System76 desktop environment COSMIC alpha now available to try

This looks nice but I have to say I'm pretty bummed that this does not look nearly as modular as I had initially hoped. I'm not really interested in a desktop environment, but I do want a window manager and the current options are less than ideal for various reasons (nvidia re wayland having been a huge pain in the ass). I would be happy to use this if I could strip it down to basically just be a window manager but it's not really looking like it'll quite do that without elaborate modification.

This looks nice but I have to say I'm pretty bummed that this does not look nearly as modular as I had initially hoped. I'm not really interested in a desktop environment, but I do want a window manager and the current options are less than ideal for various reasons (nvidia re wayland having been a huge pain in the ass). I would be happy to use this if I could strip it down to basically just be a window manager but it's not really looking like it'll quite do that without elaborate modification.

And that's completely ok. This isn't necessarily targeted towards users like yourself or others that do heavy WM customization, but primarily targeted for general users that want some customization, but also want simple UX/UI out of the box.

This is so exciting! Been keeping my eye on this forever. I very much look forward to trying it out. Might boot up a live usb later tonight if I have the time. I think we desperately need some new blood in the de space, and this could be exactly that. I use pop on my living room htpc, so will be interesting to see when that naturally updates over to this.

This is so exciting! Been keeping my eye on this forever. I very much look forward to trying it out. Might boot up a live usb later tonight if I have the time. I think we desperately need some new blood in the de space

This is such an amazingly Linux thing to say. Consider--if you use Windows or Mac, you use the single DE that comes with it--not only do you have no choice, the very concept that there could be a choice does not exist. But we Linux users are so spoiled we can be saying "Oh, the bunch of choices we have are getting a bit long in the tooth, it was about time there was a new contender or two!"
Just to be clear, this is a happy thing.

if you use Windows or Mac, you use the single DE that comes with it

I'm not sure, but I think there have been 3rd party replacement shells (is that the right term?) for Windows before.

My excitement is still at the same level because I'm not using COSMIC until it has a stable release. The excitement level is high, though. I watched The Linux Experiment's video going through the desktop and it seemed to be in a better state than the last time I saw it.

The one thing I really dislike about COSMIC is the lack of an Activity Overview, which is such a killer feature even KDE has it now. I want to see my workspaces and be able to search to launch a program at the same time; the way macOS divides Mission Control, Launchpad and Spotlight makes the entire experience feel fragmented and inefficient. Say what you will about GNOME, but the Activity Overview is done 100% right and doing it any other way results in a worse experience.

If it just had that, I really wouldn't mind switching to COSMIC for the tiling functionality. I'm really lazy, so having a desktop with sane defaults that has reliable tiling is enough for me. Setting up Sway is one week of my life I'll never get back.

My favourite part about COSMIC is that configuration options are stored in text files you can easily edit and move around. Thank you! No more bash scripts hooking into gsettings!

Oh, and each monitor has their own workspaces! Take that, KDE and GNOME.
And it has a proper system tray. Take that, GNOME.
And the UI isn't complex and the settings app isn't confusing. Take that, KDE.

I'd also like to see headless remote desktop sessions like what GNOME Remote Desktop is pioneering, and I'd like a fully-featured Graphics Tablet settings page (in fact I'd like that more than RDP). That was the primary reason I switched off Sway.

Overall, really excited. COSMIC is a Wayland-only full-fledged desktop written entirely in Rust! And it combines Tiling with a desktop easily accessible to anyone! I'm really looking forward to a future where I can recommend any distribution with COSMIC instead of Linux Mint to complete beginners.

COSMIC is in a great state already from what I've seen. Once it has the graphics tablet settings screen (hopefully when it hits stable), I'll consider switching to it on one of my computers. I still have a lot of love for GNOME and I'll be using it for my servers because it's the only option for remote headless sessions (X11 with VNC/XRDP is awful), but COSMIC might be what I use on my desktop moving forward...

I hope there's a stable release before October 2025 :)

Edit: Here's the issue for Drawing Tablet settings in COSMIC: https://github.com/pop-os/cosmic-settings/issues/141

if you use Windows or Mac, you use the single DE that comes with it

I'm not sure, but I think there have been 3rd party replacement shells (is that the right term?) for Windows before.

There still is;

macOS has Yabai, Windows has Komorebi.

Well, they're really just tiling window managers rather than their own shells.


Last edited by pleasereadthemanual on 9 August 2024 at 4:05 am UTC

I've got it running on my laptop and it's really snappy!
There are clearly missing settings/features, but for a alpha-v1, it feels way more solid than I was expecting.

