budgie-rd

Research & Development repository for Budgie 11. Budgie 11 will be based on Qt and this repository will help us to flesh out some concepts and architectural requirements for the upcoming desktop work.

But yeah this will basically evolve into Budgie 11. Jump in. :P

Here Be Derghuns

Plan (rough)

Create budgie-rd-session component. This will load XDG autostart entries and any desktop session components from /usr/share/budgie-session/desktop/*.desktop We'll scope to allow multiple session types.
Have the session launch kwin_x11 and budgie-rd-shell
Make budgie-rd-shell capable of launching a terminal and exiting the session
Factor reusable bits into libs (xdg, session comms, etc.)
Flesh out RD Shell with primitives (plugin building) and open the floor to rapid expansion. :P
Add our QPA plugins to provide consistent experience across the shell and all Qt applications.
Extend GTK to use our own stylised dialogs to match those of our QPA dialogs.

Core notions:

While Budgie Desktop is.. well, a desktop, it shouldn't scope limit itself to executing a pure-breed desktop session. The Budgie Shell should provide a data and service driven execution environment, exposing data and objects to any shell UX implementation.
In effect, this will allow us to support multiple Budgie modes, such as for OEM installers, first run, tutorial, "big screen", etc.
Basic widget providers (such as OSD and notification windows) should be reusable to help build these extra session types.

IRC: #budgie-desktop-dev on irc.freenode.net

Building

Check the root meson.build for build dependencies. The pkg-config names are:

Qt5Widgets
Qt5Quick
Qt5QuickControls2

Additionally you will need development headers for KWindowSystem, as well as the meson and ninja build tools.

To install these on Solus:

sudo eopkg up
sudo eopkg it -c system.devel qt5-base-devel qt5-declarative-devel qt5-quickcontrols2-devel kwindowsystem-devel

Now, let's configure the project (set libdir to appropriate libdir for your distro):

meson build --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc --libdir=/usr/lib64
ninja -j$(($(getconf _NPROCESSORS_ONLN)+1)) -C build

Testing

For now, just run from git as we're not currently installing. This may change in the near future, but we'll update the README to reflect this

./build/src/desktop/shell/budgie-rd-shell

Using KWin

Currently we're testing integration with KWin. Note that this will break integration in your existing Budgie desktop install (Or other non-KWin desktops). We're testing various effects (such as blur behind) and considering it for the Wayland angle, given the use of the KWindowSystem KF5 module.

To temporarily switch to Kwin:

kwin_x11 --replace --no-kactivities &

If you're using bash, prepend the command with nohup, if you're using zsh, suffix it with an extra bang (!) to ensure that when you close the terminal with CTRL+D the kwin_x11 process isn't aborted.

To restore budgie-wm, use the above hints but with this command:

budgie-wm --replace &

License

budgie-rd is available under the terms of the LGPL-2.1 license. This will be changed in future to a split GPL-2.0/LGPL-2.1 model to match Budgie Desktop.

Authors

Budgie Desktop is primarily authored by the Solus project which oversees the development and leadership of the Budgie Desktop to ensure the delivery of a distribution agnostic and open source Desktop Environment for everyone to enjoy and contribute to.