Since late April, we haven’t really heard much about System76’s eagerly anticipated new desktop environment, COSMIC, which is still sitting at the Alpha 7 stage. Sure, the wait for the beta has dragged on much longer than many expected.
But while for many of us summer is a time for vacation, COSMIC’s developers have been hard at work, and now one of the core pieces of the desktop is ready: the initial setup, a big milestone on the way to the final release. With that said, let’s take a look at what it brings to the table.
Accessibility comes first. The setup enables a screen reader by default and includes a magnifier that zooms in on the cursor as it moves. High-resolution scaling is handled automatically, with options to fine-tune scaling and adjust text size incrementally.
The next screens highlight customization. Users can choose from six preset themes: “COSMIC Dark,” “COSMIC Light,” “Comet Light,” “Cream Light,” “Mocha Dark,” and “Nebula Dark.”
Additionally, panel layout customization is available, offering the option for a single or dual panel, making it easier for those familiar with Windows or macOS to adapt.
Moreover, workflow configuration is also built into the initial setup. Users can select between vertical and horizontal workspaces, choose whether windows tile or float within each workspace, and set workspaces as pinned or dynamic.
Let’s not forget to mention that tiling has been reworked with more intuitive behavior, extra grid layouts, and new keyboard shortcuts for navigation.
Finally, the setup introduces the Launcher, positioning it as a central tool for quickly accessing applications and features. Plus, users are reminded that COSMIC ships with a core suite of Rust-based applications ready for use.
With all these pieces in place, COSMIC is really starting to feel complete. At this point, it’s pretty safe to say the long-awaited first beta is just around the corner, and that release should give us a clear picture of what the final stable version will include.
Unfortunately, System76 hasn’t shared any specific details or an official timeline yet. But don’t worry—we’ll be among the first to let you know as soon as there’s news, so keep an eye out for updates.
In the meantime, if you’re eager to give COSMIC’s Initial Setup a spin, you can do so by downloading the latest stable Pop!_OS release and installing the desktop environment. Rolling-release distros offering COSMIC are also expected to update their repositories with the newest packages in the coming days.
For more information on everything in the new Initial Setup for the desktop environment, System76 has posted the full details on their X profile.
Image credits: System76
Universal Blue….. Immutable / Silverblue….. Rock Solid. Debian 13 – Rock Solid Choice. POP – is just OK. Not much to write home about. There are better choices. Rust ? It’s already rusting.
This is shaping up to be a great DE.
The simple fact that they built this initial setup completion shows that they have the correct approach, which is to let the user decide what is good for himself, and not force project some dumb workflow down their throats.
They have done almost everything right, so far.
I was going to read those details, but do people really still use X? Anywhere else they posted those details?
Everybody uses Wayland today.
Almost everyone does.
Just a few offended blue hairs no longer do, but basically they’re negligible and everyone ignores them.
What’s wrong with X? Not enough censorship for you?
“What’s wrong with X? Not enough censorship for you?”
Wow. That’s the kind of cookie-cutter drivel people blurt out when they can’t form an actual argument. X isn’t some noble free-speech haven—it’s a festering landfill of bots, scammers, and washed-up attention addicts screeching into the void. If you think anyone criticizing that hellscape is just crying for “censorship,” you’ve basically announced to the world that your brain runs on pre-chewed X replies and Facebook memes.
Let’s be real: X is dead. The advertisers are gone, serious users are gone, and what’s left is a sad carnival of conspiracy nuts and wannabe edge-lords trying to convince themselves their garbage takes are profound. Clinging to that cesspool doesn’t make you look principled, it makes you look pathetic. You’re not a free-speech defender; you’re a groupie for a rotting platform that’s already irrelevant.
This is the usual load of nonsense from Red Hat paid trolls. No critical thinking, a bit too affirmative, none of what is said is actually happening as such, the extinguish attempt at the competition (not X itself since they took it over then sabotaged it, but the new extremely active and dynamic competition), the negative opinion attempt, etc…
The only pathetic person is the one that relays whatever he was ingrained and lobotomized into by its Wayland cult.
Nevermind, I misunderstood and was talking about X11, not X, formerly Twitter.
Argh, why no workspace grid? As soon as you get to 4 Workspaces it’s more efficient to move between them when using arrow key shortcuts whilst still allowing you to use number shortcuts if you would like.
This has been such a terrible rollout. Imagine being a Pop_OS! user and having to wait YEARS for a new major OS release, all for the sake of developing a DE that doesn’t promise significant changes (despite what System76 says). There are plenty of other distros that offer parity with the “selling” points of Pop_OS!, and the rest of the functionality can be easily implemented with various extensions in GNOME. ArcMenu (select the Pop menu), Forge tiling manager, etc. GPU support and GNOME shell improvements were the selling points, at least in my mind. But there are more optimized distributions which also NVIDIA GPU support out of the box, which are more optimized than is Pop. I continue to believe that System76 only set out to create this new DE, which is just as buggy now as it was nearly a year ago, so they could firmly stamp their imprint on the distro. They make good computers, they maintained (past tense) a decent distro, and contributed positively to the development of GNOME (IIRC). Leaving users with no new major releases for years, in furtherance of a solution looking for a problem, in my mind means that Pop_OS! is no longer a reliable distro.
