The Digital Research GEM desktop, which failed to become widespread due to Apple lawsuits and Microsoft’s competition, has been ported to Linux by Tomaz Stih. The project, which is neither a window manager nor a desktop environment for X or Wayland, runs on the framebuffer in minimal Linux installations.
The project draws on GEM’s original code through OpenGEM and FreeGEM and includes sample applications such as a clock and calendar. The APIs are said to be compatible with Atari ST applications and may also overlap with the DOS version. GEM is said to offer a lightweight experience on Linux.