LinuxFest Northwest 2024: Meet COSMIC DE

Carl Richell
System76 Founder
Learn why System76 built COSMIC and the new features and capabilities it brings to the Linux desktop environment landscape.

[@_emh]

This is the most excited I've been about a Linux desktop-related project in ages. Kudos to the team working on Cosmic!

[@canadaduane]

I love how easy-going and humble the System76 team is, and now I see why! Great leadership .

[@iamkartiknayak]

The very first version of Cosmic DE looks 🔥. Can't wait what it would bring in upcoming versions. Great job System76 team 🍻

[@Little-bird-told-me]

*There has never been a time when I have waited so eagerly for the launch of an OS.*

[@Legion-495]

Same. Just for the DE. There is already a Fedora Spin SIG to get an official spin going. Everyone waiting for Cosmics release x3

[@Little-bird-told-me]

I am also disappointed at Cosmic OS team. They have let u down with no news on release.

[@marius.ileana]

As a Pop!_OS user for years, I love System76 care and attention to details! And the theming of the COSMIC DE is awesome. Being a Rust based project, I expect great performance. Keep up the good work, team! And thank you for your ambitious project to have a new DE for us! ❤

[@rocksquared]

Making the DE as un-opinionated and consistent as possible is simply the best idea. Top attention to detail matters, and you are in the right mindset. Like many, I can't wait to see the v1.0. PS: iZotope RX, unfortunately closed source and not available for Linux, could really help you with fixing bad background noise such as this recording.

[@Batwam0]

I think that the un-opinionated part was a bit of a nod to the Gnome team 😂

[@mmstick]

​@@Batwam0 Yes, it is a jab at GNOME's inflexible design ethos. Their Adwaita ("One and Only") philosophy is deeply flawed. Having suffered from having to work around a lot of their bad design choices, we do not want to inflict the same onto our users and downstreams. Users and distributions alike should be able to configure and theme COSMIC however they like, and it should be easy to do so, with the most common needs built into the desktop by default.

[@HiAdrian]

Been following this ambitious project since early development. I'm still clutching my Xfce (X11) pearls and COSMIC is where I intend to finally make the jump into modernity, along with new hardware.

[@theunknownkadath]

I think the most valuable thing about all this is that Cosmic is being built with Linux users in mind -- creators, builders, programmers, developers, scientists. I often felt uncertain why the "average desktop user / low tech person" was seemingly the target audience of major linux DEs (respectfully). I look forward to see how this all goes.

[@creamrisesup]

Cosmic is on 🔥. I would love for System76 to kind of polish the Cosmic DE experience by integrating some nuggets such as rounded corners and smooth animations on auto tilling just like Hyprland.

[@meow-is-edible]

Agreed, I'm just testing Cosmic right now, currently their animations are too minimal, just like old Android with animations set to 0.5x.

[@MinaSchloch]

Using the sidebar for convergence is truly genious. It works on normal size too and is so simple! I really love how you cherrypick all the good stuff of all the DEs, and I see you have experience, as a KDE user, and rebuild it from scratch with a modern and elegant codebase

[@oluwatobiadefami8944]

really looking forward to this

[@silversentinal]

I am so impressed with the work that's been done. I am not a Linux power user, so the fact that this is designed to work simply is sooo appealing. What other operating system component should they tackle next?

[@scooter4196]

The feature set for hybrid graphics is really awesome!

[@EdersonBairros]

I've never been as excited for the launch of an OS as I am for the new cosmic. Pretty pretty pretty.

[@tizimessina]

historical moment

[@williamfish1407]

Love system 76. Own a thelio major and am definitely quite likely to try out cosmic de

[@TheTaoistOnline]

I love all the color!

[@shmilyz7121]

so cool,cant wait for cosmic

[@aberba]

All I've always wanted is a stable, clean, and functional desktop to use and for some reason Gnome/KDE has never giving me that. Have been suing Pop OS since my first switch from elementary OS. Excited about the new design. Very happy about it.

[@PavloskyUfanov-Trooper]

I just love the whole thing, it feels like a hybrid of XFCE and Gnome, where they have picked almost all the good paradigms of XFCE and the only thing of Gnome that is worth anything; AKA it's clean aesthetics. Can't wait to try it.

