We met project lead David “Fossfreedom” Mohammed and packaging guru Sam Lane from the Ubuntu Budgie team in Rīga, and they passed on news of a rift – and indeed possible divorce – between Budgie and Enlightenment… and it’s caused by Wayland.

While Enlightenment does have some Wayland support, in the project’s own words this is “still considered experimental and not for regular end users.”

Thus, the Budgie team has been evaluating options to move forward. XFCE are doing some really great work in this area with libxfce4windowing – a compatibility layer bridging Wayland and X11, allowing the move in a logical direction without needing a big-bang approach. To date, most of the current codebase has already been reworked and is ready for a Wayland-only approach without impacting further development and enhancements.