What started as a simple desire to explore Zed’s GPU-accelerated UI framework quickly turned into a multi-hour adventure through dependency errors, missing system libraries, and truncated terminal pastes. The goal was straightforward: get a basic GPUI application running on Debian, then evolve the classic Hello World into something interactive.
The first major hurdle appeared immediately — Application::new() no longer existed in the current GPUI API pulled from the Zed repository. The modern entry point requires gpui_platform::application(), along with the correct platform features for Linux (Wayland and X11). After correcting the Cargo.toml and swapping the initialization call, compilation succeeded… only to fail at link time with a missing libxkbcommon-x11. A round of apt installs for the necessary development packages resolved that, and the original green Hello World window finally appeared.
From there the real fun began: replacing the static greeting with a stateful counter. Buttons were added, colors chosen to feel modern and calm (a dark background inspired by late-evening skies over the islands, soft pink and green accents), and click handlers wired up so the count actually changes. After a few rounds of fighting with long heredoc pastes in the terminal, the file was finally written cleanly using nano, and the dark counter window launched successfully. Watching the number climb from 0 to 3 felt disproportionately satisfying.
The foundation is now solid. A working GPUI application runs on this machine, state updates correctly, and the development loop is fast enough to iterate. Ahead lies the next layer of polish and capability — keyboard shortcuts so the counter responds to + and – keys, a clean reset button, tighter visual refinements, and eventually more complex UI patterns. The same way the trade winds keep pushing the waves toward shore, the next experiments will keep building on this base until something more substantial takes shape.
For now, the window sits open on the desktop, counting quietly, a small but tangible proof that the late-night debugging sessions were worth it.
A few seconds of the live GPUI counter in action — pure native Rust GUI, no web technology involved.