Honestly, this wasn't supposed to become a project.
There are already a few AI desktop assistants built around Rofi. They work, but they usually cover just one or two pieces of the puzzle. I wanted something that actually felt complete.
So I kept adding things.
Localization. TTS. Natural voices. Dark mode. Better prompts. Better UX. A lot of boring fixes that nobody notices until they're missing.
I use it every single day, so if something breaks, it annoys me first. That's probably why it's been surprisingly stable.
Where the idea actually came from
My mom uses it too.
That's actually where the whole idea came from.
Her computer isn't exactly powerful, so I switched her to Linux. The problem is... Linux can be confusing when you're not into computers. And I can't always be around to help.
Now she just asks Lumina instead of calling me.
That alone made the project worth building.
Publishing it on GitHub was kind of an afterthought. I figured maybe someone else is in the same situation, or maybe someone is trying Linux for the first time and wants something that makes the desktop feel a bit less intimidating.
Why Rofi and not Eww
One thing I wanted from day one was to keep everything native.
That's why it's built on Rofi.
I could've used Eww, but I didn't really want another layer running in the background just to draw a prettier window. Rofi is already insanely fast. I just kept pushing it until it did what I needed.
Turns out, Rofi is capable of way more than people usually think.
Code's up at
github.com/Rafacuy/desklumina if you're curious how it's put together.
Top comments (1)
The mom test is the realest QA there is 😄
Appreciate the Rofi-over-Eww call — "no extra layer just to draw a prettier window" is the kind of tradeoff you don't appreciate until you're debugging at 2AM.
Curious: what TTS engine are you using under the hood? Tried a few options for local voice and the quality gap is wild.