DankMaterialShell Becomes Dux Shell as Dank Linux Rebrands to Dux Labs
Dank Linux, the Wayland desktop suite built around DankMaterialShell (DMS), has put out its final post on X under that name, bidding farewell to its old identity. Accompanying it is DMS 2.0, codenamed “Heisenberg,” which reached GitHub just a few hours ago.
If you didn’t already know, the shell is a Quickshell and Go project that stands in for tools like waybar, swaylock, mako, and fuzzel. Around it sit a greeter, a calendar app, a system monitor, and a search service.
It began as a hobby project, with 1.0 shipping in December last year. Since then, newer releases have added niceties like desktop widgets, a new launcher, and spring-based motion.
With that many components in the suite, the project has now put all of them under a new name.
A surprise rebrand
The rebranding covers the whole suite. DMS is now Dux Shell, and the greeter, search tool, system monitor, and calendar are now Dux Greeter, Dux Search, Dux GOP, and Dux Calendar, respectively.
Dank Linux gets renamed Dux Labs, which also acts as the new name for the project as a whole and for every app in the suite.
Dux Files is a standalone file manager that is the one piece that’s new instead of being renamed. It offers features like tabs, split views, trash, and network shares. It picks up your DMS theme if the shell is running.
Dux is the suite’s mascot, and the name echoes Linux’s penguin mascot, Tux. Starting with a D also lets the dms, dcal, and dgop commands keep their names.
The project’s reasoning to go through the rebrand is that a name built around one product no longer fits a suite with its separate collection of apps and a plugin community.
Another thing to note is that the earlier release, DMS 1.6, still carried the Dank name, and its roadmap listed a standalone file browser and phone integration, but a rename was never really mentioned.
As for the DMS 2.0 release, it is a packed one that adds a Material 3 Expressive redesign, plugins for the dashboard and dock, and a lock screen with widgets you can arrange yourself.
It also adds Dux Dot, a free-floating companion or replacement for the bar that can turn into notifications, weather, media, and wallpaper views, as well as the control center, dashboard, and launcher.
What now?
The project has already moved from the AvengeMedia umbrella to a new GitHub organization called Dux Labs.
You will find many repositories that used to be known by their Dank names, including dux-shell (previously DankMaterialShell), dux-gop (dgop), dux-search (danksearch), dux-calendar (dankcalendar), and dux-greeter (dank-greeter).
Personally, I preferred the Dank branding. But if the developers feel this is the best approach and the community accepts it, there’s no point talking about what was.
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