Pop!_OS Cosmic Desktop: ALPHA Release & In Depth Review

[@mmstick]

Memory usage in Pop!_OS is higher than other distributions because we use a higher vm.watermark_scale_factor by default. This increases the memory threshold for the kernel to use for cache, which in turn improves desktop responsiveness by retaining more cache in memory. LIkewise, the more RAM you have, the higher the threshold for cache. So the actual memory usage is difficult to compare. That said, there will be some memory usage optimizations soon.

[@Dragonborn1178]

Are you guys going to fix your gaming? Saw a video where games crash and freeze and other major issues i’d love to try the alpha, but I don’t want to wait another year for updates

[@FULLTILTSWIFF]

thanks for this, what are the core benefits of the cosmic desktop env? is it more performant than, say, gnome?

[@oat1000]

​@@FULLTILTSWIFF Currently, the main benefit is that they have full control over it. The people making decisions at Gnome have a very particular vision for their software and many do not agree with their choices. The other benefit is how it handles tiling and floating windows simultaneously on different monitors, and the ease of swapping between the two modes. Backwards compatibility is also less of a concern for Cosmic (which is a good thing). It is still alpha, so speed and stability might not be as great as Gnome right now - but the "foundation" for Cosmic is better, so expect Cosmic to surpass Gnome in this regard in the future.

[@retarded_rabbit]

​​@@oat1000 Did you even use Cosmic? The performance is light years ahead of GNOME. Yesterday, I installed Cosmic on my main laptop, which had Arch + GNOME, and the difference in performance and smoothness is unbelievable. Applications are opening almost instantaneously, as if they're already in memory.

[@heus_sueh]

@@Dragonborn1178 It's in an alpha stage man, if you're going to keep bothering devs to fix things, please don't do it, don't be that kind of nasty person.

[@Prophet6000]

Cosmic Hype. Congrats to the team on the progress.

[@SavvyNik]

Let's goooo!!

[@phunkadellicphilsabi]

+1 to the Cosmic hype. I was daily driving KDE/Bismuth and I've been lost ever since that combo has stopped working in KDE6. Hyprland & sway look amazing, but I'm really just looking for a DE with good tiling built in.

[@Sithhy]

@@phunkadellicphilsabi Doesn't Plasma have built-in tiling now, like PowerToys in Windows?

[@russjr08]

System76 is making some fantastic progress on COSMIC!

[@akitake_]

Really excited to see where this goes. I would probably only use it in tiling mode, with the top panel and no dock, launching my apps through the runner. For now I'm happy with Hyprland, I'm going to let Cosmic mature a bit more. Also I don't know if it's planned but I would love desktop integration of some kind with services such as Nextcloud for the calendar, adding an entry on the sidebar in the file browser, etc..

[@keilmillerjr9701]

I would use it the same. We share the same workflow. I use hyprland as well. The cohesive theming and ease of changing settings is enticing.

[@blahblahblah1787]

The customization options and the export function are game changers. Finally the desktop environment can match the IDE.

[@mouk3y]

Big fan of the "Reset to Default" button lol.. I'm definitely gonna explore and try to break it so I can report my findings.

[@Abysmal-ji2pu]

thank you for going through everything in detail. you were clear in your descriptions and explanations. i also really love customiseability so it was fun to get a preview of all that. nice to see you are excited too :) ... 24:58 oh!! yes i would love to see an in-depth video about all the customisability great video!!

[@SavvyNik]

Love to hear it and glad you liked the video

[@LuizSenna-nb5kg]

Congratulations my friend. Good video e and Pop_ OS 24.04 LTS is the great System to productive Workflow !

[@SonyJimable]

I'm super keen to move to Pop! OS and Cosmic Desktop.

[@esra_erimez]

I've been a KDE user since I was about 6 years old when my dad gave me an old laptop with it, but COSMIC is looking very compelling.

[@nothingiseverperfect]

This is absolutely so wonderful. User friendly, customizable, and quick and snappy compared to GNOME. That App Store is terrible! So glad they fixed it here! I love that transparent top bar function. No more gnome tweaks. No more GNOME! finally! I love customization but don’t go too crazy like ricing everything. I just like to pick a few silly colors and then I never change it again. THANK YOU SYSTEM76 AND POPOS TEAM! And thank you Savynick! Great video! Cant wait when a functional for comes out!

[@atetraxx]

Finally get to try it. Hype

[@SavvyNik]

It’s pretty exciting

[@purian23]

Definitely a must watch! You have been my go to for coverage over the months, nice video!!

