And Folks, We Have a Vibe Coded Linux Distro!

Starling is a new open source Linux desktop environment. One developer built it by directing Claude for about six months, ending up with a working desktop that boots into its own session with a compositor and window manager.

Don't think of this as a themed shell bolted onto GNOME or KDE either. It brings its own X11 server, so apps like Chrome, Slack, and Zoom run on it without requiring any special modifications.

🚧

This is a vibe-coded desktop environment, still an early preview built mostly through AI prompts rather than a full engineering team. Expect bugs, security issues, missing settings, and rough edges throughout.

What is Starling?

Every part of it, like the shell, the compositor, the window manager, and the apps, are written in Swift, a language that has hardly been used for a Linux desktop before.

Most of the heavylifting here has been done using Claude, which was instructed to follow things like "Wayland only. Do not read, modify, or reference X11Server/ or X11 launch paths unless explicitly asked."

Under the hood, the framework running the whole desktop is a full port of Flutter's Dart framework to Swift. Starling brings a Wayland compositor written in C and its own X11 server, so older X11 apps still work.

That combination is what actually makes it a desktop rather than a demo.

For features, it has things like:

• A dock and Launchpad (app launcher).
• Floating and tiling window management.
• A shader-based glass effect on the dock and panels.
• Five first-party apps, including Terminal and an apt-powered App Store.

Taking it for a run

I tested Starling on an Ubuntu 26.04 LTS virtual machine, and its rough edges showed up almost immediately. Right after logging in, the resolution defaulted to a non-standard, letterboxed widescreen ratio of 5120x2160 at 2x scaling (according to Fastfetch).

I tried searching for an option to change this in the Settings menu, and the "Displays" page only had a slider for scaling, nothing for resolution itself. Things might be better if you install it on a computer directly, but that's a risk you are more than welcome to take. 🙂‍↔️

A few smaller things didn't work either. The search bar inside the Launchpad (app launcher) doesn't respond to typing, and none of the accent color swatches in Appearance actually apply once clicked.

The App Store itself works, technically. I installed Chrome through it without any errors, but the browser opened up oversized and ran noticeably laggy once it loaded. Not exactly the experience you'd want from one of the few apps the store puts at the top of its list.

Shutting the system down turned into its own small hunt. There's no power menu anywhere on the desktop, so I had to go into the Terminal and run sudo shutdown to turn it all off.

Early stages of abandonware?

Starling probably won't be the last project like this. If one developer directing an AI can produce a working desktop environment, compositor and all in about six months, expect a lot more attempts over the coming years.

Building something and keeping it alive are two very different jobs. Vibe coding gets you off the ground fast. Debugging what it produces is painfully slow, and that grind is usually what kills a developer's motivation before the project gets anywhere.

Installing Starling

Starling packages as a single DEB, built for Ubuntu 26.04 LTS on amd64. You will have to ensure that you have a Wayland-capable login manager (which the Desktop LTS release ships with).

From there, download and install the package:

curl -fLO https://github.com/starling-build/starling/releases/download/v0.2.1/starling_0.2.1-1_amd64.deb
sudo apt install ./starling_0.2.1-1_amd64.deb

Next, you have to either log out or reboot, then at the login screen click your name, open the session menu (a small gear icon at the bottom-right), and pick "Starling" from the list.

Mind you, it is quite early for this desktop. Currently on v0.2.1, the project itself is being handled by an anonymous human developer (or maybe AGI 😱?), so I would test it on a spare machine.

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I Found a Simple Open WebUI Alternative for Running Ollama Models in a Web Browser

Running local AI models has become surprisingly accessible. Install Ollama, pull a model, and you can start chatting with it in minutes. That's exactly how I began my journey with local AI.

Using an LLM directly in terminal is okayish but it limits your ability. That's why there are so many frontends available for Ollama, providing you with a graphical, chatGPT-like interface. This way, you can easily revisit an earlier answer, copy code snippets, or have an extended discussion with a model.

