Cosmic Alpha 3! This Is My Favorite Desktop!

[@LinuxIsForAll]

Omg dude thank you so much for this video! I was waiting for a good review of the alpha 3 and not an AI generated one lol

[@Damglador]

It's so awesome that I just do yay -S cosmic-session and have a new experience, I love Linux

[@LogiCreates]

I’m glad I found your channel, you seem like a genuine dude and you have a good way of talking. Keep up the good work

[@mirkodiciano4647]

nicely done mate, im still distro hopping so this info is helpfull, keep up the good work

[@matthiasbendewald1803]

You did a great job there, pointing out so many things that can improved. I used Cosmic for a month, right now I'm back to hyprland because of issues I had with a game and the missing power options; other than that it was a great experience, and when those things are fixed in beta or on release it will be my desktop of choice, just awesome!

[@alexspeegle2758]

a workaround I've found for a lot of games that don't want to work properly is using gamescope to force resolution, framerate, grabbing the cursor, etc. you can just do this per game by using steam launch options. I mainly use it when games launch in the top left, or windowed (but the game is fullscreen).

[@no_name4796]

Lol, gotta love gamescope saving games kn wayland. I was a hyprland users some months ago, and it's funny how the entire wiki to fix game problems is "use gamescope" Can't blame them though. Gamescope really solves all problems

[@sebastiangonzales46]

Great to see that your channel is growing fast man, your videos literally helped me so much especially on the gaming topics/tweaks on linux. 😁

[@Nullarino]

banger after banger after banger after banger after banger after banger after banger after banger after banger after banger after banger after banger after banger after banger

[@yaroslav7328]

I really like your reviews more than others'. They're great, in-depth, and comprehensive. As for Cosmic-yeah, it's impressive, and fair competition is always a good thing. But I still don't know what System76 would need to present for me to switch from GNOME to Cosmic.

[@linuxnext]

I think in the future you will see cosmic implementing features quicker then gnome or certain Wayland protocols that gnome takes a while to implement But there is no reason to switch if you don't think you need to move right now Cosmic is in alpha so right now there implementing what gnome and KDE already have

[@casuallygamin9]

I was looking for different desktops, I was not aware of this one to be honest. Thanks for the video

[@henryj5054]

Hi! Just want to let you know that I really like your videos. You speak in a very relatable way and I (as a whole) agree with what you say and believe your videos are very informational.

[@linuxnext]

@@henryj5054 Thank you :) Im glad to hear that

[@erixIsOffline]

The cosmic makes me (soaked with water), cant wait for full realease

[@saberspecter]

Another great overview. I'm still waiting for UX wide large font in accessibility. It's still a bit small for my vision.

[@no_name4796]

I am waiting for cursor theme instead. I used mint for a while, and now i love bibata theme.

[@gr0wnup5]

Much awaited video 🙌

[@NiffirgkcaJ]

I'm really excited for COSMIC! I hope that people will write more applets for COSMIC soon! I also would like for that service to be integrated with COSMIC. The service that changes the theme colours of COSMIC to match your wallpaper!

[@linuxnext]

@@NiffirgkcaJ I watched Carl and the designer of cosmic forgot her name but that's their plan to implement that feature soon

[@NiffirgkcaJ]

@@linuxnext amazing! I saw that SystemD service on Mii Beta's channel and it's getting implemented! :D

[@zerrubabbel]

Nice update! If it helps, I'm experiencing the same bug with the wallpapers... and also one where my cursor is wrong but normal size over the desktop, but correct but _cosmically_ oversized while over flatpak Brave browser... Brave browser also gets stifled responsiveness after some time... I experience none of these on other desktop environments... Also, not a bug, just a wishlist item, but I'd love for the "applications" and "workspace" buttons to have an assignable icon menu... I'm sure it's just leftover from the Gnome days, but it would be a nice touch of polish Other than that though, I have very little to complain about, and I'm totally loving Cosmic! I'm currently part-time using it, and if this kind of progress keeps up, I can't wait to make it my uncontested main! I particularly love the tiling, the easy customizability, and the display independent workspaces! Thank you System76 for the work well done! I appreciate it a lot, and you will be seeing a financial "thank you" from me!

[@l-const]

i have replicated this and i have kind of debugged the wallpaper issue but not provided a fix, the issue is tracked under: cosmic-settings/issues/720

[@achaziel]

Cosmic is shaping up real nicely. I just hope that the support for graphic tablets under wayland improves in the near future - many tablets have touch strips or rings that you'd use for various tasks and to my current understanding you still can't map any inputs to those things unfortunately, which is the main reason I basically *have* to stick with X11 at the moment. fingers crossed!

