[HN Gopher] Pop_OS 24.04 LTS with COSMIC desktop environment
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Pop_OS 24.04 LTS with COSMIC desktop environment
Author : onnnon
Score : 109 points
Date : 2025-12-11 19:03 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.system76.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.system76.com)
| foxheadman wrote:
| I used to hear about COSMIC and think "Glad to see more choice,
| but I doubt this will go anywhere".
|
| I wanted a Sway-like experience but with a desktop experience,
| and so tried it.
|
| It's surprisingly good: a DE with powerful enough window tiling.
|
| It's now my daily driver.
|
| Since they're backed by a sole company, I'm still not convinced
| on their longevity, but remain hopeful!
|
| I'm not familiar with Pop OS, which I now realise is what the
| post is.
| nartho wrote:
| I like tiling a lot more than I like floating windows. Cosmic
| is my daily driver and is awesome. I just wish it had a bit
| more customization options, I don't want to spend days
| rummaging through wikis like with hyprland but having a bit
| more control over it would be nice, not a deal breaker though
| panick21_ wrote:
| I think even if the company goes away we will see this
| continue. It modern it rust and some if its fundamentals are
| already used by other projects. Of course not same way, but its
| not just going away.
| pjmlp wrote:
| I was introduced to UNIX in 1993, Linux in 1995's Summmer,
| and have lost count how many X Windows desktops or windows
| managers have come and gone in 32 years.
| criddell wrote:
| What's been your favorite?
|
| I wasted too much time tweaking Enlightenment. I remember
| that was fun but I don't really remember much about
| actually using it.
|
| OS/2's Workplace Shell feels like the biggest lost
| opportunity (and has nothing to do with UNIXy stuff). I
| really liked Rexx and the SOM stuff felt cleaner than what
| became COM in Windows.
| mghackerlady wrote:
| Enlightenment still exists and works well, I just wish
| more apps were written around EFL so themes were easier
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| In two variations actually. One is a fork of E17:
| https://mokshadesktop.github.io
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moksha_(window_manager)
|
| https://www.theregister.com/2025/12/02/av_linux_25/
| baobun wrote:
| Some underappreciated and forgotten tiling wms that are
| still viable today:
|
| - ratpoison ("tmux for X11". Ultralight, great for kiosks
| and similar where you barely want a WM at all)
|
| - stumpwm (ratpoison on steroids in Lisp)
|
| - Xmonad (A bit different tiling dynamic that some
| prefer. I dig it despite Haskell, not because of it)
|
| - Qtile (Very flexible and easily hackable in python yet
| reasonably stable and fast. You can reproduce for example
| the Xmonad or i3 experiences pretty easily)
| pjmlp wrote:
| Window Maker/AfterStep were my all time favourites in
| GNU/Linux world.
|
| I used to be in the GNOME camp during its early days,
| even wrote a tiny article to The C/C++ User's Journal
| regarding Gtkmm, nowadays I rather use XFCE.
|
| The original fvwm also holds a special place, that was
| the first I used in GNU/Linux, back in 1995, and I got to
| customise it quite a bit.
|
| SOM was great, it also supported implementation
| inheritance, and had metaclasses concept as well.
|
| I like COM as idea, I dislike how badly Microsoft keeps
| rebooting the developer experience, and isn't able to
| provide modern toolig as easy as it was from VB 6,
| Delphi, C++ Builder. For something that has become the
| central mechanism how Windows APIs are delivered.
| panick21_ wrote:
| But X has stuck around and to think all that just because
| everybody was afraid of Sun.
| criddell wrote:
| I skimmed the linked story and I still don't really know what
| POP!_OS is. They are using the Linux kernel and wrote their own
| desktop environment, but what's in between that? Does it
| include all the GNU system tools? Is there a lot of software
| that takes advantage of the COSMIC desktop environment? Do they
| have an App Store? Is it closer to something like Ubuntu or is
| it more like Android?