Relax—it’s only been a year and a half. Pop!_OS isn’t just tossing extensions on top and calling it a day. There’s real engineering work going on, and it’s obvious you don’t understand that. That’s fine—you’re an end-user. But don’t pretend you know what you’re talking about when you clearly don’t.
You’ve also exposed just how little you grasp the GNOME extensions ecosystem. GNOME developers have a history of being hostile toward the extensions community. Combine that with the constant breaking changes from upstream, and it’s no wonder extension developers keep burning out. Maybe now the light bulb will flicker on for you: this is exactly why Pop!_OS decided to build their own DE.
Think about it—if they’re already being forced to dump massive resources into maintaining extensions just to survive the endless breakage and upstream hostility, why not go all-in? Why not create a desktop environment that actually works the way they want instead of cobbling together a Frankenstein’s monster of hacks? It’s the only logical move.
So, instead of firing off inane comments, maybe take a moment to reflect. Learn to understand the reasoning behind decisions, try using some empathy, and focus on giving constructive feedback. You’ll look a lot less ignorant—and a lot more like someone worth listening to—if you do.
—t. a Fedora user
I think I can understand the wish to move to a Rust-based DE for security reasons, but I think I have to agree with you. Especially considering the fact that the new COSMIC DE just doesn’t look very good. To my eyes, a vanilla Debian 13 install with Gnome + the Dash-to-Dock extension looks much better. For example, why have a rounded dock when you’re still using the same old tired, square (and ugly imo) icons? Honestly, it doesn’t look much better than the existing PopOS distro. What they REALLY need are some designers.
I have expressed the same sentiment elsewhere in regards to looks. But I have also made sure to mention that if they can get the functional core of the DE solid, looks can be addressed later. Not sure how easy it is to style the iced GUI library, but certainly more modern icons should be easy.
I have been playing with Cosmic on and off for a while and wish them well. Seems like they could hit a sweet-spot of a more full DE but maybe with better streamlined functionality than the other two players in this space. We will see, but I am rooting for them!
Agree that this rollout felt bad as popos user. Being stuck at Ubuntu 22.04 became a blocker for my work so I moved to Fedora and never looked back.
I don’t pretend to understand their full motivations in doing so, but I would much rather invest in my own technology than to drown in a maintenance burden when the upstream constantly breaks what I do.
And, I can say in my experience it is by far less buggy now than it was a year ago. It still wasn’t fully there the last time I tried it, but I can see it get better each time I do, and it’s still not even out of alpha. (Even if the nomenclature of alpha vs beta is a bit misused).
I also don’t understand the argument “the rest of the functionality can be easily implemented with various extensions in GNOME.” Extensions break all the time which is not really the fault of the extension developers. I personally don’t want to have to install extensions or the tweaks tool for that matter just to make the desktop more usable to me. And, your best option for having the top panel show on all monitors in GNOME is to not. You use the Fullscreen Avoider extension. I can have the top panel show on all monitors in COSMIC out of the box. It’s mind blowing to me that something that seems so simple to me took an entire new desktop environment for it to happen. And efforts to do so in KDE just results in jank.
We’ve been stuck in a world for ages now where the two main options for desktops are either GTK or Qt based (the most usable environments being GNOME and KDE). There have been others, sure. But, it is really exciting to see something new. It might not be an absolute revolution. But, it’s pretty freaking cool. For me, it’s going to be beautiful when it is done and stable.
lol. Because a new desktop in Rust happens overnight. Please. Clearly you never used it as it does have many features not available elsewhere. I’ve used Linux since 91 and finally a desktop i love. Buggy? I have been using it as a daily drive 12 hours a day for awhile very reliably.
I have installed Cosmic desktop on top of Manjaro Gnome desktop. Cosmic desktop works all right but Cosmic Store does not work.
You’re not using the DE, you’re using the Cosmic Extensions, so you won’t benefit from the majority of what is actually being done right now. If you want to use the actual DE, you have to find a distro that offers the actual DE or install it manually yourself. You can find which distros offer the DE itself here: https://system76.com/cosmic/
He is using the DE. It is available for Manjaro, and I’m using it too.
The Cosmic Store is working for me, but I uninstalled it because it has a hard dependency on flatpak, which is a Red Hat turd that I don’t want on my system.
Will beta be the point where the cosmic devs want and welcome bug reports, feature requests and other issues?
Either join the Pop!_OS Mattermost instance, or go through another official System76 channel that is intended for tracking feedback and technical matters – like the issue trackers, as Joom mentioned.
I dunno if you’ve ever looked at the Git issue trackers for this project, but you’ve always been able to do this. I’ve submitted several, with each one being eventually addressed. If you submit this stuff to the Pop subreddit, which I’m assuming is what you’ve only had experience with, of course they’re not going to take you into consideration. Reddit can’t track code changes, nor issues. It’s not the place for that.