October 24 2026

I've been working on Sanctum, a Linux desktop environment written in Rust. I've been daily driving it in my Ubuntu for around six months, so more or less since I started working on it.

The cool thing about it is that all its UI is made with Freya (I'm the author as well), this includes the Setting, File Explorer, Monitor and Image viewer app but also and most importantly Shell components like the apps Dock, Control Panel, Floating notifications and even the App Switcher (Alt + Tab). It also has its own wayland compositor so that I can do more stuff the way I want.

Here is how it looks on my Ubuntu:

Why not? I like Rust + Linux + Freya, I might as well use it as much as I can!

LLMs, yes. Surprise!! I used LLMs to help me build it, I have reviewed as much code as I can. Since it's not an open source project (for now?) and I am the only user I have only really cared about it working as expected and not so about the code quality although I try to have that under control. And testing... well, I run it literally everyday so testing is covered.

Just me to be honest (at least for now). I dont consider it stable yet, I find issues from time to time, but at least I get to fix those fast.

Here are the settings app, file explorer, the system monitor and the control panel open:

A closer look at the file explorer:

Here is the App launcher:

It has light and dark themes and color scheme support too:

Live demo too!

Closed until I find it stable enough to be shared.

Well, that's it for now! Thanks :)

Send me an email at marc@mespin.me if you are interested in collaborating with me, or you simply want to chat!