DEBIAN 13 TRIXIE BASE WAYLAND NATIVE ZERO RUNTIME BLOAT

THALLIUM 81

The haute-horlogerie Linux distribution. Engineered on Debian 13 with hardware-accelerated Hyprland tiling, Quickshell reactive telemetry, peer-to-peer mobile continuity, and a trust-ranked software store.

BASE_RAM_IDLE ~380 MB Zswap + zram preconfigured
FRAME_LATENCY 0.8 ms Wayland direct-scanout
CORNER_RADIUS 0 px Pure industrial ergonomics
PHONE_SYNC P2P TLS Zero cloud intermediaries
HYPRLAND_WORKSPACE_01 // WAYLAND_DIRECT
144 FPS
POWER_PROFILE
AC_PERFORMANCE (HIGH)
GPU_PIPELINE
VULKAN 1.3 // DRM
Hyprland Direct Scanout
QUICKSHELL_SOCKET
UNIX:///run/user/1000/tl.sock
TELEMETRY
143.9 FPS · 0.74ms

Engineered from hardware up.
Zero compromises.

Every layer in Thallium 81 is purpose-built. We stripped legacy X11 scaffolding and replaced generic desktop environments with an ultra-light, reactive pipeline combining Hyprland and Quickshell.

01.1
CORE_COMPOSITOR

Hyprland Wayland Core

Tiling compositor tuned for Thallium: bespoke keybinds, tearing support for games, per-monitor scaling and VRR.

  • Scanout: Direct DRI3 / Vulkan
  • Curve: snap(.05,.9,.1,1)
  • Plugins: hyprexpo workspace overview
01.2
SHELL_SURFACES

Quickshell Desktop Shell

Every surface you touch is one QML shell: top bar, dock, launcher, control centre, dashboard, notifications, OSD and polkit prompts.

  • Bar: Workspaces, tray, system stats
  • Dock: App grid, window picker, previews
  • Launcher: Fuzzy app + file search
01.3
CONTROL_CENTRE

Control Centre & Dashboard

Sliding panels for audio, network, Bluetooth and brightness, plus a dash with calendar, weather and a live OTA update drawer.

  • Tiles: Segmented sliders, toggles
  • Dash: Calendar, weather, updates
  • OSD: Volume, brightness, turbo blast
01.4
SOFTWARE

Thallium Store

One catalog across apt, Flathub, GitHub releases and AppImage, ranked by trust. A Rust backend drives installs directly through polkit.

  • Frontends: Quickshell · Qt 6 · Web
  • Trust: Sandboxed / verified tagging
  • Cache: On-disk icons + metadata
01.5
CONTINUITY

Thallium Connect

Phone and desktop as one machine over self-owned TLS. Three planes: BLE control, Wi-Fi data, and native D-Bus/PipeWire integration.

  • Daemon: thalliumd (Rust, tokio)
  • App: TLC — KDE Connect fork
  • Account: None. Ever.
01.6
FILES

Thallium Files IN DEVELOPMENT

Qt/QML file manager on a Rust backend — eight crates covering a VFS layer, change-batching watcher, task scheduler and reducer-based browser state.

  • Bridge: cxx-qt to the QML frontend
  • Tasks: Copy / move / delete / trash
  • Remotes: rclone-backed, from sidebar
01.7
CONFIGURATION

Thallium Settings

A Quickshell settings surface built from the same token set as the rest of the OS — HUD cards, metric bars, sliders and action tiles.

  • Theme: 7 palettes, live switch
  • Wallpaper: Writes back to the shell
  • Standby: Grid, gauges, quote, weather
01.8
POWER

AC-Aware Power Policy

Governors, GPU clocks, refresh rate and polling all scale on power state. Plug in and the machine changes character.

  • AC: EPP performance, max VRR
  • Battery: EPP power, polling capped
  • Thermals: Hysteresis fan curve

Apple-Continuity class.
No cloud. No account. Ever.

TLC on Android and the thalliumd daemon on the desktop are two halves of one machine. Files, notifications, media, SMS, remote input, screen mirroring, phone-as-webcam, proximity unlock and tethering — device to device over TLS you own.

CAPABILITY CHANNELS mTLS · NO ACCOUNT
DESKTOP_DAEMONthalliumd (Rust · tokio)
ANDROID_APPTLC · KDE Connect fork
IDENTITYPersistent P-256 certificate
PROTOCOLKDE Connect v8 framing
thalliumd > File Transfer PLANE: DATA / WI-FI
PLANEJOBTRANSPORT
CONTROLDiscovery, proximity, small commandsBLE (GATT)
DATAFiles, A/V, sync payloadsWi-Fi · LocalSend + KDEC
OS-INTEGRATIONSurface phone data nativelyD-Bus · PipeWire · uinput · PAM

One query. Every source.
Ranked by trust, not by luck.

Search once and apt, Flathub, GitHub releases and AppImage all answer. Every channel an app ships on is shown side by side with the safest option recommended, and the backend runs the install itself through polkit. Three interchangeable frontends sit on one Rust core.

QUICKSHELLShips on Thallium 81
NATIVE QT 6Any Debian desktop
WEBLoopback, no toolkit
EDITORIALCurated collections

Built for Thallium.
Not locked to it.

A store that only runs under its own desktop cannot be installed on a plain Debian box to get that desktop. So the Store ships three interchangeable frontends over one Rust backend, and the file manager is a standalone Qt app on its own crate workspace. Both install on any Debian-based system.

01 DEFAULT

Quickshell

The frontend Thallium 81 ships. Assumes the Thallium desktop is present and renders ui/shell.qml inside the running shell.

