Get Ready for the New COSMIC Desktop: A Comprehensive Preview

[@ScoutOnly]

This all-in-one desktop environment is everything. I can't wait for a stable release.

[@guilherme5094]

Same👍

[@larbesabdellah7079]

Yes no need for hyprland or sway tidious configuration while there'll be always something missing, this desktop environment supports well tiling WM that's awesome while do some programming and for other tasks just use Normal mode . Another thing without any configuration it looks moderne unlike gnome .

[@OraOraOra]

I love KDE Plasma, it comes with everything I need. It's a fine DE. But I prefer the GTK over qt. Just because everything looks consistent. Cinnamon, XFCE, GNOME. I think COSMIC is the bridge between GNOME and KDE Plasma. It uses the iced library and even GTK Apps will look good on it unlike in KDE Plasma, where you can immediately tell: "Oh that App looks like it's for GNOME"

[@quantusr5429]

I will try cosmic now!

[@miroslavstankov7919]

I loved the original COSMIC, as Pop!_OS was my first distro. I"m so happy the new COSMIC is shaping up so well. Wish them all the best! Might even go back to Pop with the next LTS version.

[@raysutton2310]

If you haven't already figured it out in settings -> Desktop -> Appearance -> style you can change the 'roundness' of the corners on the dock, square looks better than the default, this setting also affects button highlighting such as 'Workspaces' on the Panel.

[@johanb.7869]

and you can merge dock and panel to make it look like Dash to panel

[@graysonpeddie]

If anyone who has a visual disability decides to try out the COSMIC desktop environment, please note that there are no accessibility settings, so the only way to test the COSMIC desktop environment is by using a virtual machine and simply use the host's magnifier in order to see what's in the VM. Hope that helps.

[@jesse7631]

I love the icon set for this new desktop environment. Nice review, as always Jay!

[@UltraZelda64]

The dot turning to an oval to signify more than one window is open is a nice touch, but it'd be cool if they would take this one step further. One, two or three dots to signify one, two or three windows; an oval for four or more. That would make an already useful feature just that much more useful, especially for power users while still being easy to read/understand and taking no more space on the screen. I don't like GNOME but I am seeing enough more advanced features that I could actually imagine giving this desktop a try.

[@Linux4theMac]

Dam, that window stack is brilliant. Well done PopOs Team!….I gonna have to download it😮

[@fonte935]

Thank you for your coverage on this, Jay.. it is a good, well-rounded review.

[@Technopath47]

I can't wait! Been looking forward to this for so long now!

[@fonte935]

I'm running it now on two of my machines. Some funky buggyness here and there, but overall pretty darn good. I went ahead and took the plunge because I like the new way tiling works and it's almost worth it. Gets better with every update.

[@jim7smith]

Wow! Jay. Loving the new curtain call for the star of the show.

[@jacobhenriksen2324]

Really looking forward to this!

[@peterkensing565]

I installed it on a test system! I like it, can't wait for the final release.

[@readyplayer2197]

The "there is no place like ∼" shirt is actually hilarious. Where did you get it?

[@VeitLehmann]

From 14:17 I guess 😉

[@cgjoh]

It's hard to say just how good of a teacher Jay is. Everything down to pacing in his Linux essentials course is perfect. I can't recommend it enough.

[@MrGoldenbrown]

This is the best desktop distro by far

[@Karn0010]

I can't wait for it to get to a point where I can run it daily. It has everything I want from a DE, and for an alpha I haven't run into too many issues in short testing periods. Love that tiling is in there by default, has workspace per display and not having workspaces switch on all displays. Looks nice and outside some of the bugs it runs really well. There is an issue with it writing way too much to the drive when changing settings though.

[@jacques-dev]

I am super excited to use this! (In a couple years once the features and stability catch up to GNOME)

[@Automata_Omega]

4:34 no you don't have one workspace, you have two workspaces already if you look closely, that are glitching/flickering :) Noticed the same bug on my end too. Thank you for this review, thanks to you, I got myself jumped into COSMIC also, and I'm already contributing to their code, just to make its release even faster :)

[@nosotrosloslobosestamosreg4115]

We need more GNOME-free desktop environments in Linux.

[@jesse7631]

What we really need is a desktop environment that makes KDE Plasma look like the dumpster fire that it is.

[@cameronbosch1213]

​@@jesse7631If KDE Plasma is a dumpster fire, then GNOME is a wildfire that spread to all of Linux and nearly killed it.

