[HN Gopher] Pop OS 24.04 LTS Beta
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Pop OS 24.04 LTS Beta
        
       Author : agluszak
       Score  : 374 points
       Date   : 2025-09-26 09:20 UTC (13 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (system76.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (system76.com)
        
       | BoredPositron wrote:
       | On the one hand, I appreciate the modern stack; on the other
       | hand, the proportions and margins are completely off, making
       | everything look genuinely bizarre. The switches, for instance,
       | are humongous, and the radius on the rounded corners is excessive
       | just take a look at the dock. Everything is touching corners or
       | has double the amount of whitespace it needs. I hope they start
       | polishining with a designer now.
        
         | willi59549879 wrote:
         | Some of the whitespace can be configured in the settings. I am
         | not sure if the problems you mention can be adjusted there
         | though.
        
         | animegolem wrote:
         | I like the function but it does all feel just a bit off and
         | half backed. Im relatively hopeful it'll get there.
        
         | athoneycutt wrote:
         | There has been a UI/UX designer since day one.
        
           | BoredPositron wrote:
           | :/
        
         | cosmic_cheese wrote:
         | I feel you. It's not the worst I've seen by a long shot but
         | it's still not "right" and as a result would find it irritating
         | to use.
        
       | jjice wrote:
       | Would love to hear people's experiences with PopOS. I remember
       | when it was new and Cosmic looked really neat, but I'm weary to
       | try a new OS that has fewer users, purely because bugs will be
       | reported and fixed less, so I've been an Ubuntu (and probably a
       | Debian, soon) user.
        
         | panick21_ wrote:
         | I have been using PopOS for a long time. Its kind of like
         | Ubuntu with some of the dumb Ubuntu stuff removed. Their
         | PopShell for Gnome was just far, better then normal Gnome.
         | 
         | I have been following Cosmic and using it quite a bit. For
         | alpha it was great. I have been daily driving it off and on and
         | its mostly pretty good. I would say I prefer it over vanilla
         | Gnome.
         | 
         | So its my plan to keep using it, I have no intention of going
         | to Ubuntu again.
        
         | myself248 wrote:
         | I've been on Pop for about 5 years, through several major
         | upgrade cycles, and it's nearly flawless. The bundled Pop!Shop
         | app store is the notable turd in the pool, but it's optional.
         | It has a system restore partition (that I've never had to use),
         | boot-the-previous-kernel (that I've used once), full-disk
         | encryption by default, so many little things that I appreciate.
         | Everything Just Works, on both my old Thinkpad and my new
         | Framework.
         | 
         | When I have had trouble (e.g. stuck updates, other apt woes,
         | Bluetooth weirdness), System76's help pages have been great. If
         | they don't cover it, I just search +Ubuntu and the advice I
         | find almost always works.
         | 
         | I have no idea what WM or DE or anything I'm running, it's just
         | here and it stays out of the way so there's no situation where
         | I would be confronted by having to know its name. That's a bit
         | annoying (I did finally find out that "Files" is actually
         | "Nautilus", which helped when searching to understand some
         | behaviors) in that it limits my ability to meaningfully search
         | for, or change, these details, but I think if it was a big
         | deal, I'd figure it out. It's just fine.
         | 
         | That I can run an OS for 5 years and not know my WM or DE, is
         | pretty cool, IMHO.
        
           | snowzach wrote:
           | FWIW, I have been running regular Pop using the Cosmic Store
           | for a while now. It's nice and snappy.
        
             | tracker1 wrote:
             | Seconded, the Cosmic Store is a massive improvement... I do
             | wish they'd make flathub vs packages slightly more obvious
             | of a selector though.
        
           | pqb wrote:
           | > The bundled Pop!Shop app store is the notable turd in the
           | pool, but it's optional.
           | 
           | I agree. It's the second most irritating thing. I am glad
           | that I have written my tiny `update` bash script, which takes
           | care of installing all updates (apt, flatpack, brew, etc.)
           | without touching "app store".
           | 
           | I believe the bundled Pop!_Shop originates from Elementary OS
           | and suffers from issues with proper background job
           | processing. I find all those "store" apps for GNOME to be
           | poorly written, often displaying incorrect numbers of
           | updates, and generally slow.
        
         | WJW wrote:
         | Haven't tried the latest stuff yet but I've been on PopOS for a
         | few years now and it's pretty seamless.
        
         | DrewADesign wrote:
         | They've got a decent live USB version that runs their installer
         | if you want to try it out short-term, though obviously that
         | doesn't really give you a real sense of the day-to-day. One
         | thing that really impressed me about the live distro was that
         | it worked out of the box with the propriety nvidia drivers.
        
         | MattPalmer1086 wrote:
         | I switched from Ubuntu shortly after they started using snap
         | everywhere (so around 20.04?).
         | 
         | I really like it, everything mostly just works well without any
         | hassles.
         | 
         | I'm keen to try out Cosmic, although I would have preferred
         | that they had a Gnome based 24.04 release last year rather than
         | making everything wait for it.
         | 
         | But I'm still a happy user. Just hope they stick to the 2 year
         | LTS cadence in future.
        
         | pqb wrote:
         | I have been using Pop!_OS on my old Intel-based Dell laptop for
         | over 5 years. Now, I'm alternating between my M1-powered Mac
         | and Pop!_OS as my daily driver. Before, I used Ubuntu for over
         | 10 years and tested various distributions.
         | 
         | Pop!_OS is probably the best Ubuntu/Debian derivative I've
         | used. It's buttery smooth for everything I need it to be. I
         | haven't encountered any bugs or major problems that are
         | strictly related to Pop!_OS. It feels like Ubuntu, without slow
         | Snaps (Pop!_OS is Flatpak-centered), Canonical ads (Ubuntu Pro,
         | MicroK8s...), and with a slightly modified GNOME desktop
         | environment.
         | 
         | If I had to find the worst thing about Pop!_OS, it's a
         | negligible issue stemming from muscle memory after using macOS.
         | The Super+Left/Right Arrow keys on Pop!_OS are used to switch
         | between applications, while on macOS they are meant to move the
         | text cursor to the start or end of a word. I haven't found the
         | option to disable it yet.
        
         | A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 wrote:
         | It was, for me, one of the best experiences for linux desktop.
         | In a very practical way, it was popos that got me off of
         | windows at home. There are some issues, but they seem to mostly
         | revolve about me getting opinionated over what something
         | 'should' look like ( so I occasionally try other distros ).
         | 
         | It is less bloated than ubuntu ( but still has heavily embedded
         | stuff that is hard to remove like accessibility -- the amount
         | of times kid pressed key combination to turn on voicing each
         | key was super annoying ). Store is slow af. But all of those
         | are smaller things.
         | 
         | edit: note about the store
        
         | lproven wrote:
         | > I'm weary to try a new OS that has fewer users
         | 
         | "Weary" means "very tired". I think you mean "wary" -- nervous,
         | hesitant, scared.
         | 
         | "I am wary _of trying_ a new OS... "
        
       | littlecranky67 wrote:
       | I recently installed Pop OS stable on my ancient 2014 MacbookPro.
       | It was a mostly flawless experience - I needed to manually
       | install the closed-source wl WiFi driver after installing while
       | on USB-Ethernet, but after that everything worked. Trackpad (with
       | 2finger scroll enabled by default), Display (with HiDPI), SD Card
       | reader etc. I like the gnome based UI, I am not sure about the
       | new Cosmic thingy though. Hope the GNOME-based UI will still be
       | available in the new release.
        
