Mark
@markg85

Early 2025, my KDE Plasma desktop stopped working as a remote desktop. I figured it was some configuration thing. Simple fix.

Turns out my system had quietly switched to Wayland. Remote desktop in Wayland is broken by design. There's a mandatory confirmation dialog before any screen capture. Great for security, unless you're streaming a headless server where nobody's around to click "allow." Then it's just broken.

I dug deeper. Applications weren't remembering window positions. A feature that's existed on every desktop platform for decades, just gone. When I looked into why, I found years of debate, hundreds of comments, multiple protocol proposals. Somehow window positioning had become a security issue.

Global coordinates? Also gone. Hidden from applications for their own good. Which breaks 1-to-1 mouse mapping for remote setups like mine.

The Wayland community had turned the display layer into a political battleground. Every feature needs a security justification and a multi-year debate. I wanted something built differently from the ground up.

What I built

Waxed is a plugin-based display server. The core handles what every display server needs: VSync, variable refresh rate, multi-monitor setup, input processing, rendering. All the stuff every desktop environment currently implements on its own. Source code is on GitHub.

Desktop environments become plugins. You want to build a desktop? Implement the user-facing parts. Panels, window decorations, workflow concepts. Waxed handles the graphics underneath.

LEF is the reference desktop built on Waxed. Vulkan-powered, because we're in 2026 and there's no reason to waste GPU hardware. The whole visual layer is shader-based. Window chrome, panels, notifications, on-screen displays. Not because it's flashy, because it's efficient and lets us animate properly.

Everything in LEF is a plugin. Don't like the notification style? Replace the notification plugin. Want a different panel? Swap it. The API stays the same. Source code is on GitHub.

Both projects are MIT-0 licensed.

Why this matters

KDE. GNOME. XFCE. Hyprland. Sway. Cinnamon. Mate. Budgie. COSMIC. Each implements its own VSync logic, its own multi-monitor handling, its own input processing, its own rendering pipeline.

That's not diversity. That's thousands of developer hours rebuilding identical infrastructure instead of doing anything new.

Waxed offers a shared foundation. One implementation of the hard stuff. Any desktop plugs in and gets proper VRR, multi-monitor, input handling. When someone improves Waxed's multi-monitor code, every plugin benefits.

This doesn't kill diversity. It focuses it. Desktops stop competing on who can implement DRM planes better and start competing on actual user experience. Workflow innovations. Visual design. Ideas we haven't thought of yet.

The AI part

One developer building a display server and desktop from scratch is absurd. I know. The scope is too large by orders of magnitude.

I use GLM models as a coding partner (that link gets you 10% off if you want to try them). The AI implements, explores approaches, iterates when things break. I still steer everything. I still debug. I still have to understand what's being built well enough to catch mistakes.

The back-and-forth is where progress happens. I direct, it executes. What would take a team years becomes possible for one person with enough time.

To be clear: this isn't generating code blind and shipping whatever comes out. I'm a senior C++ developer. I know enough to catch mistakes, refactor messy architecture, recognize when a suggested approach is technically correct but practically wrong. The AI is a tool, not a replacement for understanding what you're building.

What donations buy

Time. I build this alongside client work that pays bills. Donations buy more hours for Waxed and LEF, fewer for someone else's project.

More hours means faster development. Chasing down tricky bugs instead of working around them. Writing documentation instead of postponing it. Getting the alpha release out sooner.

If you're tired of Wayland politics, tired of fragmented development, tired of waiting for features that get debated for years, consider supporting. Small contributions add up. They buy real hours of development time.

• Waxed - GitHub
• LEF Desktop - GitHub