Budgie 10.10 Released: Official X11-to-Wayland Migration

• Budgie 10.10 is officially released and marks the desktop's migration from X11 to Wayland.
• The release note on GitHub declares the move and signals the team will now focus on Budgie 11.
• A preview shipped in November; the final release is available on the BuddiesOfBudgie GitHub releases page.
• Development ran longer than planned — the Wayland-only milestone was expected in Q1 2025.

Overview

Budgie 10.10 is the first production release of the Budgie 10 series that drops X11 support and embraces Wayland as the default compositor protocol.

The short announcement on the project's GitHub page celebrated the milestone: "Budgie 10.10 is here! This release marks our official migration from X11 to Wayland. It’s a landmark moment that rounds out over a decade of the Budgie 10 series, allowing us to now put our focus towards Budgie 11."

What changed in 10.10

The headline change is a Wayland-first architecture across the desktop shell and components, removing legacy X11 plumbing where possible.

Budgie 10.10 follows a public preview released in November, with the maintainers refining Wayland integration, input handling, and compositor interactions before tagging the final release.

Timeline and context

Budgie 10.10 was originally targeted for Q1 2025 as the project’s first Wayland-only release, but development extended into early 2026 before the team declared the migration complete.

With this release the Budgie team says it can now turn attention to Budgie 11, signaling a new development phase after more than a decade of the Budgie 10 line.

How to get it

The release is available now on GitHub. Users and distributions can download the tagged source and binaries from the BuddiesOfBudgie release page on GitHub.

Why it matters

Wayland is the modern display protocol for Linux, offering better security, smoother rendering, and improved handling of HiDPI, fractional scaling, and input. Budgie’s move to Wayland aligns the desktop with other modern Linux environments and makes future development simpler.

For end users the migration should mean fewer X11-specific quirks and better compatibility with Wayland-native toolchains and compositors. For distribution maintainers, it clarifies the default display stack for Budgie sessions.

Next steps

Users who want to test or adopt Budgie 10.10 should check the official GitHub release notes for known issues, migration notes, and packaging guidance. Expect follow-up fixes and further refinements as the project pivots to Budgie 11 development.