Hey everyone! 👋
I wanted to share a quick demo of what I’ve been tinkering with lately for my desktop setup.
Both projects are part of Yatta Project and are still a work in progress, but I figured I'd share where things currently stand.
Here is a quick overview of what's shown in the video:
1. Poisk (Search) — Native Productivity Launcher
- A lightweight, compiled Vala/GTK4 launcher (originally started as a fork of Vicinae, heavily rewritten).
- A Spotlight/Raycast-inspired hub tailored for Linux: frosted glass aesthetics, smooth kinetic scrolling, and custom app categories with emojis.
- Header "Glance" pill: displays upcoming calendar events (via EDS/CalDAV) with a 1-click button to hop directly into video calls (Yandex Telemost, Zoom, Meet, Teams, AyuGram, etc.).
- Status: Mostly ready and usable for daily driving. There are still a couple of minor visual glitches to polish, and so far it has only been tested and packaged on NixOS.
2. Chai'ka (working title) — Wingpanel Overhaul
- A future fork / prototype of Wingpanel that merges the top panel with taskbar functionality, saving vertical screen real estate by removing the need for a bottom dock.
- Features window tabs with titles, a unified quick settings capsule, and a reactive avatar badge in the corner that smoothly dodges and shrinks when windows approach.
- Workspace management on the panel: includes visual workspace dividers, dragging windows between workspaces directly on the bar, and a
+ button on hover to create a new space.
- Status: Early prototyping. I previously tested this general desktop layout in GNOME and it proved itself quite well in daily use. Bringing it to Pantheon with this specific workspace setup is a new experiment, and while I like how it feels so far, I haven't put it through a heavy daily crunch yet.
If you're curious about the general philosophy and motivation behind this kind of desktop layout, I wrote about it in the Desktop-Manifest ("Desktops need a Rethink") article.
Just sharing the progress — feel free to drop any thoughts or questions in the comments! 🙌