[@SavvyNik]

Thanks for the support

[@pustodasaostane]

Great desktop! Linux is getting better and better!

[@KM-sv4dh]

Cosmic auto tiling features bought me, no more fiddeling with hyperland and bars with their config files. I'm installing it on my main desktop next week when I have time.

[@SavvyNik]

Love to hear it

[@KM-sv4dh]

@SavvyNik nice channel you have bro. subscribing ; )

[@centipedekid9824]

This isn't daily driver ready

[@salgadosp]

Amazing work they've done.

[@Jon-to6969]

Will it be easy to update the OS from alpha to stable without having to do a full reinstall?

[@ninthjake]

I will definitely try it out.

[@harveysmith4424]

This is starting to head into what I've wanted GNOME to be. Still sticking with KDE for now but enjoy these prospects.

[@sherrilltechnology]

I saw Cura in there holy crap I might use PopOS again, I have always loved it, but, now it looks amazing!! Congrats System 76 on the great work!! Great video as well!

[@voidmind]

If System 76 releases a laptop with the latest Ryzen AI chip, I am totally getting it and trying out Cosmic. Considering Rust is the only system level programming language I'm interested in dabbling in, I'd love to learn how to create apps for it.

[@cugansteamid6252]

does gparted work? or is it still broken? thought of dual booting with Windows but it didnt work at the time of release

[@Mobin92]

That dock needs some polish though. The padding and the corner radius is totally off.

[@Vancha112]

I'm almost just as excited to see what the community is going to build for this!

[@nash475]

It's really impressive for a first alpha. Looking forward to the final release, hope they improve the files manager.

[@antinatalope]

So, I was going to download for x86, but they have a version for arm64 for Pi! That is so cool!

[@HickoryDickory86]

Loving the look qnd functionality (and practicality) so far! Here's to hoping, now that it's in the wild, that System76 receives lots of quality feedback and bug reports so that a solid beta isn't too far off.

[@peterkensing565]

I installed it on a test system. Looks very good. It will take some time before the final release, but I think I'll keep it on this machine to watch the progress.

[@RAyLV17]

do we have to install it manually? I thought it'll come as an update when the finalized version officially releases.

[@SavvyNik]

We still have some time until the official release so not sure if they’ll just be able to make it an update or you’ll have to reinstall

[@RAyLV17]

@@SavvyNik Ah ok! Also thanks for the showcase vid! :)

[@tristen_grant]

Do you not know/understand what an alpha build it?

[@RAyLV17]

@@tristen_grant do you not know what finalized version means?

[@Drazil100]

@@RAyLV17Do you? Finalized doesn’t mean it’s out of alpha, just that they are done making changes and are ready to make a public release. Alpha / Beta specifically refer to the amount of Quality Assurance the specific finalized version has gone through before getting shipped. Typically alpha means pretty much that they expect it to be broken. There is no QA and they are not guaranteeing it won’t brick from using it or from it receiving updates. Beta means they don’t expect any thing to break and they are taking care to try to keep it stable, but they haven’t done rigorous QA. Any of these can be finalized. Alpha and Beta are just meant to temper expectations and keep people from getting mad at them if it breaks.

[@araputrevor5103]

Yeeeeesssssss... Finally I have been waiting for this one

[@SavvyNik]

It’s here!!

[@shaikibrahim762]

Can I live boot from my USB pendrive? Or dual boot I'm trying but no progress need some help in installation please

[@ZaberfangX]

It worked in gnome box even I heard that software render was not ready, but it worked but there is some slow down running in the VM with small little problems, I may do it on my laptop at some point. I hope is full out really out of beta by next year before windows 10 end of life when people looking at windows 11 or linux as a options.

[@dunnotck1]

I need this! My laptop is not compatible with Win11 and this looks so good. I hope it comes out soon so I can install it already.

[@uxiii9537]

Honestly im pretty excited! Its really solid. What i want to know: 1. Window snapping? 2. Wayland/x11 support (nvidia/amd) 3. Games (do they work properly without scaling stuttering or moving glitches)

[@SnowDaemon]

1) Yes 2) Yes, but glitchy rn (It's still in Alpha) 3) Works as well as PopOS on Gnome

[@radvilardian740]

ma maaaaan, I watched all minutes and waiting for the game performance benchmark since they said having well optimzed nvidia integration and native wayland, but maybe next video. Btw, good review bro, I believe this desktop will be a game changer in the future, and come on man please fire some proton games.

[@MakeKasprzak]

I installed this on a monster workstation I'm building out of server gear. Other than a glitch with the Nvidia iso installer not telling me progress, it installed fine.

