System76 are making a bit of a splash today, ahead of the Alpha release of their new desktop environment named COSMIC. They told me that COSMIC is still planned to have an Alpha release in late July, although that's still just an estimate it could be pushed back if there's issues.
To get things started, they've released the COSMIC branding:
Pictured - COSMIC logos, colours, gradients, and tagline.
Speaking about COSMIC and their new branding, here's what they said:
COSMIC makes it easy for distro developers to create the experience they envision for their users, while empowering users to curate an environment that works for them. This is the crux of COSMIC that became its slogan: Visions enacted, users empowered. And not just on the desktop, either. COSMIC is designed for creating custom experiences on any device with a display.
The open-ended ‘O’ logo mark not only represents a display, but also signifies an unwavering commitment to open source, an invitation for community, and vast possibility through customization. Beneath it, the System76 blip in an orange-red gradient resembles a keyboard with customized LEDs, representing what’s possible with COSMIC.
COSMIC offers the freedom to put your best foot forward across workflow, navigation, theming,
updates, security — and stability, thanks to its memory-safe Rust code.
On top of that, they've revealed the COSMIC Freedom Sale where you can get some big discounts on Desktops, Laptops, and Keyboards. To entice you even further you'll even get a free COSMIC T-Shirt with every laptop or desktop order, and COSMIC stickers with every computer.
Items on sale:
- $100 off the Lemur Pro 14” ultraportable laptop.
- $200 off the Pangolin 16” ultraportable laptop.
- $200 off the Oryx Pro 16” powerful laptop.
- $200 off the Thelio Spark starter desktop.
- $200 off the Thelio small form factor desktop.
- $30 off the Launch Lite 67% keeb.
- $50 off the Launch 76% keyboard.
- $50 off the Launch Heavy full-size keyboard.
The sale runs through July 9th.
Here's also a recent shot of COSMIC in action that the System76 Founder showed off on Mastodon:
Vortex_Acherontic Jun 26
wvstolzing Jun 26
Quoting: tohurman IMO cosmic looks uuugly af.. no amount of theming gona help it either as it isn't just cosmic but every GUI rust app I have ever seen looks uuugly
Oh wow, such an insightful comment. What about Rust do you think makes its GUIs ugly? Could it be the borrow checker? Maybe it doesn't let the widgets borrow any beautifulness, so they're left with their uuugliness.
Vortex_Acherontic Jun 26
Quoting: tohurman IMO cosmic looks uuugly af.. no amount of theming gona help it either as it isn't just cosmic but every GUI rust app I have ever seen looks uuugly
You can use any GUI framework with Rust. Be it GTK3, GTK4, Qt5, Qt6 or just the dedicated rust-written UI frameworks.
Also I need to admit Cosmic looks to me very similar to Gnome but with a flatter theme and less round corners. The rest is just different colours.
And I'm super excited to test it out on live usb when it's available. Always love trying out new DE!
I also love the System76 hardware, but unfortunately about 80% of what they sell is all intel/nvidia which I'm not interested in. They only have a single laptop and desktop (non threadripper) model that's AMD based. And the desktop model is the smallest one. I just generally prefer larger cases to get more open space for better airflow so the fans turn on less and when they do, it's low rpms. I once did a SFF build and HATED the end result because it sounded like an airplane engine.
NathanaelKStottlemyer Jun 26
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