# Budgie Desktop

Related articles

- Desktop environment
- Display manager
- Window manager
- GTK+

Budgie is the default desktop of Solus Operating System, written from scratch. Besides a more modern design, Budgie can emulate the look and feel of the GNOME 2 desktop.

At this time Budgie is heavily under development, so you can expect minor bugs and new features to be added as time goes on.

## Installation

Install the budgie-desktop package for the latest stable or budgie-desktop-gitAUR for current git master. It's recommended to install its optional dependencies also to get a more complete desktop environment. It's recommended also to install the gnome group, which contains applications required for the standard GNOME experience.

### Starting

Choose Budgie Desktop session from a display manager of choice, or modify xinitrc to include Budgie Desktop:

    ~/.xinitrc

    export XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP=Budgie:GNOME
    exec budgie-desktop

## Usage

You can see the notification messages, set volume, and modify the look and feel of the desktop with the sidebar called "Raven". It can be accessed with `Super+N` key or by clicking on the Status Indicator applet.

## Configuration

Configuration of Budgie Desktop is done through the sidebar and changes to system settings are made through gnome-control-center

### Changing button layout

Window button layout can be changed using dconf, dconf-editor or gsettings.

For example:

    gsettings set com.solus-project.budgie-wm button-layout 'close,minimize,maximize:appmenu'
    gsettings set com.solus-project.budgie-helper.workarounds fix-button-layout 'close,minimize,maximize:menu'

### Replace Budgie WM

It is possible to use an alternative window manager with the Budgie. Either define a custom session which replaces budgie-wm with a window manager of choice or else autostart `my-wm --replace` where my-wm is the executable name of the window manager you wish to use.

## See also

- Official Solus Project website
- Official git repositories for Solus development
- Build status for Solus projects

Category:

- Desktop environments