         | willi59549879 wrote:
         | I guess the gnome version will be available until cosmic moves
         | out of beta. That might still take some time.
        
         | avinassh wrote:
         | I have an old 2019 MBP, now I am tempted to try Pop on it. Does
         | the external displays work?
        
           | littlecranky67 wrote:
           | PopOS (just as Ubuntu) comes with a live-linux for its
           | install media -i.e. you can try with the very same installer
           | usb-stick if the system works for you. In generall I'd say
           | the older a system, the better the likelihood of linux compat
           | (if it is not WAY to old).
           | 
           | On that 2014 MBP Retina, I have attached a 4K TV via HDMI. It
           | works in dual-screen, even though I use it with the lid
           | closed in single-screen mode (4k TV only), but only 30Hz are
           | supported (I can run 1080@60). Limitation of the Intel
           | onboard GPU I assume.
           | 
           | You probably have your reasons why you do not want macOS on
           | that system anymore - for me the 2014 MBP fell long out of
           | macOS support and while I had Sonoma with Opencore Legacy
           | Patcher running on it, the OS was just unbearably slow, plus
           | some audio issues (along the fact that with opencore legacy
           | patcher your security is also at risk). So that was a no
           | brainer, because macOS just wasn't an option anymore.
           | 
           | Another word of warning: I had the very same 2019 Intel MBP
           | and it died just a couple of weeks after it fell out of Apple
           | Care. Just turned of right while using, never came back. That
           | series is notorious for having thermal issues, and a friend
           | of mine had the same model dying the same way just a couple
           | of weeks after. Maybe you want to sell it while it still has
           | macOS support (higher prices on the 2nd hand market) and get
           | a different laptop if you are after Linux.
        
             | buccal wrote:
             | You can try using DP adapter/cable: https://web.archive.org
             | /web/20160708162656/https://support.a...
        
           | foxbarrington wrote:
           | I just tried to put omarchy/arch on my 16" mbp. Everything
           | worked (eventually... speakers and keyboard backlight needed
           | special stuff) except for suspend or hibernate. After about a
           | week, I gave up and put Monterey on it.
        
         | kedean wrote:
         | As of just a couple years ago, I was able to run the latest Pop
         | on even a late 2011 MBP. It's the only distribution I found
         | that cleanly handled the wifi stack, display, and power
         | management, although it took some tweaking for power management
         | in particular to work right.
        
         | sprogg77 wrote:
         | Hello! I have a mid-2014 Macbook Pro and I couldn't get my wifi
         | working with PopOS. Do you have a webpage, or set of commands
         | you could share?
        
           | system7rocks wrote:
           | It's usually something like this. But I guess for Ubuntu?
           | 
           | https://wiki.debian.org/wl
           | 
           | Just note: anytime the kernel is updated, you need rerun
           | these commands and rebuild the drivers for the new kernel.
        
       | VWWHFSfQ wrote:
       | I'm glad to see some innovation in the Linux desktop space but
       | pop os just looks kind of cheesy
        
         | willi59549879 wrote:
         | I hope it will make the space more interesting. Also with other
         | projects using cosmic as a base to build on top.
        
       | ako wrote:
       | Old news? The version number is 24.04, seems like a year old?
       | Page doesn't have a date, news should always have a date...
        
         | SteveLauC wrote:
         | Should be new. They released some showcase videos a few hours
         | ago [1]
         | 
         | [1]:
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMJpPasSN0M&list=PL0bXfFQsIC...
        
         | panick21_ wrote:
         | They have delayed 24.04 to wait for Cosmic to be ready. They
         | push new kernels to the older release as well.
        
         | alecsm wrote:
         | The version number is 24.04 because it's based on the latest
         | Ubuntu LTS.
        
         | ako wrote:
         | Interesting that a normal, justified question receives this
         | many downvotes...
        
       | alecsm wrote:
       | I'm actually excited to try Cosmic DE.
       | 
       | It still has some of that Gnome Shell feeling that I like but
       | with many features I want that we'll never see in Gnome, like
       | having the top bar on all screens. Right now if you have a full
       | screen app on your main screen you can't even see what time it
       | is.
       | 
       | If they added independent workspaces per monitor I'll switch to
       | it as soon as it gets out of beta.
       | 
       | Edit.
       | 
       | I just watched their workspace showcase video. We have
       | independent workspaces per monitor [1]. Is this real life?
       | 
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3rGXNNUoW8&list=PL0bXfFQsIC...
        
         | mwcz wrote:
         | I'll probably be switching over too, from sway, once Cosmic is
         | out of beta. I love tiling, and the only thing I miss while
         | using sway is the lack of a single integrated settings
         | application. It's possible to couple together individual apps
         | to manage Wi-Fi and Bluetooth and Monitors and everything else,
         | but a single settings app is much better than babysitting a
         | dozen separate ones.
        
           | baobun wrote:
           | FWIW you can run i3 as WM inside, say, XFCE, if you're not
           | married to wayland. i3 and sway are almost identical
           | otherwise.
        
           | flexd wrote:
           | I use Regolith Desktop packages to run Sway with Gnome. It's
           | basically i3/Sway + Gnome settings, and works really well. I
           | get the benefit of a sane DE (Sway) and somewhat easier
           | settings and defaults
           | 
           | https://regolith-desktop.com/
        
             | fhchl wrote:
             | I highly recommend regolith as well, even though the Sway
             | session has never worked without issues for me yet. X11 is
             | very stable.
        
             | mwcz wrote:
             | Very cool. I'm on Fedora and not likely to switch, but it
             | looks like there's a lot of improvements I could crib from
             | regolith.
        
         | TrueSlacker0 wrote:
         | "Right now if you have a full screen app on your main screen
         | you can't even see what time it is."
         | 
         | This drives me crazy. I'm in a flow, distraction free via the
         | full screen and break it to see what date or time it is. Even
         | on a multi monitor setup. Which usually ends up meaning I get
         | pulled out of that flow because I see a new notification on
         | some other app or because I grabbed my phone to check that
         | info.
        
           | teddyh wrote:
           | Addiction issue.
        
             | lukan wrote:
             | But very widespread.
             | 
             | Do you never check your phone and realize you are now
             | suddenly doing something completely unrelated?
             | 
             | Phones are focus breaking by design. It takes effort,
             | silencing them.
        
               | tracker1 wrote:
               | I live by timers/alarms on my phone... if I don't set an
               | alarm/timer, I'll never break focus for meetings etc.
        
               | teddyh wrote:
               | > _But very widespread._
               | 
               | Yes. Does that invalidate the fact?
               | 
               | > _Do you never check your phone and realize you are now
               | suddenly doing something completely unrelated?_
               | 
               | How is this relevant? But, no, as it happens, I don't.
               | 
               | > _Phones are focus breaking by design. It takes effort,
               | silencing them._
               | 
               | Maybe your phone. Those who get an addictive phone may
               | get addicted, and it does take effort to break an
               | addiction.
        
             | messe wrote:
             | That's not on you to say, and pretty fucking tone deaf to
             | boot.
        
               | teddyh wrote:
               | If someone cannot look at their phone to find out the
               | time without becoming distracted and losing their focus,
               | that's not a phone problem.
        
               | wtetzner wrote:
               | Maybe, but why should you have to pull out a separate
               | device to check the time?
        
