The release of the new version of the desktop environment Regolith 1.4 was announced, which is a developer environment by the same team behind the Linux distribution with the same name.
This desktop environment It is based on the GNOME session management technologies and the i3 window manager. The project is positioned as a modern desktop environment, developed for faster execution of typical actions by optimizing work processes and eliminating unnecessary clutter.
The goal is to provide a functional but minimalist interface that can be customized and expanded according to user preferences. Regolith Linux may be of interest to beginners who are used to traditional window systems, but want to try window tiling techniques.
Despite its minimal visual design, Regolith offers modern file and system management functions, such as external monitors and storage management, wifi and bluetooth settings, as well as language and privacy settings.
Regolith stands out because it offers the power to use it in two ways.
- One of them is if the user already has an existing Ubuntu installation (or derivative). With this, Regolith can be added as another desktop session by installing the regolith-desktop package from the Regolith PPA.
- The second method is downloading the distribution and performing the installation from scratch on a computer or on a virtual machine.
Because Regolith uses i3-wm for window management it features i3-gaps (an improved version of i3-wm), i3blocks, i3bar, conky, a GTK theme and icon, window changer, app launcher, the composer compton and more.
Besides that, provides support for hotkeys as in i3wm window manager to control the tiling layout of the windows.
While to manage windows involved i3-gaps, an extended fork of i3wm. The panel is built with i3bar, and i3blocks based i3xrocks are used to run automation scripts.
Session management is based on the gnome-flashback and gdm3 session manager. GNOME Flashback has also been used to simplify system administration, configure the interface, mount drives, and manage wireless network connections. In addition to mosaic design, traditional methods of working with windows are also allowed.
The application launcher menu and the window switch interface are based on Rofi Launcher. The application list can be viewed at any time using the super + space keyboard combination. Rofication is used to display notifications.
To manage the environment, an appearance utility called "regolith" is provided that is in charge of managing themes and installation of individual resources related to appearance.
Download and installation
As mentioned above, the desktop environment can be tested in two ways, one of them is by installing the environment on Ubuntu or some derivative of it.
For this we are going to open a terminal in the system with the key combination Ctrl + Alt + T or with Ctrl + T and we will type the following command:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kgilmer/regolith-stable -y
After that we are going to install the desktop on the system with:
sudo apt install regolith-desktop
At the end of the installation, you will only have to close the session of your system and start a new one but this time choosing the Regolith session.
While the other method is using the distribution built on Ubuntu and that the developers distribute an image prepared for this new version of the environment based on Ubuntu 20.04.
You can obtain the image of the system, you only have to go to the official website of the project where you can download the image in its download section.
At the end of your download you can use Etcher to save the image to a pendrive and thus boot your system from a USB.
The developments of the project are distributed under the GPLv3 license.