A Wayland compositor. We got a little carried away.
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Install · Edit the shell · Documentation
denial-readme-github.mp4
Features
- Stacking, tiling, and scrolling tiling layouts.
- Workspaces and touchpad gestures. Plenty of room for projects you'll definitely finish someday.
- Smooth animations and transitions.
- Blur and customizable glass. Subtlety is available in Settings.
- Light and dark themes. Pick an accent color or borrow one from your wallpaper.
- Settings for layouts, displays, input, shortcuts, and appearance. It's a desktop. You should be able to configure it with a mouse.
- Live shell editing and hot reload.
- Wayland apps, optional X11 support through Xwayland, multiple monitors, screenshots, and screen sharing.
Hyprland and niri users are welcome. We won't tell.
| Glass dashboard | Another mood |
|---|---|
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| Launcher, up close | Wuthering Waves, with company |
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Support Denial
There are easier hobbies than writing a compositor. Unfortunately, we like this one.
If you like where Denial is going, help fund its development.
Install
Denial is in public beta. It runs on Linux. Someone got it running on StarryOS's starry-kernel too. Apparently one kernel wasn't enough. Linux builds support x86-64 and ARM64. Configuration and developer interfaces may change before 1.0.
First-party Linux binary packages are currently x86-64. For the distributions below, review the repository setup script, then add the signed repository:
curl -fsSL https://install.denialwm.org | shSetup shows its plan and asks for confirmation before using sudo. Once it
finishes, install Denial with the command for your distribution:
| Distribution | Install |
|---|---|
| Arch Linux / CachyOS / Omarchy 4.0 | sudo pacman -Syu denial |
| Debian 13 / Ubuntu 24.04 LTS | sudo apt update && sudo apt install denial |
| Fedora 44 | sudo dnf install denial |
Alpine Linux 3.24 has signed APK downloads. NixOS has a first-party source flake and module. ARM64 builds are supported from source; Void Linux has also been tested, with no first-party binary yet. openSUSE Tumbleweed has a native local RPM adapter; publication is not connected yet.
After installing, choose Denial from your display manager's session menu.
Plugin development and installation are provided separately by
denial-plugin-manager; see the step-by-step plugin guide.
Installation, updates, and removal · Session setup and renderer options
Edit the shell
The shell's UI is editable Flutter code. With the development tools installed, change a widget, save, and watch your desktop update while your Wayland apps keep running. Try to remember what you were supposed to be working on.
The Flutter 3.47.5 generation ships only the release engine. The optional
denial-ui-development package is paused for this generation; its source
tooling remains available for an explicitly requested future development
engine refresh.
When a compatible development package is published again, setup remains:
denialctl ui setup
Open the generated workspace's dart_shell directory in VSCodium for hot reload
on save. If an edit goes wrong, denialctl ui restore gets you back to the
packaged shell, even when Settings can't open.
Live development guide · Custom shell framework
Under the hood
Rust and Smithay handle Wayland, input, and displays. Flutter draws the shell and application windows together. Yes, that Flutter. It got promoted.
Explore the architecture · Build from source
Why Denial
Denial is an English word. The name contains Denia, followed by one last letter.
It is a quiet reference to Denia from Wuthering Waves. Her story never gives a simple answer to what she originally was, and that uncertainty is important. What is clear is that others treated her as an asset: something selected, shaped, and assigned a purpose that was not her own. She was meant to remain a vessel. Instead, by observing people and learning to live among them, she grew a heart and gained the ability to choose what she would become.
Her story reflects Denial's central idea: what something was made to be does not have to determine what it can become.
Made through dialogue
Denial was conceived, architected, directed, and tested by Doctor Logix, and developed in continuous collaboration with OpenAI Codex. Its initial implementation was generated through that dialogue.
Doctor Logix made the design and technical decisions, tested the results on real hardware, and sent the work back when it wasn't right. Codex investigated problems, proposed solutions, and wrote the code.
Authorship is more than typing source code.
Documentation
All guides · Control and recovery · Screenshots and screen sharing
Changelog · Roadmap · Contributing · Security
License
Denial's original source code is licensed under GPL-3.0-or-later. Bundled third-party components and media retain their own licenses and attribution notices.