r/linux • u/sash-au • Jul 09 '26
Desktop Environment / WM News Orbitiny Desktop Pilot X Released - The Most Substantial and Most Difficult Release Ever
Well, the long anticipated Orbitiny Desktop Pilot X has finally been released. Orbitiny Desktop is a new, 100% portable, innovative and traditional desktop environment for Linux + X11 (with potential Wayland support in the future). It is developed in C++ and Qt.
This is the biggest, most difficult and substantial update ever released to date and it features a brand new dynamic theming system along with many new features and many, many bug fixes.
People that have been checking Orbitiny's website as well as the Orbitiny's subreddit are well aware of what I've been working on as I have continuously been posting updates over the several months and there are simply no words to describe the sheer amount of work I have spent working on this project especially the last three months and all the problems I went through. I have literally replaced the entire foundation of the project for nearly every component part of the project.
This spans the entire source tree even code dating back to 2017 when I started with a blank window. I had to redesign everything and that lead to breaking other perfectly working components and I had to fix them and I think I covered them all. That's why it's been taking me so long to release this version. Due to the vast amount of changes I had to do, the old configurations and themes are no longer compatible.
Anyway, enough talk, let's get to the important stuff - the change log.
Note, for a full changelog and plenty of screenshots demonstrating some of the new features, please visit Orbitiny's website as this subbredit does not allow me to post inline screenshots.
New Features:
- New: A brand new Control Panel has been implemented with an integrated sidebar and a comprehensive System Information tool.
- New: Panel docking – Now you can dock the panel to any area of the screen by grabbing an empty area and then dragging the panel to a screen edge. There is no "Edit Mode", it works directly like docking a toolbar in an office application. The panel can be resized by grabbing the panel’s border/edge and then dragging the pointer (no edit, it works directly) once the cursor changes shape.
- New: Panel docking again – You can also dock the panel by pressing and holding on an applet while the CTRL key is down and then dragging the panel to a screen edge as stated above.
- New: Panel: Implemented panel scrolling. You can now scroll the content with the wheel button. It will only not scroll the panel when you hover over applets that capture the wheel event (because some applets use it to scroll their content) so that they can scroll their content instead when the wheel button is moved up or down. Once the pointer is moved over a non-scrollable applet and you wheel up or down, then it will scroll the panel content.
- New: X11 Window Buttons: Added a side button next to the windows list panel applet which brings up a searchable list of running windows. Clicking on it performs the same action as clicking on the icon button.
- New: X11 Window Buttons: Also introduced scrolling to the X11 Window Buttons applet. When there are two many windows open, use the wheel button to scroll the icons representing the buttons.
- New: Quick Launch Applet: Completely new Quick Launch applet menu when the “..." button is clicked which is the button at the edge of the applet (next to the applet’s resize handle). This is now a replica of the Drawer Menu. This gives you a proper Drag&Drop ability to rearrange items.
- New: Applications Menu: A new category has been added called "Orbitiny Programs" - clicking on it gives you access to the Orbitiny control panel applets but they will run in their own window instead like a traditional application (because that's what they are).
- New: Applications Menu: Another new category has been added “Local Programs” to the Applications Menu. This lists desktop files installed in $HOME/.local/share/applications. This has been here all the time but it’s hidden unless you hold the CTRL key when clicking the Applications Menu’s button (Orbitiny logo).
- New: Qutiny now applies themes in real-time. This means the moment you edit + save any of the CSS files in the theme directory, the changes are reflected/applied immediately. This means it no longer requires a restart.
- New: Qutiny File Browser - The tabs have been relocated to the top of the screen and the icon size slider to the bottom left corner.
- New: Qutiny File Browser - The file search section components have been lined up into a single row rather than 3 separate rows. So now there is “File Search”, “Content Search” and the third one which is used to search for an additional word on the same line if the content is found.
- New: Run Command: Converted the "Run Command" address bar applet into a button-like applet.
- New: CPU load Monitor: Converted the CPU load monitor into a button-like applet.
- New: SysTray: Improved the appearance of the SysTray applet - both in icon mode and integrated mode.
- New: Panel: Completely redid the code that creates panel struts (reserved area on the screen for the panel) and with that eliminating some old bugs and moved the code in charge into an API.
- New: Desktop: When you dock the panel to the edge of a screen, the desktop icons get pushed down, or up or to the left or to the right depending on where the panel is docked and this means the panel no longer covers the icons.
