Solus OS had us believing that the year of the Linux desktop might actually be a reality. No really, Solus is a profoundly excellent desktop experience. The main thing that stopped me from moving wholesale to Solus, is that it relies on its own packaging system, and its own package maintainers. The great thing about Ubuntu is that it really doesn’t rely too much on Canonical for the packages, the vast majority of them are simply downstream from it’s grandaddy, Debian.

Moving away from the packages you know and love, specifically some of the more esoteric ones you have, can be a bit of a leap of faith. If you’re not quite ready to do that yet, then someone else has already made the solution – why not merge the best of Ubuntu with the best of the Solus OS experience? The result: Ubuntu Budgie. Budgie (and its accomplice, Raven) are the core desktop interface components of the Solus desktop. Stick that on top of GNOME 3 and plug it into the Ubuntu backend, and you have a very mature base for a very slick desktop environment.

Video or it isn’t true

We put together a really short video tutorial showing how easy it is to install Ubuntu Budgie, it also shows a quick demonstration of the desktop, the pre-installed apps and the unique features and design of the Budgie desktop, as well as the Raven sidebar. Have a look for yourself! As always, we really appreciate your feedback so please leave us comments!

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqve7-yGx2Y[/embedyt]