             | wtetzner wrote:
             | Even if you don't get pulled into something else, having to
             | stop what you're doing to check the time sounds like a bad
             | UI.
        
           | komali2 wrote:
           | Getting a desk clock was a weirdly useful change for me,
           | maybe try that?
        
             | Maken wrote:
             | Which has the added bonus of working even in fullscreen
             | games.
        
           | abrouwers wrote:
           | I appreciate your dedication. Never once in my career have I
           | been at "I'm so locked in, I can't spare a single second of
           | time to look at another monitor" level of concentration :D
        
             | antnisp wrote:
             | It is not about the time spent looking at the time, it is
             | about being unable to ignore shiny stuff when you get out
             | of fullscreen.
        
             | alecsm wrote:
             | The point is, there's no clock in any other monitor because
             | the top bar is only on the main one.
             | 
             | To me it's not about a couple seconds that takes me to look
             | at my phone. It's the inability to have it on all my
             | monitors just like all other DE. And it's not only the
             | time. You can't access your notifications, your app
             | indicator icons or anything you add to that top bar through
             | extensions.
        
               | abrouwers wrote:
               | Sure - I get the point, but also have never found the top
               | bar on another monitor to be super prohibitive to my
               | production. It's rare that I don't have a spare moment to
               | move the mouse to check notifications (in fact, if they
               | were close to my full-screen work environment, I might be
               | tempted to check them MORE frequently).
        
               | luqtas wrote:
               | you can literally press Meta/Win key and have Gnome's
               | overview... want something better move to XFCE :P
        
           | eek2121 wrote:
           | FWIW on KDE this is easily doable. I have my taskbars set up
           | with per monitor taskbars as well.I can do pretty much
           | anything while playing a game, watching a movie, etc.
        
         | close04 wrote:
         | I accidentally upgraded to the alpha (identical laptops, picked
         | the wrong one and jumped into it) and it's been _very_ rough
         | and not just around the edges. Can 't wait to go to beta,
         | hopefully this addresses most of the issues. At least even the
         | alpha was rock solid in terms of stability, so definitely fine
         | for daily use but I didn't enjoy the user experience.
        
           | tormeh wrote:
           | It used to be really bad this spring, but now it's somewhat
           | buggy but fundamentally fine. Somewhere around March games
           | would just randomly lose focus, start stuttering, or you
           | couldn't use fullscreen while having a secondary monitor
           | connected, that sort of thing. Now it's mostly fine. Steam
           | Remote Play still has issues, but this is really a niche use
           | case.
        
             | tracker1 wrote:
             | I've been running the 6.16 kernel via mainline for a couple
             | months and that has taken care of most of my issues with
             | games, running ta current gen AMD gpu. Can't speak for how
             | much of the stability increase has been the kernel vs the
             | DE though, just been getting more solid along the way. I
             | just switched about 5-6 months ago though.
        
         | yuters wrote:
         | Most things can be solved with Gnome Shell extensions, but I
         | have to admit that having to install 5-6 extensions for basic
         | DE features, like managing where notifications show up, makes
         | it easier to switch to something else.
        
           | ChocolateGod wrote:
           | Problem is exacerbated when your GNOME Shell gets updated and
           | takes out all your extensions.
        
             | heavyset_go wrote:
             | Or your extensions take out GNOME
        
           | alecsm wrote:
           | Most things, yes. The things I mentioned, no.
        
           | tracker1 wrote:
           | Even then, Gnome updates regularly require massive updates to
           | those extensions... Pop used to just do that in the box, but
           | felt just having an entirely separate DE they control would
           | be a better long run experience.
        
         | cbolton wrote:
         | I'm using niri with quickshell now and it has a similar feel,
         | as quickshell implements many features in a unified way as in
         | Gnome Shell.
         | 
         | In niri you can have the bar on all monitors, and you can also
         | configure a window to fill the available space and have it
         | "think" it's full screen while the top bar is still visible
         | (see the toggle-windowed-fullscreen setting).
        
           | gorgoiler wrote:
           | Did you follow or do you have a guide or instructions for how
           | you configured your setup?
        
             | seaal wrote:
             | Checkout DankMaterialShell[0], it's still in somewhat early
             | stages of development but it supports both Niri and
             | Hyprland. I just switched over to it from waybar in my
             | Omarchy setup and have been loving it.
             | 
             | [0]: https://github.com/AvengeMedia/DankMaterialShell
        
             | cbolton wrote:
             | For niri I followed closely the build and "manual
             | installation" and "example systemd setup" instructions on
             | the website. If you do that don't forget to edit
             | niri.service to set the correct path for the executable.
             | 
             | For Quickshell I basically followed the website
             | instructions but here are my notes from when I installed on
             | Debian Trixie:                   git clone
             | https://git.outfoxxed.me/quickshell/quickshell
             | sudo apt install cmake qt6-base-dev qt6-declarative-dev
             | qt6-shadertools-dev  spirv-tools pkg-config  libcli11-dev
             | qt6-wayland-private-dev qt6-svg-dev ninja-build qt6-svg-
             | plugins libjemalloc-dev wayland-protocols libdrm-dev
             | libqtqmlmodels-dev 'qt6-*-private-dev' libpam0g-dev
             | Do not install ddcutil: it prevents detection of the
             | external monitor except if the monitor is turned off and on
             | again.              cmake -GNinja -B build
             | -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RelWithDebInfo -DCRASH_REPORTER=OFF
             | ignore warnings `The qml plugin 'xxx' is a dependency of
             | 'quickshell'...`              cmake --build build
             | cmake --install build
             | 
             | For the Quickshell config I used Noctalia. This means
             | installing some dependencies like fonts-roboto, then
             | cloning the noctalia repository as a directory in
             | ~/.config/quickshell/, and finally editing the quickshell
             | systemd service to start it with the noctalia config
             | (command "qs -c noctalia-shell").
        
           | bardsore wrote:
           | I tried niri this spring and had several issues trying to get
           | copy-pasting between Wayland and X (Xwayland) working. Think
           | I had some other problems as well that were a dealbreaker
           | that I can't recall at the moment. Anyway, have you had an
           | issues like this? I assume Gnome does a lot of work to make
           | it seamless, maybe Quickshell does something similar?
        
             | cbolton wrote:
             | As far as I remember I just had to install wl-clipboard and
             | xwayland-satellite. It was working fine then even before I
             | moved from Waybar to Quickshell.
        
         | j1elo wrote:
         | > [in Gnome] if you have a full screen app on your main screen
         | you can't even see what time it is.
         | 
         | I know in FOSS there's a ton of enthusiastic and just non
         | professional work (nor there should be expectations of it), but
         | still... I'd hope the user-facing interface for an OS (or any
         | UI, really) should be designed by people with a background on
         | design, which doesn't seem to be the case at all with this
         | idea. It's another example of why most of us developers should
         | not be even touching the world of laying stuff out visually :)
        
           | deaddodo wrote:
           | The truth is that the GNOME community probably has the most
           | designers and UX-focused members in its community.
           | 
           | The problem isn't lack of designers.
        
             | ChocolateGod wrote:
             | For all the hate it receives, Libadwaita is one of the
             | nicest designed toolkits currently in-use that has more
             | than a dozen applications using it.
             | 
             | Having an entire CSS engine at their disposal certainly
             | does help the designers design without needing to know
             | programming.
        