[@boballmendinger3799]

I want a distro where everything works. After using Linux for roughly 20 years, the useability seems to be worse than ever.

[@_VeritasVosLiberabit_]

@@boballmendinger3799 I guess you haven't tried Linux Mint Cinnamon. Everything just works! I've been using it the last 5 years and even after doing major upgrades everything works correctly (including Nvidia drivers).

[@cameronbosch1213]

@@boballmendinger3799 Tuxedo OS.

[@markstevens6406]

The active window border is fine... as long as the color can be changed. Is that an option?

[@jasond1245]

This looks great so far much better then gnome for people coming from macos like Linux mint cinnamon is for people coming from windows just the ability too do small changes without having too add a bunch of extensions

[@Ex_impius]

I like that login screen!

[@ВселенскийСтранник-ь2п]

COSMIC is the super DE for any user. Thankey!

[@tristen_grant]

It might be, when its finished. Right now, its in Alpha.

[@helloimatapir]

Looks like a good foundation. Better than I expected for an alpha release. I just hope they keep their focus on the desktop environment and not waste time building their own suite of applications.

[@mmstick]

We can do both. There's more than one of us.

[@LymanPhillips]

There are many parts of the cosmic desktop that seem to be well thought out, but I don't consider the notification area " simple and effective." Clicking on a little icon in the top corner and having able to do only one function seems inefficient. I prefer the GNOME 46 notification area that combines multiple features in one drop down menu, so that I can adjust volume and input/output, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, as well as the logout features, power features, etc. I hope that the cosmic desktop will mature to that level of efficiency in version 2. However, I do appreciate the blue indicator box around the active window. I use a dark theme and a dark wallpaper and sometimes it's difficult to tell the edges of the active window, and this would be a huge usability improvement in Ubuntu GNOME.

[@applemodus]

Thanks for the review 😊

[@krzysztof1703]

Looks really promising, w8ing for finall release

[@MRboss11]

id be nice if you could change the pixel width of the window accent and also make the windows snap closer together, just like how you can in windows 10 with powertoys presets. though i hope it would be a fluid solution rather than a macro preset

[@mathieuberthalay21]

Thank you for your video 🤩

[@KM-sv4dh]

Their out of the box tiling is really good. No more struggles with config files

[@B3TR0Z]

I like the Cosmic desktop much better than Gnome shell! But...I am more of a Cinnamon guy.

[@laminathith2530]

So you mean Cinnamon is better than cosmic and Gnome. For me personally Gnome is better than Cinnamon. Ohh now I got it, it means for me Gnome will be better than Cosmic... Whatever I love to use Gnome.....

[@logyross6883]

Same. Cinnamon is simple and reliable without being too old fashioned

[@rimenahi]

How can you live without Wayland?

[@AlexanderMikhailov629]

@@rimenahi Most of us just did, I mean even after living in Wayland DE, I just came back to Pop OS because I realize Pop's tiling feature is more worth it than Wayland.

[@david300m]

great review. thanks for sharing

[@SYNERGiST]

Settings/Desktop/Appearance you have many options like style options if you want less round or square etc.

[@mikehawk7307]

This will be my daily driver once it ends the Alfa and Bata.

[@robertbodnar8745]

It''s a good thing that they all go own way: Unity, Cosmic, Gnome & even Cinnamon (based on old gnome) this variation is awesome! for system called "linux"

[@johanb.7869]

You should have the option which automatically disables hinting when not in tiling mode. When in tiling mode hint, when not automatically no hint. You forgot to cover that you can change the roundness of the corners to rounded, less rounded and square and that you can merge panel and dock to make it look like Dash to panel.

[@thisbridgehascables]

Curious what’s going to happen to my gnome extension installed, do they get integrated?

[@markloughtonUK]

Hopefully it will be possible to change the colour of that border. That cyan is a bit jarring 😊

[@andreasvukman]

You can change it in settings.

[@derekenz4185]

Very nice!

[@JohnVorstermans]

Nice review Jay.

[@rc2276]

Cosmic looks great. I hope it can behave and have keyboard shortcuts like i3. ❤

[@lmaheu]

Do I need to have gnome installed to use cosmic? I’m trying to get alpha up and running. My distro is Manjaro.. I got the AUR package from arch wiki.

[@tristen_grant]

Its in Alpha. Many things won't work.

