Rocket

A modern Wayland desktop environment built on KWin, designed to be lightweight, modular, and visually striking with a cyberpunk neon aesthetic.

Features

• KWin Compositor - Battle-tested Wayland compositor as the foundation
• Floating Panel - Cyberpunk-themed taskbar with workspace indicators, clock, system tray
• Application Launcher - Fast fuzzy-search launcher (Super key)
• Notifications - Desktop notification daemon following freedesktop spec
• Wallpaper Manager - Dynamic wallpaper with multiple scaling modes
• Overview - Expose all windows (Super+Tab)
• Settings Panel - GUI configuration for themes, keybinds, power
• Power Manager - Shutdown, reboot, suspend, hibernate
• Clipboard History - Searchable clipboard with pin support (Super+V)
• Screenshot Tool - Full screen, region, and window capture

Installation

Arch Linux / CachyOS

git clone https://github.com/Rocket-Space/rocket-desktop.git
cd rocket-desktop
./scripts/install.sh

The installer will:

1. Detect your Arch-based system
2. Install all required dependencies via pacman
3. Build the project with CMake
4. Install binaries to /usr/bin/
5. Set up systemd user services
6. Install the session file for your display manager

Manual Installation

mkdir build && cd build
cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
make -j$(nproc)
sudo make install

Usage

From Display Manager

Log out and select Rocket from your display manager (SDDM, GDM, etc.)

From TTY

rocket-session

Configuration

All configuration is stored in ~/.config/rocket/:

File	Description
rocket.conf	General settings, keybinds, panel config
appearance.conf	Theme, colors, fonts, effects

Default Keybinds

Shortcut	Action
Super	Open Launcher
Super+Tab	Overview
Super+V	Clipboard History
Super+Print	Screenshot (fullscreen)
Super+Shift+Print	Screenshot (region)
Super+L	Lock Screen
Super+Shift+E	Power Menu
Super+1-9	Switch Workspace
Super+Shift+1-9	Move Window to Workspace
Super+Q	Close Window
Super+F	Maximize Window

Architecture

┌─────────────────────────────────────┐
│         KWin (compositor)           │
├─────────────────────────────────────┤
│          Rocket Session             │
├──────┬──────┬──────┬──────┬─────────┤
│Panel │Launch│Notif │Wallp │Clipboard│
│  Tray│  er  │      │paper │         │
├──────┴──────┴──────┴──────┴─────────┤
│       DBus IPC Communication        │
├─────────────────────────────────────┤
│systemd │PipeWire│NetMgr│BlueZ│Polkit│
└─────────────────────────────────────┘

Tech Stack

• C++20
• Qt 6 / QML
• KWindowSystem (KF6)
• Wayland
• DBus
• systemd
• PipeWire
• NetworkManager
• BlueZ

License

MIT License

Credits

• KWin team for the compositor
• KDE Frameworks for KWindowSystem
• Hyprland for design inspiration