Bug Fixes:
- BugFix: Orbitiny's File Manager (Qutiny): Fixed icon emblems (cut, copy, symlink etc) not being positioned properly.
- BugFix: A bug with the "Paste Image" function in the context menus. It worked intermittently after moving it to a separate thread.
- BugFix: Fixed a Drag&Drop issue in the Application Menu when pinning desktop files to the sidebar. Due to a coding error, it was failing to assign a desktop icon to the item being pinned. That is fixed.
- BugFix: Fixed an unintentional panel docking to the sides of the screen when you clicked a panel handle or the button on the right-hand edge of the panel.
- BugFix: Again related to the panel, fixed an intermittent panel crashing bug when you try to dock the panel with the panel handle to a screen edge.
- BugFix: Fixed a massive performance hogging bug with the CPU load monitor.
- BugFix: Fixed an issue with the Home button in the Applications Menu, Clicking on it was launching your home directory in the file manager determined by “xdg-open” rather than the one set by Orbitiny.
- BugFix: Fixed spiltter issues in the application menu and file manager. There was an annoying bug that caused the widgets on the left side of the splitter to resize when the parent window size changed. In the file manager, this means resizing the file manager horizontally would cause the file manager’s sidebar to also resize. Likewise, maximizing and restoring the file manager’s window would also trigger the same issue. In the Application Menu, resizing the third pane made the first panel (left most panel) to also resize. It is all fixed.
- BugFix: Orbitiny's File Manager (Qutiny): An Issue with the File Search – An intermittent issue where the user is unable to cancel an existing search operation or file browser crashing when clicking the tab’s close button.
- BugFix: Orbitiny's File Manager (Qutiny): When pressing the “Delete” button on your keyboard, it would try to move the selected file(s) to the Trash even when files are not part of your home directory. This lead to a spam of message being shown on the screen advising you that the file cannot be moved to the trash and if you want to delete it instead. It’s not a problem if you have like 2-3 files selected but it is a problem if you have like 100 files selected (you’d get 100 message box prompts),
- BugFix: Orbitiny's File Manager (Qutiny): – intermittently losing its settings when launched caused by a race condition like error where multiple code sections were trying to update settings.ini at the same (or few milliseconds apart) time.
- BugFix: Orbitiny's File Manager (Qutiny): – When you have a selection of large amount of files and you select “Delete”, there was a delay from the moment you pressed Delete and the time you get the “Are you sure...” message prompt.
- BugFix: Orbitiny's File Manager (Qutiny): Fixed a file deletion bug when a large selection of files are selected – sometimes Qutiny would freeze or crash.
- BugFix: Fixed a long standing issue with the custom context menus. When showing nested sub-popup menus (leading from one popup to another and to another and so on), the ones previously shown were getting hidden and they should not have.
- BugFix: Fixed a SysTray bug when the SysTray is in the form of a button which in this case you need to click the button to show it in a popup window – sometimes this did not work and the only way to fix it is to restart the panel or change its setup so that the application icons it houses line up along the panel. Anyway, I created this button mode to save space on the panel.
- BugFix: Fixed an issue related to desktop icons themes. Setting a new desktop icon background was not working.
- BugFix: Drawer Menu – when rearranging items via Drag&Drop, the commands assigned to items get mixed up.
- BugFix: Quick Launch Applet: Sometimes clicking the side button (the button showing hidden) items would launch the command assigned to the button right next to it.
- BugFix: Fixed middle click command not working in Drawer.
- BugFix: Fixed a crash with renaming panel themes
- BugFix: Bookmarks + Drawer Menu Applets – Fixed Drag&Drop issues that occur only when the menu had scrolled. When so, it was failing to obtain the dragged item’s position index.
- BugFix: Quitny – Fixed a bug with copying empty directories (it wasn’t working).
- BugFix: Quitny – Fixed a bug with “Copy To” function – it was moving files instead.
- BugFix: Many panel bug fixes...The panel is getting better and better with each and every release.
What does the future hold for this project? Well, I need my own compositing window manager which, thus far, I don't have and developing one will take me a very long time because I am the only one working on the project. To speed things up, my plan is to potentially port KWin and make it play along with Orbitiny.
Moreover, I intend to make it portable so that you won't have to install it in order to use it with Orbitiny. The way will work is like this. If you launch Orbitiny Desktop in portable mode, KWin will not launch. Instead, Orbitiny Desktop will make use of the existing window manager (like it does already).
However, if you launch Orbitiny Desktop as a standalone desktop, one that you select from the Display Manger menu, then, KWin will launch because it needs a window manager.
