Luft

Luft is a Linux desktop environment built around the Kestrel Wayland compositor, a web-rendered panel shell, and native Rust services for session, IPC, notifications, and tray hosting.

Workspace

crates/kestrel          Wayland compositor and render backends
crates/luft-shell      Panel shell service and Fenestra web chrome
crates/luft-session    Display-manager/session launcher
crates/luft-config     Shared config model and XDG path handling
crates/luft-ipc        Typed compositor IPC payloads

Build

cargo build

Build shell web assets with Bun before compiling luft-shell after UI changes:

cd crates/luft-shell/web
bun install
bun run build

The DRM/KMS session backend is behind an explicit feature while it is still under active development:

cargo build -p kestrel --features session-backend

Run

Run the nested compositor inside an existing desktop session:

cargo run -p kestrel -- --nested

Kestrel prints a WAYLAND_DISPLAY value. Use that socket from another terminal to launch clients:

WAYLAND_DISPLAY=<printed-socket> ghostty

Run the protocol/headless backend for smoke tests:

LUFT_IPC_SOCKET=/tmp/luft-headless.sock cargo run -p kestrel -- --headless --socket luft-headless

Checks

cargo fmt --check
cargo clippy --workspace --all-targets -- -D warnings
cargo test --workspace

Docs

• Development
• Running Luft
• Configuration
• Shell and Compositor Behavior
• App Compatibility Inventory
• Shortcuts