Ultimit 1.1.0

Ultimit 1.1. A new top bar, automatic Game Mode, three new skins and font sets, an animated boot-to-desktop sequence, a full visual polish pass, signed updates and a round of security hardening.

Updating: Settings › Updates › Ultimit offers it as usual. Edge PCs (ultimit-update --edge) already run all of this. From this release on, updates are signed: a PC only installs a release whose signature checks out against the key it already has.

The desktop

• A top bar on the main display replaces the bottom strip and the desktop clock. On the left, the focused app's name opens its menu (New window, the app's own actions, Fullscreen, Minimize, Close, Quit). In the middle, the news ticker now carries your notifications too. On the right, the tray and the time, which opens a big clock over quick settings. Over a fullscreen window it hides and slides back when the pointer touches the top edge.
• Pinned rail apps own their windows, dock-style: click to launch, focus, minimize or cycle through them; middle-click for a new window; right-click lists them. Rail menus and tooltips open beside their button on every screen.
• Quick settings, rebuilt: toggle tiles for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Do not disturb and Game mode, sliders with mute buttons, a power profile switch, a now-playing card and a row of power buttons (the destructive ones ask for a second click).
• The focused window glows in your accent with [ ] corner marks that fade with focus. Close and minimize animations can be turned off, and minimize now heads toward the rail.
• One motion language across the shell, the apps and the greeter, and a polish pass on every panel, menu and app: cleaner surfaces, real app icons in the launcher and window list, nothing smaller than 12 px. Skin changes crossfade. Reduce motion now covers everything, the lock screen and greeter included.
• A livelier wallpaper: the shards react to the pointer, audio and window changes. The status block can show CPU, GPU, RAM and network graphs and a seconds ring.
• Settings › Appearance › Effects for glass, glow, sounds and the rest.

Skins and fonts

• Three new skins: Sakura, Paper and Void.
• Font sets: HUD, Neo (the new default) and Clean, with a preview of each. Window titles follow them.
• Day/night skins switch on a schedule, and From wallpaper picks an accent from your wallpaper.
• Flatpak browsers follow a skin change while they're open, and tray icons stay readable on light skins.

Boot, login and lock

• A boot splash in the Ultimit look on every monitor, with a styled password prompt.
• One animated sequence from power-on to the desktop: the login screen opens on the splash, logs you in back into the emblem, and the emblem cracks into glass shards that fall away to reveal the desktop.
• A new lock screen that sweeps in, idles with slow shards and wipes away on unlock. A wrong password glitches the card.

Games

• Automatic Game Mode. A fullscreen game, or one started from Steam, Proton, Wine, gamescope or GAMES, pauses every shell animation, quiets UI sounds, holds notifications until you're done (critical ones still show) and switches to the performance power profile. Settings › Power › Game Mode; a GAME chip shows when it's on.
• No panel glass is drawn over a fullscreen game, so a toast or the volume OSD costs nothing.

Security

• Signed updates. Every release is signed on GitHub, only with the owner's approval; Settings only offers, and the updater only installs, a signed release that says it is that version.
• Flatpak apps can no longer type into other windows, read the screen or clipboard, or draw a fake lock or password prompt. Screen sharing still works through the portal.
• EMBER asks first before reading hidden files in your home, and before sending anything out once a chat has read a web page, file or command output.
• A hidden or background window can no longer hold off auto-lock, USB disks don't mount while locked, and the password dialog warns when an app asks to run a shell as root.
• Hardening around the lock screen, the compositor's IPC, Flatpak browser themes and shared folders.

CLAUDE

• Chats run on Sonnet and call in Opus when stuck, with Haiku for the grunt work: much cheaper for the same results.
• A bar suggests a new chat once a chat's context gets long, and chats can move to another project.

Fixes

• Ctrl, Super and the other modifiers no longer get stuck after waking from sleep, and all keyboards share one layout and modifier state.
• Desktop animations no longer stay paused after the first unlock, and idle lock works again after it.
• No stray blur box on rotated (portrait) monitors.
• Screenshot and recording shortcuts no longer close open menus, and the OSD and password prompt return to the main display after a menu was open on another.
• No glass halo around browser menus, and no wallpaper strobing at low shard density.
• The boot splash is selected on Ubuntu 26.04, whose plymouth no longer ships plymouth-set-default-theme.
• A lighter idle desktop: the wallpaper and rail no longer repaint every monitor at full refresh rate.

Ultimit 1.0.0

Ultimit 1.0. Everything from the 0.1 releases is in, plus new TASKS, DISKS, ITEMS and EMBER apps, NekoMail and NekoPlayer built in, your own accent colour, smoother animations and a stack of crash fixes.

