What is singularity-desktop?

Singularity Desktop Environment is a project to build a complete graphical desktop for Linux. It is designed for Wayland, which is the modern display system used by many Linux distributions. The project is organized as a meta-repository that ties together several sub-projects, each responsible for a different part of the desktop. The shell layer includes the components a user interacts with most directly: a panel (the bar typically at the top or bottom of the screen), a dock for launching applications, an overview for switching between open apps, workspace management, a notification system, a settings panel, a spotlight-style search tool, a lock screen, and a login screen. These pieces are built on GTK4, a toolkit for building graphical interfaces on Linux, and use a compositor called labwc to manage how windows are drawn on screen. A shared library called libsingularity provides common code that all the desktop components and first-party applications use, so the visual and behavioral style stays consistent across the whole environment. Building the project from source requires a collection of system libraries and development tools that are standard on Linux development setups, including Meson (the build system), the Vala programming language compiler, and various libraries for networking, power management, audio, and display hardware. The build process follows a standard three-command sequence using Meson. Settings such as dark mode, accent color, dock layout, and workspace configuration are stored using the GSettings system, which is a standard way to manage application preferences on Linux desktops. The project is licensed under the GPL-3.0 open-source license.