I just hope it's possible to change the clock format to something sensible (I'm partial to '%A %F %R', for example 'Friday 2024-08-09 10:22'). It's the main thing keeping me from using GNOME (there's extensions but those break every time an update comes out, so not worth the hassle).

I installed COSMIC on Fedora Silverblue for the sake of it, which was really quick and easy: https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/ryanabx/cosmic-epoch/

I've changed my mind about the aesthetics. They look worse through screencasts for some reason. When I'm actually using it, it looks quite nice. The sidebar is easily the weakest aspect of the design, but I'm sure they'll work on the aesthetics later.

The COSMIC App Store is wonderfully pointless on Fedora Silverblue as it doesn't support Flatpak. The Files app is nice enough but it's not Nautilus.

I think the Workpace view is actually nicer looking than GNOME's Activity Overview...but please let me open apps while in this view!

Focus follows cursor would be good to have.

It's a pretty nice experience with things missing and a few small bugs. What you'd expect from an Alpha. I think I'll continue using it for now.

Not using it before a stable release, but pretty excited for this! I also watched the video The Linux Experiment did on the alpha and you can see they took inspiration from GNOME and KDE and took the best from both, while adding their own window tiling system. Moreover it's built on a modern stack and System76 has a good reputation in the Linux gaming community. The only thing I'm not too enthusiastic about it that Pop_OS is Ubuntu-based, but hopefully Cosmic will work equally well on Fedora and Arch.

if you use Windows or Mac, you use the single DE that comes with it

I'm not sure, but I think there have been 3rd party replacement shells (is that the right term?) for Windows before.

Sort of, but those (as far as I recall) were all hacks rather than fully legit options. And if they broke, you were stuffed.

Only Linux offers a range of officially supported environments that you can more or less freely choose between, all of them for real usable and stable

real usable and stable

That varies. Being one of the lucky KDE SC 4 version 4.0 users I have to say that stable is a relative term.

And usability is a very objective term. I've never been happy when I had to use Unity for example.

This is so exciting! Been keeping my eye on this forever. I very much look forward to trying it out. Might boot up a live usb later tonight if I have the time. I think we desperately need some new blood in the de space

This is such an amazingly Linux thing to say. Consider--if you use Windows or Mac, you use the single DE that comes with it--not only do you have no choice, the very concept that there could be a choice does not exist. But we Linux users are so spoiled we can be saying "Oh, the bunch of choices we have are getting a bit long in the tooth, it was about time there was a new contender or two!"
Just to be clear, this is a happy thing.

haha, this is true! I think Apple does a good job with their DE on macs. I use them for work stuff and I can be very efficient and get stuff done quickly. But that's it, just utilitarian work stuff. Windows is such a bloated ad ridden spyware nightmare these days I can't even bring myself to use it, like at all. I used to use it all the time for work stuff, but moved to Macs because of those reasons.

Anyway....!!! I love linux because of the choices we get and the support of the community, and I absolutely love when interesting projects like this Cosmic come to be! yay!

i run pop 22.04 on my laptop (13700h/rtx4060)- and I installed the cosmic de - mostly to check out the nvidia wayland performance w/ driver 555. feels pretty snappy - think it will be pretty good once it is all finalised. like some of the other comments - really hanging for that 24.04 upgrade ..........................

Can someone share if it's now possible to set a wallpaper to one of my monitor specifically, or is this still a higher science that needs some extra years of research to achieve? I know nobody has more than 1 monitor these days, but still. Maybe to get ready for people buying a secondary monitor in the far future.

edit; seems Cosmic will allow for per monitor wallpaper, we're living in the future!


Last edited by posthum4n on 12 August 2024 at 12:47 pm UTC

Okay, I installed it in Tumbleweed from the Factory repo and I gotta say it's useable but I don't like it very much.

The title bars are hilariously oversized, the date format can't be changed, it has dynamic workspaces (which I really can't stand, I vastly prefer having dedicated workspaces for specific applications so I can just press Super+3 to go to Emacs, for example), not being able to change cursor theme is very unfortunate, the keyboard repeat delay goes from 'slow' to 'fast' without any indication what that means and without a test area it's very awkward to try and get right, no hover tooltips for the dock is also very unfortunate...

But all complaining aside, between workspaces per monitor and amazing defaults for keyboard shortcuts (almost all shortcuts use the Super key, which is exactly how I think that should be done), I think Cosmic has the potential to become one of the best desktop environments available. Really looking forward to the next release.