Of the so many GUIs, Open WebUI is like the de facto Ollama front-end. I don't know about you but I find it difficult to set up.

I also looked at options like LibreChat, AnythingLLM, and LobeChat. They all felt geared toward users who wanted an all-in-one AI platform rather than a lightweight companion for a local Ollama UI.

This is the 'problem' that I think OrionChat solves...by its simplicity.

OrionChat: Web-based chat interface for Local LLMs

OrionChat is a free, open-source, web-based chat interface. It isn't built exclusively for Ollama. Instead, it can also talk to OpenAI, Google Gemini, Claude, Groq, Cerebras, and a few other providers.

But for this piece, I only care about one thing: how well it works as a front end for models running locally through Ollama.

It doesn't attempt to become an entire AI platform, no automation, agents, scheduled tasks. Instead, it provides a clean chat interface, model selection, and a responsive interface.

Once the models are downloaded, OrionChat simply detects them. I particularly liked this design because it doesn't introduce another layer of model management.

Installing OrionChat

Getting OrionChat running took me less than five minutes. There's no need to even run a Docker daemon.

Step 1: Clone the repository

Clone and move into the project folder.

git clone https://github.com/EliasPereirah/OrionChat.git
cd OrionChat

Step 2: Serve the files

Python makes this trivial if you already have it installed, which most Linux systems do:

python -m http.server

Step 3: Open OrionChat

Head to http://localhost:8000 in your browser. OrionChat's interface should load right away.

Letting Ollama talk to OrionChat

This is the part I actually got stuck on the first time. By default, Ollama only accepts requests from its own trusted origins, and a browser-based frontend like OrionChat doesn't automatically qualify. Every request gets silently blocked until you explicitly allow it.

Step 1: Check how you're running Ollama

If you installed Ollama via the official install script, it's almost certainly running as a systemd service. If you just launch it manually with ollama serve, skip to Step 3.

Step 2: Edit the Ollama service

You need to add the origin override to ollama.service systemd unit file.

sudo systemctl edit ollama.service

In the editor that opens, add this under the [Service] section:

[Service]
Environment="OLLAMA_ORIGINS=http://localhost"

Save, then reload and restart Ollama:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl restart ollama

Step 3: Or, if you run Ollama manually

Skip the systemd steps entirely and just set the variable inline when you launch it:

OLLAMA_ORIGINS=http://localhost ollama serve

Step 4: Confirm it worked

Refresh the OrionChat tab in your browser. It should now connect to Ollama and start listing your locally installed models. You can choose your default Ollama model and start prompting.

It provides an option to upload files and to use the microphone with Ollama models. This is a really nice feature you can't use in CLI mode.

My wxperience running Ollama models with OrionChat

Want to go from Gemma to Qwen? A couple of clicks. Want to try Mistral instead? Select it and keep going. For someone who regularly experiments with different models, this alone is worth the five-minute setup.

Starting a conversation feels exactly like using any modern AI chatbot. Code blocks render properly. Markdown formatting looks clean. Tables show up as tables instead of a mess of pipe characters. Long conversations stay easy to navigate because everything lives in an actual interface instead of a scrolling terminal buffer.

Copying responses feels natural too, no highlighting text in a terminal and fighting with line wrapping. For anyone who asks a lot of questions to local LLMs, that alone noticeably improves the day-to-day experience.

Also, unlike other Ollama UI alternatives, OrionChat is not an Electron wrapper hiding a browser inside your app menu. It lives in a web browser ;)

Final Thoughts

Ollama already made running local models easy, and for quick tests, the terminal is perfectly adequate. But if you're talking to local models for hours every week, a proper interface makes a real difference.

OrionChat hits a sweet spot for me. It doesn't require a complicated deployment, and doesn't try to become an all-in-one AI platform. It focuses on doing one thing well: giving Ollama a pleasant place to live outside the terminal.

After using it for a while, I found myself opening OrionChat first and reaching for the CLI only when managing or updating models themselves.