[@fakecubed]

Yeah. I use GNOME and Xfce as my desktops on various systems, and neither is exactly thrilling, but they're both directionally where I want them to be. If COSMIC manages to pull off a nice stable system that runs well on my hardware, I will probably switch to it on my distro of choice and never look back.

[@mohitkumar-jv2bx]

I have been a faithful KDE user. but if the tiling is really good in cosmic, i will definitely switch. Hope it comes independent of the distro too. Can't wait to try it.

[@vitormelo22]

Me to.

[@willi1978]

i installed it already, it is not hard to install.

[@mohitkumar-jv2bx]

@@willi1978 Installed the PopOs or just the Cosmic DE in some other distro ?

[@willi1978]

@@mohitkumar-jv2bx installed cosmic on manjaro

[@gh0stcassette]

It's packaged on Fedora (COPR repo), Arch (AUR), and NixOS (nix flake)

[@linhusp2349]

How dare you let distributions do anything with your deskop environment freely? That is so great!! I'm in!!

[@arubaga]

Gnome will break interoperability by next version.

[@sumirandahal76]

Great product for linux world thank you System76 ❤ been a pop os user since pop os 18.04 🎉

[@abebewalcott2572]

Waiting patiently for the release, from the Caribbean island Jamaica

[@CRYPTiCEXiLE]

Looks interesting I will indeed check it out late May,

[@syeduroojkamal4986]

is alpha release in late may?

[@CRYPTiCEXiLE]

@@syeduroojkamal4986 so i heard

[@pragmaticmero686]

Companies like that really align with my values and my ethics, i really like their way of doing things.

[@asadurrahman1681]

Love you boss, for bringing amazing products and the amazing pop-os, cherrios!

[@liquidmobius]

Can't wait for the stable release! The future is Rusty!

[@eeeezypeezy]

I will definitely be installing the alpha and gaming on Cosmic, looking forward to breaking stuff to help fix it 😂

[@fakecubed]

Bless you early adopters. I'll probably jump in in a couple years, but I am watching this project with great interest.

[@taylrthegreat]

I just installed pop os, and i was just complaining about the lack of customization out of the box. I wanted to change what my mouse pointer and couldn't figure it out. Of course I'm dum and new But this looks amazing

[@thesullivanstreetproject]

It seems cool in a lot of ways, and I understand his rationale for not being able to choose where the window buttons appear, but I’m really used to having mine on the left side, as so many people who come from Mac will be…

[@AgamSama-u2t]

timestamp please

[@mmstick]

This is necessary for the consistency of application design. The nav bar toggle button is on the left side where the nav bar panel is presented. The context drawers slide out from the right side of the application. Reversing window controls would significantly increase complexity of the layout system. Or at least look out of place to have window controls taking up space in front of the nav bar toggle.

[@AgamSama-u2t]

@@mmstick thanks for replying

[@fakecubed]

@@mmstick Makes sense to me.

[@avizyt_official]

I have been using Pop os since 2020, don't find any other distro as reliable as Pop OS and very exited for the Cosmic DE with 24.04 LTS.

[@jpsalis]

The intuitive tiling brought me into pop OS, I'm glad I chose to stick with it. Looking forward to Beta and full release

[@B0redBanana]

COSMIC is so damn cool!

[@iced-rs]

Absolutely beautiful!

[@16BitBow]

Really excited for this!

[@vitormelo22]

Thanks for the work.

[@Sim-rh4tj]

Looking forward to trying this 👍

[@MorganNilsson]

Super exited for Cosmic!

[@ibechuckp]

So exciting

[@Aku-Signal]

At 16:50 COSMIC stands for Computer Operating System Main Interface Components 🙂👍 (Posted on Thu 20 June 2024 at 18:40 UTC)

[@bleack8701]

I really hope they improve the light theme. It's nice that they let you customize it, but it's best to ship with something good by default. I know there are contrast concerns, but the black text on white just doesn't work well with my eyes. Grey background works better for me. Everything else sounds good

[@markusjohansson4949]

It looks good. Is the panel the same as the dock, just configured differently? I would like to just have a panel with an application switcher, start menu, virtual desktop switcher and notifications.

[@mmstick]

Yes, the dock is just a second panel. The dock can be disabled. You could have more than two panels, but the settings application is only designed to aid with configuring two panels.

