Should Budgie Desktop consider moving to GTK 4/5?

[taozuhong]

Budgie Desktop 10 has been in development for ten years—that kind of dedication and courage is rare and commendable. But migrating to Qt means rewriting all the code and re-testing everything, so it would be hard to get new versions out fast. Why not just move to GTK5?

There is a full solution for new Budgie Desktop v11:

• UI Framework: QT6 --> GTK4 / QT7 --> GTK5(2026.9)
• Adaptable UI: kirigami --> libadwaita
• Compositor: all ship with Wayland (QT6/7, GTK4/5)
• Color: GTK has HDR/HDR10/CICP/BT2020 support
• Vala: it's better than C++

I do think that Budgie Desktop v11 should step forward to GTK4/5, and AI(GLM 4.7 / GPT 5.2 / Claude Opus 4.5) could help make it possible quickly.

[fossfreedom]

Budgie 11, our goal is not just to port the desktop to a new toolkit. This is our opportunity for a fundamental re-architecture. We are making Budgie more modular, not only to allow for better personalization for distributions and users, but to pave the way for new form factors, input devices, and workflows,” said Joshua Strobl

So basically we are rethinking our approach anyway - to key areas - budgie core and budgie-desktop

So the budgie-deskop is to leverage budgie-core - it won't look and work the same way as current from an architecture level. From a user POV it should feel similar but with lots of extra goodies.

The toolkit is fundamental to how we envisage a future "budgie" - one that the current and future team have confidence in. Do have a read with the new "state of the budgie 2025" where there is more detail.

The TL;DR; - budgie in v11 is very different from v10 - from an end user POV it should work as similar as now but with lots of different ideas and ways where you can leverage all things budgie.