If you've been relying purely on the Ollama CLI and occasionally wish it felt a bit more like ChatGPT, OrionChat is worth the five minutes it takes to try.

If OrionChat isn't quite your fit, Open WebUI, Enchanted, Chatbox, LibreChat, and NextChat are all solid alternative Ollama frontends, each trading off simplicity against features differently. Worth trying a couple to see which matches your workflow.

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GCC Compiler Bans AI Code Contribution But Sensibly

Open source projects have mostly split into two camps on AI. Some keep a human in the loop, letting contributors use whatever tools they want as long as they take responsibility for the result.

Others have gone further and banned AI-generated contributions outright, no matter who reviews them. GCC has now weighed in, and it's leaning toward the stricter camp.

It's the compiler at the heart of building software across GNU and Linux systems, so its stance on AI carries weight well beyond its own repository. The GCC Steering Committee has decided to decline what it calls "legally significant" contributions made with AI, a term we will be unpacking shortly.

AI begone?

Well yes, and no. The GCC Steering Committee has inducted a new AI policy built around one core rule. If a contribution is legally significant and any part of it traces back to an LLM, GCC won't take it.

By that, they mean what the GNU maintainer guidelines define as being legally significant, which is around 15 lines of code or text, the point where copyright actually applies. Smaller edits don't count on their own, but enough of them from the same person can still add up to it.

There's some leeway for a certain use case, though. GCC maintainers can still accept legally insignificant AI-generated contributions, as long as they're clearly marked and meet the project's usual contribution standards.

Test cases are exempted too. Even ones that would normally count as legally significant can still be AI-generated. The policy itself only covers GCC. Any code imported from other projects for convenience or dependency satisfaction falls outside its scope.

Other than that, any AI-assisted contribution now needs an "Assisted-by:" tag in its commit message, similar to what the Linux kernel adopted earlier this year.

None of this touches how contributors use AI on their own time. Screen readers, translation tools, spelling and grammar help, research, bug hunting, and patch review are all fair game, provided the actual output submitted to GCC isn't AI-generated itself.

The GCC Steering Committee expects the policy to keep evolving, shaped by community feedback and wherever the wider GNU Project lands on AI overall. The next review is set for the start of 2027.

A growing trend

Codeberg took the dramatic route last week, where its members voted 358 to 144 to ban projects built mostly from AI-generated code and to formally rule out training AI models on user data or code.

They blame server strain from AI crawlers, climbing hardware costs, and a growing pile of low-effort AI-generated contributions as the driving forces behind the decision.

LLVM went the other way at the start of this year, adopting a "human in the loop" policy. Here, contributors can use any AI tool they like, but they have to disclose which one, answer questions about their submissions, and take full responsibility for the result.

GCC's policy lands closer to Codeberg's without going as far as an outright ban. Test cases keep a narrow opening that Codeberg's rules don't, and GCC still allows small, clearly marked AI contributions that Codeberg's project-level ban wouldn't.

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Good News Gamers! GOG is Officially Coming to Linux

GOG built its whole brand around selling DRM-free games and providing offline installers that work without requiring an internet connection or any kind of verification from their side.

They even encourage people to download installers and copy them over to physical media like discs, and treat the copy as theirs. This is something the big players in the space, Steam and Epic Games, just cannot do, since both keep your library tethered to their clients.

And don't even get me started on account standing. If you break their rules, they retain the right to suspend your account or, worse, ban it outright, leaving you locked out of your own games.

GOG GALAXY is the company's optional client that does the things one would expect from such an application. It handles auto-updates, cloud saves, achievement tracking, rollbacks for when a patch breaks your save, and pulls in game libraries from other platforms.

Sadly, none of that has ever officially arrived on Linux, as the client is only offered for Windows and macOS. Linux gamers who want it on their systems have to run the Windows client through compatibility layers like Bottles or Lutris instead of installing it directly.

What you see when you visit the GOG GALAXY website from a Linux computer.