[@ps3301]

Still a long way to go. Another year of development at least. They have learnt the lessons from gnome so hopefully they can accelerate to the finished line much faster.

[@zsytssk5176]

this comment is just for me to practice. --- so on so forth.(11:14) but you also have these sub categories side.(11:15) which is an incredible thing.(12:21) everything's super fluid.(13:15) I can't understate how wonderful this experience is.(15:28) there's something goofy on.(18:03) that's what comes up.(18:48) takes everything back default.(20:26) I really do like all the different settings that we can play with.(21:31) switch these around however you want.(23:48)

[@TrustJesusToday]

Looking forward to beta. This could be a good alternative to life in Hyprland.

[@guilherme5094]

Looks really great!

[@Sithhy]

It still has some way to go before it becomes usable as a daily driver but I have to say I like the stacked windows feature; looks like it was inspired by BeOS/Haiku

[@johanb.7869]

Terminal should have a new tab option like KDE terminal Konsole has next to file edit view open a new tab, instead of clicking on file first to open a new tab. You can use a short cut, but I don't like using short cuts. I don't like light themes, but I must say the Cosmic light mode looks nice. It's not so bright. I like that you can change the roundness of corners too. Square is my favorite because I don't like rounded corners. And you can remove the dock and use the top panel to make it look like Dash to panel.

[@fractievoorzitter]

Can we move the tabs bar of the stacked window to the bottom instead of the top?

[@VwSvNexus]

Is there any way for me to install this on my already preexisting pop-os installation? Without having to make the bootable usb?

[@radicalsanta6115]

is this good for gaming?

[@andreja-yk2nu]

I predict that by this time next year linux will have 8% market share

[@auglicious]

That would be awesome to see!

[@NoxyYT]

Really bad prediction, but I'd love that :p

[@bhargavjitbhuyan9394]

Nope. Even more. That could convince developers to port their software to Linux. In turn, increasing Linux's market share even more.

[@KM-sv4dh]

I hope win10 EOL helps in that regard

[@Vancha112]

The kind of optimism the world needs :p

[@freedomgoddess]

i wonder what exactly the compositor might need all this memory for. i haven't created some particularly good compositor myself, client-side rather than server-side composition is a much needed change and i simply don't have the time to learn how to use opengl with a january presentation at the local university timeline, but i am not familiar with what exactly you would need all this information for. then again, isn't this wayland? the compositor there is as much the same exact thing as much as it is a completely different thing.

[@mmstick]

The compositor needs only 100-200 MB RAM. Depends on how many displays you have, and what their resolutions are.

[@yuriblanc8446]

it's a great addition but I think Linux ecosystem needs to improve and complete Wayland and provide better support for hidpi display and compatibility from app. You can still see a lot of blurry apps on fractional scaling and many display server features are not complete yet. Of course also saying goodbye to xorg has to arrive it just splits more the ecosystem

[@reinettetinekerr219]

Will I be able to just sudo update && upgrade when the next alpha 2 to stable version releases?

[@retarded_rabbit]

Yup, devs confirmed that on reddit.

[@reinettetinekerr219]

@@retarded_rabbit thank god

[@jakobw135]

Is the Cosmic Desktop available for Garuda Linux?

[@washim-7867]

7:02 reminds me of winVista...

[@CDMS_pt]

I'm waiting for the full release to switch to Linux for good.

[@chtmes]

How I did it 😂in 2005 just randomly costomizable with help in a sitweb and terminal it so much fun playing with Linux software it so free you can costomizable with your heart ❤️ remember me of the moebuntu anime costume

[@waffles3782]

Love it, but spent two days trying to get it to install and now I'm just giving up. Installer keeps failing when trying to configure bootloader :( Might just buy another drive to do it as a clean install, rather than trying to manually set up partitions for install.

[@araputrevor5103]

I was flashing the iso as i was watching this

[@ouro2164]

Looking forward to using it. That rounded dock has to be the worst thing I've ever seen in my entire life tho.

[@eliasekkk]

Hello, how can I reset the system?

[@SavvyNik]

Reinstall it?

[@eliasekkk]

@@SavvyNik Yes. So, I cant reset in on like windows? or?

[@SavvyNik]

No just get a new iso get it on a usb and run through the install process on the same disk

[@auglicious]

I couldn't get the alpha installed on my laptop, kept getting an "unable to find kernel" error, but I was able to get the nvidia iso loaded on my desktop without issues. I'll be playing with that this weekend.

