gardesk
A modular X11 desktop environment suite
New on the scene and in active development. Written in Rust. Configured in Lua. Built for power users.
curl -fsSL https://gar.dev/install.sh | bash Built for power users
A lightweight desktop environment with sensible defaults and full configurability.
Rust Powered
Memory-safe, performant, and compiled. No runtime dependencies, just native binaries.
Lua Configuration
Full Lua 5.4 scripting for your window manager. Define keybinds, rules, and layouts with ease.
X11 Native
Built directly on X11 with x11rb. Works with NVIDIA out of the box.
Modular Design
Install only what you need. Each component works standalone or together as a complete desktop.
gar
Tiling Window Manager
An event-driven X11 tiling window manager with a binary tree layout engine. Configure everything with Lua, from keybindings to window rules.
- Binary tree layout with smart splits
- Full Lua 5.4 configuration
- Multi-monitor workspace support
- EWMH compliant for compatibility
- Unix socket IPC with garctl
garbar
Async Status Bar
A Tokio-powered status bar with modular widgets and Cairo/Pango rendering. Displays system info, workspaces, and more.
- Async module architecture
- Cairo/Pango vector rendering
- Battery, CPU, memory widgets
- Workspace and window title display
- System tray support
garbg
Wallpaper Daemon
A multi-source wallpaper daemon with caching and animation support. Load backgrounds from local files, HTTP, or S3.
- Local, HTTP, and S3 sources
- LRU cache with blake3 hashing
- Animated GIF/WebP support
- Optional video playback (ffmpeg)
- Systemd user service integration
garlock
Screen Locker
A PAM-authenticated screen locker with secure input handling. Features background blur and status indicators.
- PAM authentication
- Secure password handling (zeroize)
- Configurable background blur
- Caps lock and time indicators
- Grace period support
gardm
Display Manager
A system-level display manager with a graphical greeter. Manages login sessions and user switching.
- Graphical greeter UI
- PAM-based authentication
- Session management
- Multi-user support
- Systemd service integration
garlaunch
Application Launcher
A rofi-like application launcher with fuzzy search. Browse .desktop entries, run commands, switch windows, or execute custom scripts.
- Fuzzy search with nucleo
- Desktop entry mode (drun)
- Command execution mode (run)
- Window switcher mode
- Custom script mode with JSON protocol
gartk
UI Toolkit
A shared UI toolkit library used by gardesk components. Provides X11 window management, Cairo/Pango rendering, and theming.
- X11 connection and window management
- Cairo/Pango text and shape rendering
- Built-in dark, light, and high-contrast themes
- Monitor detection with RandR
- Keyboard and pointer grabbing
garclip
Clipboard Manager
A clipboard manager with history and search. Store text and images with easy recall.
- Clipboard history
- Image support
- Search and filtering
- Keyboard navigation
Get started in seconds
Choose your distribution or use the universal installer.
The installer will prompt you to select which components to install.
For manual installation, see the documentation on GitHub .