Ubuntu Budgie 25.04: One of the Best Desktops on the Market
I’ve been a fan of the Budgie desktop for quite some time. For about three years it was my desktop of choice, and the community-driven Ubuntu Budgie was the distro found on all of my Linux desktops.
Why?
Well, the Budgie desktop is beautiful, as well as user friendly. It’s one of the more modern-looking Linux desktop environments available and offers just enough customization to make it worthy of the Linux OS.
I still remember how excited I was to first try Budgie because it looked so fresh. That was years ago, and today, a lot of desktop environments have taken a clue or two from the Budgie designers to create a similar look and feel. It’s not that Budgie did it first; it just did it better.
But what about the latest release, which is based on Ubuntu 25.04? How does it hold up to releases from the past? I did my thing with it to see how well it fared.
In a word, outstanding.
I ran Ubuntu Budgie 25.04 as a VirtualBox VM with 5GB of RAM and 4 CPU cores. As I’ve experienced in the past, the installation of Ubuntu Budgie isn’t quite as fast as other distributions. The Ubuntu Budgie install took roughly 10 minutes, whereas a straight-up Ubuntu installation can be taken care of in less than half that time.
But then, we’re talking 10 minutes. That’s like Allen Iverson talking about practice.
What Does It Look Like?
Out of the box, Ubuntu Budgie is beautiful. It’s rather reminiscent of macOS’s desktop or elementary OS. Of course, like so many Linux distributions these days, Ubuntu Budgie defaults to a dark theme (which is always the first thing I change).
Open the Budgie Desktop Settings app (Figure 1) and disable the dark theme by clicking the On/Off slider.
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Figure 1: Disabling the dark theme is the first step.
After doing that, you need to change the Widgets to a light theme, and then move to the Top Panel option (in Budgie Desktop Settings > Panels) and change the Transparency to Always (to shore up the theme).
Now, you should have a light-themed Budgie desktop.
If you prefer a dark theme, stick with the default.
What Does It Include?
Ubuntu Budgie opts not to go the same route as Ubuntu, and ships with all the software you need to be productive out of the gate. You’ll find Firefox, LibreOffice, Lollypop (music player), a login manager app, Parole Media Player, Transmission (BitTorrent client), gPodder Podcast Client, a GUI log viewer and more. The only thing missing from the mix is an email client, which can be easily installed from the App Center (which includes both .deb and Snap support). Keep in mind, if you search for an app and it doesn’t appear, switch between the default Snap to .deb and see if it shows up (Figure 2).
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Figure 2: The Geary email client is only available as a .deb package.
There are also a lot of nice “little touches,” such as the Quick Notes app in the top bar, where you can click on the icon and type a quick note (Figure 3).
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Figure 3: The Budgie Quick Note feature is really handy.
There’s also the ability to quickly switch between workspaces by moving your mouse wheel over the two circle icons in the top bar and the Raven side panel, which includes widgets (such as a calendar and sound control) and notifications.
If you don’t like the default theme/layout, you can open the Budgie Welcome center and go to Budgie Makeovers & Layouts (Figure 4), where you can install different “makeovers” to give Budgie a different look and feel.
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Figure 4: There are plenty of layouts and themes to choose from.
The layout tab allows you to select from layouts that look like Windows 11, Windows 7, Chrome, macOS and more.
How Does It Perform?
I’ve yet to come across a Ubuntu Budgie release that didn’t perform well, and version 25.04 is no exception. App windows open quickly, and animations are smooth. To really push Ubuntu Budgie, I installed the Ollama AI CLI tool to see how it would perform with limited resources. Once installed, I ran llama3.2 and then ran the query, “What is Linux?”
As expected, the AI tool required more RAM than I’d given the VM, so I had to close it down and bump it up to 6GB. Once llama3.2 had enough resources, it performed surprisingly well (especially given that it didn’t have a GPU to access). In fact, I found Ollama/llama3.2 ran better on Ubuntu Budgie than it did on a Fedora or Ubuntu VM with the same amount of RAM and CPU cores.
To me, that speaks highly of Ubuntu Budgie, and it would make for a very good workstation for those who need to run resource-intensive jobs. Just make sure you give it plenty of RAM and CPU cores (and add in a GPU for good measure), and the sky’s the limit.
In all honesty, I was surprised at how much I enjoyed testing Ubuntu Budgie 25.04. As I said, I’ve been a fan of the distribution for some time now, and it’s only grown considerably better since those early days.
If you’re interested in giving Ubuntu Budgie a try, download an ISO now and spin it up as either a VM or on a spare bare metal machine.
Trust me when I say that you won’t regret it.