             | j1elo wrote:
             | That surprises me. What kind of decision process ends up
             | choosing to hide the primary clock in a desktop OS. It's
             | funny imagine the meeting, people voting "yes" to this. Not
             | even in the tiny screens (by comparison) of phones this has
             | been done (probably proposed somewhere sometime, but
             | thankfully denied).
        
               | deaddodo wrote:
               | The problem isn't enough designers, it's too many.
               | 
               | There are conflicting design goals throughout the UI. All
               | could be good/great with a cohesive system, but there is
               | none.
               | 
               | To answer your question, the same people that wanted the
               | system to be a Tier 1 mobile/tablet UI.
        
         | alex_duf wrote:
         | I don't understand, on Gnome when you maximize a window (drag
         | to top) you can still see the time.
         | 
         | Now if you're talking about complete fullscreen, like when
         | watching a video, I' don't understand the use case. Either you
         | want fullscreen or you don't?
        
           | card_zero wrote:
           | Baffled me too but I get it now, they want fullscreen on the
           | first monitor and a clock on the second.
        
             | alex_duf wrote:
             | Ah thanks, I was so confused
        
             | Dusseldorf wrote:
             | I agree GP was talking about the multi monitor scenario,
             | but I also run into trouble with just one monitor. If I'm
             | playing a full screen game and want to know what time it
             | is, there's no way to focus the task bar without closing
             | the game entirely. On Windows, hitting the start button
             | while in a fullscreen app will give focus to the taskbar so
             | you can glance at the time and immediately return to the
             | game.
        
               | wltr wrote:
               | Yeah, I lost so many Warcraft III games on Battle.net,
               | when I accidentally pressed that pesky button, while
               | having a pretty decent computer with 256 MB RAM. I ended
               | up facing a separate keyboard without the key (and some
               | others too).
               | 
               | Thankfully, these days when I want to play a bit (with a
               | computer, sigh) on my Sway setup, yeah, it doesn't react
               | to that button.
               | 
               | Saying all that, yeah, I never considered that -- having
               | your game being lost to buggy and slow Windows -- a
               | feature. I wouldn't want that even today, having 125
               | times more RAM than 20 years ago.
        
               | iknowstuff wrote:
               | This is now solved because games don't default to
               | exclusive fullscreen anymore, so the windows compositor
               | still runs on top of the game, so popping up the start
               | menu is instant without any weird resolution/hdr changes
        
           | deaddodo wrote:
           | Just because someone wants a single app to have a full screen
           | (video, game, an IDE, etc), doesn't mean they aren't using
           | their other screens/desktops for work.
        
           | elygre wrote:
           | Even with a single screen I sometimes want a video in full
           | screen, while keeping an app window (email, excel, whatever)
           | in a window in front of it.
        
             | alex_duf wrote:
             | right click -> "always on top". That's available by default
        
               | mort96 wrote:
               | Well, that only works for GTK 3 or 4 apps. Thanks to CSDs
               | and GNOME's refusal to implement SSDs, every app that's
               | not either running in XWayland or a GTK3/4 app has its
               | own decorations without the context menu with the always
               | on top option.
               | 
               | There was some way of enabling always on top on non-
               | GTK3/4 apps too, but I don't remember it off the top of
               | my head.
        
               | amlib wrote:
               | You can use the alt+space shortcut to access the window
               | context menu on any window, even if they are not a
               | gtk/gnome app. At least on my system qt and kde apps
               | still get some kind of ssd decoration that behaves
               | somewhat like the gnome apps, plus access to the window
               | context menu, though I agree things should be better than
               | this and work more universally...
        
       | SteveLauC wrote:
       | Really impressive work from the Pop!_OS team. They broke away
       | from GNOME and decided to build their own DE, now it's finally
       | here
        
         | ChocolateGod wrote:
         | Maybe it's just media bias, but I have seen interest and work
         | for GNOME really drop off the last couple of years. You could
         | see something cool being worked on every couple weeks (at least
         | reported on).
         | 
         | I remember this goal to change the window management to be more
         | like a tiling WM (similar to Niri) that seems to have faded
         | away. I recently moved from GNOME to KDE, one reason being KDE
         | adopting Wayland protocols quicker and constant performance
         | issues with GNOME.
        
           | PixelForg wrote:
           | > I remember this goal to change the window management to be
           | more like a tiling WM (similar to Niri) that seems to have
           | faded away.
           | 
           | Are you talking about this article?
           | 
           | https://blogs.gnome.org/tbernard/tag/tiling/
        
             | ChocolateGod wrote:
             | Yes it was shown off at their GUADEC.
        
       | amanzi wrote:
       | I think they bit off more than they could chew with this project,
       | but happy they are making progress. I actually prefer Gnome, so I
       | didn't care much for this project anyway. I've switched back to
       | regular Debian 13 and am super happy with it.
        
         | kokada wrote:
         | Yes, I didn't even know they didn't had a version based on the
         | last LTS (that was release more than 1 year ago). Especially
         | considering that they have a strong focus for developers, and
         | developers in general wants the new-ish libraries otherwise
         | things starts to break or just in general compatibility issue
         | with newer programs or libraries that you may depend for work.
         | 
         | It does seems to me that it would be better to invest one more
         | release cycle in Gnome before switching all efforts to their
         | Cosmic DE. But good luck for the team nonetheless.
        
           | adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
           | One of the big differences between PopOs and Ubuntu is that
           | they tend to keep more up to date versions of the kernel and
           | drivers which significantly mitigates the impact of this.
           | PopOS 24.04 is currently on kernel 6.16.
        
           | swiftcoder wrote:
           | I don't know about that - quite a few of us developers value
           | stability over all else.
           | 
           | I can build newer tools/libraries from source if needed, but
           | upgrading and discovering half my workflow is broken on a
           | newer OS is an absolute dealbreaker. I'll wait to adopt new
           | OS for some time after they are released, let the early
           | adopters flush out all the bugs.
        
       | weatherlight wrote:
       | I've been using Alpha(as my main driver!) for a year now, there's
       | been a few hiccups here and there but its been very good. I
       | prefer this to Gnome.
       | 
       | It's my main driver for software development, it was initially a
       | dual boot system with windows, but I found that I could use Steam
       | with very little configuration and could do all my gaming in
       | linux(Cosmic DE/PopOS, I have a Nvidia GPU) as well. Works out of
       | the box with Bigwig Studio and my Soundcard (Ultralite mk5)
       | 
       | I use a mix of the Cosmic store and nix for packages and
       | programs.
       | 
       | I don't need to use windows ever again for anything and it makes
       | me very happy.
        
       | francislavoie wrote:
       | They took too long so I moved off of PopOS 22.04 over to Ubuntu
       | 25.04. I had tons of audio stability issues among many other
       | things that I wanted fixed as well. I also have a lot of Gnome
       | extensions I depend on right now, so I'm not ready to run a
       | completely new DE without a healthy extension ecosystem to fix
       | the quirks. I love the idea of a Rust DE and all that, but I
       | can't really risk it for my daily driver machine.
        
         | noisy_boy wrote:
         | Same - I got tired of waiting and moved to KDE on Fedora. Zero
         | complaints and regrets. People said that Fedora is too bleeding
         | edge and things break but fingers crossed, it has been an
         | awesome experience.
        
           | ajcp wrote:
           | I've been running Fedora for years on my XPS 13 and am very
           | pleased. Had zero issues except the integrated webcam doesn't
           | work, but honestly that's a feature to me.
        
