A fundamentally new desktop environment has been introduced Orbitiny, which has been developed from scratch using the Qt framework. This project aims to combine innovative ideas not previously found in other DE/WM with classic elements such as taskbars, menus, and desktop icons.
The Orbitiny project includes a set of custom utilities and applications, such as a file manager, notification system, file search interface, and screenshot tool. Development focuses on portability across various Linux distributions and the capability to be used in live environments, as well as in any existing user interfaces, including KDE and GNOME. In this case, the project displays its desktop in fullscreen mode, overriding the current one. The project's code is written in C++ and is distributed under the GPL license.
Additional features of Orbitiny Desktop:
- The ability to draw mouse gestures on an empty area of the desktop (up to 12 gestures per mouse button).
- The Orbitiny panel supports extending functionality through plugins and supports Drag&Drop. There is also the possibility to create multiple profiles containing different sets of applets and settings. Among the 18 available plugins is an applet that implements a start menu for quick access to installed applications.
- The ability to choose any directory to place desktop content, without being tied to the standard directory $HOME/Desktop. Support for different desktops on each screen.
- Configurable context menus that do not block other applications, with a built-in Directory Browser for navigating content.
- In the context menu, you can add a button to execute arbitrary commands that will be applied to the selected file.
- Icons for files moved or copied to the clipboard are displayed with special labels, and labels also appear when the contents of a directory change.
- The ability to combine files by dragging one onto another.
- Support for pasting data from the clipboard at the beginning or end of existing files, as well as automatically creating a new file when pasting into a directory.
- The ability to open a terminal for the selected directory, with support for opening multiple terminals when multiple directories are selected.
- Configuration of actions applied to selected files.
- A dashboard that shows current tasks and installed applications.
- A portable mode where all necessary files and programs are placed in a separate folder or on a flash drive for transferring the environment to another system.
- Built-in support for Wine and DOSBox, allowing exe files to be run through Wine.
- Support for MAFF (Mozilla Archive Format) for packaging webpage content into a single archive.
- The ability to bind multiple commands to one shortcut, for example, for the left and middle mouse buttons.
- The ability to change the scale of icons using the context menu or the Ctrl+mouse wheel combination.
- Support for binding actions on double-clicking empty spaces on the desktop.
- A built-in device manager for managing connected and disconnected hardware devices at the kernel level.
Regarding the question 'X11 vs Wayland', the author comments:
Right now, I officially support X11 only. There are at least 2 issues with Wayland: the window task buttons do not show up and no SysTray.
Repository: https://codeberg.org/sasko-usinov/orbitiny-desktop
Download and try without installation: https://gitea.com/sasko.usinov/orbitiny-desktop/raw/branch/main/orbitiny-bin-release/orbitiny-release.tar.gz
Note from the news author: I still haven't been able to download the archive to make screenshots myself, the download speed of the archive does not exceed 1kb/sec, and the website itself (gitea) is also not loading. While trying to figure out the issue (out of curiosity, I tried a tor proxy — the same result).
Source: linux.org.ru