[@KM-sv4dh]

I believe they want system 76 made cosmic for linux dedktop to be used by any distribution, not just Pop!OS. That is why they renamed their app store from pop shop.

[@richarda6435]

I love Zorin OS, but I may try Cosmic once it's released.

[@saggitarius6155]

Tried it a minute ago on Arch Linux. Still a lot to tweek. Switched back to Gnome.

[@jduvel]

Whats the onscreen keyboard like? I use this frequently for my mini pc and no distro of linux has one as good as win 11 yet.

[@luz_reyes_676]

Are there horizontal workspaces?

[@mmstick]

Both

[@willi1978]

there is a setting to chose either one

[@luz_reyes_676]

@@willi1978 ohh thanks!

[@KaleabDesalegn-j6o]

Jay can you do a video for us on openssl?

[@EJSmith-dk3yg]

Oh and regarding the previous statement ... even the Mint install instruction website does not cover this ?!

[@nielderfp]

What's the point of pretty desktops and fancy stuff? It's what you can do and the Apps available to do it. I'd love to use Linux but I'm stuck with Win11 as I have many Apps that I've written in C# to get my work done and it's too daunting to port to Linux. Wine just doesn't cut it.

[@billfrug]

mono? or doesn't Dotnet core work on Linux now?

[@Onyx-it8gk]

C#.NET runs on Linux

[@cgjoh]

Oh wait, that means you can group windows by task and even move them over to new workspaces, you could make an assembly line and pass programs along and everything. Dude that's crazy

[@reneheijnen6288]

Looks very much the same as the current gnome. I just hope it's stable and that it's working with gaming and that it's performing the same or better. You almost wonder if it was worth all those years of development. But it's always good to have competition.

[@tristen_grant]

Works very different than current gnome.

[@quantusr5429]

cosmic is wayland-only, so for those who still must need to use x11, this is not the time.

[@rc2276]

Hope it has mouse follow focus like i3.

[@waltermitty4132]

Excellent review. Cosmic desktop looks very promising. One question: can touchpad be completely disabled?

[@highimwolf]

I hope minimizing an app goes into the app's icon and not in its own icon in the toolbar. At minimum have an option for it as this is standard.

[@meh.7539]

It's not at a place where I would use it... **YET**. But god damn is it looking really good.

[@PS_Tube]

The most common use for active windows border is for people with low visibility alongwith ADD.

[@turtlewax3849]

Thanks for your vids. In your opinion, when is it a good time to have a stab at Arch? And would you suggest having another PC while struggling with Arch?

[@lmaheu]

Take the arch plunge! The install is much easier than it use to be. When you get to the terminal use the command archinstall - it will guide you through installation.

[@maxarendorff6521]

Jay, can you make a video on bcachefs? It's the hot new Linux filesystem out there.

[@devshmsec]

If they will have customization options to make it look like unity de, I am in.

[@GlenGlenervo]

Hopefully will be available for Debian soon

[@tristen_grant]

Why? its in Alpha. Should wait until its finished.

[@vamsi8669]

Do gnome extensions work ?

[@willi1978]

they wouldn't work. it is not gnome, cosmic is a completely new desktop. for most things i used extensions in gnome there is already a setting in cosmic now

[@digiryde]

But, can it replace windows explorer? 😁 That would kick ass. (To be sure,I know it can not, but I like to dream).

[@celestialbeing4767]

It's Blend of Window manager.

[@typingcat]

So, what's so exciting about this? Looks like Gnome with some extensions.

[@Onyx-it8gk]

It's written in Rust

[@Nothing_serious]

​@@Onyx-it8gkSo? Why should I care if it's written in rust?

[@codedusting]

Actual issues of Linux Distros: 1. Less number of games support. 2. Bad audio codecs for video recording and video editing. 3. Low compatibility with most used apps. 4. Absurd scaling on laptops What Linux developers keep fixing/modifying: 1. UI 2. UI 3. Terminal 4. UI

[@mmstick]

1. That requires game developers to fix 2. No such problem exists. ffmpeg supports everything. 3. ??? 4. Ironically a UI issue fixed by developing a Wayland compositor... Which is that COSMIC is.

[@ettoreatalan8303]

6:55 A BeOS feature in COSMIC.