             | andrewflnr wrote:
             | Weird. I'm also running Fedora on an xps 13 and my camera
             | is fine. In case it makes a difference, is yours the
             | Ubuntu-specific version?
        
               | ajcp wrote:
               | Yup! I bought the Ubuntu specific version and flashed
               | Fedora on it day 1. From everything I've read this was
               | fairly common behavior.
        
             | mixmastamyk wrote:
             | I had to blacklist newer kernel series that broke AMD
             | graphics. But overall quite like it.
        
           | hodgehog11 wrote:
           | Exact same story; Fedora has been so much more wonderful than
           | I expected. Made me realise just how far the Linux desktop
           | has really come these past years while Pop OS languished.
           | I've tried the alpha, and while bugs were few, Cosmic doesn't
           | look or feel like home to me. The slightly off positioning of
           | items on the taskbar, the high contrast borders... It's
           | speedy, but it's not for me.
        
             | troyvit wrote:
             | I might try Fedora now that kde-neon is going the immutable
             | route via kde linux. That said one of my most stable times
             | with KDE was installing it over Pop!_OS. It was rock solid.
        
           | wilsonnb3 wrote:
           | There is a Fedora Cosmic spin available as well for anyone
           | who likes Fedora but still wants a nice Cosmic experience out
           | of the box
        
       | mythz wrote:
       | Was looking forward to this for a long time as I think Linux
       | could do with a clean break from the Legacy built around
       | Gnome/KDE/X11. But it's taking so long to get to release my main
       | concern is now that a small company doesn't have the dev
       | resources to take on maintaining a DE by themselves and haven't
       | been successful in attracting a dev community to help pick up the
       | slack.
       | 
       | I'm now leaning towards the Hyprland/Omarchy approach of starting
       | with a curated blank slate that can be easily themed, customized
       | and extended to suit where I wouldn't have to rely on big drop
       | releases of a single organization for any missing/preferred
       | functionality.
       | 
       | Even at its young age Omarchy has some how managed to attract
       | 134/782 open/closed PRs [1] vs 6/90 for CosmicDE (since 2022) [2]
       | which IMO speaks to the approachability and hackability of a
       | scriptable DE and the community being built up around each.
       | 
       | Edit: as the Cosmic DE repo is made up of many submodules, they
       | all have a lot more PRs/activity combined.
       | 
       | [1] https://github.com/basecamp/omarchy/pulls
       | 
       | [2] https://github.com/pop-os/cosmic-epoch/pulls
        
         | BoredPositron wrote:
         | Omarchy is mainly composed of configuration files which makes
         | it a lot easier to interact with.
        
           | mythz wrote:
           | Exactly, much more hackable/approachable/sharable to be able
           | to easily cobble features together.
        
           | Jgrubb wrote:
           | "configuration as convention"?
        
         | mwcz wrote:
         | The number of PRs for Cosmic you shared is very misleading. The
         | parent repo is full of submodules, so if you want to present
         | the number of PRs to Cosmic as a whole, you need to count the
         | PRs for each repo. For example, the software library app alone
         | has more than double (3/182) the number you presented (6/90).
        
           | mythz wrote:
           | ok that makes more sense, was looking for their main/largest
           | repo with the most stars, but yeah given it's made up of
           | multiple sub modules its PRs are highly under represented.
        
         | jorams wrote:
         | > Omarchy has some how managed to attract 134/782 open/closed
         | PRs [1] vs 6/90 for CosmicDE (since 2022) [2]
         | 
         | You're linking to the PRs on one of many Cosmic repositories,
         | the top-level wrapper repository. The total number of PRs on
         | all Cosmic repositories it includes is far larger than Omarchy.
        
         | sroerick wrote:
         | I agree with this.
         | 
         | However, I have a Starlabs convertible tablet, which I have
         | just not gotten comfortable with on Arch.
         | 
         | I've considered going the sxmo route, but the volume buttons
         | aren't that good. So I'm thinking maybe KDE plasma? Maybe the
         | hardware is just not good enough for me to be happy.
         | 
         | There really isn't a solid arch config, to my knowledge, on
         | tablets. I'd love to have the scriptability of Omarchy on
         | something that worked well with an OSK and touchscreen. It may
         | be hard to do this, however, as elements like "Activate OSK
         | when text box selected" might be reliant on DE properties. Im
         | not sure
        
         | pelagicAustral wrote:
         | This is fine, but Hyprland/Omarchy is a different paradigm than
         | you average Gnome/KDE distro... As much as I would love to love
         | Omarchy, it is just not my cup of tea, I just like to operate
         | on windows floating everywhere, and get pissed that I can't
         | find what I'm after and Super+Tab two full rounds before
         | landing where I want to be, I just like that, I thrive in this
         | chaos... I settled for Bluefin which is by far the best
         | developer experience I have ever had in my life, it is just the
         | perfect distro for coming from either Windows or macOS...
        
         | pjmlp wrote:
         | A UNIX graphical system without a proper developer stack, with
         | frameworks for all layers, means everyone does their little
         | thing, the people that can't be bothered just ship Electron or
         | something just as bad, and for all user purposes to manage
         | windows, and a couple of xterms, one could just be using FVWM
         | from 1994.
         | 
         | Which is how I look to most of these new desktops.
        
           | thw_9a83c wrote:
           | > with frameworks for all layers
           | 
           | Not only that. Those frameworks are constantly changing. Old
           | APIs are left behind while new, incompatible APIs are
           | introduced swiftly. Fortunately, the Linux desktop is now
           | perfectly usable despite all this, because most software runs
           | in a terminal, the Electron engine, or in the web browser.
        
             | pjmlp wrote:
             | Which is basically why nowadays, my devices don't run
             | GNU/Linux.
             | 
             | I am old enough that when I reached university, there were
             | still green and ambar terminals to a DG/UX server used as
             | timesharing system by all students.
             | 
             | Electron, the only application I tolerate on my private
             | computers is VSCode, mostly because some plugins aren't
             | available anywhere else.
             | 
             | Browser, I can have anywhere.
             | 
             | If it is to have the same experience as early 1990's UNIX,
             | I can just as well ssh into a server box, VM or container.
        
           | thewebguyd wrote:
           | Isn't this what Gnome/Libadwaita is trying to solve? They've
           | been putting quite a bit of effort into it, and gnome
           | builder, flatpak & related tech to have a proper developer
           | stack for making GUI apps, and a community (gnome circle) to
           | show them off.
        
             | pjmlp wrote:
             | Yes, both GNOME and KDE, but unfortunately never took off
             | as many of us expected in the 2000's, and nowadays
             | apparently tiling managers without such frameworks is what
             | is cool.
        
             | t43562 wrote:
             | At one time Gnome ejected a portion of its user base in
             | order to become something that would work on tablets and
             | phones as well as desktops - at least that seemed like the
             | rationale. At that time it looked like there might be a
             | market for linux devices with a UI and I don't know for
             | sure but I think some money was spent to achieve this which
             | is why objections by users were of so little importance.
             | 
             | Nowadays phones seem like a duopoly that cannot be
             | challenged and tablets aren't very important anymore. Linux
             | doesn't matter on the desktop because browsers are the UI
             | and the apps run in the cloud. The whole GNOME/KDE/whatever
             | effort is a bit moot.
        
         | Y_Y wrote:
         | > curated blank slate
        
         | cosmic_cheese wrote:
         | On approachability, I think with COSMIC the use of Rust is
         | going to negatively impact it in that area. I don't think a
         | scripting language needs to be used, but something more C-like
         | in syntax is a must. Rust is intimidating looking to those who
         | don't know it which is likely to bottleneck contributions.
        