All's not gloom though, as it has now been confirmed that a Linux build of GOG GALAXY is coming. Speaking to Liam from GamingOnLinux, the joint CEO of GOG, Krzysztof Papliński, stated that they already have a "specialist on board," and are looking for the "best way to approach Linux support."

Before you get too excited, know that there's no release window mentioned in the original email reply by Krzysztof, who notes that:

This is a significant undertaking, so while we’re not ready to share any specific plans, timelines, or results just yet, it’s very much an area we’re investing time and effort into.

Some context

This isn't appearing out of nowhere. Late last year, GOG became an independent company after CD Projekt sold it to co-founder Michał Kiciński, ending its run as a subsidiary.

A few days later, in January, Michał told PC Gamer that Windows is "poor-quality software" and that he isn't surprised people are gravitating away from the ecosystem altogether.

In the same interview, managing director Maciej Gołębiewski said Linux was already one of the things GOG had put in its strategy for the year.

Around the same time, a new job listing went up, looking for a senior software engineer, with the description referring to Linux as the next major frontier for the platform.

This is great news

Placeholder image of the Windows client for GOG GALAXY.

A native GOG GALAXY client would finally let Linux gamers manage their GOG library the same way Windows and Mac users already do. Though I am not sure if any other game platforms will be supported.

But despite that, gamers will still get to take advantage of a well-equipped launcher that handles large game libraries with ease. Which is supplemented by handy conveniences like auto-updates, cloud saves, syncing between multiple devices, and staying connected with your friends.

This matters more than you might think, btw. Nowadays, digital storefronts are the ones who have the final say over what stays in your library and what doesn't. The recent delisting of Xbox games showed us that quite clearly.

Physical media is going away too, as Sony, for instance, recently confirmed it will stop producing game discs for new PlayStation titles starting January 2028, pushing new releases into digital-only territory.

GOG's DRM-free installers and the optional client that lets you download those eliminate both problems. Since nothing phones home to check a license, copying those installers onto a USB drive or burning them to a Blu-ray or DVD is enough to keep a library playable long after the storefront disappears.

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Ubuntu Now Has a Rolling Release Model! But Not For The Distro

Ubuntu is one of the most stable Linux distros out there, provided you're running its LTS release. Now imagine giving that up for a rolling release model. Feels exciting, right? Stop fantasizing then, as today's not the day that happens.

Instead, Canonical's latest announcement introduces a rolling release approach for the virtualization stack, which swaps the usual LTS cycle for a faster, six-month upgrade cycle.

Confidential computing is the driving force behind this move, as Canonical's Ijlal Loutfi emphasizes that the different pieces of the stack rarely arrive at the same time.

A processor might support a new feature before the kernel can expose it, before QEMU can handle it, before libvirt gives users a way to turn it on, and before the firmware and attestation tools are ready to make it actually usable.

How does this work?

Checking the installed virtualization variant with ubuntu_virt_helper.

The virtualization HWE stack has four parts. qemu-hwe handles the hypervisor and system emulation; libvirt-hwe covers virtualization management; edk2-hwe brings newer OVMF firmware for UEFI booting; and seabios-hwe does the same for BIOS compatibility.

It's the same approach Ubuntu already runs for kernels, just extended across the rest of the virtualization chain.

Switching to this is entirely optional, and during these first two years of Ubuntu 26.04 LTS, all four packages get refreshed every six months, but only after a dry run in an interim release first.

And stating the obvious, existing installations of Ubuntu will stay on the base stack unless someone decides to switch over to the new stack. A tool called ubuntu_virt_helper (different package name) handles that switch, since QEMU, libvirt, and firmware all need to move together as one unit rather than being swapped out piece by piece.

Why should you care?

This is basically Canonical admitting that confidential computing has outgrown the two-year cadence Ubuntu LTS was built around.

The virtualization HWE stack is aimed at anyone running confidential VMs on AMD SEV-SNP or Intel TDX, regulated workloads that need stronger isolation, AI inference that leans on confidential computing, or accelerators, and private or sovereign cloud platforms that can't just hop to Ubuntu's interim releases.

