Slovenian developer Tomaž Štih has ported Digital Research's GEM, the pioneering 1980s graphical desktop, to run natively on Linux. GEM for Linux is built on the Atari ST version of the interface and shares a display server that can render straight to the Linux framebuffer or appear in a window via Štih's own SDL2-based Rasta emulator, offering a novel alternative to the long-running X11-versus-Wayland debate rather than an attempt to replace either.

The project draws on the GEM source code Caldera released as open source in 1999, and on the FreeGEM and OpenGEM communities that have since restored features stripped out after Apple's 1985 legal threat over GEM's similarity to the Macintosh interface, as well as added extras such as Bézier curve drawing and 3D-shaded buttons. It follows EmuTOS as only the second modern open-source implementation to build on the FreeGEM code, and echoes Digital Research's earlier multitasking ambitions for GEM. Štih says the code was not "vibe-coded" with AI but built through deliberate, architecture-first development, with AI used only as a junior-developer-style aid under his control.