           | MeetingsBrowser wrote:
           | Rust is the "most loved" language for almost a decade now.
           | 
           | The syntax may be verbose in some cases, but that ignores the
           | hype surrounding Rust. I don't think they will be hurting for
           | contributors.
        
             | cosmic_cheese wrote:
             | Rust certainly has an enthusiastic following, and I'm sure
             | there will be contributors from within that circle, but
             | that hype has little impact beyond that crowd. The chances
             | that your random user who gets an itch to contribute has
             | adequate Rust skills is not high.
        
             | t43562 wrote:
             | One tends to love things that make life easy. If you spend
             | all your time debugging memory errors or concurrency
             | problems then rust might seem wonderful for saving you from
             | those problems.
             | 
             | I'm still learning it but it doesn't really seem very
             | joyous when trying to accomplish simple things. I'm feeling
             | nostalgic for C actually. I don't end up doing a lot of
             | concurrency and memory handling is a discipline that can be
             | greatly aided by running valgrind on my unit tests.
             | 
             | I find Python joyous and I don't love Javascript but I'd
             | much rather write UI code in that than any compiled
             | language.
        
               | cosmic_cheese wrote:
               | I think that writing UIs in a compiled language can be a
               | pleasant experience, but it requires that the language in
               | question be designed to put an explicit heavy emphasis on
               | ergonomics and devs landing on the happy path by default.
               | Rust doesn't really fit that profile and prioritizes
               | safety above all.
        
           | thewebguyd wrote:
           | Or at the very least, an easier way to extend the desktop
           | with extensions.
           | 
           | What made gnome extensions so successful (despite gnome
           | breaking them every new release) is it's just JavaScript &
           | CSS. You can learn & make a gnome shell extension in an
           | afternoon. No need to learn C, GObject, etc.
           | 
           | For COSMIC, even the panel applets are full rust programs
        
             | cosmic_cheese wrote:
             | Unfortunately Gnome extensions suffer from breaking
             | frequently due to how they work.
             | 
             | The best design for extensions specifically is with a
             | capable, well-defined, stable public API that can be hooked
             | into by a scripting language. The extension APIs should be
             | exposed with both official bindings for popular languages
             | as well as plain C headers, so other language bindings can
             | be easily written and extension authors can use Python or
             | Lua or Ruby or whatever it is they like to write.
        
         | array_key_first wrote:
         | The reality is that hyprland is not a desktop environment and,
         | even with a few dozen extra packages installed, it doesn't
         | cover even a quarter of the use cases something like KDE does.
         | 
         | For many people that's fine, but you're comparing apples and
         | oranges.
        
           | mythz wrote:
           | The fact they are different is the point, and my preference
           | is leaning towards the Hyprland/Omarchy approach of starting
           | from an empty base that you script and stitch different
           | features together (from a wider community of authors) to
           | build my preferred DE instead of relying on a big release
           | drops from a single vendor to provide most of a DE's
           | features.
           | 
           | There's going to be room in Linux Desktops for multiple DE's,
           | and everyone's going to have their own preference, mine's
           | just leaning towards the Hyprland ecosystem.
        
       | ollien wrote:
       | This might be what finally gets me to ditch my i3+xfce setup.
       | Anyone done a similar transition?
        
         | Garvi wrote:
         | I was using Manjaro i3 X11 for 3 years. A few months back I
         | switched to Arch Hyprland Wayland and so far I am very happy
         | with it. I use it for programming, video editing and gaming. No
         | major inconveniences.
        
         | dadoomer wrote:
         | I was running i3 on Arch before. Then, I moved to Gnome Shell
         | and have been daily driving COSMIC for a couple months. I think
         | you will like it. At least on Alpha there were a couple rough
         | edges here and there, but no deal breakers for me.
        
       | gempir wrote:
       | I've been using the cosmic-de on arch for a few months now.
       | Started with the alpha and then switched to their git main
       | branch.
       | 
       | I absolutely loved it. It is such a breath of fresh air. I
       | previously used to run i3 and a bunch of other tooling around it
       | I can't even remember. Setup always had some weird edge case or
       | was weird to use. Gnome always felt very bloated and laggy.
       | 
       | I then tried sway because I wanted to see if Wayland was any
       | better performance and was not very impressed, although it just
       | might be a configuration issue, the out of the box experience was
       | just not good. And I wasn't in the tinkering mood anymore.
       | 
       | I installed cosmic and everything just worked. It felt snappy, no
       | weird lags, nice but not too slow animations, even a build in
       | window manager that was close enough to i3 that I no longer need
       | sway or i3.
       | 
       | Notification, Display Management, Login, Autolaunching apps,
       | Window Management etc. everything finally feels like a full
       | operating system the way I have never experienced linux before.
       | Maybe Ubuntu or Mint came close, but those came with their own
       | troubles.
        
       | writebetterc wrote:
       | Why should we care about the COSMIC Desktop Environment?
       | 
       | Edit: I've now gotten 2 downvotes in 4 minutes. I do not
       | understand what's so controversial about this comment. Why should
       | we care about having a third DE? Does this matter to users at
       | all? I've watched several videos show casing it, and there seems
       | to be no point to it except organizational (Pop OS wants to break
       | free from GNOME).
        
         | spicyusername wrote:
         | Pro-tip: These are inside thoughts, no need to comment, just
         | have the thought and move along.
        
           | writebetterc wrote:
           | Sorry, I don't see it that way.
        
             | maleldil wrote:
             | Which is why you were downvoted.
        
           | charcircuit wrote:
           | Not being able to question large investments is not a healthy
           | perspective. And as this is the first public release with
           | Cosmic, I think it's completely fair for people to question
           | it.
        
             | timeon wrote:
             | Sure but there was not much in that question.
        
         | jamesnorden wrote:
         | Who is "we". But to answer your question, it was created
         | because System76 didn't find an existing DE that met their
         | needs even after extensive changes to them.
        
         | graynk wrote:
         | Because there are a number of existing frustrations with GNOME
         | that can not be fixed in GNOME, because GNOME Foundation has
         | their own specific vision, which not a lot of people like.
         | 
         | KDE is good but has its own flaws, and it's a different
         | workflow
        
           | array_key_first wrote:
           | IMO KDE is not a different workflow. You can easily recreate
           | all of gnome in KDE.
           | 
           | So, just use KDE.
        
             | BaardFigur wrote:
             | Tried KDE. I very much prefer Gnome with extensions
        
             | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
             | Can KDE do dynamic workspaces now? That was one of the
             | nicer things about GNOME last time I used it
        
         | phkahler wrote:
         | Your comment could have been posted under almost ANY story on
         | HN. "Why should we care about .... ?" In other words, it's a
         | very low value comment as far as discussion goes. If you don't
         | care about it move on, nobody said you had to care.
        
         | plasticsurgery wrote:
         | Perfectly valid question. I remember Ubuntu getting lost down a
         | rabbit hole of their touch screen desktop wm that had soo many
         | warts. I guess if you don't have the power to steer a project
         | you fork or try something else. Then realise you neither have
         | the UI chops or technical finesse to pull something off.
         | Windows has been atrocious UI wise since Win 8, failed to pull
         | anything off cohesively and just left a mess. Much like Ubuntu,
         | but with what you would expect a well funded dedicated UI team.
         | 
         | UIs generally sick in Linux with the exception of the shell.
         | And even that could be sexed up hugely.
         | 
         | The best thing about AI tools for me is that they make up for
         | shortcomings in the UI and have become a very important go-
         | between for me.
        