[@linuxnext]

@@achaziel I see, kde has been improving their tablet support recently with 6.2 and 6.3 will include even more new features for tablets I do hope that tool becomes compatible with Wayland on any of the major desktops :)

[@kvba0000]

ngl.... looks good

[@fantbox]

oops, I need extensions to disable some stuff to get plain Gnome ;-)

[@linuxnext]

Atleast they won't break every feature update ;)

[@donaldmickunas8552]

Nice video. I'm a new sub. DistroTube included you in his last video.

[@peterkensing565]

I've been trying the Cosmic Desktop for a few days, but I'll wait until the final version. Whether POP!_OS or under Arch I don't know yet.

[@SecretlySeven]

Personally when I see a video like this on a DE my immediate questions are: Can I make the task bar invisible/transparent. Can I change/download new icons. Can I change the mouse pointer. Can I turn on wobbly windows. Are there many options for open/close and min/max animations? For me a DE is about how much I can tweak it and how "sexy" it can look.I feel like for so many it's more about how it looks and feels than how does it fit X workflow. I feel like there are more casual Linux users than super users and we should remember that. A lot of us are only here because of Compiz back in the day.

[@linuxnext]

@@SecretlySeven well with cosmic you can make it fully transparent with either the dock or panel individually, you can change the icon pack in the settings, I don't think you can change the cursor yet, you can't do wobbly windows yet, there are show active window hint, show maximize button, show minimise button toggles, you can't change animations currently for closing or opening apps I definitely understand coming from custom ROMs on android phones, rooting with magisk, different launchers like lawnchair to kwgt widgets to customise it to your content I think this is a niche thing tho also so for me I have had enough of customising and only rlly want simple customising like changing icon pack or changing the colours or making it look like windows with a panel at the bottom

[@SecretlySeven]

And yes I know you can do this on and DE. My question is always is it as accessible and easy as KDE. Will there ever be a competitor to KDE?

[@linuxnext]

@@SecretlySeven I don't think cosmic will get to that level like KDE, the CEO Carl has said they don't want over do it like other desktops, finding a good middle ground where most users are happy should suffice, but they have also said cosmic can be turned into something more then what they make it, so cosmic tweaks for example could bring that extra functionality to the desktop if your looking for more like what KDE offers We are pretty far away from the stable release so a lot can change, we will see how it turns out :)

[@SpikeSlania]

Not sure if they have their own disk partition tool or not, but wondering if they do is it good enough to auto mount drives or will I still need GNOME'S disk tool? I even use GNOME'S on KDE to get automounting to work right

[@linuxnext]

They do not have their own disk application yet but I bet they will at some point, they have gnome disk preinstalled on the alpha iso

[@BrunoFinger]

lol I also use the LoFi Coffee wallpapers

[@noaln1697]

FYI Fallout FPS being capped to 60 is by design of the game, and a side effect of the fps being tied to the game physics. There are a few mods you can get to unlock this, but not an issue with Cosmic.

[@linuxnext]

@@noaln1697 yeah I realised after i edited the video, I changed that game and other Bethesda games on that list that cap to 60 by default :)

[@therealphilosopherpete]

Suggestion: Shave to go-tee. Keep the stash but the chin just is not thick enough.

[@linuxnext]

This is true, my family thinks that also

[@dsa1979]

the active window border looks hideous to me

[@linuxnext]

Then you can turn it off in settings

[@Elefsinian]

A man that says definitely 3 times in a row deserves a sub. 🎉

[@linuxnext]

@@Elefsinian where did I say this 😂

[@Elefsinian]

By 0:26 you have said all 3. “definitely give it a like..definitely subscribe…I would definitely appreciate it…”😂

[@linuxnext]

@@Elefsinian oh damn I didn't even notice 💀

[@Elefsinian]

Nobody can hold how Aussie you are against you mate, this is ‘definitely’ a great channel oozing with downunderness! Just made up that word. Linux focused channels should and will have a better exposure going forward. G’day to you mate. 🇬🇧🇬🇷

[@mat_max]

i hope change the menu scrolling because that looks painfully slow. Like, half a row per tick should be the bare minimum

[@jr_Linux]

im on arch, and the worst bug is that just opening the desktop mangohud launches on the desktop. and i can't figure out how to get that shit to stop.

[@linuxnext]

You need to turn it off globally, there's currently no way from my knowledge from stopping mangohud from applying itself to Vulkan windows

[@piet-0]

I am a bit confused. Cosmic Tweaks is not available for me.