Updating: Settings › Updates › Ultimit offers it as usual. Edge PCs (ultimit-update --edge) already run all of this.

New apps

• TASKS, a task manager. Ctrl+Alt+Delete opens it, and it stays above fullscreen games. Processes with sort, search and Apps/Mine/All filters, End, Kill and Pause, and a performance tab with CPU, memory, GPU, disk and network graphs.
• DISKS. Every drive with a partition bar and its health (SMART/NVMe). Mount, eject, format, create, resize and delete partitions, with progress while it works. The drive the system runs from is refused. A usage view shows what takes space and opens it in DATA.
• ITEMS, device settings. For mice and keyboards that keep their own settings. First up: the Redragon M990 Legend (lighting, DPI levels, every button).
• EMBER, a desktop assistant you can plug any AI into. Claude or anything OpenAI-compatible (OpenAI, Grok, Ollama, LM Studio, llama.cpp). She runs commands, works with files, apps, windows, the web and the clipboard, and asks before anything risky. She's a bit of a brat about it.
• NekoMail is built in and handles mailto: links. NekoPlayer is the music player.

The desktop

• Your own accent colour on any skin (Settings › Appearance): eight presets or a hex value. It colours the focused window's frame, selections, toggles and the cursor.
• Smoother animations at your monitor's refresh rate. Maximize, snap and restore now morph the window into place, and panels ease open and closed.
• Photo frames on the desktop. Drag them around, resize or lock them, from the desktop menu, DATA or IMAGE.
• IMAGE opens as a picture library when started on its own: thumbnails, folders and Places.
• New mouse cursors: Izy (white darts) is the default, with Shard still in Settings, and both come in more sizes.
• Claude in the corner: a small chat above the tray that expands into the full CLAUDE window. CLAUDE also answers Claude's multiple-choice questions in the window, and uses smaller models for grunt work.
• WWW and CONSOLE on the rail, for the browser and a terminal.
• Resize windows from the top edge and corners. Drag the top or bottom edge to the screen edge to stretch a window full height.
• Your own snap widths, with an editor in Settings.
• The wallpaper and the ticker stop while a game is fullscreen on any screen, and the desktop clock only ticks each minute.
• GTK window buttons match Ultimit's title bar, and Flatpak apps follow a skin change straight away.
• USB disks mount by themselves. Ultimit asks before mounting a Windows drive and can read dynamic disks.

Games

• Proton games on NVIDIA use NVIDIA's newest DLSS. AION 2 works, and so do MapleStory and MapleStory Worlds.
• Fullscreen games pick the right monitor on PCs with a portrait side screen.
• Steam's dropdown menus work: clicking one no longer closes it.

Fixes

• A crash after waking from sleep no longer comes back unlocked: the desktop restarts on the lock screen.
• No crash when a monitor disappears on wake, and none at logout.
• Edge updates no longer hang at "Trimming Ubuntu's server parts".
• The disk automounter quits with the session instead of piling up.
• fastfetch shows the real installed version.

Ultimit 0.1.6

New IMAGE and CLAUDE apps, Discord with several accounts, frosted glass everywhere, spell check, new icons and cursors.

• IMAGE, a picture viewer. Pictures now open in Ultimit's own viewer (it replaces imv), in your skin's colours. Step through the folder, zoom with the wheel, drag to pan, rotate, set as wallpaper, copy, show in folder, or delete to Trash. GIFs and animated WebPs play, and Tab hides the bars. (#12)
• Spell check. Ungoogled Chromium underlines misspelled words (after its next restart), and native apps get an English (US) dictionary. (#13)
• CLAUDE, a built-in Claude app. Open it from the launcher or from Settings > About > "Troubleshoot with Claude". "This PC" is built in for troubleshooting and sends Claude a summary of the machine. Other projects are folders with their own account, model and notes, and their chats can be picked up later. Several accounts can be signed in side by side. Claude asks before it edits a file or runs a command. (#14)
• Discord with Vencord. Ultimit installs Vesktop with three launcher entries (Discord, Discord 2, Discord 3), each its own account, all able to run at once. Settings > Discord adds, renames and removes accounts. New accounts use the Ultimit title bar and a Vencord theme in your skin's colours. (#15)
• Icons. Steam shows its real logo, and running Steam games show their own icon. DATA and GAMES have new art. Other apps show a letter tile in your skin's colours, and Settings > Appearance > Other apps' icons switches back to their original icons. (#16)
• Redrawn mouse cursors in the desktop's own style: crystal shards and thin accent lines in your skin's colours, with an upright shard instead of a hand for links. (#17)
• MEMO right-click menu. Undo, Redo, Cut, Copy, Paste, Delete, Select all, Find and Replace, also from the Menu key or Shift+F10. (#18)
• Stronger frosted glass. Every Ultimit app, window frame, the rail, ticker, menus and flyouts are frosted glass with a stronger blur. It looks the same on every screen, and windows get a 5px glass frame. (#19, #20)

Full Changelog: v0.1.5...v0.1.6

Ultimit 0.1.5

Monitors stay where you drop them, a better DATA, the Shard cursor is back, and text looks crisp everywhere.