| jsk2600 wrote:
| It's based on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, with their own DE
| dsego wrote:
| Does it use snap packages?
| cguess wrote:
| yes
| akdor1154 wrote:
| They attempt to avoid them, though snaps are still
| available if you wish.
|
| Flatpak is installed by default and used by their app
| store, and Firefox is packaged as a deb so you can avoid
| the snap.
|
| I consider it a deshittified Ubuntu.
| criddell wrote:
| Based on Ubuntu? So is it basically Ubuntu with Gnome
| removed and COSMIC added? How compatible are the two OS's?
|
| They show icons for Steam, Chrome, Firefox, Zoom, etc...
| Does that mean they are maintaining their own fork of those
| applications built for COSMIC?
| mghackerlady wrote:
| No? They can run on cosmic, just like they can run on any
| other desktop. It's a linux distro, it does linux distro
| things and happens to be built on ubuntu. What part of
| this are you not getting? Remember when Ubuntu made Unity
| because they were pissed at the GNOME people? That's what
| System76 did, they got mad at GNOME because GNOME didn't
| like how much they were messing with GNOME
| criddell wrote:
| I'm not super familiar with the history of GNOME, KDE, or
| COSMIC and I've never used COSMIC and I haven't been able
| to see into their app store to see what apps are
| available.
|
| The version of Chrome (for example) that Google
| distributes uses GTK which is GNOME, no? So I was
| wondering if System76 forked that and made a version that
| uses the COSMIC API.
| jsk2600 wrote:
| You do not need to have GNOME in order to run GTK apps -
| Pop_OS ships with GTK/QT libraries so all apps works as
| on Ubuntu.
| mghackerlady wrote:
| It's ubuntu with their own desktop and app store (kinda like
| mint) its also known for being the best linux experience for
| nvidia users. It's designed for power users and gamers
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Have you tried the new-ish KDE window tiling? (Super-T by
| default) I had a similar desire to you, and am quite happy with
| what KDE provided. It'd be interesting to read a comparison
| between the two.
|
| Although I'm happy enough with what KDE gives me that COSMIC
| would have to be substantially better before I'd endure the
| switching costs.
| tmtvl wrote:
| I hard bounced off COSMIC with the complete lack of theming. I
| can't even set my clock to a reasonable format in it. The only
| thing it has going for it is sane multi-monitor support, which
| neither KDE nor GNOME have gotten right so far (though at KDE
| there is some activity around it, dunno 'bout GNOME).
| dontlaugh wrote:
| What's wrong with Gnome's multi monitor support? My two
| monitors even have different pixel density.
| akdor1154 wrote:
| Gnome works OK with integer scaling, more granular than
| this and you're up shit creek.
|
| E.G. can you set one screen to 150% and one to 175%? (I
| think the answer to this is 'technically yes but then
| everything goes a bit blurry because they do it by
| rendering at 2x then downscaling')
|
| Proper mixed dpi scaling means stuff will render pixel-
| perfectly instead of downscaling hacks.
| dontlaugh wrote:
| I have two 4K monitors, one at 150% and another at 175%.
| Nothing is blurry.
|
| I did have to get a reasonably new Gnome, Ubuntu LTS had
| one that was broken with fractional scaling.
| jorvi wrote:
| I really hate that at some point in the past, KDE developers
| decided that they hated how deeply intuitive virtual desktops
| are and deprecated them in favor of something deeply
| unintuitive (Activities). Any issue or complaint mentioning
| it is shot down with "you're holding it wrong."
|
| Please just give virtual desktops first class support and
| lets forget about the Activities experiment. Most users hate
| it.
|
| The attitude regarding it is about as bad as Gnome forcing
| Overview on everyone, refusing to provide a first party dock
| or lightweight launcher. Despite almost every distro and 95%
| of Gnome users immediately installing Dash to Dock.
| bxparks wrote:
| I'm not familiar with the Gnome terminologies. Is Overview
| the one where they removed all the desktop icons, breaking
| 40 years of GUI conventions going back to the 1970s? (It's
| impossible to do a search on a product called "Overview".)
