14 DAY TRIAL // Today, July 12, 2016, Softpedia has been informed by Solus project leader Ikey Doherty about the general availability of the Budgie 10.2.6 desktop environment, a major release that introduces lots of new features and improvements.
Coming three and a half months after the debut of Budgie 10.2.5, which most of the Solus users are using on their computers, the Budgie 10.2.6 update promises many goodies. But first, the biggest change is the implementation of a stable, performant API/ABI, which will force those who maintain Budgie extensions to rebuild them based on the new API/ABI.
"The next release of Budgie will be v10.3, which will move to enforcing a stable, performant API/ABI through a C rewrite of the core. The soname will be bumped in v10.3 meaning all binary extensions to Budgie will require rebuilds in the next version. No removals will be made to the API so no code changes will be required," said Ikey Doherty.
What's new in Budgie Desktop 10.2.6
Release highlights of the Budgie 10.2.6 desktop environment include a redesigned Budgie Menu, fade-out effects for tile previews, compatibility with GNOME Terminal notifications, better Spotify support, the ability to dismiss the Raven notification center by clicking anywhere on the desktop (finally!), as well as improvements to the desktop notifications.
Other than that, it looks like Budgie Desktop 10.2.6 ships today with numerous other small enhancements, such as better wallpaper performance, lots of theming improvements, gnome-screensaver integration in the autostart file, battery update and calendar applet revisions, and consistent Raven toggle behavior, which promise to enhance your overall Budgie desktop experience.
Budgie Desktop 10.2.6 is now available for users of the Solus operating systems, as well as for the Fedora 22, Fedora 23, OpenSuSE Leap, and openSUSE Tumbleweed operating systems. For other distros, you can download the source archive from the GitHub page announcement, where you can study the entire changelog and find out what else is new in this release.