• Dragged monitors stay put. In Settings > Display, a monitor you drag and drop stays where you dropped it instead of jumping back. It lines up with a neighbour only when it's within a few pixels, and holding Shift turns that off. (#7)
• DATA file manager. "Show in folder" on a browser download opens DATA on that folder with the file selected. The address bar suggests folders and files as you type: Tab completes, Up/Down picks, Escape hides. You can drag files out of DATA into other apps, and Chromium can read your Pictures, Videos, Music and Documents (read-only) so dropped files upload. (#8)
• The Shard cursor is back in your skin's colours (Mine, Amber, Silver, Verdant). Changing the skin in Settings > Appearance recolours it right away, in the desktop, GTK apps and Flatpak apps. (#9)
• Crisp, consistent text. The shell, the login screen, native apps and Flatpak apps (Chromium included) all render text the same way: greyscale smoothing with light hinting, and Noto as the default font. Liberation fonts are installed for web pages that ask for Arial, Times New Roman or Courier New. (#10)
• Tested games list. docs/games.md lists games confirmed to run on Ultimit and the settings they need, starting with Neverness to Everness on DW-Proton. (#11)

Full Changelog: v0.1.4...v0.1.5

Ultimit 0.1.4

Fixes for multi-monitor desktops, sound over HDMI/DisplayPort, and Flatpak apps.

• Lighter desktop on several screens. The wallpaper paints its still parts once and redraws only what moves, and the news ticker (with the tray) shows on the main display only. "Rail and bar on" in Settings > Display is now "Rail on". Settings also opens again after you close it from its titlebar. (#1)
• Ultimit theme in Flatpak apps. Flatpak apps use the current skin's Ultimit theme, dark or light, and its cursor. Chromium-based Flatpak browsers switch to the GTK theme and the Ultimit titlebar. (#2)
• Pick the screen that plays sound. Settings > Sound has a "Screen speakers" list showing each HDMI/DisplayPort output by monitor name. Clicking one sends the graphics card's audio there and makes it the default output (Easy Effects stays the default if you use it). alsa-utils is now installed. (#3)
• Place monitors freely. In Settings > Display, monitors still touch edge to edge but can sit at any offset along the shared edge. Only the monitor you drag snaps (hold Shift to stop it), and the selected display has X/Y fields for exact placement. (#4)
• Menus close when they should. Tray flyouts, Quick Settings, right-click menus and the launcher close when you use a keyboard shortcut or click on another screen. Pressing Super over a fullscreen game brings the rail up with the launcher. (#5)
• GPU for Flatpak apps on NVIDIA. Ultimit installs NVIDIA's Flatpak graphics libraries for the running driver, both when it installs apps and at each login (for example after a driver upgrade). Chromium and other Flatpak apps use the GPU instead of drawing on the CPU, so scrolling is smooth. (#6)

Full Changelog: v0.1.3...v0.1.4

Ultimit 0.1.3

Full Changelog: v0.1.2...v0.1.3

Ultimit 0.1.2

Full Changelog: v0.1.1...v0.1.2

Ultimit 0.1.1

Full Changelog: v0.1.0...v0.1.1

Ultimit 0.1.0

The first Ultimit release: a gaming-first Wayland desktop on Ubuntu 26.04.

• Desktop: own compositor (wlroots + SceneFX) with Ultimit window chrome, rail, launcher, quick settings, notifications, Alt+Tab, clipboard history, screenshots and screen recording, wallpapers
• Gaming: Steam, Proton tools, Wine + DXVK, GameMode, MangoHud, gamescope
• Settings: displays (several monitors, rotation, refresh rate), sound, network and VPN (WireGuard, OpenVPN, PIA), Bluetooth, users, updates
• Updates: Ultimit now updates from these releases in Settings › Updates; Ubuntu's packages update as usual

Install from source with scripts/install.sh (see docs/install.md), or onto a fresh PC from the Ultimit ISO (docs/iso.md). This tarball is the precompiled release the updater and the ISO use.