The Pomelo project
The goal is simple: a light, friendly Linux desktop that speaks your language. The login screen, window manager, Zhuyin input method, apps, PDF reader and AI assistant — every layer is rebuilt in C as one coherent design.
Desktops shouldn't keep getting heavier
Mainstream Linux desktops keep growing: Ubuntu's minimal desktop install alone pulls in about 1,270 packages. Lightweight desktops save resources but are stitched together from many projects, and Chinese input, fonts and old Big5 files often have to be set up by hand.
Pomelo takes another approach: every layer is written in-house as one design. Install it and you can type Zhuyin, read official documents and sign PDFs right away — plus an AI assistant that runs on your own computer and never sends your data anywhere.
How we make decisions
Light
Depends only on basic libraries like Xlib and cairo, never on GNOME. 0% CPU at idle, fully event-driven; things like input methods and printer drivers are installed only when you need them.
One coherent whole
The login screen, window manager, menu bar, settings and apps share one design: the same menus, the same shortcuts, the same dark mode and accent color.
Chinese first
Built-in Zhuyin; Big5 text files, subtitles and MP3 titles converted automatically; documents without embedded fonts shown in Ming and Kai; plain Taiwanese wording in the interface, no jargon.
Respects your privacy
The AI assistant runs on your own computer; the keyring encrypts the whole file; Pomi always asks before acting, never overwrites and never really deletes.
No lock-in
Installs on your existing Ubuntu, Fedora or Rocky without replacing your desktop; every component is a separate package — if you only want the terminal, install just that.
Honest
What it can't do is written in the manual; if a test didn't actually run, we say so (see the 0.30 release notes). The numbers are measured, not estimated.
Every layer is Pomelo
All components share libpomelo: drawing, icons, menus, config files, settings widgets and image loading. Each component has its own folder and package, and can be built and installed on its own.
Xlib/xcb + cairo on X11. No GTK, Qt or GLib required.
Design notes: Assistant design notes・ Login manager design notes・ Zhuyin input design notes・ Keyring design notes
How we got here
From dropping GNOME to writing our own PDF engine and digital signatures.
Editing PDF content
Edit the original text on the page and remove watermarks in one go.
Digital signatures
Signing and verification written in-house, validated by poppler.
Editing PDFs
Annotations, signatures, organizing pages, merging, page numbers.
Our own PDF engine
No off-the-shelf PDF library; reads Chinese documents and encrypted files.
Four new apps
Calculator, image viewer and media player, plus a major text editor update.
Five distributions
Ubuntu 22.04/24.04/26.04, Fedora 44, Rocky Linux 9.
Quick commands
Common phrases handled in under 0.1 s, no waiting for the model.
Make it your own
Edit the app menu and login screen; Pomi gets six color themes and can read answers aloud.
Network settings
Reverts after 30 seconds if misconfigured, so you're never locked out remotely.
Screenshots & recording
Super+Shift+3/4/5; recordings saved as MP4.
Pomelo login screen
About 2 MB resident, no GLib or D-Bus.
Pomi gets things done
Opens URLs, creates folders and files — and always asks first.
14 interface languages
Traditional and Simplified Chinese, English, Japanese, Korean, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Vietnamese, Thai, Indonesian.
Our own Zhuyin input method
The Chewing engine plus our own candidate window, only 4 MB extra.
Pomi walks onto the desktop
Our own software 3D rendering — no graphics card, under 1% CPU.
Text editor
Mixed Chinese/English text and a clipboard shared with other apps.
Keyring and AI assistant
Replaces gnome-keyring and encrypts the whole file; the first version of the on-device AI assistant.
No more GNOME dependencies
Our own password dialog; input methods installed only when needed.
What's next
These directions come from the design notes and the manual. It's a plan, not a promise; the order may change.
Next up
- PDF: filling in form fieldsThe manual already says this is coming in a later version.
- Pomi: GPU acceleration on integrated graphicsVulkan (Intel Iris Xe, AMD Radeon) or OpenVINO, detected and downloaded automatically.
- Pomi: understanding the screenLoading the vision part of the same Qwen3-VL model lets it "see" the screen or the camera.
Under consideration
- Raspberry Pi (arm64)Pomelo is all C and builds directly on arm64; even a 2 GB Pi 4 is enough.
- Zhuyin input in Qt appsImplementing the fcitx5 interface so VLC and VirtualBox can use Pomelo Zhuyin too.
- Pomi controlling the browserLogging in and filling in forms for you.
Known limitations
- X11 onlyWayland is not supported.
- File manager drag and drop, window shadows and animationsUse picom for shadows and animations for now.
- PDF digital signaturesCertificates on smart-card readers (e.g. Taiwan's Citizen Digital Certificate) aren't supported yet, and no timestamps are added when signing.
Help make Pomelo better
Install it and try it out
Give it a try on your computer. We especially need testing of the Pomelo login screen on real hardware (Fedora and Rocky with SELinux enabled).
Help review translations
Apart from Traditional and Simplified Chinese, the other 12 languages are AI translations not yet reviewed by native speakers. If something reads oddly, please tell us.
Read the source, change the code
GPLv3 free software, one folder and one Makefile per component. Download the source.
When reporting a problem, including your distribution, Pomelo version and the contents of ~/.xsession-errors helps a lot.
Licenses & third-party components
Pomelo is free software licensed under the GNU General Public License version 3 or later (GPL-3.0-or-later). You are free to use, modify and share it; if you distribute a modified version, it must use the same license and include the source code. This software comes with no warranty.
| Component | Used for | License |
|---|---|---|
| Pomelo | The whole desktop | GPL-3.0-or-later |
| Qwen3-VL | Pomi's AI model (downloaded on first use) | Apache 2.0 |
| llama.cpp | Pomi's runtime (downloaded on first use) | MIT |
| Piper | Offline speech synthesis (downloaded when you enable read-aloud) | MIT |
| huayan Chinese voice | Offline voice | The dataset license is listed as "unknown" — please check before any commercial use |
| Adobe Glyph List | Glyph name table in the PDF reader | BSD-3-Clause |
| xcb-imdkit 1.0.9 | Zhuyin input for Rocky/RHEL 9 (unmodified) | LGPL-2.1-only |
| Yaru/Adwaita icons | Interface icons | CC-BY-SA 4.0 |
| Noto CJK | Chinese, Japanese and Korean fonts | SIL Open Font License |
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