Status Updates September 2026

Hi Regolith users! I wanted to give an update on where the project is and what the future looks like from my perspective. People have been waiting for an update for Ubuntu 26.04 (and soon we’ll have 26.10 as well) for several months. Without getting into details, I can say that a combination of day-job stress and life generally have kept me from spending as much time working on Regolith as I have in past years. Recently I’ve decided to take a break from full time work (as a software developer), for reasons that would not surprise most people aware of what the software industry is like generally in 2026. This means that I have time, energy, and interest in picking up Regolith work, and I no longer need to use Ubuntu¹ on a daily basis.

A lot has changed since the Regolith on Bionic days; we have Wayland, a bunch of new compositors with interesting approaches to app management, an entirely new root of Desktop Environment in COSMIC, and a growing popularity of Linux in general. I have been spending some of my free time exploring some of the new things, and am really impressed. We have come a long way in 8 years! I am going to continue playing around, learning what other projects have found, and thinking about what this means for the Regolith project.

I think it’s worth framing what problem Regolith attempts to solve, or why it is a distinct choice among others: Application Fidelity. Regolith’s design puts the user’s interactions with applications at the top of the priority list. This makes it less suitable for those that have other needs, which is fine. Regolith doesn’t try to be everyone’s application management environment. But what does that mean in terms of actual running software? Well, I’d like to know what you think about that. I’ve created a small survey (4 questions), to help me understand and prioritize what users want out of Regolith in the future:

https://xoyondo.com/ap/wgvg385qd241h9i

(I tried and failed to find a survey app without advertisements. You’ll have to vote on each question individually it seems.)

Getting Regolith running on Ubuntu 26.04 is a short-term priority for me. The rest is up in the air. Let me know what you think, and if the poll doesn’t capture something you think is important, feel free to open a discussion topic on GitHub or email me if you prefer.