[@roberttranceedm]

GIVE IT TO ME NOW! Joke...of course I wait happily until you feel it's ready and great. Thank you!

[@mraiupov]

SerpentOS + CosmicDE = The Best Сollaboration 🤟

[@mmstick]

I hope that it happens!

[@Eyuphuro]

Sucesso a S76;

[@MinaSchloch]

Are there any effords on making a pdf reader using pdf-rs? That would be lit. Btw I think its supercool how you just embed Alacritty in the Cosmic terminal and add all the needed things like Tabs and split.

[@seibx9290]

Fascinating and promising future, however, will it be lost in time like the Enlightenment DE?

[@Jopekos]

Great showcase, a shame there was an annoying turbine noise in the background.

[@mmadevgame]

This is awesome. Will there be option to merge apps with the top panel instead of having top panel and bottom dock?

[@mmstick]

That was already possible.

[@lmnk]

Is there any kind of collection of all Figma concepts? I wanted to play around with them and maybesuggest something myself

[@mmstick]

They are private to the UX team, but you may be able to request access from Maria.

[@brainstormsurge154]

Loved the presentation. Though I really wish you edited out the background noise as it's so easy to do so.

[@Linuxgymrat]

I hope pop os will feature snapper at one point.

[@ary2000]

I like this :)

[@gbncondor88]

can i install it on Sparky linux?

[@ibrahimhussain3248]

Wow!

[@TheCharlos64]

Workspace grid pls XD

[@Batwam0]

I’d be willing to try it in a VM but all the reviewers have seen so far mentioned it had to be bare metal. Anyone know if there is an iso which works in a VM for this?

[@mmstick]

It requires Vulkan hardware acceleration for good performance, so you need to configure your VM in a way that it can get real hardware acceleration. Without Vulkan support, applications will use the LLVMPipe Vulkan software renderer, which is significantly slower.

[@Indra88155]

Nice speech, but what's that fan noise?

[@MinaSchloch]

Yeah wtf PC is that?

[@n.m4497]

A windows PC opening Minesweeper

[@NaokoMikuu]

It goes away towards the 30 minute mark but yeah it was distracting

[@mmstick]

Sounds like a leaf blower

[@yuppi161]

probably the projector

[@ys1197]

PC go brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

[@ElFlor95]

What about transparent windows?

[@Batwam0]

and blur

[@mmstick]

The terminal is the only application using transparency. Developers can make their applications do this if they desire to.

[@PavloskyUfanov-Trooper]

At t=2699 Amazing.

[@deviantsemicolon618]

I might temporarily move away from Hyprland to try this on Nix. I'm excited for this

[@Bob-qz5yj]

I hope that fan is not indicative of cosmic's resource usage lmao

[@mmstick]

I think that sound is coming from outside. For what it's worth, it uses less resources than GNOME.

[@rickwise41]

Will we be able to use it as a server for workstation?

[@mmstick]

You can, and due to the architecture and use of Rust from the ground up, there's less surface area for vulnerability exploits.

[@PawełRzeszów]

Meh, Linux has lover usability than Win/Mac, the DE is not the problem, it's just a marketing move. MacOs/ windows have: multiuser/multigroup file/folder ownership, easy sharing of files, good integration with Cloud storage providers(including offline access), all support fingerprint sensors. MacOs has: file tags, smartfolders, consistent UI Windows has: network folder sync (including offline(cached) file access), Credentials app provides cool UI for the keychain, file attributes (hidden files), device manager, digital signed installation files. Personally I do not need an another DE.

[@MaxxxJoker]

Help yourself! I would like to make a donation, but I need to create an account? I want to pay but I don't want to create a new account. I realy like POP_OS!

[@minux1434]

Shut up and take my money! (in case someone doesn't know, it's a Futurama meme used to express my necessity to have Cosmic)

[@ran2wild370]

I dunno, resembles going back to CDE.. er.. not CDE, XFCE :-))

[@petegiant]

i3 with XFCE. I feel sorry for people who have to manage windowed apps.

[@Voidage1260]

Kinda cool ig but damn that is an ugly ass ui lmao

[@ran2wild370]

Прямо классика, Маша - дизайнер. Ребят,вы там там очередное КДЕ на сляпайте в порыве креативности, а то пользоваться невозможно будет, только настраивать и настраивать вместо продуктивной работы.

