System76 are busy hacking away on their new upcoming COSMIC desktop environment, and their latest development blog post is looking good. They also recently released System76 Scheduler 2.0, to further optimize the performance of their Linux distribution.
Looks like COSMIC is already quite usable too, with their COSMIC Panels feature that acts like the panels you see in other desktop environments like GNOME and KDE Plasma. These panels have their own applets, they said to think of them like GNOME extensions but they're technically their own applications and run in their own processes. These include things like notifications, workspaces, applications, battery, wifi, bluetooth and so on with plenty more coming.
Rather customizable too so you can make whatever layout you wish. Click the pictures to enlarge.
System76 also stated that while COSMIC is intended to be their own flagship experience and the default for a future Pop release, it's designed for everyone. So any other distro could pick it up and customize the layout and experience for their users.
They're also working towards HDR support, 10-bit colour support, building up their settings app which will also be modular to allow anyone to add into it and they're taking great care on accessibility too.
Looking forward to testing the first release when it's ready.
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