REQUIRESquickshell
branch: main
02 PORTABILITY LAYER

Native Qt 6

A small C++ host that embeds the same ui/shell.qml, exposes desktop theme icons and bridges QML to the backend's Unix socket. Same file, different host.

REQUIRESqt6-base-dev · qt6-declarative-dev
No Quickshell. No Electron. No Chromium. No Node. No webview.
branch: native/qt6
03 RECOVERY FLOOR

Web

Binds an ephemeral port on loopback, mints a per-session UUID every request must present as x-thallium-token, serves assets compiled into the binary, and exits once idle.

REQUIRESany browser
branch: compat/no-quickshell
WRAPPER RESOLUTION ORDER
$THALLIUM_STORE_NATIVE ~/.local/libexec/ /usr/libexec/ target/native/ --web

The thallium-store wrapper walks this list and falls back to the web client when the native binary is missing, so the Store always starts.

BUILD THE NATIVE CLIENT ON PLAIN DEBIAN
sudo apt install cmake g++ qt6-base-dev qt6-declarative-dev \
  qml6-module-qtqml qml6-module-qtquick \
  qml6-module-qtquick-controls qml6-module-qtquick-layouts \
  qml6-module-qtquick-shapes qt6-qpa-plugins

./scripts/build-native
# -> target/native/thallium-store-native
OR TAKE THE PACKAGE
./scripts/build-deb
sudo apt install ./dist/thallium-store_*.deb

# no packaging, user prefix only:
./scripts/install-local
BRANCH STATE

native/qt6 and compat/no-quickshell both fork at 1a249b1 and sit behind main. Their instructions predate the un-vendoring of UNI. Rebase before shipping either.

STANDALONE APP // OPTIONAL PACKAGE

Thallium Files IN DEVELOPMENT

A Qt/QML file manager on a Rust backend, driven through a cxx-qt bridge. Not an ISO default — it installs on any Debian box independently of the desktop. Eight crates, exercised end to end by a real integration test over a temporary directory.

RUN IT
cargo run -p thallium-backend --features qt

# headless, backend crates only
cargo check --workspace
cargo test  --workspace
thallium-vfsFilesystem abstraction layer
thallium-fs-coreCore filesystem primitives
thallium-watcherChange-batching file watcher
thallium-schedulerCopy / move / delete / trash tasks
thallium-stateReducer-based browser state
thallium-actionsAction coordinator for the UI
thallium-protocolFrontend/backend message protocol
thallium-backendcxx-qt bridge and QML host
KNOWN GAPS — EACH PINNED BY A TEST, NOT LEFT SILENT
  • Copy handles regular files only. Delete recurses; copy does not.
  • Remote services need rclone; remotes are added from the sidebar. Without it the browser is local-only.
  • Remotes have no trash, links or mode bits.
  • Trashing depends on a reachable XDG trash directory.
  • The watcher's reporter is a stub, so refresh is explicit rather than live.
  • Video thumbnails need ffmpegthumbnailer; SVGs are not thumbnailed and keep their type icon.

Black Everforest.
Calm, sharp, moss-lit ergonomics.

Click any palette variant below to test-drive real-time CSS variable recoloring across the entire website viewport.

COLOR_RAMP_SPECTRUM
bg
plate
edge
faint
moss
aqua
amber
red
CONTRAST RATIO: 14.2:1 (AAA) EYESTRAIN INDEX: MINIMAL
TYPOGRAPHY_METRICS
UNBOUNDED 800
JetBrains Mono 400/500/700 — Crisp terminal geometry & tabular numerals.
ZERO BLUR GLOW 0PX BORDER RADIUS

Minimal footprint.
Maximum hardware yield.

Designed to fly on high-end desktop rigs and breath new life into ultrabooks and ThinkPads.

SUBSYSTEM MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS RECOMMENDED FOR VRR / GAMING
CPU ARCHITECTURE 64-bit x86_64 Dual Core (Intel Core 4th Gen+ / AMD FX+) 64-bit AMD Ryzen 5000+ or Intel 12th Gen+
MEMORY (RAM) 2.0 GB RAM (Zswap active) 16.0 GB+ DDR4/DDR5 Dual Channel
GRAPHICS / GPU Intel HD Graphics 4000 / AMD Radeon GCN / Vulkan 1.1 AMD Radeon RX 6000+ or NVIDIA RTX (Proprietary/Nouveau DRM)
STORAGE 16 GB SATA SSD 64 GB+ NVMe PCIe Gen4 SSD
DISPLAY PROTOCOL Wayland DRM direct (HDMI / DisplayPort / eDP) 144Hz+ DisplayPort VRR / Adaptive-Sync

Not ready yet.
v0.6.2-B, internal.

Thallium 81 is at internal build v0.6.2-B and is not publicly downloadable yet. When the first ISO is cut it will be signed, checksummed and listed here. The flash instructions below are what the process will look like.

INTERNAL BUILD: v0.6.2-B PRE-RELEASE · NOT YET PUBLIC
thallium-81-amd64.iso
Internal build v0.6.2-B · public ISO not yet cut
FOLLOW DEVELOPMENT
BUILD STATUS
INTERNAL RELEASEv0.6.2-B
PUBLIC ISONot yet cut
CHECKSUMSPublished with first public build
QUICK_FLASH_INSTRUCTIONS
1
Write with dd (Linux/macOS)
sudo dd if=thallium-81-amd64.iso of=/dev/sdX bs=4M status=progress oflag=sync
2
Ventoy Compatible

Simply copy thallium-81-amd64.iso onto any standard Ventoy multi-boot USB drive.

3
Calamares Installer

Includes automated Btrfs subvolumes, Zswap configuration, and optional proprietary NVIDIA driver injection.