[@s4b210]

Гном с расширениями на стероидах.

[@mmstick]

@@s4b210 GNOME needs extensions to mimic a fraction of COSMIC's power.

[@kylerjohnson988]

How is it like KDE? It has different defaults, it’s powered by a different programming language, it’s driven by a different compositor, different theming, it has an entirely different aesthetic, its approach to extensibility is fundamentally different, the way it manages display processes are different, and more. It’s not at all like KDE.

[@ran2wild370]

@@kylerjohnson988 Ok ok, don't worry. It was kind of joke.:-) KDE has a lot of options exposed to users to tune and change. I am probaby got over that age when I needed to poke into Prefercnces to customize how my DE looks like. Gnome has everything hidden and that' s what I want and like how Ubuntu customized it :-))

[@mmstick]

@@ran2wild370 If you don't want to use customization options, then don't use them. The capability is there for those who do want this.

[@infernocop31]

Great job. It truly could be the greatest DE.

[@DavidSmith-ef4eh]

Should hire a designer. I saw major design flaws in it, first one is the huge circle in the menu bar, second is the alginment in the screen settings toggle buttons and color picker fields. There are bunch of others as well. Shame, they steal apple ideas and ui layouts, and think they can improve uppon them? Good luck with that, just copy it 100%.

[@blahdelablah]

If they copied 100% they wouldn't need a designer. Also, I think you're overstating the design problems, looks fine to me.

[@JG-nm9zk]

ditching gnome software center "Pop!_shop" is actually the secret killer feature of cosmic.

[@henriquepicanco97]

Pop!_Shop isn't based on GNOME Software. It was a fork of Phanteon App Center, from Elementary OS. The ISO installer is work between System76 and Elementary OS, too.

[@JG-nm9zk]

@@henriquepicanco97 Dang all this time I've been frustrated at the wrong thing. Just typing into the search bar is so bad. one character at a time

[@JG-nm9zk]

Just tried all 3. Gnome Software, Pop!_shop and Cosmic App Center. Cosmic is by far the best. It starts the fastest, it doesn't lag while searching for things, and has the best in my opinion layout.

[@StaffyDoo]

Congratulations, everyone! COSMIC is shaping nicely! I only wish KDE 💙 would have that *amazing* WM capabilities 🫠

[@dominik2327]

I‘m hyped to test Cosmic as it sounds like everything I ever wanted a Linux desktop to be.

[@Storya-tq5gy]

So hyped for COSMIC! Can't wait till it comes out.

[@feliperodriguessouza3184]

Fantastic, here in Brazil we are excited to use the new system. Congratulations on the work

[@vitormelo22]

Somos 2 ;)

[@andy.4790]

As he mentioned in the video, I'll definitely be using Cosmic DE for gaming in Steam and Lutris.

[@linuxnext]

cant wait for cosmic desktop :)

[@alejandroespalter2601]

I've been checking their website on a daily basis since Aprl 20th.

[@JohnnySacc]

Been daily driving this for a few weeks and I'm very impressed. Feels as smooth as hyprland without all the headache of ricing it.

[@alejandroespalter2601]

looks like it might be even more modular than KDE

[@fakecubed]

Hopefully it's much more stable.

[@afro.systems]

can't wait to try COSMIC out

[@phils3736]

The fans were pretty active.....

[@willi1978]

not sure what kinds of fans those are. it is annoying in the presentation but during my tests it looks to use about the same ressources as gnome. i guess in the future it might get more optimised

[@G-3-A-R-Z]

I love system76, I own one of there laptops. SO support your Linux first laptops. But I hate the heavy Linux DEs. I Run Arch on mine. I know your waiting for the BTW. but System76 made it possible to get the right drivers for the hardware. Makes them a great company. thanks for not making me us Cosmic guys. Cosmic is just gross to me. Go Hypr.

[@danielmugas3009]

Cósmic de hype

[@tohur]

Not gona lie rust looks like a disaster for GUI apps.. looks like something from the early 2000s.. but guess what ever floats folks boats LOL

[@mmstick]

You must have come from an alternative reality if you saw applications from the early 2000s that look like this.

[@Jesse_Carl]

What was it you don't like about them? I ask out of genuine curiosity because I'm not much of a UX designer myself, but they all seemed useable and cute to me