I’ve been keeping an eye on MauiKit for a while now, and over Christmas, they surprised us with their brand new convergent desktop environment – Maui Shell – targeted at both desktops, tablets, and mobile devices. After developing a whole set of applications, as well as a Linux distribution to use them, their next step is now a complete desktop environment.
The objective of Maui Shell is to deploy a convergent desktop shell with different form factors, from mobile phones and tablets to desktop computers. Maui Shell will adapt to various form factors, and there’s no need for multiple versions targeting different form factors.
Maui Shell is still in early development, but they’ve published a tight schedule with the first complete release scheduled for late 2022, with several preview releases in between then and now. In fact, the next release of Nitrux will include the first test release as an alternative shell for users to log into.
If you’re interested in a modern take on the Linux desktop, phone, and tablet – these are the projects to follow. They’ve got some good stuff under their belt already, a proven track record, and a clear vision of what they want Maui Shell and its applications to be.
I think their name is a problem. Maui is also a product for a cross platform UI Kit in .NET. So, Googling just “Maui” I git to the 4th page before it broke with “Maui, as in Hawaii”, and the first non Hawaiian link was, “What is .NET MAUI?” I think it will be interesting to see who keeps the name.
So instead of finishing up Ubuntu’s abandoned Unity project, a new project is going to start from scratch and reimplement the wheel… And people wonder why it’s never the year of desktop Linux.