Getting Budgie

Budgie Desktop and our macrocosm of applications are available across a wide variety of Linux-based operating systems.

Get Budgie Effortlessly

You are able to get Budgie Desktop out-of-the-box, with no extra effort, with the operating systems shown below. These operating systems range in the experience they provide, some will be more curated with additional widgets / extensions for Budgie Desktop, others may be closer to the "stock" / "vanilla" Budgie Desktop experience.

EndeavourOS

EndeavourOS is a terminal-centric distro built on top of Arch Linux. EndeavourOS offers through their unified installer the ability to install Budgie Desktop, with user choice on their desired experience.

Fedora Budgie Spin

Fedora Budgie Spin offers a near-stock Budgie Desktop experience on top of the Fedora open source platform.

Fedora Budgie Atomic

Fedora Budgie Atomic offers an atomic / immutable Fedora experience with a near-stock Budgie Desktop experience.

NixOS

NixOS is a Linux distribution based on the Nix package manager and build system.

Solus

Solus offers a curated Budgie Desktop experience on top of its built-from-scratch operating system.

Ubuntu Budgie

Ubuntu Budgie offers a highly curated Budgie Desktop experience with Ubuntu at its core.

Ultramarine Linux

Ultramarine Linux is a Fedora-based Linux distribution designed to stay out of your way and be easy to use.

Get Budgie with a bit more work

Arch Linux

Arch Linux offers a Budgie Desktop profile within its 'archinstall' installer, though more intrepid users also have the option to install the desktop manually.

archinstall
Manual Installation

Under the "Profile" option, select "desktop", then "budgie".

After completing manual installation, run the following to install Budgie and a login manager:

sudo pacman -S budgie lightdm-gtk-greeter

It's also recommended to install nm-applet, the default GTK theme, and the default icon theme:

sudo pacman -S arc-gtk-theme papirus-icon-theme network-manager-applet

Finally, enable LightDM:

sudo systemctl enable --now lightdm

FreeBSD

Budgie is not yet available in a quarterly release of FreeBSD; however, it can be installed if the Latest binary repository or the master branch of the ports repository is used instead.

Package
Port

Install X11 and the Budgie package group:

pkg install xorg-minimal budgie

Configure and install X11:

cd /usr/ports/x11/xorg-minimal && make config-recursive install clean

Configure and install Budgie:

cd /usr/ports/x11/budgie && make config-recursive install clean

Finally, enable DBus and LightDM:

sysrc dbus_enable="YES" lightdm_enable="YES"

After a reboot, you will be able to log into Budgie.

🚧caution

Using the Latest repository or the master version of the ports repository may result in system instability.

NixOS

Budgie Desktop can be installed by adding the following to your system configuration:

# Enable the X server.
services.xserver.enable = true;
# Enable the Budgie Desktop.
services.xserver.desktopManager.budgie.enable = true;
# Enable a display manager (recommended).
services.xserver.displayManager.lightdm.enable = true;

note

None of these operating systems are viewed as being the "reference" platform for Budgie Desktop, rather we want you to be able to pick the OS that fits your needs best, and have Budgie Desktop along with you!