       | palata wrote:
       | I had to check, so for the record: Pop OS is an Ubuntu-based
       | Linux distro.
        
         | monooso wrote:
         | Just to be clear, the news here is that Pop OS now uses the
         | Cosmic DE (which just reached beta).
         | 
         | Unlike the previous Pop OS DE, Cosmic DE is not tied to a
         | particular distro. For example, there's an official Fedora Spin
         | [1].
         | 
         | [1]: https://fedoraproject.org/spins/cosmic
        
         | ok123456 wrote:
         | No snaps by default. So it fixes Canonical's folly.
        
       | spicyusername wrote:
       | Tiling support is such a killer feature.
        
         | qludes wrote:
         | Don't both gnome and kde also have tiling support?
        
           | specproc wrote:
           | Gnome via extensions, but not natively. I've never really
           | clicked with any of them. Not sure about KDE.
        
             | qludes wrote:
             | Plasma has at least basic tiling support for different
             | workspaces and reasonable default hotkeys to arrange your
             | windows.
             | 
             | https://kde.org/announcements/plasma/6/6.4.0/
        
               | specproc wrote:
               | Nice. I'm sat on Gnome like a basic again, as I got tired
               | of fucking around with dotfiles and deciding what sort of
               | login manager defines me as a person.
               | 
               | Had been thinking of giving KDE another whirl, but now
               | Cosmic seems roadworthy, and I could go back to hyprland
               | with this Omarchy thing everyone seems so hyped about.
               | 
               | All these choices, such a great time to be a linux user.
        
       | sieep wrote:
       | Pop is great & i love what system76 is doing, but the bugs in
       | cosmic have had me holding off. I will certainly try again soon.
        
         | OnionBlender wrote:
         | Which bugs in particular? I was thinking of installing it on
         | another drive.
        
           | tracker1 wrote:
           | Can't speak for GP, but in the 5-6 months or so I've been
           | using it, most of my issues have been with keyboard
           | navigation breaking or not working in some of the apps. It's
           | gotten better with regular updates though and has been pretty
           | solid. Other stability issues seem to have been deeper as
           | since switching to a mainline kernel install (6.16.x) I
           | haven't noticed any deep issues.
           | 
           | Pop has kept kernel updates well ahead of Ubuntu though, I
           | just switched sooner than they seem to have.
        
           | sieep wrote:
           | it doesn't seem to handle multiple monitors very gracefully
           | yet, at least when I used it & on my setup. Felt a little bit
           | slower than gnome and less stable across the board.
           | 
           | For example, the top-bar UI doesn't render certain app icons
           | properly, which was driving me crazy. Maybe it's a
           | settings/config thing. My opinion is if cosmic isn't a drop-
           | in replacement for gnome with extra bells and whistles, im
           | not going to use it.
           | 
           | For all I know, it could be a lot better than gnome at this
           | point. But for a daily driver that I'm working in, I need the
           | stability of gnome over the 'cool factor' of cosmic.
           | 
           | I really liked the direction it is heading and will be using
           | it eventually. Worth installing and trying out!
        
       | curioussquirrel wrote:
       | I've moved over to hyprland but Cosmic is a pretty good upgrade
       | from Gnome already in my opinion. Great to see so many viable
       | desktop environments!
        
       | oguz-ismail wrote:
       | > 24.04 LTS Beta
       | 
       | It's almost 2026. Yeesh
        
         | smallerfish wrote:
         | Yeah the version numbering is a mistake. They should version
         | based on their release, not the underlying base.
        
       | honeybadger1 wrote:
       | Cosmic is coming along so well, worked with their PM team when it
       | was pre-alpha on validations and the project still excites me.
        
       | mirekrusin wrote:
       | Shame there is no ARM64 ISO.
        
       | TylerLives wrote:
       | I've had issues with Nvidia drivers on a fresh install. Couldn't
       | get my PC to boot, similar to what is described here -
       | https://youtu.be/ICXjcnhW5qc
        
       | moondev wrote:
       | The killer feature of Pop for me is nvidia drivers baked into the
       | live ISO. Live boot to nvidia-smi without touching the disk is
       | really handy.
        
         | akdev1l wrote:
         | Universal Blue has this too
        
       | qwertox wrote:
       | > Dragging and Dropping files from Wayland apps to X11 apps is
       | not currently supported.
       | 
       | I assume that this is a Wayland/X11 limitation.
       | 
       | How is Linux supposed to beat Windows if the desktop is so
       | broken? Microsoft breaking their Windows 11 desktop more and more
       | seems to be the only hope.
        
         | heavyset_go wrote:
         | Works in KDE just fine
        
           | phendrenad2 wrote:
           | Which implies that it's one of those things that DEs need to
           | provide. So to answer OP's question, the answer is: With lots
           | of custom, non-standard code. And who knows, if the world
           | continues in this X11/Wayland duopoly, maybe one interop API
           | will become standardized.
        
         | array_key_first wrote:
         | The desktop is literally not broken at all.
         | 
         | This is already standardized, there's already multiple
         | implementations, and it works in all major desktop
         | environments.
         | 
         | This is a brand new DE that just got out of alpha.
         | 
         | Its not gonna implement all protocols, because duh. Let's not
         | be melodramatic.
         | 
         | This happens literally every time something new happens on
         | Linux. "Oh it's so fucked and broken and Linux sucks!!"
         | 
         | Okay, it's new. There are mature options. Use a mature option.
         | This is how things have always worked for all ecosystems.
        
           | pathartl wrote:
           | The fragmentation is a huge reason the desktop experience is
           | broken. The only UI that's actually consistent across all
           | distros and works pretty damn well is the TUI.
        
             | reppap wrote:
             | I've been daily driving Gnome on Fedora for years and
             | literally nothing about it is broken. We're having very
             | different experiences.
        
               | doubled112 wrote:
               | In GNOME, can you drag and drop from the archive manager
               | into your file manager yet?
        
         | ok123456 wrote:
         | This is solved by using X11.
        
       | dxxvi wrote:
       | It's Sep 2025. Why is the 24.04 LTS still at Beta?
        
         | al_borland wrote:
         | I think it's related to what is mentioned in this blog post.
         | 
         | https://blog.system76.com/post/closing-in-on-a-cosmic-alpha
         | 
         | > The official release of COSMIC DE will debut on Pop!_OS 24.04
         | LTS, which will be based on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS. Running and
         | testing on 24.04 gets us closer to a final, polished release.
         | 
         | It seems it's because Cosmic development is being based on
         | Ubuntu 24.04, so it's more about that base than the date of the
         | Pop_OS release.
        
           | SSLy wrote:
           | Do you think that they'll rebase for the soon coming 26.04?
        
             | adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
             | probably.
        
       | sheerun wrote:
       | This was long awaited thing, very good!
        