[@linuxnext]

@@piet-0 what distro and do you have flathub/Flatpak installed

[@sobahighroller2936]

I've just installed Pop! OS on my new laptop (Nvidia ISO) but I can't tweak the appearance details, in the settings menu I only see light mode or dark mode without any other option

[@linuxnext]

@@sobahighroller2936 did you install the normal pop os iso? That is not using cosmic rust desktop as this is alpha software, stable pop os is using gnome 42 with extensions applied If you want the cosmic desktop you will need to grab this one system76.com/cosmic/

[@chris122380]

Bugs I have found. Flatpak icons not showing in the launcher or dock. synaptic package manage not working or crashing after entering password. Have to click to mount a drive but have to click again to open it (this should be one click for both). No printer setting in cosmic settings. For now I'm staying on Pop OS 22.04.

[@linuxnext]

@@chris122380 that's quite odd that Flatpak icons aren't showing in the launcher or dock, I use Flatpak and they show up on both launcher and dock :P But the others I haven't tried specifically and I don't use printers but I know it's very important for lots of users I would highly recommend opening a bug report on either cosmic-epoch GitHub or if you know which component might be the issue, reporting a bug on that repo would be better for the Devs to see github.com/pop-os/cosmic-epoch github.com/pop-os It is an alpha so I'd expect bugs to show up even in newer alpha releases until the first final release of cosmic comes out

[@paullee107]

Hey what distro can I install that has cosmic installed by default - or, can you explain your setup and how you installed the new release of it?

[@linuxnext]

@@paullee107 well the main one is from the desktop Devs themselves which is pop os system76.com/cosmic/

[@Little-bird-told-me]

which Distro do u use ?

[@linuxnext]

Endeavour os

[@FoivosP]

what about font scaling?

[@linuxnext]

Font scaling like if you make the font bigger it will scale properly? Or is this to do with fractional scaling?

[@JoshuaT902]

I dont like how I have to restart or re-login when changing my mouse sensitivity

[@linuxnext]

Interesting I haven't changed the sens, I bet that will be change soon

[@DefCantGame]

My issue is I can not set my hz above 60, when setting it to 240 it starts black screening when clicking full screen apps or the reboot button on a 7900xt, this is an issue that doesnt exist in pop22

[@linuxnext]

have you reported it?

[@DefCantGame]

@@linuxnext I reported in the epoch github, tried telling their twitter, may have even messaged the ceo but no one responded and my github issue just forever unanswered

[@DefCantGame]

@@linuxnext Yeah i've reported it, havent tried it on my nvidia card on my other pc but have tried every reddit suggestion and every tweak so far. Seems like just cant use the alpha

[@linuxnext]

I think they have a lot on their plate and probs do know about it, I wouldn't be messaging their personal accounts, just leave the GitHub issue open and wait for them to get around to it, and as I said they may already know about it as they are a computer company also

[@renaneuzebio6323]

I just wanna be able to search after pressing the super key and this would be perfect

[@linuxnext]

You can do that already if that's what I think you're talking about. In settings, desktop, window management, super key action, you can set it to open launcher/search, then clicking super it brings up a search bar for you to open a application or any application you have open right now also

[@renaneuzebio6323]

@linuxnext Oh really? What I mean is being able to toggle the workspaces with the super key and search on it like on gnome

[@linuxnext]

@renaneuzebio6323 ooh no you cannot search when toggling workspaces yet, you could open a feature request for it maybe if someone hasn't done it yet so cosmic Devs know about it github.com/pop-os/cosmic-epoch

[@SvalbardSleeperDistrict]

The revolutionary new desktop AKA Gnome with new accent colours :Kappa:

[@KennyPowers-dx3mz]

Love the slightly salty Gnome users in the comments, myself I am man of all DE's and will never commit to anything

[@tonyhart2744]

is is better than plasma???

[@linuxnext]

@@tonyhart2744 well no it's alpha software so it's no where near the same level as plasma It's design is completely different to KDE's also so this highly depends on what you like, for me I like cosmic more but someone else they may like plasma more

[@Rthabett]

Cosmic features are impressive, but the UI design feel outdated.

[@linuxnext]

What makes it look outdated? And what would you say isn't outdated?

[@mgord9518]

​@@linuxnext"Modern" = margins take up 90% of real estate, absolutely no traditional widgets are allowed and only expose the most basic options to the user

[@willi1978]

i quite like it. you can make it look however you want.

[@linuxnext]

Cosmic is designed to be as modular as possible so a developer can create a traditional widget if they like, there isn't anyone stopping them from creating one, in my opinion the desktop right now is in a great state and as shown in the video you can make things compact if you like instead of having empty space left over This often comes up in UI design and it's either KDE plasma design where you have too many buttons and sliders on a page or you choose gnome which has way less sliders and buttons on a page, I feel like cosmic is aiming for the middle ground

[@Fossil-e4w]

@@linuxnextMy only complaint is the accent colors being over used in the UI. I don’t like that the window actions are colored by accent specifically. Gives off a “gamer-y” vibe.