| I blew away Gnome after that, installed Mint MATE (now
| Cinnamon), and vowed to never touch Gnome again.
| jorvi wrote:
| Overview is when you press the Super ('Windows') key.
|
| What appears is an unholy amalgamation of a launcher, a
| workspace strip, a window overview, workspace peeking,
| and a dock.
|
| Worse yet is that every time you go in or out of this
| overview, an animation plays, making things fly and
| animate everywhere constantly, whenever you want to take
| any action.
|
| Whenever someone points out to Gnome developers that most
| people only want to open a launcher to type "52*93" or
| find a contact, that they just want to mouse over a dock
| to have a lightweight way to see if an application is
| open (and to switch to it), they get irate and tell you
| their vision is vastly superior.
|
| Gnome could be pretty great if the developers their
| attitude to their users wants and the feedback on their
| issue tracker wasn't extreme snark and "actually we are
| right". Even if clear UI defects are pointed out, no, in
| fact they are right.
|
| The Gnome peoples also frustrate any attempt at improving
| Wayland at a more rapid clip.
|
| There is a reason why Valve went with KDE. KDE has its
| own set of problems, but at least they are receptive,
| cooperative and friendly. I genuinely hope Valve puts
| enough money into KDE that Gnome with its high and mighty
| attitude gets completely railroaded.
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| Plasma/KDE's virtual desktops are working for me, as 3x3,
| 4x4 would be too small in the widget which shows in the
| 'taskbar', which is only 24 pixels high, here.
|
| Took me some time and asking in their irc-channel, but
| actually the basic setup is super-simple, and was too
| 'intuitive' for an old greybeard like me :-)
|
| You right-click on the launcher icon, or the systray and "
| _Add or Manage Widgets_ ", then a window appears where you
| can pick all sorts of widgets in a bar to the left, which
| then appear in a subwindow to the right. You just want the
| _Pager_ , and remove any instances of that _Activities
| Pager_ thing, if it is /they are already present(because
| you have multiple instances in different places(leftover
| from earlier tries, maybe)).
|
| What I didn't get was that you can pick that pager-widget
| from the subwindow, and move it anywhere you want it to in
| that whole taskbar-panel(outside the edit window!), by
| holding the mousebutton down, until it is exactly where you
| want it, and then releasing the mouse-botton.
|
| And then " _Exit Edit Mode_ " in the still open window,
| which then closes. That's all there is to it.
|
| (Similar to how you customize the appearance of Firefox)
|
| From then on you can configure the pager by right clicking
| onto it, and virtual desktops in system settings like you
| want them. Maybe having it appear larger with some key-
| combo, or whatever.
|
| During the time I cursed it, I discovered the _activity
| thing_ isn 't really active anymore, they just let it there
| for the people who want/like it, meanwhile the real virtual
| desktop thing didn't get much attention, but that may
| change in the future?
|
| Hopefully?
| bsimpson wrote:
| I tried a bunch of shells when I got my Legion Go, including
| COSMIC. It had the worst touchscreen support of any of them.
|
| Now that SteamOS is officially released, I just use KDE.
| Maybe COSMIC will be better at touch eventually, but since
| it's a traditional laptop company, I'm not sure.
| mjorgers wrote:
| I have yet to try it in depth, but being able to stack different
| apps into the same window is awesome. Reminds me of Konqueror,
| where you had the same app for browsing the internet and your
| local filesystem.
| jklinger410 wrote:
| I will try this once a designer has had a chance to clean it up
| mghackerlady wrote:
| It's clean enough, most of the changes you want can be done
| through theming
| LatencyKills wrote:
| I've been using 22.04 for about six months (AI development and
| some Steam games) - I really enjoy it. The 24.04 upgrade was
| flawless.
