Roadmap to Ubuntu Budgie 27.04

Development
1

These are just some ideas on our focus for 27.04. Feel free to ask questions, raise points of interest, offers for help etc.

  1. Add kimageformat6-plugins as a recommendation to budgie-artwork - this will open up JXL, JPEG2000 and other image types for the SDDM wallpaper
  2. Improve accessibility - add wvkbd as the on-screen keyboard, update budgie-control-center config to ensure on-screen accessibility is a definable option.
  3. Budgie 10.10.3 makes changes to the default menu applet, and budgie-extras applications-menu has similar changes. Need to offer up tweaks to key themes supported in budgie-welcome otherwise these applets appear with a transparent background
  4. budgie-welcome ASTRO edition - this is a really exciting change for welcome. Completely revamped by Nikola. We need to plugin the python bits around and to iteratively test this before rolling out to all supported budgie versions.
  5. Replace SDDM X11 with SDDM + Wayland Compositor (e.g. Cage). This will make our distro end-to-end wayland. → see below for an example.
  6. Budgie 10.10.x - respond to issues raised on buddiesofbudgie and help to resolve.
  7. Package 10.10.x and all related packages for 27.04 in a timely release manner
  8. Package 10.10.x and all related packages for Debian Forky
  9. stretch goal - create a Qt based slickSDDM settings app - great learning experience for Qt 6 base development
  10. Fix up QuickChar for wayland compatibility
  11. Fix up budgie-browser-profile-launcher for wayland compatibility
  12. Update theme and icon packages as and when released by their upstream. Consider backporting to older supported UB versions
  13. Rework budgie-sway-session for UB - upload to development PPA for testing.
  14. Package budgie-sway-session for Debian to allow install on 26.10
  15. Revisit nemo-desktop again - linuxmint upstream have made changes to make nemo-desktop fully wayland compatible. Lets see if its suitable for budgie.
  16. it appears the next version of gthumb - our image viewer and part time image editor - will be libadwaita based. Look to substitute it.
  17. sadly “drawing” hasn’t seen any meaningful progress over the last couple of years … so again - may want to consider options in this space.
  18. Work out best way to make our Raspberry Pi image more automated - current issues mainly around GNOME-Shell finding its way onto our image.
  19. Revamp the seeds. Look for areas to cleanup. Example is the use of !syntax for attempting to block germinate from pulling in packages. the blacklist file should now be renamed blocklist and should be the primary source for blocking packages.
  20. Check and if necessary fix the plymouth text theme (budgie-artwork/debian at master · UbuntuBudgie/budgie-artwork · GitHub) - the triggers/postrm etc make reference to lsb_release - this has been changed to os_release (I think) in 26.10 so we need to ensure the text theme still functions as expected.

Suggested UI fixes:

  1. Would also be useful to make sddm pick up resolution/scaling algo. Login screen widgets are teeny tiny on 4k screen. Currently have to set the config in 50-ubuntubudgie.conf - for info on KDE they achieve this via System Settings > Colors & Themes > Login Screen (SDDM) > Apply Plasma Settings - this makes various settings in SDDM use the user desktop settings at that point of choosing the option.

[General]
InputMethod=qtvirtualkeyboard
GreeterEnvironment=QML2_IMPORT_PATH=/usr/share/sddm/themes/ubuntu-budgie-login/components/,QT_IM_MODULE=qtvirtualkeyboard,QT_SCREEN_SCALE_FACTORS=1.5

The schedule for 27.04 is Ubuntu T T Release Schedule - Ubuntu release notes

3

For 17 - I think Pinta is worth a look as a potential drop in replacement candidate for Drawing.

It doesn’t have a .deb package and it was dropped in favor of snap and flat formats instead which are available and working on 26.04 right now.

4

Can we incorporate part of the Ubuntu installer so that users can access the accessibility settings as soon as the installer launches?

6

image
image1280×800 316 KB

I might be wrong but i dont think the installer allows you to customise what you see on this screen. Kind of a take it or leave it situation.

Thus how can we implement all of these options? Needs someone who is willing to research all of this.

7

As far as I can tell, isn’t that what this is all about?

And the configuration seems to be explained there.

8

Correct. “accessibility” … thats the whole page that is entirely hidden. It doesnt appear you can hide parts of the accessibility page… for example the speech part where orca needs additional work in budgie to work properly.

9

Ah. :face_without_mouth:
I was just thinking about the possibility of increasing the font size during installation.
But I was thinking that if you wanted to improve accessibility, Ubuntu had paved the way.

10

Think it would be a useful info to plough though all those options and see what currently works and what doesnt. That will be helpful to guide ideas on where to concentrate matters in the future.

11

For sure! — to make 20 characters.

12

Spotted this in Debian / 26.10 - sudo apt install wayland-pipewire-idle-inhibit … GitHub - rafaelrc7/wayland-pipewire-idle-inhibit: Inhibit wayland idle when computer is playing sound · GitHub … might be useful for folks wanting to not dim/lock when playing audio / teams calls etc … not sure how to integrate this from a graphical POV. Thoughts?

13

Pinta does not qualify as an acceptable snap for ISOs Policy on 3rd-party software sources included by Ubuntu - Ubuntu project documentation since it isn’t mapped to each release (tracked)