DEsk BETA
DESK

The DEsk desktop: two programs on sheets of paper on a walnut desk, the clock, the Control Panel at the back left and the post box at the back right

A Skeuomorphic Wayland Compositor for Linux.

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Free and open source under the MIT License. Version 0.1.4 (beta) for Debian, Ubuntu, Arch Linux and Fedora.

Get the highlights.

The drawer is your dock. Pull the brass handle and the things you keep close are there, on green felt.

The drawer pulled out under the desk, with five things on green felt

Turn down the corner. Fold, Unfold and Discard are printed on the back of every window.

The turned-down corner of a window, with Fold, Unfold and Discard on its back

Your apps, on a bookshelf. Each category is a ring binder. Take a sheet, and the app opens on it.

The bookcase: eight binders, the ALL APPS book, the calendar, memo pad, clock and post box

Notifications arrive by post. Letters show the sender and subject. Take one out and carry it anywhere.

The post box, open, with letters in it

A Control Panel with real meters. A volume knob, levers for the network and Bluetooth, and a fader for the lamp.

The Control Panel: meters, levers, the volume knob and the power keys

Plans, stuck onto the day. A desk calendar with a notebook of to-dos, and notes you peel off.

The desk calendar at October, beside its binder of sticky notes

Fold it like a letter. A minimized window is left on the desk, under the others, as paper put down is.

A window folded into a packet and left on the desk

Real-time lighting

One lamp.
Every shadow.

Move the pointer to move the lamp

The room is ray-traced. Desk, shelf, console and post box are traced on the GPU with OpenGL ES 3, with a CPU tracer to fall back on — and cached for your screen size, so it only happens once.

Everything shares the same light. Windows, letters and folded paper are all lit by the one desk lamp. At login the room starts dark, and the lamp comes up as the room is made.

OpenGL ES 3.0 ray tracingCPU fallback tracerCached per screen sizeSizes in points

Paper windows

Every window is
a sheet of paper.

The turned-down corner of a window, with Fold, Unfold and Discard on its back
The corner, turned down
A window folded into a packet and left on the desk
Folded, and set down

Real fibre, real thickness. Each window sits on a cream sheet with a dog-eared corner. Drag an edge and more paper is pulled out from behind it.

What's on the back. Hold the pointer on the corner and it lifts: Fold leaves the window on the desk like a letter, Unfold opens it out, and Discard crumples it into a ball and tosses it.

Performance

Rich to look at.
Light on its feet.

Written in C, straight on wlroots. No toolkit and no browser engine in the shell — just the compositor drawing the desk itself.

Fast without a GPU, too. Once the room is traced, even one core with no GPU drops no frames. Graphics go from Ultra down to a 2D Fallback for virtual machines.

~2 msto draw a frame once the room is traced
0.5 msa frame in 2D Fallback, on two CPU cores
≤450 MBof memory for DEsk itself — 200 to 450 MB
7languages, switched live

Time to draw one frame

Budget at 60 Hz
16.7 ms
DEsk, room traced
~2 ms
DEsk, 2D Fallback
0.5 ms

Measured nested at 1440×900 with the CPU, GPU and memory cut down. 2D Fallback figure on two CPU cores without a GPU.

Take a closer look.

The whole desk

Choose a part of the desk to see it up close.

Hands on

Try it on the desk.

A small DEsk, right here in the page. Drag the paper around, turn down a corner, pull the drawer and open the post box. The real one is traced in 3D; this one is just for getting a feel.

Drag a sheet by its title.
Hold the corner to fold, unfold or discard.
Pull the handle to open the drawer.
Open the post box when the flag is up.
The plates at the back turn your head to the bookcase and the Control Panel.

And so much more
on the desk.

A bookshelf for your apps.

Each category is a ring binder whose sheets fan from a single ring. Take one, and it's carried down to the desk.

The bookcase with eight binders

The ALL APPS index book.

Every program from A to Z, with thumb tabs and a line at the top to type into.

The ALL APPS book searching for term

A post box for notifications.

Letters show the sender and subject. One taken out lies on the desk.

The post box, open, with letters

The Control Panel.

A valve-era machine built into the back of the desk: real meters, a volume knob, network and Bluetooth levers, and faders for the lamp and the screen's backlight.

The Control Panel

A front door for a lock screen.

Traced in 3D with the hour's light — the sun worked out from your city — and, if you allow it, the real weather.

Seven languages.

Everything DEsk prints, switched live.

English · 日本語 · 中文 · 한국어 · Español · Français · Deutsch

The DEsk Experience Index.

Processor, memory, 2D, 3D and disk, each rated 1.0–9.9 on brass-rimmed meters.

A calendar, a memo pad and a clock.

The calendar has a notebook of plans and to-dos; notes are peeled off and stuck onto the day. The memo pad's sheets turn over the wire.