These workloads are moving faster than Ubuntu's own release schedule can absorb, and nobody running them is waiting two years for a point release to catch up with the ever-evolving silicon vendors.

Canonical is positioning this as a way to get LTS stability and newer hardware support at the same time, instead of users needing to pick one over the other.

Get started

Don't assume this is locked behind Ubuntu Pro. Every example in Canonical's instructional material runs on plain apt commands without requiring you to log in to some portal.

The most basic one is to install the helper tool:

sudo apt install ubuntu-helper-virt-hwe

The rest, you will have to figure out by going through the documentation and running the following command:

ubuntu_virt_helper --help

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A GrapheneOS Privacy Feature Just Became the Basis for a Federal Indictment

An Atlanta resident, Samuel Tunick, is fighting a federal indictment that treats a privacy feature on his phone as evidence destruction. A grand jury charged him under 18 U.S.C. § 2232(a), a statute that covers destruction of property to block seizure by a government agent.

The root cause of all this was the deletion of a Google Pixel smartphone's contents during a border search, and the case itself sits in the Northern District of Georgia under case number 1:25-CR-499, before District Judge Eleanor L. Ross.

If Tunick is found guilty, the charge carries a fine, up to five years in prison, or both.

The coercion

On January 24 last year, the CBP placed Tunick into secondary inspection at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport as he returned from a trip to the Dominican Republic, putting him through several rounds of questioning and searches.

The officers started off by searching him, checking what he was carrying, and demanding that he fork over the passcode for his phone. All of this was reportedly done under the pretext of searching for CSAM.

He also asked for a lawyer multiple times, but the officers ignored every request, never read him his Miranda rights, and kept questioning him anyway. When he pushed back, they said it was "a whole different ballgame" at the border and that they didn't need a warrant.

Tunick eventually handed over a passcode.

But, the moment it was entered, the screen flickered blank a few times before the device rebooted itself, erasing its contents in front of the same agents who'd demanded access.

The motion filed by Tunick's lawyer stresses that his association with Defend the Atlanta Forest, an AGAAVE-labeled outfit, was the actual reason federal agents moved on him, not any crime.

Earlier, a Homeland Security agent had circulated Tunick's name and photo hours before his flight landed, flagging him for suspected terrorism activity, while FBI and CBP officers coordinated to set up the search.

Despite that, the government has never presented evidence tying Tunick to an actual crime connected to the movement.

What triggered this?

Tunick had what appears to be GrapheneOS's duress PIN/Password feature set up on his phone. When officers entered the passcode he gave them, it did what it was designed to do, wiping the device the moment the duress code was entered.

If you didn't know, this feature also triggers at any authentication prompt, not just the lockscreen, and covers every profile on the phone, not only the main one.

In a forum post that reads like a reaction to this case (though they never name it), GrapheneOS said people should carefully think through how they use the duress feature. And that wiping a device in an actual duress situation can carry physical or legal consequences of its own.

Guilty as charged?

Nope! Nothing's decided yet. A hearing on Tunick's suppression motion happened earlier this month, but the judge kept it open for more testimony before ruling on anything.

Written arguments are due through the fall, Tunick's side by September 18, the government's by October 9, and Tunick's reply by October 23. Until then, know that the five-year prison term attached to the charge is just the maximum the law allows, not what's actually coming his way.

As for my views, hearing about a citizen of a country getting worked over like this just to come home, only for it to end in a federal indictment months later feels like something you'd expect from a banana republic.

But that's how things go in the greatest nation in the world /s.

It makes you wonder how worthless the rights of the average Joe are, while people committing crimes that make your blood boil walk free. 🙃

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I Really Want to Love This Markdown Editor, But One Thing Holds It Back

From the Git repo's README to blogs, Markdown is everywhere in the tech world in general.