       | giancarlostoro wrote:
       | Pop was my last Distro before I went to Endeavour (Arch), it
       | wasn't anything against Pop, I just ran into a weird issue where
       | I needed a more up to date GBLIC for some software I was trying
       | to run (to add insult to injury, it was a Ubuntu package too). I
       | am really excited by the work they do, if I'm ever shopping for a
       | Non-Mac Laptop in the near future I'm strongly leaning towards
       | buying a System76 laptop since I love what they do.
       | 
       | Their desktop environment was nice, though I always run back to
       | KDE, even now I'm on KDE on Endeavour, I gave Budgie a try again
       | which is another one I really enjoyed for Ubuntu but KDE has
       | enough bells and whistles that I always miss, especially its
       | window management stuff. I did try OpenBox and company but too
       | much manual setup required. I want OOTB experiences that just
       | work without hassle.
       | 
       | I am interested that they've been working on a Text Editor, I saw
       | it on their GitHub, and hopefully it will be nicely polished.
       | 
       | One thing I loved about ElementaryOS (Ubuntu based as well) was
       | the built-in custom Text Editor they made, it was nice and fast,
       | and did everything I wanted, and looked gorgeous. I'm hoping they
       | do similar with their Text Editor.
        
       | jamesponddotco wrote:
       | No secure boot support? Still?
        
       | dmart wrote:
       | Wow, reordering workspaces with the mouse! This is a small thing
       | that has been driving me insane on GNOME coming from macOS.
        
       | HumblyTossed wrote:
       | if you're on the alpha, does it update to the beta when you apt
       | update?
        
         | junga wrote:
         | Yes it does. We could argue if it's update or upgrade, but I
         | think it's clear what you mean.
        
       | adverbly wrote:
       | So excited for this! I'm on 22.04 but I've been watching this
       | closely.
       | 
       | I love stable things so I might still wait for this to get out of
       | beta, but I love that it's making progress! Maybe in time for
       | 2026.04 LTS?
       | 
       | Excited to desktop swap again!
        
       | tracker1 wrote:
       | I've been running the alpha for about 6 months at this point...
       | it's been relatively solid, but there's been a few rough edges
       | (mostly around keyboard navigation in the apps). Most of what I
       | expect to work is now working without issue. I've also been
       | running a mainline 6.16 kernel, for better gpu support (RX
       | 9070XT).
       | 
       | I've got no idea on where Accessibility lands right now though...
       | At least in terms of screen readers. As I've been having vision
       | issues even beyond using very large monitors I've had to rely on
       | zoom features in apps/browsers. It's generally been a better
       | experience than some of the rougher edges of Windows at work. I
       | need to figure out if/how to scale RDP sessions.
        
       | coastalpuma wrote:
       | I think this is amazing work and I'm looking forward to trying it
       | out and maybe adopting long term, but I can't help but think
       | they're selling themselves short with the default theme.
       | Personally find the electric blue pretty grating. Would be nice
       | to see more examples of "calm" theming with more neutral tones,
       | or even a preset alternative default for that.
        
       | kylecazar wrote:
       | Long time Pop user -- I've been eagerly following Cosmic's
       | development for over a year. I resisted the temptation of the
       | alphas, and know how I'll be spending my evening.
       | 
       | Congrats to the devs. It's a significant achievement.
        
       | exabrial wrote:
       | My next laptop will be a system76 no matter what... But
       | pleeeeeease come out with a high-perf ARM model!!
        
       | dmix wrote:
       | Linux is always so much further ahead of Apple on window
       | management.
        
         | CharlesW wrote:
         | Reading through this thread, I've never been happier with macOS
         | as my daily driver. I don't think or worry about my OS at all,
         | other than being reminded on HN how terrible it is.
        
       | dev1ycan wrote:
       | I'm not a UI/UX designer but I feel like in general, Linux
       | community need to put a LOT more focus into the GUI frameworks.
       | 
       | What is the fundamental thing that makes a Windows version feel
       | like a new Windows version? It's not a different control panel or
       | basica taskbar animations (although it helps), it's mundane
       | things like how the borders of the buttons look, animations,
       | transitions, loading bars so on and so on...
       | 
       | It all boils down to Winforms/UWP/WinUI and others for Windows
       | and GTK/QT for Linux...
       | 
       | To this day Winform in windows gives me a sense of peace,
       | something about the way the UI looks just looks "solid"... even
       | when a lot of it is outdated, UWP was terrible while WinUI 3 is
       | sleek and modern, although it does feel less robust I just can't
       | pinpoint the reason exactly.
       | 
       | For Linux I don't know exactly what it is but I am almost sure
       | GTK/QT are responsible, I have yet to use a linux distro that
       | manages to give me the "feel" of solidness that let's say the
       | Windows 7 UI gave me, it's not really about how smooth your
       | animations is, it's that when I open a file explorer or the
       | control panel it just doesn't feel "there".
       | 
       | I how can it be that so many decades keep passing and Linux still
       | feels like a pre alpha UI compared to Windows versions of the
       | early 2000s? I just took a look at a youtube video of the beta
       | and I keep seeing distros focus on the wrong things, also can we
       | at LEAST bring back the chrome/aero/real button feel of the
       | "start menu" buttons? the PopOS start menu button looks very
       | unserious... I guess it's just me though.
       | 
       | I understand that there's a lack of funding but it wouldn't
       | surprise me if a really good UI framework design came around
       | Linux would suddenly start seeing much higher adoption.
        
       | outlore wrote:
       | First time Linux explorer here; does anyone know how Fedora
       | Atomic Cosmic fares against Pop OS?
        
         | acomjean wrote:
         | I can't say much about fedora But pop os is not bleeding edge
         | or glitzy. It's kind of a workhorse distribution. I like
         | Pop!os, despite its strange name.
         | 
         | I've used it pre installed at work/ home and installed on a
         | work machine to get the nvidia card working after being unable
         | with the original Ubuntu OS. Pop is basically Ubuntu so
         | software that works on Ubuntu works on pop. It's pretty bullet
         | proof.
         | 
         | The "pop shop" (oddly named installer program where you don't
         | spend money) has a lot of the open source applications with one
         | click install.
         | 
         | I think both Fedora and Popos can be run via usb stick if you
         | want to try them out.
        
       | wwweston wrote:
       | Anyone have this (or another linux distro) working with an nvidia
       | rtx 5060?
        
       | Uehreka wrote:
       | I've been using Pop OS for several years and really like it.
       | However while I think it's cool that they're doing some
       | innovative DE stuff, the fact that it has come at such a huge
       | cost to the stability of the OS is extremely frustrating.
       | 
       | I've been stuck on 22.04 for almost the entire 24.04 cycle at
       | this point, and I occasionally have weird display issues or other
       | bugs that I know are not going to get fixed.
       | 
       | At this point my hope is that Cosmic may be stable enough to
       | release as 26.04, since from what I've been hearing it sounds
       | like the beta still has a lot of rough edges.
       | 
       | I think I would be a lot less salty if they'd just explicitly
       | called a mulligan on 24.04 back in early or mid 2024. I could've
       | made an informed decision to switch to an Ubuntu flavor with
       | slightly rockier Nvidia drivers support while I waited until
       | 26.04 to rejoin Pop OS. But instead they just kept drip feeding
       | PR updates saying that it was "coming soon!", even though it was
       | probably clear to folks working on it that they were over a year
       | away.
       | 
       | Edit: To explain why I think it was clear to folks working on the
       | project: I recently went back to look at the Alpha announcements
       | from late last year. I wasn't going to run an Alpha, so I didn't
       | read them in depth, but in those announcements they announce that
       | they are BEGINNING work on a media player, which was available in
       | a WIP state in the Alpha. If they were BEGINNING work on the
       | media player in late 2024, then they probably could've said in
       | April 2024 (when they hadn't even started on it) that this was
       | going to take at least another year.
        
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