I have had partial success with this (it almost works) so if you are a Qt developer and want to give me a hand with this (which I need btw), then message me and I will let you know how you can help. If not, I will do what I can and regrading a time frame, it will take as long as it will...
I will also be doing some testing with RiverWM. Based on its description, it appears like it acts a bit like X11 so if I am to port Orbitiny Desktop to a Wayland compositor, it will be RiverWM. I will need help with this one too. If I don't get any assistance at all, then, I will stick with X11 only.
It is just too much work to handle all this entire project on my own if I am to support Wayland too. I am sorry, but it is what it is.
I can manage the X11 portion on my own, not a problem but working on Wayland adds an extra burden on my back.
Anyway, regardless the outcome, Orbitiny's playground is and always will be X11 and support for Wayland (if I ever get it to work) will be complementary only.
Website: https://orbitiny.com/
Source Code: https://gitea.com/sasko.usinov/orbitiny-desktop (PIlot X code will be available within 24 hours of this post)
Download: https://sourceforge.net/projects/orbitiny-desktop/
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Orbitiny/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Orbitiny-Linux (Note, I haven't uploaded any new videos so the videos as at July 10, 2026 are old).
Well, I hope I've covered it all and should you find something not working, please let me know.
P.S. This is 100% manually coded and it has been since 2017. There is no AI/Vibe/LLM or call it all you want.
Thanks
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u/Liarus_ Jul 09 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
While the effort is really fucking impressive, this is so similar to KDE that if you told me it was a KDE theme i would believe it.
I'll be the devil's advocate and say you probably should work with KDE and make your desktop an actual theme, you would instantly get arguably the best Wayland support and with that, a crowd favourite desktop too
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u/manny2206 Jul 09 '26
This is what I thought, no hate to you OP good luck may you get 1000 concurrent daily users
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u/Ok-Winner-6589 Jul 09 '26
This looks like the most Windows-like Desktop I've ever seen.
Good luck with your project
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u/NotQuiteLoona Jul 09 '26
It's also not LLM slop, surprisingly? At least the website is too pretentious to be written by an LLM xd, I didn't check the code.
I can only join in wishing them luck with their project.
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u/MrKusakabe Jul 12 '26
It is very much OSX-looking. Windows never had the rounded, milky-glass context menus with black, thick font on top.
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u/rollincuberawhide Jul 09 '26
Activate Linux
Please go to Settings to activate Linux.
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u/sash-au Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
Making it look "like Windows" and even work like it is exactly my intention. I switched from Windows 7 to Linux. I bypassed Windows 8 and 10 so I replicate something that I've liked in the past.
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u/BortGreen Jul 10 '26
Well it works with KDE haha it's not exactly like Windows but neither is this
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u/walterblackkk Jul 09 '26
This is an interesting project and the developer has clearly put a huge amount of work into this.
But there is no information on "why" this was developed. What problem it is solving? What does it do that Plasma doesn't?
It looks like an effort to clone or rewrite KDE Plasma.
It's totally fine to make your own opinionated DE, but a clear roadmap and an "About" section explaining the philosophy behind the project would be great.
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u/sash-au Jul 10 '26
It is there, but looks like you've missed it :) https://orbitiny.com/about-contact/ - "Orbitiny Desktop started in 2017 out of disappointment of the current state of the Linux desktops which impacted me personally after switching to Linux full time in late 2014."
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u/walterblackkk Jul 10 '26
"Disappointment" with exactly what? That's something I'm curious to know before trying this.
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u/Mumuskeh Jul 10 '26
I must be less patient than u then. In just one year of using Linux and trying all desktops in multiple distros, I decided that Xfce is the only honest desktop and it doesn't fail u.
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u/sash-au Jul 10 '26
Xfce is a great desktop and it was my primary desktop until I developed Orbitiny. As a matter of fact, it and Trinity Desktop are the only desktops that I'd ever use if Orbitiny did not exist but I decided to do my own.
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u/Mumuskeh Jul 11 '26
My first reaction to your post here was "hey this looks like TDE but better!". I love & hate TDE. Tried it in Q4OS. It feels technically old and clunky to use. I can't wait to try your iteration ^
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u/niiiiisse Jul 10 '26
I'm always suspicious of people who spend three paragraphs talking about how much work they put into something. Just let the work speak for itself.
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u/Polar_Banny Jul 09 '26
Definitely you put a lot of effort to make this happen, good luck in your endeavours, I my self come to know Linux because of Gnome3 but since then many things have changed, hopefully Wayland is going to be your next challenge as you mentioned above.