I have been using Markdown for years. That's what I use for writing the articles here. While I often write directly in the CMS, I also manage personal notes, drafts and work on documentation in dedicated Markdown editors on my computer.

Over the time, I have used a number of Markdown editors on my Linux system. But I keep on exploring new ones, a force of habit, as it keeps me aware of the new tools in the field.

Recently, I came across a new Markdown editor called Ferrite. I tried and found that it mentions all the features I wanted:

• Folder view
• Dual pane
• Focused view
• Editor tool bar
• Git status
• Built-in terminal

There are many more features, like code folding, syntax highlights, mini-map overviews, diagrams, and more.

Basically, Ferrite is like an IDE but for Markdown (or should I say text) files.

🚧

It was later that I realized that the project, though open source, is 100% coded with AI. Read their AI workflow details here.
I'm adding this disclaimer because whether to use AI-generated code is a matter of principle for a lot of you.

Meet Ferrite, Markdown editor for developers

Written in Rust, Ferrite a text editor primarily for Markdown but with good support for JSON, YAML, and TOML files. Basically, various text files developers and devops deal with.

For markdown file, you can view it in raw mode (with synax), rendered view (only shows rendered markdown), and split view (shows raw text and rendered view side by side).

For other files, it just displays them with a mini-map overview and highlighted syntax.

There is zen mode for focused work.

Zen mode removes nice to let you focus on the text

Ferrite also allows you to create flowcharts, wire diagrams, mind maps etc.

In fact, Ferrite has a huge list of features. You can export files as PDF and HTML, run shell and Python codes from the editor itself, has a command palette, supports Wikilinks, can view PDF and CSV files and much more.

Basically, it's a Markdown editor specially created for developers.

Why I liked it

Lately, I found myself in situations where I had to edit technical documentation hosted on GitHub. The flow is standard. I fork the repo, clone it on my system, checkout to a new branch, make my changes, push it to my forked repo and then create a pull request to the upstream branch.

This is the usual code contribution flow, applies to collaborative documentation, too.

Now, since this is a dev-like workflow, a text editor that behaves like IDE is perfectly suited for this.

Built in terminal is useful for my workflow

Ferrite's built-in terminal gives me instant access to the command line for quick commit and push. It also shows the locally modified files if you are in a git repo.

For this kind of workflow, though I could use VS Code with extensions, it's an overkill. And I prefer to separate code and text files.

I used Ghostwriter, but it's a simple Markdown editor and I found myself switching between tools. This is when I came across Ferrite and it looked like it could be the perfect fit as it ticked (almost) all the checkboxes for me.

It's not perfect

Like most things in life, Ferrite is not perfect as well. I came across a few quirks after regularly using it for the past few days.

There is a dedicated button to sync the raw and rendered views when you are in the split view mode. This way you should be able to scroll on one side and see the impact on the side pane.

This feature works, but not perfectly. There is a lag that cannot be unnoticed.

0:00

/0:03

Sync issue between raw and rendered views

Then, it doesn't display images in the rendered view. This is a huge disappointment for me.

Take a look at the screenshot below:

Ferrite cannot display images?

I understand that relative path is crucial for image display in Markdown. But those paths were correct and the image was displayed properly in the Ghostwriter editor:

Ghostwriter displays the images correctly

Also, Ferrite has way too many features. It's like an IDE and if you have ever used an IDE you would know that IDE gradually become too complex with all kinds of settings and tweaks and busy interface.

Sometimes, simplicity also becomes a feature.

Should I use it or not?

Frankly, I did not notice the "100% AI developed" when I started using Ferrite last week. I liked what I saw, used it and fit very well for my current needs. I made notes, something I often do when I try a new tool, so that I can write articles and reviews on those tools later.

And when I started writing this article and went through the details, I learned that the project mentions explicitly that it is fully developed with AI.

That puts me in a dilemma. On one hand, it seems like a good piece of software. 1.7K GitHub stars are proof of its popularity. On the other hand, "100% AI" label is kind of offputting.

What would you do?

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