The Legendary KDE of the 1990s Is Back on Modern Linux: Explained

Explore the legendary kde of the 1990s is back on modern Linux.

The MiDesktop project was first revealed in early 2025 by programmer Alec Bloss . He successfully made the KDE 1 desktop environment compatible with modern Linux distributions. To achieve this, the project used a fork of the Qt2 framework called Osiris , while modern KDE and most applications today have moved to Qt 6 .

Interestingly, MiDesktop retains the original KDE interface and functionality, but runs on Debian 13 or Ubuntu 24.04 , and can use modern Linux applications. In other words, you can experience the feeling of using a Linux desktop from the late 1990s or early 2000s without struggling with outdated software or a obsolete system.

In a Reddit post, the project author describes:

MiDesktop is incredibly fast and lightweight, focusing on practicality and avoiding distractions. Installation packages are now available for Debian 13 and Ubuntu 24.04. Now you can see what a Linux desktop from the late 90s/early 2000s looked like, without having to rebuild the old environment.

However, the current version is only a beta development and still has quite a few bugs. Some core KDE applications such as KEdit, KWrite, KCalc … are not yet integrated, and it is likely they will use different names to avoid confusion with modern KDE applications. Chrome and Firefox browsers have errors when resizing windows, taskbar menus often disappear after opening, the system lacks sound, and multi-monitor setup is not yet working correctly.

As expected, MiDesktop still uses X11 instead of Wayland. The project author stated that porting to Wayland is planned, but it will require significant time and effort. This could be a suitable case for applying Wayback – a conversion layer that allows X11 desktop environments to run on Wayland, although this project is also in its early stages of development.

The developer also emphasized that this is only a developer preview: "This is a preview, so there will definitely be bugs and possibly even undiscovered security issues. MiDesktop is not yet considered stable. Development is slower than expected, but good results take time. I've recently had more free time, so the development speed will improve."

Users can install MiDesktop through the official Ubuntu and Debian software repositories, and distributions based on these two systems can also use it, as long as they still support X11 sessions. After installation and restarting the machine, the MiDesktop login option will appear right on the login screen.