[@VeitLehmann]

A Haiku and FluxBox feature. BeOS didn't have real tabs. Just a tab-like titlebar that you could move, but it didn't group windows. But I'm happy to see a shoutout to BeOS 🎉

[@vslabs-za]

KDE Plasma. Elegant and beautiful.

[@richter1991]

I like what I see. I have been using Gnome for a very, very long time, and honestly, I am down for a test-run. I just hope they put a little bit more work on the window decoration. I know that Adwaita is unpopular, but wasting precious space with just the tittle bar and close button is painful to stare at. We are not in 1995 anymore...

[@EJSmith-dk3yg]

This question is completely off-topic ... but this is the latest video so, hopefully a response. This channel is "Learn Linux TV" and yet I have NEVER seen this topic covered. When installing Linux Mint Cinnamon ... EVERYONE does the option "erase disk and install Linux" NOT the option "SOMETHING ELSE" ... which then allows for manual partitioning ! For EXAMPLE on a new drive (unallocated) ! What size do I make the partitions, how many and what kind ... on a 1TB SSD (sata) ? Band new nothing previously installed !

[@MinuteManGameReviews]

I hope they animate the dock.

[@tristen_grant]

Why?

[@MinuteManGameReviews]

@@tristen_grant i like pretty things.

[@GrindAlchemyTech]

🙌🏽💗

[@Monarchias]

Feels like everyone wants to develop something fancy! Instead of thinking of how to make it visually simple and easy to see without fanciness. Like for example, all those little boxes, icons, down in the middle. So much wants to mimic that same awkward Mac style. Instead of border coloring, what if they make the bottom icons wider when it's on the front and active. So, that icon at the bottom can be wide enough to show the title characters of the active window, windows. Even in Windows 8/10/11, I don't appreciate that the active window top title part is not color coded. It can be turned on, but still not perfect. Some system windows are not following the instructions. Hilarious. Back in Windows 7 simple theme it still worked flawlessly. Active window active color, not active window, not active title coloring. So simple.

[@ironfist7789]

Almost 700k

[@Giorgighurtskaia9204]

Please let's go video of qemu

[@ash1kh]

Everything in cosmic designed to serve a purpose, not arbitrarily to look cool, 18:37 the dock top roundness that you are critiquing about, just maximize any cosmic app and it seamlessly mix in with the dock, giving you more room instead of black spaces on the bottom, out of maximize the dock resizes itself to top rounded..

[@kdg1955]

People who like Gnome will definitely welcome Cosmic. Maybe it will become the default desktop on other distributions as well. I prefer (old-?)style desktop where you can put icons on the desktop like Plasma, Xcfe ...

[@ettoreatalan8303]

There is a reason why you can still put icons on the desktop in Windows, macOS, KDE, etc., but GNOME developers usually don't care much about that.

[@TubeF0x]

Desktop icons are a planned feature.

[@Tomas_F.]

Not bad. But you forget the most important thing... Does it run Do... I mean Fallout 1 & 2 ?!

[@drumpf4all]

It sucks PopOs is stilling going to use Ubuntu as its base. Sux!

[@VeitLehmann]

You can install COSMIC on other distros like Fedora, Arch or OpenSUSE, I guess soon even more.

[@henrymach]

I already can say that I really don't like this dynamic workspaces and window stacking thingy

[@cameronbosch1213]

That's the beauty of it. I'm pretty sure you don't _have_ to use them. And you'll still have other distros if you don't like Pop!_OS or want KDE Plasma.

[@ericjohnson5990]

Anyone tried this on Nvidia gpu with 120 hz display?

[@IUseArchLinuxBTW]

I'm using Arch Linux with COSMIC! BTW.

[@yobart]

this DE simply looks like a fork of Gnome

[@VeitLehmann]

It's made to look like their old GNOME-based extensions so Pop!OS users feel at home. But it's built from scratch and shares nothing with GNOME. You'll only find some external GNOME apps on the alpha iso.

[@Onyx-it8gk]

Everybody else: Icons, theming... Me: Rust!!!

[@ChrisJorenby]

I'm one of those people who did NOT like that border.

[@Phanteist]

To be honest it just seems like the less polished gnome version, I do appreciate the tiling however, because how both kde plasma and gnome handles windows is sometimes irritating, I also pray one day plasma will have the snap assistant like the one in windows 11, being able to drag one window to where you need and than have desktop show you suggestions of the apps you want to put in space that is empty

[@johnarnold893]

I liked the look of Plasma but I got to hate using it. Back to Mint for me especially since they now use an updated kernel.