The desk calendar beside its binder of sticky notes

A clock that keeps watch.

A red LED clock stands at the back of the desk. Four keys beside it turn up its pages, and light as your hand comes near.

CLOCK
The time, 24-hour or 12 with AM and PM. The seconds sit small beside the minutes, and the colon beats.
DAY
The date, where the time was.
MEDIA
What's playing in Spotify or any MPRIS player, with play, skip and the volume.
POWER
The battery. Plugged in, how much power the machine is drawing.

Press the keys. Press one again to go back to the time.

  • The two little lamps above the seconds, a camera and a microphone, light only while a program really has one open. A machine without a camera has no lamp for it.
  • Beside the time: the input method you're typing with, and the volume. On a laptop, the battery and the screen's brightness under them.
  • At login it counts in red how far the room is made. And on certain days of the year, it has something more for you.

More than one screen.

Every other screen shows more of the desk's boards, running on from it, for windows to lie on.

X11 apps, on paper too.

They run through Xwayland — and windows that draw their own frames sit on paper as well.

X11XWAYLAND

Graphics for any machine.

The installer rates the machine and picks a level for it. Your own choice always wins.

Shell Settings.

Tap to click, natural scrolling, pointer speed, keyboard layouts and key repeat — applied at once to what's plugged in.

Shell Settings, System tab

Something special, on the day.

On certain days of the year, the door and the clock have something more for you. There's no setting for it — you'll see on the day.

✦

Runs on the computer
you already have.

DEsk is installed as a whole desktop, like GNOME or KDE. It runs on these distributions:

Debian

  • Debian 13

Ubuntu

  • Ubuntu 24.04 LTS
  • Ubuntu 26.04 LTS
  • Linux Mint
  • Pop!_OS

Arch

  • Arch Linux
  • EndeavourOS
  • Manjaro

Fedora

  • Fedora 43
  • Fedora 44
  • Nobara

Minimum

Everything works. The first login takes longer.

2 x86-64 cores1 works
4 GB of memoryDEsk itself uses 200–450 MB
No GPU neededThe room is traced on the CPU
1366 × 768screen
About 1 GB of diskwith --bare

Recommended

The room traced in seconds, with room to spare.

4 cores or morex86-64
8 GB of memory or moreRoom for your apps
OpenGL ES 3.0 with GBMMesa Intel, AMD, Nouveau; VMware SVGA3D
1440 × 900 or morescreen
2–2.7 GB of diskwith the whole set of programs

Measured with the CPU, GPU and memory cut down (nested, 1440×900). Only the first login draws the room: about 14–18 seconds until the lamp comes on, with a GPU. Without one, DEsk goes to 2D Fallback by itself, and the first login takes about 16 seconds on two cores (a 3D level chosen by hand takes about 10 minutes there). After that it's cached.

Get DEsk.

One installer per distribution brings everything DEsk needs. It shows what it will install, and asks first.

Download v0.1.4 View the source on GitHub

  1. Get the release

    Download the latest release from the Releases page and unpack it — or clone the repository.

    $ git clone https://github.com/fyzugx/DEsk.git
$ cd DEsk

  2. Run the installer for Debian 13

    The packages come straight from Debian.

    $ sudo sh scripts/install_debian.sh

    --yes takes the suggested answers. --no-apps skips the recommended programs. Run the same line again to update; your settings are kept.

  3. Log out, and choose DEsk

    Pick DEsk on the login screen. The first login draws the room once — a few seconds on a GPU, longer without one. After that, it starts at once.

1.3k+ starsRead the code, report a problem, or send a fix.View on GitHub 130+ membersBug reports, ideas and screenshots of your desk.Join Discord

Questions, answered.

Getting it

Which Linux distributions does it run on?

Debian 13; Ubuntu 24.04 and 26.04 (with Linux Mint and Pop!_OS); Arch Linux (with EndeavourOS and Manjaro); and Fedora 43 and 44 (with Nobara). Each family has its own installer, which shows what it will install and asks before it starts.

Is there a version for Windows, macOS or openSUSE?

No. DEsk is a Wayland desktop for Linux, and there are installers only for the four families above.

How do I update it, or remove it?

To update, unpack the new release and run the same install line again: there's no need to uninstall first, and your settings and the room already drawn are kept. To remove it, log out of DEsk and, from another desktop or a console, run sudo sh scripts/uninstall.sh in the release folder. It shows what it will remove and asks first, and leaves your settings and your distribution's packages alone.

Is it a whole desktop, or just a window manager?

A whole desktop, chosen at login like GNOME or KDE. DEsk draws the desk itself: the paper windows, the drawer, the bookcase, the Control Panel, the post box and the lock screen. For the rest it uses free programs that already exist, mostly from Xfce and MATE, which the installer brings along (unless you pass --no-apps).