Starling: A New Linux Desktop Written In Swift, Own Wayland Compositor & Written With AI

There's yet another new open-source desktop option for Linux users in the era of new open-source projects largely written via AI/LLMs. Starling is this new project largely written via Claude and using the Swift programming language for the desktop while having its own Wayland compositor implemented in C. It also includes a built-in X11 server for handling X11 clients.

For those that enjoy trying out evaluating new Linux desktop options, Starling was just announced as a new desktop option written over the past half-year largely via AI (Claude). In a message to Phoronix, the sole developer working on this project with Claude explains its technical stack as:

"- Its own Wayland compositor, written in C, implementing xdg-shell, linux-dmabuf (zero-copy import), viewporter, fractional-scale-v1, pointer-constraints, relative-pointer, text-input-v3, presentation-time, primary-selection, idle-inhibit, cursor-shape-v1, xdg-decoration, xdg-activation, xdg-output and wlr-data-control.

- An in-tree X11 server (DRI3/Present) so X11 clients run too.

- Runs on the Flutter engine's C core through a DRM/KMS embedder. The shell, window manager, compositor and apps are Swift — the UI framework is a full port of Flutter's framework to Swift, no Dart VM.

- Unprivileged session: DRM master and input come from logind via libseat, not from running as root. Boots through GDM like any Wayland session.

- Runs real apps as native clients — Chrome, VS Code, Slack, IntelliJ, GIMP, and Blender (EEVEE viewport via linux-dmabuf) — covering Chromium/Electron, Qt6, GTK3/4, the JetBrains Runtime and Blender's GHOST.

- Ships as a ~53 MB .deb on Ubuntu 26.04. Verified on AMD (Radeon 780M) and on virtio-gpu/virgl in a VM.

It's an honest early preview (v0.2): AMD and virtio-gpu tested, Intel/NVIDIA not yet; scaling currently pinned to 2.0; Ubuntu 26.04 only."

And for those wondering what Starling looks like:

Those wishing to learn more about Starling can do so via the project site at Starling.build. The Apache 2.0 licensed code is available on GitHub. A pre-built Ubuntu 26.04 LTS Debian package is available for those wanting to try this latest AI-written desktop and compositor.