[@Phanteist]

@@johnarnold893 Yeah plasma while flashy and still my favorite DE has way too many issues that goes without addressing by devs for long time, while keep adding new features , there still however places where is more polished than gnome, especially if we compare Kwin to the Mutter. Kwin does so many things better, from wine pop up windows to overall latency

[@fonte935]

It is definitely not as polished yet, that's for sure!

[@cameronbosch1213]

​@@johnarnold893Mint feels a bit less polished these days to me. It feels less like a good beginner distro and more like a boomer distro.

[@tawanakombora_19]

That's fair. Gnome being over 20 years old and cosmic being barely 1 year old would result in cosmic feeling less polished

[@johnarnold893]

I've yet to find a better distro than Mint, especially since they released 22.

[@cameronbosch1213]

Oddly enough, that's the release I started to get sus of Mint.

[@billglaser1270]

I really like Mint. I did not have luck with pop.

[@Surimokoto]

yet another Gnome with useless top-panel..... 😪 btw, TY for review!

[@CheapHomeTech]

So why would I ever want to give up XFCE for Cosmic? There are no benefits.

[@willi1978]

so stay with xfce. that's the beauty of linux. you can make it your own

[@CheapHomeTech]

@@willi1978 I just don't get it. I feel like I'm missing out on something. What though I can't pinpoint.

[@willi1978]

@@CheapHomeTech i am using gnome at the moment. from gnome cosmic looks like a nice step up with more configurability. i think people who intend to use cosmic like that the system can be made to look how they want without a lot of hacking.

[@miguelanaya95658]

There is nothing to set itself apart from a dozen other window managers. Glad I watched it, there will be no FOMO.

[@NeftisIsHere]

u dont have to write a full setting file, so there is that (?

[@cameronbosch1213]

​​@@NeftisIsHere And it's Wayland. That's huge, given XOrg is on life support. (Don't worry, X11 apps are still supported via XWayland.)

[@midnytrev]

All these bots 💀

[@zaandam0172]

lmaooo

[@sudiprajbanshiii]

Where?

[@midnytrev]

@@sudiprajbanshiii You cant find them anymore, too many new comments or he deleted them

[@fredmckinney8933]

Looks ugly and confusing -- yeah, definitely influenced by GNOME, which I personally can't stand at all. Slick logout effect, though. But then again, I'm very much a traditionalist -- Xfce user here, or Openbox if I REALLY need to conserve memory. Sorry, but COSMIC doesn't look like a desktop I would find myself using.

[@jimnorrison8481]

Yet another dark-theme IOS inspired desktop UI for basement dwelling geeks that play video games and watch porn every day. For those of us who use our computers for productivity: no cigar. Give it a year or two and this pie-in-the-sky thingamajigy will end up in everyone's recycle bin.

[@adamadamnrhi]

...more perpetually half finished UI shit for Linux... I just need to launch shit and do work. I don't net 15 desktops because some "devs" think "they" have the best "solution" and NEED to rewrite everything in the next new shiny language because ego. I'll never use Windows again but for ****'s sake.

[@boballmendinger3799]

I know, right? So much shiny new crap, but the basics don't work worth a damn. After getting fed up with mint and switching to ubuntu, it won't even mount a raid at boot without all kinds of terminal crap. The only I got audacity to record a stream is to use the appimage. Of course more terminal crap required to make it open like any other program, of which I haven't been successful with either. So much glitz, but not even basic point and click functionality.

[@mmstick]

Ironically, you're asking to stop the development of a desktop environment that fixes the exact problem you're complaining about. GNOME and KDE already have their developers. More DE developers is not always wanted by established projects like that. They are already developing their DEs the way they want them to be, using programming languages that result in poor performance (JavaScript), crashes (C/C++), and stability flaws (C/C++/JavaScript). Rust was released 10 years ago. It is not a shiny language anymore. There's a reason why Linux, Google, Microsoft, the NCIS, NSA, aerospace industry, automotive industry, space industry, etc. are all pushing for memory safety with Rust. Rust solves these problems, and does so in a way which developers enjoy developing with it. 90% of MISRA C rules are enforced by the Rust compiler and statically verified at compile-time. You are effectively asking the Linux desktop to be held back with languages that are half a century old.

[@bored78612]

Gnome devs and psychophants malding over this

[@TheTastefulThickness]

I made this.