Dux: open-source Wayland desktop shell released
The gist
Dux Labs released DMS 2.1 "Stormborn," a free open-source Wayland desktop shell for Linux compositors.
The rebrand keeps the dms command and plugins, so users upgrade without reconfiguring.
How it unfolded
- Oct 21, 2026Dank Linux posted its final message on X under that name; DMS 2.0, codenamed "Heisenberg," had reached GitHub a few hours earlier.
- Oct 22, 2026DankMaterialShell was renamed Dux Shell with the 2.0 release, and the parent organization became Dux Labs; the DMS abbreviation and `dms` command were kept.
- Oct 23, 2026DMS 2.0 "Heisenberg" was reported to include more than 90 bug fixes and improvements, but was not yet in distribution package repositories, so the install script was required.
Key terms
- Wayland
- A communication protocol defining how a display server talks to its clients, with a C library implementation.
- compositors
- Software that gives each window an off-screen buffer and combines them into the screen image written to display memory.
Source: Wikipedia