[@nklvjvc]

Anyone knows is font rendering on cosmic same as on gnome? I want to move on linux, but bad font rendering makes me go back to windows

[@linuxnext]

@@nklvjvc what font rendering is used on gnome? This may help you pop-os.github.io/cosmic-text/cosmic_text/ github.com/pop-os/cosmic-text

[@l-const]

it is not

[@alternatuber6698]

My KDE: Do NOT watch this, shhh!

[@highimwolf]

I'm still seeing bug when in the dock panel i delete the start and end applets then i can no longer add any more applets back again

[@linuxnext]

Even if you restart the settings app?

[@highimwolf]

​​@@linuxnextcorrect the bug is still there

[@highimwolf]

Yep same issue

[@mugichi8597]

all linux DE have a lot of bugs

[@linuxnext]

All software have bugs, that's how coding goes, still gonna show the bugs as it's very important for the Devs to see

[@FierroSev]

The more I see cosmic, the less sense it makes as to why they went this route.

[@linuxnext]

@@FierroSev they want to do their own work and not wait for gnome to hurry up You can watch plenty of podcasts and presentations from the CEO and their Devs about the many problems they have with gnome Devs, so their taking it into their own hands and doing it at a faster pace then gnome already

[@Andinnh0]

Is it working with Nvidia?

[@linuxnext]

Yes, I have heard they have fixed the problems and I did test games on it with my rtx 2060 without any issues except the bugs with the games themselves lol They are working on explicit sync support so when that gets added nvidia will get another boost and will solve some other issues

[@Zukoogfire]

Can I install it on debian?

[@linuxnext]

@@Zukoogfire you would need to compile it yourself github.com/pop-os/cosmic-epoch

[@xymaryai8283]

yay for cosmic! can't wait for beta♥

[@deven_gaming]

How do i install it?

[@linuxnext]

@@deven_gaming what distro?

[@deven_gaming]

@@linuxnext Endeavour OS

[@kkazakov]

Can these ugly borders be turned off? It's like a child made the interface... 😅

[@linuxnext]

@@kkazakov yes you can

[@GalaxyTracker]

What exactly are they working on, for so long? Rewriting GNOME in Rust? The visual design is, literally, like GNOME with 2-3 extensions and theming. Zero innovation.

[@l-const]

compositor, things like gtk / gio gobjects frameworks, and all the daemons for (notification ,devices, upower information) needed for a desktop, wayland protocols, text / font rendering libraries , window abstraction libraries, accessibility stuff and then of course creating new "core" apps like a file manager / text-editor / terminal / store /media-player / pdf viewer ...., a new display manager alternative to ssdm / gdm . There are about 5 devs & 2 QA working on the team so in my personal view they are doing great.

[@linuxnext]

They are literally making their own desktop and applications, they aren't forking any of gnomes work, the only one Iv seen that they have forked until they create their own is a advanced network manager, everything else is their own work by a small team + everything is in rust like iced for the toolkit, smithay for the compositor The fact that they started development on the desktop around a year ago and it's already functional with around 5 to 7 people working on it is quite insane

[@l-const]

correct, they are not even using Gtk like many other DEs(cinnamon, mate, budgie, elmentary....), they are/gonna be the third major alternative linux DE after QT/KDE and GTK/GNOME in terms of being a different by a lot, codebase/toolkits.

[@GalaxyTracker]

@@l-const again, no visual differences from GNOME. It's like seeing GNOME, in Rust. It does not matter if they make their own libraires, etc. If they don't have any distinct characteristics from other major DEs (GNOME, KDE, etc), they don't offer anything new. It's a DE, not a programming contest. You have to offer something to the end-user. KDE offers the familiarity of Windows and the endless customizability. GNOME offers a stable environment with a very sleek, simplistic (MacOS-like) interface. Both robust ecosystems, which have solved the "problems" of working in Wayland flawlessly. Which problem exactly does COSMIC solve apart from the hype factor (new and shiny)? Don't tell me "it's in Rust", it's laughable, it won't make a difference. Now that I think about it, they started making it, right around the time when Rust exploded and was the talk of the town. Seems more like a hype project than anything else.

[@dkkdkkc6]

Its just gnome with built in extensions lol.

[@linuxnext]

@@dkkdkkc6 from the front it looks like it but under the hood it's not :P

[@Fossil-e4w]

This is extremely ignorant of a comment. It’s not using GTK/Libadwaita or mutter. The compositor is based off smithay iirc. Most of what has been shown has been written from scratch by System76 itself.