Cosmic Desktop on Pop!_OS - In Depth Review of Alpha 3

[@SavvyNik]

Are you excited for Cosmic?

[@Parsast]

Yeah

[@antinatalope]

My main concern is their tensions with the Linux kernel developers.

[@KingKrouch]

It looks good, but I wish they'd work on the taskbar a bit more (the clock looks ugly when you have a Windows-esque taskbar).

[@Mik3l24]

Yeah, that may be the only desktop that would ever make me consider switching off Gnome (my current fav).

[@roccociccone597]

yes but I am waiting for it to be finished. I've tried the various alphas and it's promising

[@ForceGamerrr]

I'm actually excited for Cosmic, especially so to see Rust in action on quite a big project like this

[@bobbybyrne1899]

It is optional. You can also change the colour of it, if you are just concerned about the blue.

[@ForceGamerrr]

@@bobbybyrne1899 yeah I realized that pretty quickly and edited my comment!

[@SavvyNik]

@@ForceGamerrr the theming is going to be great

[@roccociccone597]

@@bobbybyrne1899 I still thing they need to overhaul the theme... It doesn't look very polished.

[@esra_erimez]

@@roccociccone597 I think cosmos is very customizable

[@msbigfoot]

I too was impressed and surprised by the 3 mighty desktop icons demoed in this version of Cosmic Desktop. I imagine in a few more years we will also have desktop shortcuts! I haven't seen that many desktop icons on a Linux system since forever. I have one idea for a Special "Cosmic" Shortcut, where you drop a certain type of file over an Cosmic Desktop shortcut it does a sequence of steps on that file (similar to PowerAutomate in Windows but as a Shortcut) Make desktop Shortcuts great again!

[@hadockzin]

I heckin' love COSMIC

[@Cyco_Nix]

While I moved from Gnome to KDE as KDE is just ahead of Gnome in the graphics side, I am looking forward to seeing where Cosmic goes. It has a ways to go, but from what I have seen in my testing in Alpha, I think it has a bright future. It is not just another hacked together fork of Gnome/GTK like Cinnamon or Budgie, it is something from scratch.

[@xavi_6767]

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="106">1:46</a> We noticed that pun, Nik.

[@SavvyNik]

haha damn thought I was more discreet than that :) I'll "resolve" this issue at some point

[@Kermit2k]

Just fell to my knees in a Walmart when I saw desktop icons.

[@SavvyNik]

Haha 🤣

[@techzone2009]

I love default gnome. Almost no extension 😊. It is very beautiful 👍

[@MrAlanCristhian]

I'm better «gnomer» than you, I'm have zero extensions 🙃

[@no_name4796]

If only gnome implemented features everyone uses. Such as titlebars. Or system tray icons

[@Sqwert-g6h]

@@no_name4796 Honestly the only real problem I have with Gnome is the fact you can't have the top bar on all screens, unless you use an extension. Which is usually janky.

[@halilibrahimkisakesen546]

I love the earlier versions of gnome.

[@stupidburp]

I appreciate the progress on Cosmic but I will keep waiting.

[@alexstone691]

I hope it stabilizes well and plays well with other desktops as i am sure i want to try it cause optional tilling seems awesome

[@SavvyNik]

can't wait to see it available on even more distros as well

[@manuel.7461]

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="253">4:13</a> Im pretty shure that the the feature you're asking for is suppost to be the bottom panel you previously showed off at <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="169">2:49</a>.

[@guilherme5094]

👍

[@Whatupdays]

I've been testing it out. The only thing that sticks out is issues with Bluetooth, both the mouse and two different sets of headphones. I can't wait for the beta and more features to be added.

[@pju28]

On the mini PC N100 I have sound settings problems if I choose 5.1 HDMI. Not all speakers works like subwoofer, center, left right rear. Only front left right on LTS 24.04

[@mathsDOTearth]

I am liking what I am seeing but it has a showstopper bug for me which has been reported by several people but as yet has not been fixed and my case was closed because it was similar to someone else's. Mine was issue 1067 which is basically if I turn my monitor off and back on again all my open applications die and close. This also happens if I switch inputs on my monitor which is very annoying because in my work I often switch between incompatible systems by switching my monitor to a different input. It does all work well on my System 76 laptop so not all bad news but my word the monitor switching bug is beyond annoying.