[@SavvyNik]

Good luck

[@lantoni63rj]

Try to desable Secure Boot in your BIOS if you haven't done it yet

[@auglicious]

@@lantoni63rj Didn't even think about that...and it worked! Thank you!

[@bernardogalvao4448]

Is this on Arch yet? 😊

[@nathanl2966]

I'm watching it slowly being added to the repos as we speak. 🥲

[@Starbunio]

It's gnome fork?

[@mmstick]

No, it's a new platform built from the ground up in Rust using new Rust libraries.

[@meemon7580]

That Dock Design needs some improvement.

[@steveellsworth2547]

I see there is zero mention of Display Link. I will be moving on from Pop OS. I have 4 external monitors and System76 has apparently moved away from gnome and made it impossible for the monitors to work. Once I install the software and connect the monitors, the driver crashes 100% of the time. The author of the video speaks of logging in. It took me 4 reboots to have the opportunity to log in. I have an older OryxPro, but think I will be moving on from Pop OS as I must have external monitor support through Display Link.

[@mmstick]

This is an alpha. The purpose of an alpha is purely for testing and reporting issues.

[@steveellsworth2547]

@@mmstick Totally hope you are aright. I have Pop OS loaded on two of my laptops.

[@highimwolf]

Please have minimizing an app go into the app's icon and not in its own icon in the toolbar. At minimum have an option for it as every other OS ive ised does this

[@quantusr5429]

wayland-only

[@babakfp]

Current theme of PopOS doesn't have a freaking download button on their store page. So, when you download something, it doesn't show you how much is downloaded!!!!!!!!!! How do you people expect them to build something that isn't going to suck!

[@babakfp]

They spent time, money, and effort, but couldn't get a goddamn designer to design something that doesn't suck. I'm talking about the new theme. This is just stupid.

[@rubenruiloba3556]

Suspend works for me !!! 😅

[@PHDWhom]

Wait, so I would need a pretty decent video card to run this? Yeah, it looks interesting, but if that's a requirement, I'm out. I need to be able to disable every single special video effect. I don't want fancy transitions, animations, nothing like that. For me it's distracting and makes it harder for me to do my work. And of course I'm old now, and kinda stuck in my old school Slackware ways. Again, looks pretty cool, but it remains to be seen if I could see myself using it. I do like the "Krunner" style menu thing, which is the only part of KDE that I ever want or like.

[@mmstick]

No, you only need basic integrated graphics that supports OpenGL ES 2.0 and Vulkan.

[@khaledzaki11]

Everything is great, but to be honest, I'm not a fan of the dock and panel stuff. For a laptop screen, it makes everything look small.

[@tristen_grant]

You can auto-hide the dock.

[@angeldude101]

​@@tristen_grant Or delete it entirely.

[@debadityasarkar857]

downgrade the karnel to latest LTS suspension would work

[@MrBenadada]

wifi don t work

[@AlaaSaidAhmad]

Tell me its stable version or just beat cause i want to make it as my daily Linux distro

[@SavvyNik]

Watch the video..

[@tristen_grant]

Its an alpha build.

[@ettoreatalan8303]

When it comes to the elegance of a desktop environment, COSMIC is already a tough competitor for Deepin.

[@centipedekid9824]

How can i go back to the old version it was fine I don't like this

[@awnion]

Don't say "go through" say "rust through".

[@jacksonmyers1892]

My god the dock looks horrible bu default

[@ScottJPowers]

this is the problem with Linux distros. they're never fully working. There's always components that do not work correctly. This is why Linux will never be a major platform for PCs, not to mention it's lack of hardware support. Windows on the other hand, despite all of your complaints, at least it works.

[@sandeepnaik6437]

Cinnamon still better ...

[@nathanl2966]

Wayland.

[@whzzysqueze]

i just remove pop os, cause it's take so much ram, when you play game sometimes it's just freeze

[@elias-ou2sp]

it's unusuable. opened firefox and the whole desktop started lagging like a motherfer

[@tristen_grant]

Yes, its an Alpha. What did you expect from an alpha?

[@elias-ou2sp]

@@tristen_grant for at least the internet browser to work without freezing the entire computer?

[@act.13.41]

Did you file a bug report?

[@mmstick]

I'm using multiple Firefox windows across two 4K displays in COSMIC. No lag. Are you perhaps using a VM that's limited to software rendering?

[@samnwakefield2032]

Im so disapointed with the release of cosmic..waited years to get this........gaming on it sucks i get it is an alpha but for the sake of gaming it should have been better...i went with immutable vanilla os orchid..works like a charm and it was remade aswell.

