Starling Releases Free Linux Desktop, Office Apps, Terminal, and SDK

AI is accelerating the creation of top-quality software alternatives, so we should expect to see more of this going forward. Case in point, a new startup called Starling is using AI to help it build a full desktop Linux environment, Office productivity suite in web and native app forms, a Terminal app, and the SDK it created and used that brings Flutter to Swift without requiring the Dart virtual machine (VM).

“We’re building world-class software for everyday work,” the Starling website explains. “A fast terminal. An office for your ideas. A desktop that gives you room to do more. Free to use. Open to study, change, and build on.”

Available software includes:

Starling Desktop. The Starling Desktop is a Linux desktop environment built on the Starling SDK that’s currently available for Ubuntu 26.04 LTS (x64), and Windows through WSL2 with Ubuntu 26.04. If offers a traditional 2D interface and an experimental 3D desktop that appears to be influenced by Minecraft and 3D environments like HoloLens, remote desktop capabilities, and dedicated workspaces for agents. You can download Starling Desktop from GitHub.

Starling Office. This office productivity suite currently consists of three Microsoft Office-like apps–Writer, Slides, and Sheets–that run in the web browser or in Linux, Mac, or Windows via WSL2. They seem to look and work much like their Microsoft alternatives and feature a familiar ribbon interface. You can download Starling Office for Linux, Mac, and Windows/WSL from the Starling website.

Starling Terminal. The Starling Terminal promises dramatic performance improvements over the built-in terminal apps in Linux, Mac, and Windows. It’s a native app on each platform, and the Windows version is portable. Starling Terminal is available for download for Linux, Mac, and Windows on GitHub.

Starling SDK. This is the software environment Starling is using to create its software. Linux is the primary platform, the Starling apps are written in Swift, and the SDK uses the core C engine in Flutter on desktop platforms and Swift WebAssembly and the skwasm renderer for the web. You can learn more and download the SDK and it source code on GitHub.

All of this is pretty early in development, but I’ve run the web and Windows/WSL version of Writer and you can see that it’s coming along pretty well.