|
| It may sound a little odd but I'd describe my time with Pop!_OS
| as "quiet". It feels good to be total control again. I don't have
| to constantly disable things and there isn't a Copilot icon on my
| dock that comes back from the dead every few days.
|
| Obsidian, 1Password, VS Code, Warp, etc. all work without issue.
| wwweston wrote:
| AI dev - any chance it works well with nvidia 5xxx series
| cards?
| dewarrn1 wrote:
| Not your question, but 4xxx-series work seamlessly.
| bigyabai wrote:
| It should. The Linux/Nvidia experience is pretty much plug-
| and-play if you have modern drivers.
| sharms wrote:
| Yes they have an Nvidia image and I just used it on a 5080
| last weekend, worked perfect
| physicles wrote:
| Piggybacking on this... do all nvidia cards have the same
| issue with Linux drivers, where the fan won't ever go below
| 30%? I have a 3090 on Ubuntu 24 and hours of googling
| netted nothing that worked.
| Vinnl wrote:
| I guess that also means the first stable release of Cosmic -
| congrats to the team! Honestly I expected it to be delayed more,
| so good on them for pulling that off. Hopefully it's actually
| stable.
| Manfred wrote:
| I use Pop!_OS for my gaming PC and I generally enjoy it. It could
| do with less punctuation in the name because it makes it harder
| to search the internet for distro specific information.
| dardeaup wrote:
| I would be more inclined to use it if it didn't have
| punctuation within the name.
| taeric wrote:
| Kudos to the team on getting this out! Been looking forward to
| updating for a while.
| panick21_ wrote:
| I have been using is since early Alpha and overall its pretty
| good. Certainty bug early on but now that I'm thinking on it I
| don't remember hitting any real issues in a few months now.
|
| I still think the name Pop!_OS is dumb, they should just call it
| CosmicOS, as this new desktop is their defining feature and its a
| great name.
|
| What is really amazing is that thanks to Cosmic now becoming an
| important part of Wayland, along with others, the community in
| total can finally move protocol forward that were blocked by
| really dumb ideological conflicts that are holding back Wayland.
| If Cosmic can take Gnome market share, people will be more
| willing to move on protocols without Gnome and hopefully
| eventually Gnome will realize that they have to implement this
| stuff, or at least large users of Gnome will realize it.
|
| My with for Pop!_OS next major feature would be to embrace ZFS
| and build around it.
|
| I'm also looking forward to seeing full Cosmic on ReduxOS.
| ender341341 wrote:
| > the community in total can finally move protocol forward that
| were blocked by really dumb ideological conflicts that are
| holding back Wayland. If Cosmic can take Gnome market share,
| people will be more willing to move on protocols without Gnome
| and hopefully eventually Gnome will realize that they have to
| implement this stuff, or at least large users of Gnome will
| realize it.
|
| Can you expand on what you mean here? I only somewhat follow
| Wayland/X11 migration/development, but from what I understand
| gnome is on Wayland, enough so that they apparently dropped x11
| support from their upcoming release in march.
| mghackerlady wrote:
| GNOME is wayland only but either refuses to implement certain
| things or uses their position to prevent discussions from
| going anywhere
| akdor1154 wrote:
| Gnome is wayland, but they are very stubborn about the
| extensions they will/won't implement. For example, mixed dpi
| scaling, server side decorations, accessibility protocols all
| work differently on gnome or not at all.
|
| This makes it very difficult for Wayland to evolve in a way
| that people want, as Gnome is the biggest player by user
| count.
| panick21_ wrote:
| There are 10+ years of endless discussion about how wayland
| is being developed and being standardized.
|
| The youtuber Brodie Robertson does regularly updated on all
| the discussion and proposals and why are the moving forward
| or not moving forward. And what the issue with the processes
| are:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRjzjpJ02WDOsPPtwUqqE.
| ..
|
| If that's not good enough, you can find all the issues with
| the discussion, but be ready for the same issues to be
| discussed endlessly in a cycle for years and years.
|
| Gnome is not the only issue but they are on of the biggest.
