This is a full v6.0 rewrite of the desktop plan, produced after:
1. Booting CachyOS desktop ISO (cachyos-desktop-260426.iso, 2.9GB) in QEMU
11.0.0 to establish the reference baseline.
2. Six parallel research agents that audited the full Red Bear stack
against the CachyOS reference and Linux 7.1 kernel source.
3. Resolution of two architectural questions that v5.x punted on.
Two non-negotiable architecture decisions (v6.0):
A. UNIFIED INPUT ARCHITECTURE: every input driver writes to BOTH
/scheme/input/orbclient (for Orbital) and /scheme/input/evdev (for
KWin + libinput). No more inputd <-> evdevd bridge that loses
metadata (timestamps, axis ranges, vendor IDs, SYN_REPORT).
Matches CachyOS/Linux: one kernel-evdev path, all consumers
read from it.
B. KWIN IS THE PRIMARY COMPOSITOR: redbear-compositor (788-line
Rust) is too small to reach production parity with KWin in any
realistic timeframe. KWin is used for the user session;
redbear-compositor hosts only the greeter (minimal xdg-shell +
wl_keyboard events are still needed for the greeter to function).
Critical path rework (v6.0):
- Phase 0: QML JIT gate (4-6 weeks) — moves to pre-flight because
it blocks 12 KF6 packages and KWin. Without QML, no Plasma.
- Phase 1: Unified input (1-2 weeks) — resolves the inputd/evdevd
proliferation.
- Phase 2: DRM atomic modeset + render node + PRIME real FDs +
RESOURCE_MAP_BLOB (2-3 weeks).
- Phase 3: Mesa EGL Wayland fix (1 week).
- Phase 4: Compositor greeter — redbear-compositor adds
xdg-shell + wl_keyboard events (2-3 weeks).
- Phase 5: KWin real build (2-4 weeks).
- Phase 6: PipeWire + wireplumber + audiod bridge (6-8 weeks).
- Phase 7: Plasma shell (4-6 weeks).
- Phase 8: QEMU E2E validation (1-2 weeks).
- Phase 9: Intel ARC track (parallel) (12-20 weeks).
Coverage inventory (v6.0):
237 components audited across 14 categories.
86 real (36%), 41 partial (17%), 110 missing (46%).
Detailed gap matrix in §8.
Intel ARC support:
Added as Phase 9 parallel track — requires Mesa iris + Xe driver
cross-compile + real hardware validation.
Total: 22-32 weeks to functional software-rendered KDE Plasma
Wayland desktop on QEMU. +4-8 weeks for Mesa virgl. +12-20 weeks
for real Intel ARC hardware.
This supersedes v5.0 and v5.1 in full. The v5.x changelog sections
(§9, §9.1, §9.1.1) are retained as historical record.
vasilito
4ec01243a0