Now that Budgie 10.10 is out as the last chapter in the Budgie 10 series, the devs behind this modern Linux desktop environment have kicked off the development of the next major release, Budgie 11.
Budgie developer Joshua Strobl shares with us today some interesting details about Budgie 11, such as the fact that the upcoming desktop environment will be written in the Qt 6 open-source application framework, and some steps have already been taken in this direction with the Budgie 10.10 release.
The devs already wrote Budgie Desktop Services, the beating heart of Budgie 11, in Qt 6, and they plan on writing the Budgie Display Configurator in Qt6/Kirigami as well. The end goal here is to make Budgie more modular, allowing users and integrators alike the freedom to fully configure the desktop environment.
Budgie made a crazy turn. From a legacy GTK based desktop to Wayland and Qt??
I dont know why Qt but I guess it is good
I always preferred GTK and its ecosystem. But GTK is more and more positioning itself as just a toolkit for GNOME. And GNOME is more and more going not only going its own way but also not concerning itself with compatibility beyond what I will call the Red Hat Linux platform.
So I can certainly see why anybody outside of GNOME would consider migrating off GTK. I mean, this is basically how we got COSMIC as well, based off the Iced toolkit.
Tbh after reading a recent blog post, I think this is not true at all.
Like theming can be shipped as part of the platform toolkit or something.
Qt, GTK, they’re both solid. But yeah, it is an impressive development.
I much prefer QT. The GTK ethos since Gnome 3 is basically: “We’re making this for our own needs, we don’t care about what you want”
And while I sympathize and understand the frustrations that downstream brings, I don’t think any project not part of Gnome/GIMP should be building on it.
QT is built from the ground up to be used by anyone, regardless of needs or use case. It’s a better fit for building complex software like desktop environments.
Well, KDEs Qt fork (I think they have one). Qt is released proprietary and the older versions are open source. Which may make it pretty well funded but also always behind on updates.
Newer GTK (through phosh and gnome-mobile) makes for great mobile applications, but no way I’m using those on the desktop.
Yeah, for my hobbyist needs I was looking at qt myself. They’ve both been around since 98. But you’re right about gtk being focused on their use only. It’s in the name. Gimp tool kit. Though these days I guess its more GNOME?
It has really only been a problem since GTK4. A lot of the rest of the GTK universe has stuck with GTK3. Now we are seeing people come up with alternative versions of libadwaita.
We should end up seeing a fork on the GTK side with GNOME going one way and everybody else another.
Tbh custom libadwaitas are kind of how GTK4 is supposed to be used.
@Eldritch @boredsquirrel most qt apps don’t have AT-SPI support so an unfortunate day for people in need of accessibility tooling that use budgie
Fair point. Also an issue with Wayland ATM too iirc. Hopefully something that sees increased attention now that it’s gone flagship.