[@Vancha112]

😂

[@TheDesertBlizzard]

Why does Linux need yet another DE? It’s the reason major devs don’t develop for Linux desktop. They have to pick a DE, and if you don’t run the de they pick, you basically resort to hacks to run the software on your de of choice, which is bleh. QT on GTK is gross, and vice versa. The DE problem is holding Linux back now just as it was 15 years ago.

[@tristen_grant]

What? Most applications are available on every distro.

[@TheDesertBlizzard]

@@tristen_grant Yes, but they are all a mess. Some written in some version of QT. Some written in some version of GTK. Others written strictly for X. It's all an inconsistent mess. I don't know what problem COSMIC is trying to solve, but I do see it just adding to the mess. A software house needing to support a product mostly avoids linux not because they cannot make money on it, but because it's impossible to support. For instance, Synology releases a client in .deb form and integrates with GTK/Gnome nicely. I can run it on Fedora with KDE, but must rely on some kind soul to convert and maintain the .deb to a .rpm, and then miss out on the GTK features because they don't write for QT or support KDE in any way. Good luck getting support for their client on Fedora/KDE, let alone Debian/COSMIC. It's all a non-standardized mess. Don't know why COSMIC exists.

[@mmstick]

None of this makes any sense. That's not how any of this works. Developers only need to pick a GUI toolkit of their choice, and no matter what that choice is, their application will work on any desktop environment. The compositor doesn't care what toolkit an application window is being drawn with.

[@TheDesertBlizzard]

@@mmstick You sound like someone who has been using linux for only a short while. Back in the early 00's, A gtk program in a QT DE worked very differently than a QT program. Today it is little different. One simple example of this is that in KDE, a theme needs to be created for the DE, and then another must be created for GTK. There is a whole section in settings just to address this and that is just theming. GTK does not like menus, QT loves menus. My point has nothing to do with if it works or not. My point is that is it NOT consistent. Developers like consistency. So if they pick to develop for GTK and the integration doesn't work in another DE, good luck getting support. Synology Drive client is an example of a GTK program that does not work well under GTK on KDE. There are many others, such as Double Commander, which is a GTK2 program needing it's own GTK2 theme and was written when GTK had a global menuing system and deep menus are the norm and expectation and does not look like or work like what either KDE or GNOME want today in QT6/GTK3 land. When I see cosmic being demonstrated, I see yet another independent design principle with a DE where QT and KDE and COSMIC programs all work and look different from one another. It's the same thing in Windows where you now have Win32 and UWP programs, but a LOT worse on Linux. I watched another video of a man, the cosmic lead or ceo of System76 or whatever his name/position is, try and answer the question what COSMIC is for, and he really couldn't answer the question. My takeway was that cosmic exists to give PopOS it's own unique look and feel, the same rabbit-hole Ubuntu went down with Unity. Empowering developers to create their own environment is just fluff pie-in-the-sky dreaming. I think it's all a waste of time, and just causes Linux to not be taken seriously by major developers outside the Server space. How is COSMIC going to make everyone out there want to develop for it over KDE/QT or especially GNOME/GTK? Will Cosmic be the DE of choice to run GTK programs? LOL. I will say this for Cosmic. XFCE will be the DE of choice to download and install Cosmic. I understand the challenges System76 has of having to re-invent their whole DE every time Gnome changes something up. I think creating their own DE and libraries is broken thinking, unless they don't permit QT or GTK to be installed a nd force the hands of the FOSS community to write/rewrite for the cosmic libraries. GLHF!

[@mmstick]

@@TheDesertBlizzard I've been using Linux since 2007, and am developing COSMIC.

[@eygs493]

i installed it on nixos, wayland, now i have random screen flicker :}

[@SavvyNik]

Yeah the ports are going to have worse problems for a while haha

[@eygs493]

@@SavvyNik you think maybe 24.11 release can address some? also, i did not enable nvidia driver, only amd, do you think i should enable nvidia driver?

[@Vancha112]

​@@eygs493it's likely better to wait for the 24.04 release first and see if it's fixed there ;)

[@Zenless260]

IS THIS STABLE TO USE?

[@jiffylube9476]

no

[@77seban]

ALT + F4 doesn't work to close app. I know from other yt.

[@retarded_rabbit]

It uses Super+Q to quit applications.

[@Vancha112]

​@@retarded_rabbitthanks! ^^

[@povilasbrilius]

Suspension doesn't get noticed working neither coding local entity SMB edgy ThinkPad 🙂