Ferese 0.1.0

Ferese 0.1.0

• Workspace screen sharing. #64
• Mouse window controls and finer display scaling. #63, 3d08d64
• Configurable OBS sharing, live and recording indicators. e03d491
• Pomodoro timer with work and break sessions. 2c9bb85
• Lower idle CPU usage and less background work. #62, 392e9cf
• Screen-sharing performance and scaling fixes. #65, 533cd74, f5fff6d
• Floating window placement fixes across monitors. #60
• Keep notification menus open when unread badges clear. d18f0fd

Full changelog: v0.1.0-beta.2 → v0.1.0

Ferese 0.1.0-beta.2

Ferese 0.1.0-beta.2 brings a native launcher and configurable panels with Live Activities, along with tabbed window groups and fixes for recording, focus and display changes. We've frozen the 0.1.0 feature set so we can concentrate on regressions and release testing.

On the desktop

You can search for apps, files and open windows from the launcher, or browse each category on its own. It follows your theme and shell material settings and closes when you click or tap outside. Apps keep their own renderer preferences when launched, including the GPU rendering default in Settings.

Panel styles include the Morph hub, with items and groups you can arrange in Settings. Live Activities show command and build progress in the panel so you can keep an eye on a running task without returning to its terminal.

Tabbed groups work in both layouts. In scrolling layouts, columns remember their row sizes when you switch between stacked rows and tabs, and the tab indicator lets you select a window or reveal its title. You can also define separate sets of shortcuts with named binding modes.

Night light now fades between settings. Brightness shortcuts work while the session is locked, so you can turn the screen back up before entering your password. Window blur controls are in Settings alongside the other window options.

Fixes and compatibility

You can record a selected region with audio, and captures now use the exact output dimensions at fractional scales. Cached capture targets are released after capture activity stops.

Window activation follows the managed-window focus path, including for windows on hidden workspaces. Layer surfaces must be mapped and visible before taking focus, while bar popovers retain their own keyboard focus. During resizing, waits for clients have deadlines, and a waiting client no longer holds up independent tree branches.

DRM teardown releases devices through the session manager. Morph also handles queued frames for outputs that have disappeared, and output allocation checks for a complete CRTC assignment before applying a configuration. This beta includes output-specific DMA-BUF feedback and optional DRM rendering diagnostics.

Sandboxed clients connected through a security context can no longer access either privileged clipboard data-control protocol. Ordinary clipboard access and host clipboard tools remain available.

Installing or upgrading

If you use Fedora 44 or Arch Linux, you can install the matching package from the release assets. For other distributions, follow the installation guide. When upgrading, log out of Ferese before replacing your existing installation.

Replace panel-level surface and group-surface settings with style, and remove any surface setting inside a group:

 panel "main" {
-    surface "solid"
-    group-surface "none"
+    style "flat"
     start {
         group "overview" {
-            surface "none"
             item "overview" kind="overview" overflow="never" priority=100
         }
     }
 }

Use style "flat" for an edge-to-edge bar or style "floating" for separate floating groups. The new styles control the whole panel, so old appearance combinations are not retained. Packages preserve your configuration files, but the old panel format is no longer accepted. Refer to the packaged config.example.kdl when updating yours.

If you installed beta 1 from source, remove that installation before switching to a distribution package so its /usr/local launchers and portal service do not override the packaged versions.

Ferese 0.1.0-beta

Ferese 0.1.0-beta is the first packaged release of the desktop. It includes the Wayland compositor, shell, Settings, lock screen, authentication agent and desktop portal in one installation.

Desktop

You can use scrolling columns, tree tiling or floating windows, with a workspace overview, recent-window switching and keyboard or touchpad navigation. Panels can sit at the top or bottom of the screen, and their items, groups and surfaces are configurable.

The shell includes notifications, media controls, and Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and audio controls. Settings and the desktop share colors, fonts and corner shapes, with light and dark themes, live wallpapers and blur. Configuration changes apply live; an invalid edit leaves the last working configuration in place.

Multiple monitors, fractional scaling and monitor mirroring are supported. Screenshots can be annotated, and the desktop portal lets applications share a display or window through PipeWire. The built-in recorder saves monitor recordings as WebM files.

Fixes included

Older configurations containing desktop-widgets load again, and configuration saves now use file locking to prevent concurrent updates from overwriting each other. The lock command waits for compositor confirmation before reporting success.

Unused desktop font bundles have been removed. The source installer also accepts retired font licenses in existing installations, fixing updates that stopped with Invalid inventory entry: licenses/Cantarell-LICENSE.txt.

Install

Prebuilt packages are available for Fedora 44 and Arch Linux, both on x86_64. Download the package for your distribution from the assets below.

Fedora 44:

sudo dnf install ./ferese-0.1.0.beta-1.fc44.x86_64.rpm

Arch Linux:

sudo pacman -U ./ferese-0.1.0beta-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst

Select Ferese in your login manager, or run ferese-session from a local TTY. If you installed Ferese from source, uninstall that copy before switching to a package; keep your personal configuration.

X11 applications need Xwayland and xwayland-satellite built with its systemd feature. See X11 setup.

Current limits

• The built-in recorder captures a monitor without audio. It does not record a selected region.
• Automatic theme switching supports a custom schedule or the system appearance preference. Sunrise/sunset scheduling is deferred.
• The RemoteDesktop portal and its session Clipboard integration are not implemented. Ordinary application clipboard use works independently.

The assets also include an offline source archive with the locked Rust dependencies, package recipes, a source RPM, debug packages and SHA256SUMS.

Report a bug with the steps to reproduce it and relevant logs.