Remember Ubuntu’s convergence dream? One operating system across your desktop, tablet, and phone, with apps that adapt to whichever screen you’re using.Canonical pursued that vision with Unity 8 and Ubuntu Phone before pulling its investment in 2017. Now, a new project called Luma wants to tackle a similar ambition.It’s early days, and only a desktop build is available to download. But its plans go well beyond becoming another desktop Linux distro.The project's founder, Nick (nmcmil), has worked with a small group of people to achieve this, with the group answering to no shareholders or investors and taking all the key project-related decisions themselves.When I tested it, it was built on Fedora 44 and ran a recent version of the Linux kernel. The team does say that they have reworked enough of the stack that it doesn't count as a typical distro.Their blog on AI also points out that the distro features AI-assisted contributions, with contributors being held responsible for any work that carries their name.🚧This distro is still pre-release and should not be treated stable enough for daily use or production deployments.Luma: Overview ⭐The desktop is called Prairie, and the team describes it as a hard fork of GNOME. Its goal is to provide a shell, windows, fonts, and apps that all look and feel the same.Apps are built with GTK and Libadwaita, with the project shipping LumaUI as a toolkit outside developers can use to make their software feel at home on the system. Luma’s original code is licensed under Apache 2.0, and anything taken from upstream retains its original license.The distro comes with pre-installed apps built for it; these include Depot as the app store, Viola as the browser, Charlie as the email client, and Tide for any music needs, alongside the self-explanatory Filer, Notes, Photos, and Messages.If you opt for the Creative Collection, you get access to Canvas for design, Focus for RAW photo editing, Grid for spreadsheets, Stage for slides, Write for documents, Reel for video edits, and Sessions for audio mixing.You also get Ari, the built-in AI assistant that's meant to work with local models, so everything can stay on your own hardware.Package support is covered too. I installed apps through DNF5, Flatpak, and Snap on the October 11 nightly, and all three worked.Valet takes care of AppImage, DEB, EXE, and APK files, which is how Windows and Android apps are meant to sit alongside native ones. It also tells you who made an app and what it can access before you install it.Android support comes from an optional subsystem based on Waydroid, and compatibility varies by app. Luma is meant to be one system across desktop, tablet, and phone, so apps adjust their layout and controls to the screen size and to touch or mouse input.There's also the optional Luma Connect app that handles sync for apps, settings, and files across devices.For Smartphones Too!Luma also wants to be your smartphone's OS. The team names the Fairphone 6 and the Google Pixel 9 family as its targets and says it plans to support more phones and tablets.With what I can see from the screenshots they shared with us, the interface looks like it's on par with modern Android and iOS offerings, while sticking to a very measured approach for the colors and elements it employs.The Luma folks are directing people to their hub's bounty board to vote for the devices they want and pledge money towards getting them supported.Test it NowLuma's clean installation experience.Luma's download page lists a single 7.2 GB x86_64 nightly ISO as the recommended way to try the distro out. It needs a 64-bit Intel or AMD processor with at least two cores running at 2 GHz or faster, 4 GB of RAM, and 40 GB of storage, with an SSD preferred.An ARM64 build is yet to make an appearance here, so people on that platform will have to wait a bit. Similarly, creative apps like Grid, Stage, Reel, Sessions, and Canvas are also set for a later arrival.Luma