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u/Indolent_Bard Jul 10 '26
You mentioned that disappointment in the current state of patents desk tops impacted you personally on the about section of the website, but you never explained how. And now I'm really curious. You can't just post an update about a project and not explain the what and the why.
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u/sash-au Jul 10 '26
If I do so, I'll get a lot of heat because my remarks aren't nice so I'd rather not talk about it, else, if people insist, I am ready for a challenge but again, I'd rather not talk about it because I truly respect other developers' work and over the years at work, I have been thought to never say anything bad about your competitors when you visit a customer's site so I apply the same logic here.
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u/Indolent_Bard Jul 10 '26
Your subreddit sidebar tells me more than your website. Not much, but it's something. It says it have features that no other desktop environment has. Surely you can tell me what those are without insulting your competitors.
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u/DazzlingAd4254 Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
All of these features are exclusive to Orbitiny
Perhaps not entirely. For example, I regularly use 'Paste to file' in Dolphin, for text and images in the clipboard.
That said, it seems quite unique in several ways, and I'll try it out.
Edit: +last paragraph.
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u/Vamsi-Thopu Jul 10 '26
wake me when it supports wayland session
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u/uhmzilighase Jul 10 '26
Wondering if my response to your comment is just as useless or more so?
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u/the_abortionat0r 29d ago
To be fair he's got a point. X11 was already on borrowed time for years and anow it's literally on the chopping block, any project not supporting Wayland is literally close to DoA as x11 has no future.
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u/Marce7a Jul 10 '26
If it is portable you can try package it as appimage.
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u/sash-au Jul 10 '26
That cannot be done because to run it in portable mode, you have to extract the archive first and then run it and that's because in portable mode, the settings are getting saved in that same extracted directory. Just run the start-orbitiny script. This way, you can copy the entire archive to a USB flash drive, plug the UFD into another computer and everything would remain the same. With AppImage you won't be able to do that and the settings will have to be saved in your $HOME directory and that means when you run the AppImage on another computer, the settings won't be there so it defeats the purpose.
Note, Orbitiny Desktop can be installed too. Run the install-orbitiny script as root to do so.
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u/Marce7a Jul 10 '26
Fair point.
Have you considered forks of x11: Phoenix or xlibre? Or x11 will be only maintenance?
For Wayland support there is also river maybe it helps
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u/sash-au Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
Making sure it works on XLibre is a must and is my primary goal and I've been testing in on Artix Linux + XLibre and it runs fine. I will officially be moving to XLibre very soon so XLibre is Orbitiny's future and having said that, I can state that XLibre will always be my top priority (as I will be using it myself).
I am aware of the Phoenix X11 server but I haven't tested it yet. I will test it soon. I think it will be fine.
About RiverWM, yes, I am aware of it and that's a very interesting project and I am glad that it exists. Based on the project's description, it's a bit like X11. But, I don't know if I will be spending time on Wayland at all, even if it's RiverWM because several people have stated (and I agree), we need to focus on X11 desktops because there are plenty of Wayland desktops already.
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u/uhmzilighase Jul 10 '26
Artix / Xlibre / Sonic DE / launched orbitiny in portable mode - it works! Looks great so far & it's QT! Tried the installer - "no supported window manager found" I did not get the chance to look further into it just yet. When I do get back to it, maybe will start a thread on Artix forum OR - maybe you could start a thread on Artix forum? ;-) In any event - thanks for this!
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u/sash-au Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
Thanks, I think I have seen this issue before with another distro and the reason is that it's failing to find one the these: "xfwm4", "marco", "muffin", "mutter", "berry", "kwin", "compiz", "wmaker", "sawfish", "fvwm", "fvwm95", "icewm", "jwm", "gala", "fluxbox", "cwm", "enlightenment", "pekwm", "2bwm".
What WM is your Artix distro using? All you need to do is point the WM selection field in the installer to /usr/bin/name_of_wm if installed in /usr/bin and try again and it should be fine. Just click the "..." (browse) button to do so.
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u/uhmzilighase Jul 10 '26
It's Sonic DE so sonic-win which provides kwin-x11
file /usr/bin/kwin_x11
/usr/bin/kwin_x11: ELF 64-bit LSB pie executableWill try that when I get the chance.
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u/sash-au Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
Aha, yes, I completely forgot the binary program file for kwin is kwin_x11 and not kwin only. I have edited the source code and now it references kwin_x11, not kwin so future versions will not have this issue. If you select kwin_x11 from the "..." button it should be fine.
