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johnohhh1
johnohhh1

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I Ported the Ollama Desktop App to Linux Just in Time for Ubuntu 26.04 LTS

#ollama #ubuntu #linux #go

Ubuntu 26.04 LTS drops this week. I've been running the RC for months. And I think it's going to be the release that finally pulls a meaningful chunk of people off Windows — especially AI-curious developers who are tired of the telemetry, the forced updates, and the general feeling that Microsoft is treating them like a product.

So I've been on a mission: take the cool AI tooling that still assumes Windows or macOS, and make it work natively on Linux.

This week's project: the official Ollama desktop app.

The Problem

Ollama is incredible. Local LLMs, dead simple, fast. But their desktop app — the polished GTK-style chat UI with model management, file attachments, settings, chat history — officially ships for Windows and macOS only.

Every single Go file in the app/ directory of ollama/ollama starts with:

//go:build windows || darwin
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Linux users are left running ollama serve and pointing a browser at localhost:11434. It works, but it's not the experience.

The Discovery

Before writing a single line of code, I did what any good engineer does: I read the source.

The Ollama desktop app is built on webview — a lightweight C++ library that wraps the platform's native browser engine. On Windows it uses WebView2 (Edge). On macOS it uses WebKit. And on Linux?

// From webview.h, line ~400:
#if defined(WEBVIEW_GTK)
// Full GTK3 + WebKit2GTK implementation
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The Linux support was already there. Fully implemented. Sitting in the header file, waiting. The Go build tags were the only thing blocking it.

The Port

Six new files. A patch. About 350 lines of Go.

1. Unlock the build tags

~40 files needed one line changed:

// before
//go:build windows || darwin

// after  
//go:build windows || darwin || linux
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2. Wire up the CGo flags

app/webview/webview.go needed Linux-specific build flags to find GTK and WebKit:

#cgo linux CXXFLAGS: -DWEBVIEW_GTK -std=c++14
#cgo linux LDFLAGS: -ldl
#cgo linux pkg-config: gtk+-3.0 webkit2gtk-4.1
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Note: Ubuntu 26.04 ships webkit2gtk-4.1 — not 4.0. If you're targeting older distros, check your version.

3. Platform files

The app architecture expects platform-specific implementations of a handful of interfaces. I wrote six _linux.go files:

app_linux.go — GTK window management via CGo, lockfile-based single-instance enforcement, signal cleanup:

func handleExistingInstance(startHidden bool) {
    f, err := os.OpenFile(lockPath, os.O_CREATE|os.O_EXCL|os.O_WRONLY, 0o644)
    if err != nil {
        slog.Info("another ollama-app instance detected, exiting")
        os.Exit(0)
    }
    f.Close()
    go func() {
        c := make(chan os.Signal, 1)
        signal.Notify(c, syscall.SIGINT, syscall.SIGTERM, syscall.SIGHUP)
        <-c
        removeLock()
    }()
}
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server_linux.go — The app normally spawns the Ollama daemon itself. On Linux, systemd handles that. So this file is just a health-checker that pings localhost:11434 every 30 seconds and logs if it's unreachable. Never spawns a process.

updater_linux.go — All no-ops. systemd and apt manage updates on Linux.

filepicker_linux.go — File/folder dialogs via zenity:

func selectDirectory(title string) (string, error) {
    out, err := exec.Command("zenity", "--file-selection", "--directory", "--title="+title).Output()
    if err != nil {
        return "", err
    }
    return strings.TrimSpace(string(out)), nil
}
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dialog/dlgs_linux.go — zenity implementations of the app's dialog interface (yes/no, info, error, file pickers).

webview_linux.go — The Webview struct without the Windows menu.h CGo baggage, plus all the JS bindings: ready, close, drag, doubleClick, zoomIn, zoomOut, selectFiles, selectWorkingDirectory.

4. The one frontend bug

The React sidebar had:

{isWindows && (
  <Link href="/settings">Settings</Link>
)}
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On Linux, navigator.platform returns "Linux x86_64" — so isWindows is false and Settings just... doesn't appear. One-line fix:

const isMac = navigator.platform.toLowerCase().includes("mac");

{!isMac && (
  <Link href="/settings">Settings</Link>
)}
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The Result 

git clone https://github.com/johnohhh1/ollama-webchat-ubuntu.git
cd ollama-webchat-ubuntu
bash build.sh
sudo cp build/ollama-app /usr/local/bin/ollama-app
ollama-app
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A native GTK3 window. WebKit2GTK rendering the full React SPA. Chat history in SQLite. File attachments. Model management. Settings. Dark mode. Wayland-native — no XWayland needed.

The NVIDIA gotcha

Running an RTX 5070 (Blackwell) with the proprietary driver? You'll see a wall of EGL warnings on startup:

libEGL warning: egl: failed to create dri2 screen
libEGL warning: pci id for fd 17: 10de:2f04, driver (null)
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Ignore them. There's no open-source Mesa driver for Blackwell yet — WebKit probes Mesa EGL, fails, and falls back to Cairo software rendering for the compositor. For a chat UI it's completely imperceptible. Page layout and text were always CPU-rendered anyway.

Why Ubuntu 26.04 changes things

26.04 LTS is the first Ubuntu release with X11 removed entirely — Wayland only. GNOME 50. The desktop finally feels like a first-class target, not an afterthought.

At the same time, the local AI tooling ecosystem has exploded. Ollama, LM Studio, Open WebUI, llama.cpp — these tools are genuinely good, and they mostly work on Linux. The desktop app experience is just lagging behind.

That's the gap I'm trying to close. If you're a developer making the jump from Windows to Ubuntu 26.04 this week, you shouldn't have to give up your tools.

Repo

github.com/johnohhh1/ollama-webchat-ubuntu

PRs welcome — especially if you test on Fedora, Arch, or Ubuntu 24.04. And if you're building other AI tools that are stuck behind Windows/macOS build tags, the pattern here is reusable.

The C library usually already supports Linux. The build tags are almost always the only thing in the way.

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