In January, I covered MiDesktop when it launched its first public development preview, bringing the classic KDE 1 look to today’s Linux systems. Now, eight months later, the project has hit another milestone with the first beta release of MiDesktop 1.2.
If you missed my earlier article, MiDesktop is a fork of KDE 1.1.2 that runs on Osiris, a modernized version of Qt 2.3.2. The goal is to keep the lightweight, simple desktop feel of the late 1990s, but make it usable on today’s Linux systems.
A lot has changed since January, judging by the latest beta. One major new feature is MiPanel, which is based on the KPanel version from Corel Linux. It combines two panels into one at the bottom of the screen, but users can still switch back to the original KPanel if they prefer.
There are now more applications available, including KCalc, KHexdit, KScreenshot, Ark, KNotes, and other classic KDE apps that have been ported to MiDesktop.
Some usability issues from the earlier preview have been fixed as well. Now, you can use mouse-wheel scrolling when the pointer is over a window, not just the scrollbar. Font rendering is also better, thanks to proper anti-aliasing.
Firefox and other GTK apps should work much better now. Before, some apps would keep resizing until parts of their windows disappeared off the screen. That problem has been fixed.
The update also fixes disappearing menus and accidental panel clicks, and the tree view in the Control Center has been improved.
However, MiDesktop 1.2 is still in beta, and multi-monitor support is still limited. The desktop can show up on multiple displays, but it does not treat them as separate screens yet. So, snapping or maximizing a window to just one monitor does not work as expected.
The developer says MiDesktop is already stable enough for daily use on their own computer. However, testing is still limited because only one person is maintaining the project right now.
For additional details, view the dev’s post on Reddit.
You can get prebuilt packages for Debian 13 and Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, or compile the source code on other Linux distributions. If you are upgrading from the earlier preview, you will need to remove the old packages and repository first, since the names and structure have changed. The new repository offers stable, testing, and nightly channels, plus source packages.
