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KDE Plasma 🌌🎆

· One min read
Mister Teddy
Creator & Maintainer of Polar Bear

We're excited to announce that our experiments with KDE Plasma have yielded positive results, both the X11 session via XWayland and the Wayland session.

KDE Plasma on Local Desktop

How to

Please visit this document for detailed instructions. In simpler terms, just add the following configuration to your localdesktop.toml file:

/etc/localdesktop/localdesktop.toml
[command]
try_check = "pacman -Qg plasma"
try_install = "stdbuf -oL pacman -Syu plasma --noconfirm --noprogressbar"
# X11 session via Xwayland
try_launch = "XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=/tmp Xwayland -hidpi :1 2>&1 & while [ ! -e /tmp/.X11-unix/X1 ]; do sleep 0.1; done; XDG_SESSION_TYPE=x11 DISPLAY=:1 dbus-launch startplasma-x11 2>&1"
# Wayland session
try_launch = "XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=/tmp WAYLAND_DISPLAY=wayland-0 /usr/lib/plasma-dbus-run-session-if-needed startplasma-wayland 2>&1"

The outcome has been so promising that we're considering setting KDE Plasma as the default desktop environment in Local Desktop. This aligns with our long-term goal: replacing XWayland with a native Wayland session for better performance. We'd love to hear your thoughts on our GitHub repository, and toss us a ⭐️ to help keep us motivated to improve KDE Plasma compatibility!

Google just sherlocked us! But we are delighted

· 2 min read
Mister Teddy
Creator & Maintainer of Local Desktop

According to Android Authority, Android Canary 2507 now supports native GUI Linux apps.

After installing the July 2025 Canary build, a new icon appears in the Linux Terminal app that opens a display activity. Inside it, running weston launches a full Wayland-based Linux desktop session. It even has GPU acceleration and audio support 🤯

Android with Linux GUI apps

This is exactly, and technically, what we're building. I believe we had the same approach: Wayland, as I haven't checked the code, but the fact that they shipped weston says everything.

In some way, we just got sherlocked, since people are less likely to pick a third-party app if there's a built-in alternative (at least that's what I would do). However, as an Android user, I'm actually delighted. It's a win-win situation: this validates what we've believed all along, Android devices can be more than phones. With official support, more people will explore desktop-style workflows, and more manufacturers will build hardware to support them.

This built-in feature will likely be available starting from Android 16, but Local Desktop will continue to do its best to support all devices from Android 5 and beyond. We've always been about unlocking possibilities before they go mainstream - and we're not stopping now.

Please star our GitHub repository and follow our adventure 🐻‍❄️

Thank You, Sentry

· One min read
Mister Teddy
Creator & Maintainer of Polar Bear

I'm excited to share and express my gratitude for Sentry's approval of our application to their Open Source Sponsorship Plan 🎉

The sponsored account from Sentry

If you're maintaining an open-source project, you can apply here. Having Sentry for telemetry helps more than you might expect. Before using Sentry, we had to ask users to connect their devices to a PC via USB, capture logcat output, and send it to us via email or GitHub. Now, panic reports are automatically sent to us with detailed context, helping us quickly identify which assumptions or expectations went wrong, and take timely action.

How Sentry helped us

We also plan to make further use of Sentry by leveraging traces and spans to monitor FPS and frame delays. This will help us optimize the app's smoothness even more. Follow our progress on GitHub!

100 GitHub ⭐️, a Small Milestone, and a Big Thank You

· One min read
Mister Teddy
Creator & Maintainer of Local Desktop

Local Desktop just reached 100 stars on GitHub 🎉 What surprised me even more was a sudden wave of traffic from Brazil. Obrigado 🇧🇷

Brazil led the wave of visitors to Local Desktop

Your support means the world to us, and we will keep working hard to make Local Desktop better every version. We are working on handling better mouse/trackpad input, and our next plan is to support an Android storage mount point.