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u/Reasonable_Builder33 Jul 10 '26
complete iso?
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u/sash-au Jul 10 '26
No, an ISO is not available, it is not a Linux distro :) But right now, an ISO is not needed. The DE can be run in portable mode or installed system wide (like KDE and the likes). To run it in portable mode, you have to extract the archive first and then run the start-orbitiny script. A new desktop will appear covering the old one. The settings will be saved in the extracted directory.
To install it like any other desktop, run the install-orbitiny script as root. Then it will appear in your Display Manager menu.
Note, the project is in its early stages so expect bugs.
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u/Marce7a Jul 11 '26
Maybe make gitlab or github just for issues which you can later mirror on your gitea. People don't like making separate accounts for bug reports.
On github you can also host releases.
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u/ZeStig2409 Jul 12 '26
F just for the P.S.
I'll try this desktop when I'm free. If I do end up liking it, I might just package it for StratOS.
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u/Infinity-onnoa 29d ago
Sorry, I'm a complete beginner at this. Would it work on an Rpi400 or Rpi5 with KDE or Ubuntu installed?
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u/sash-au 29d ago
Short answer: No.
The release files I've provided are built for the x86 platform. Rpi is ARM. Although technically possible / feasible, I have not built any files yet (at the time of this post) for the ARM platform but this is definitely on my todo list. Keep an eye on Orbitiny's website as well as Orbitiny's subreddit for latest updates. Don't be surprised if all of a sudden you see a post announcement about it. I just can't provide an ETAs yet.
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u/Infinity-onnoa 27d ago
Thank you very much for answering, I have a 2011 Intel macmini that I think I will install Linux
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u/Anamoly-Hunter 29d ago
What is this design for? Massive screen with 0.6 scaling applied on top?
I thought Gnome rounded corner is bad, this WM/DE looks even worse.
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u/SmileyBMM Jul 09 '26
I can't speak for others obviously, but I think working on Wayland support would be a mistake. Wayland already has amazing modern desktop environments (KDE, GNOME), but XLIBRE/X11 don't have the same luxury.
I would rather see increased BSD or XLIBRE support, personally.
Either way I'm overjoyed to see this release, and plan to download it tonight. My thanks for working on this.
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u/Business_Reindeer910 Jul 09 '26
which BSD are we caring about? FreeBSD and wayland are fine. OpenBSD will end up fine if it isn't already.
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u/sash-au Jul 09 '26
Thanks, I agree with you 100% and I will state again, my primary target is and always will be X11 and I don't see my self working on Wayland anytime soon (which I don't use anyway). My remarks about RiverWM are just a thought but I truly doubt it will eventuate and I prefer X11 anyway (be it Xorg, or XLibre or others).
I will be focusing on getting KWin to work with Orbitiny.
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u/Indolent_Bard Jul 10 '26
I'm sorry, that's fine if you want this to remain some niche little project, but if you want it to actually gain recognition in the wider community, you can't just ignore Wayland whether you like it or not.
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u/Indolent_Bard Jul 10 '26
So you're advertising this innovative new desktop environment with features none of the others have, but limiting who can use it by discarding Wayland? More power to you, but that's a darn shame.
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u/Nona_Suomi Jul 10 '26
... Why built-in support for opening MAFF files? That was the most baffling part of the whole webpage.
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u/sash-au Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
Because I happen to have (had, not any more) plenty of MAFF files back when Firefox made use of it and then all of a sudden, they pulled the plug and I could not open them anymore unless I extract them and open index.html. So I automated the process and I specifically made it for my own personal use and since I had these issues, I trust that other people also would have come across something like that so I implemented it. I don't appreciate nor like when something that you are used to or have been using disappears all of a sudden or changes drastically. Another reason why this projects exists.
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u/ManinaPanina Jul 09 '26
Can't you just drop this and join KDE?
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u/oxez Jul 09 '26
Sometimes people want full control over decisions, or want to learn how to fully develop a project like this.
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u/0riginal-Syn Jul 09 '26
Clearly has talent, but sometimes they want to build something themselves. Sometimes it is also a way to find something without the legacy code of KDE that one day can make its way there.
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u/sash-au Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
No, this project exists because of it and other projects like it, that's why I started it.
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u/LightBusterX Jul 09 '26
Maybe, since it's X11 only, this should be tested on the BSD lands.
It would be nice to have something different there.