Testing Budgie
This document provides high-level documentation on testing the latest changes to Budgie Desktop. Whenever possible, we recommend that when reporting an issue with Budgie Desktop that you first test with the latest available version of Budgie Desktop, if not the latest in-development changes, to see if the issue is already resolved.
Please look at our GitHub releases to confirm the latest version. You can compare this against the version you have installed by running:
budgie-desktop --version
Git Builds
Some distros provide up-to-date "git" versions of each component. If possible please try these packages on a separate machine / in a virtual machine.
- Arch
- Ubuntu
Arch Linux typically has the latest stable version in the Extra repository, with new releases landing in Extra Testing first. To test the latest in-development changes, build Budgie Desktop from source as described below.
Ubuntu Budgie provides a testing PPA. Budgie Desktop 10.10 is currently published there for Ubuntu 24.04 LTS.
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntubudgie-dev/budgie-desktop-test
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
reboot
To remove the PPA and return to the distro provided package, install ppa-purge and run:
sudo apt-get install ppa-purge
sudo ppa-purge ppa:ubuntubudgie-dev/budgie-desktop-test
reboot
For other distributions, or to test the latest in-development changes, you will need to follow the steps at Building Budgie Desktop. To test your build without replacing your installed Budgie Desktop, use meson devenv as described in Installing / Validating.
Testing
There are several components that you may encounter throughout usage or testing of Budgie Desktop.
| Name | Description | Restart Component |
|---|---|---|
| budgie-daemon | Budgie Daemon is a background process responsible for many activities such as notifications, on-screen displays, screenshots, screen locking and idle handling, night light, the desktop background, keyboard layouts, media controls, and brightness. | budgie-daemon --replace |
| budgie-desktop-settings | Budgie Desktop Settings is the graphical application for configuration of our desktop environment. | Not supported, close and reopen it |
| budgie-panel | This component handles one or more visual panels, which includes Raven and panel applets. | budgie-panel --replace |
| Dialogs | budgie-power-dialog, budgie-run-dialog, budgie-screenshot-dialog, and budgie-polkit-dialog provide the power, run, screenshot, and authentication dialogs. They are installed in Budgie Desktop's libexec directory. | Not supported |
| labwc | labwc is the Wayland compositor and window manager Budgie Desktop runs on. | labwc -r reloads its configuration |
| labwc bridge | The labwc bridge keeps labwc's configuration, such as keyboard shortcuts, in sync with Budgie Desktop's settings. It is started automatically at login. | Not supported, see below |
Restarting components
It is common when testing Budgie Desktop to restart various components. When doing so, pass the --replace flag, then run the process in the background and detach it from your terminal with disown,
so you can for example close the Terminal without it stopping. How you do this depends on your shell:
- bash / zsh
- fish
budgie-panel --replace & disown
fish needs disown as a separate command:
budgie-panel --replace &; disown
Some may opt to use the nohup (no hangup) command to log the output as well. If you do not need to do any long-term logging, it is not necessary to run it with nohup. Below is an example of how you would use it with budgie-panel:
nohup budgie-panel --replace > budgie-panel.out 2>&1 &
This will output to the file named budgie-panel.out in whichever directory you run the command. You can change the filename should you desire.
Some components may be more sensitive to replacing and may either need to be done in a specific order, or twice (common with budgie-daemon).
When in doubt, you should:
- Do a double replace of budgie-daemon
- If you are replacing both budgie-daemon and budgie-panel, first replace the daemon, then replace the panel.
Restarting the labwc bridge
The labwc bridge does not support --replace. To restart it, stop the running bridge and start it again. Its location depends on how your distribution packages Budgie Desktop, so find the command it is started with first:
grep '^Exec=' /etc/xdg/autostart/org.buddiesofbudgie.labwc-bridge.desktop
Then stop the running bridge and run that command, adding --debug for more detailed output. For example, on Fedora:
pkill -f labwc-bridge
/usr/libexec/budgie-desktop/labwc-bridge --debug