[@jimjam4real]

My beloved Ubuntu font... dissed...

[@SavvyNik]

haha

[@FelixTheAnimator]

Ooo you got resolve (kinda) working

[@n.m4497]

Wayland just finished 2 more protocols today. Session Restore and HDR are almost done too.

[@nordern1]

"Not like Windows where you have to basically dive really deep into the system to change that type of folder setup" You mean the "Hidden files" checkbox in the Explorers View menu, same as here?

[@Just_Add_Coffee]

Still on Pop. Waiting for quality of life things that I currently use GNOME extensions for to be implemented before switching.

[@antinatalope]

The whole point of the desktop metaphor is that you can use it like a physical desk. If you can't put files and folders on your desk, it defeats the metaphor. So that change is welcome.

[@kbhasi]

Yep! Especially considering that one of Ubuntu's modifications they did to GNOME was to enable desktop icons out of the box.

[@celdaemon]

Dunno, I prefer the desktop just being for windows

[@antinatalope]

@celdaemon Well, you can have that, but the whole metaphor of a desktop is to actually mirror a real desktop. That's why it's called a desktop.

[@mmstick]

@@celdaemon Every other OS-even Android-lets you place widgets and icons on the desktop. So every DE should support it out of the box.

[@halilibrahimkisakesen546]

I remember thousand files inside a folder named desktop, which contains another folder desktop and so on

[@datapeluche]

How in hell they are developing that fast? Compared to unity 8 development, cosmic is advancing at a very fast pace.

[@gljames24]

What was nice for me was that they added some more power features like screen dim and suspend which is great for my laptop. Still hoping to see low power warning and options for the power button instead of instantly shutting down, but it's progressing nicely. I want to help, but with the toolkits being unstable, I'm not sure how much I can help out til after the alpha.

[@mmstick]

There are low power warnings, but to see the notification you need to ensure do-not-disturb is not enabled, and to hear the notification you need to have the pop sound theme installed.

[@SirSomnolent]

I tried it a few weeks ago. Changed the auto 200 scale to something like 125% and locked up the entire system. Same when logging back in after restart. Obviously I could have hunted for that in .config to edit but I just went back to sway

[@tschorsch]

I will give it a try when it's released, but I can't stand Gnome, so I hope it is quite different.

[@chris122380]

Cosmic desktop is missing scripts for the file manager, or at least I haven't been able to figure it out. In gnome I have a script created so I can right click on a PDF and convert it to a image file. I haven't figured out how to do this with cosmic yet

[@alexeiboukirev8357]

For Logitech devices you need Solaar to pair. I do not think S76 is going to work on that.

[@mmstick]

Yeah Logitech receivers do not use Bluetooth.

[@nezunskyfire292]

I wonder if they broke sudo again. The previous Epoch my system was completely unusable as I could not do anything with admin privileges because sudo just refused to work.

[@SavvyNik]

I didn’t experience this issue as I could run the updates with sudo. As I did in the vid

[@rocksquared]

Can the new outline around the windows be set 2 pixels thick or disabled within settings? I really do not like how it looks with it. The look suddenly lost its modernity and purity feel.

[@SavvyNik]

Yes you can adjust the width

[@yurtlew2280]

You can turn it off as well

[@raimg1816]

Also tested its feeling just like wery old gnome, UI for me is big no looks pretty bad in my opinion. Maybe for some it's great

[@necuz]

It almost feels unfair to call Cosmic a desktop environment, since it isn't slow and clunky. I've been dailying it on a laptop with a Pentium 4405U (15W 2015 dual-core) and 8 GB RAM, even on there it feels just as snappy as a minimal Hyprland setup. I don't even mind installing Flatpaks, because their store app starts up fast and doesn't need to show any loading spinners.

[@MrAlanCristhian]

Cosmic has the best store IMO.

[@desvendandoornasaude4127]

On my computer gnome is still faster than cosmic

[@starkfuture1057]

The details view probably shows the r progress of individual installs - the bottom progress bar is the overall progress.