I Wrote a Desktop Environment in Pygame/Python
I Wrote a Desktop Environment in Pygame/Python
I'm open-sourcing my Desktop Environment. It's still in pre-alpha but I figured I should release it before Wayland completely deprecates X11.
The Projects
Lavinder
Lavinder is the main desktop environment/window manager written in Python using Pygame. It provides the core window management and desktop functionality.
Janit
Lavinder runs 'janit' as its menu/process handler. Janit is also being open-sourced and is useful in plain X11 with any window manager running. There are plans to use janit with Wayland's Weston compositor as well.
Source Code
- Lavinder: https://bitbucket.org/hackersgame/lavinder
- Janit: https://bitbucket.org/hackersgame/janit
- Rapid prototyping capabilities
- Python's flexibility for system-level programming
- How desktop environments work under the hood
- Alternative approaches to traditional C/C++ implementations
Why Python/Pygame?
Building a desktop environment in Python with Pygame demonstrates:
Technical Details
The project works with X11, the traditional Linux display server. While Wayland is becoming the standard, X11 knowledge and projects remain valuable for understanding Linux graphics architecture and supporting systems that still use X11.
The release was timed to share the work before the ecosystem potentially moves entirely to Wayland.