| The refuse to implement certain things even when pretty much
| every other system on the planet both linux and non linux
| support it. And those are things that many applications relay
| on. And because of the way the standardization process works
| it was for years really hard to get many things into the
| standard leading to basic things missing and applications
| having inconstant support or apps that are just broken.
|
| Having more voting members and more members with some real
| money and development power and more composites has already
| changed the dynamics.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Wow, I had heard they were late but didn't realize it was over a
| year and a half.
|
| Note that if you're that far behind on a project, the rational
| choice is to significantly cut its scope, and push the rest to
| the following releases.
| uutangohotel wrote:
| Is there any reason why I'd want this release instead of waiting
| for 26.04?
| kwanbix wrote:
| I tried it because another_linux_distro! Sadly, I found the
| COSMIC dock looks "dead" since they can not implement the genie
| effect as it is patented by Apple :///////////
|
| EDIT: I refer to this effect:
| https://www.youtube.com/shorts/eOrvbaKz5H4
|
| It is called magnification effect.
| bsimpson wrote:
| The genie effect was from the original X release in like 99. If
| there's a patent, it should be expired.
|
| But that's a weird line to draw for which shells you find
| unacceptable.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| They did not say it was unacceptable.
| MrBra wrote:
| What's the genie effect?
| data-ottawa wrote:
| The window being minimized animates.
|
| It goes from bottom to top of the window with a continuous
| effect, it squishes down in width then gets warped/pulled to
| the dock icon to minimize.
|
| The effect is like when Genie from Aladdin enters or leaves
| the lamp, but without smoke.
| kwanbix wrote:
| Sorry, It is actually called magnification effect (I am not a
| Mac user).
|
| https://www.youtube.com/shorts/eOrvbaKz5H4
| phkahler wrote:
| I've often said OSes and DEs have stagnated, so web browsers
| started innovating in areas they shouldn't have needed to. Tabs
| is one such area. And now with Cosmic:
|
| Stacks, snapping, and sticky windows
|
| * Stack windows to combine them into tab groups like a browser
|
| *** Right click on the header and choose Create Window Stack.
| Then drag another window to the stack.
|
| *** When tiling windows, simply drag the window on top of another
| to create a stack.
|
| Tabs are an interesting way to handle multiple instances of the
| same app (though this sounds like cosmic might mix them too). But
| in Windows for example, each app would have to do it's own
| implementation of muli-document handling. Browsers just brought
| us the tabs metaphor to manage them. I always thought that should
| be done at a higher level than the apps, and now it's here! I was
| thinking toolkit level, but go a level up to the DE and mix apps.
| sho_hn wrote:
| FWIW, multiple KDE versions had similar group-windows-with-tabs
| implementations for many years, and the uptake wasn't
| particularly high.
|
| Cf. https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-
| content/uploads/archive/kde44...
| swisniewski wrote:
| I use Cosmic on a DGX Spark, as my daily driver, and it works
| pretty well.
|
| They don't have a pop os iso for arm64, but they do have arm64
| Debian repo. So I just took DGX os (what Nvidia ships on the
| device), added the pos os "releases" repo, and installed cosmic-
| session.
|
| It works like a charm and provides a super useful tiling
| experience out of the box.
|
| This is replacing my M3 Pro as my daily driver and I've been
| pretty happy with it.
|
| I recently upgraded to an ultrawide monitor and find the Cosmic
| UX to be hands down better than what I get in the Mac with it.
|
| If you want a Linux desktop with the productivity boost of a
| tiling window manager with a low learning curve, it's pretty
| good.
| JojoFatsani wrote:
| PopOS 20/22 was the first "as good as mac" desktop linux
| experience IMO. Didn't really need to improve on it from my POV
| since Chrome and Steam and Proton apps worked in it just great.
| I'm doing the upgrade now, I hope I don't regret it.
| lioeters wrote:
| Same here. Up-thread someone said the upgrade was flawless. I'm
| crossing my fingers.
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