COSMIC! This name has become increasingly popular in the open-source community over the past year, raising high expectations. Now, more than two years after System76 unexpectedly announced its bold plan to create a new desktop environment written in Rust programming language from scratch, users can finally try it out. And let me tell you, the wait was worth it.
We recently tested the alpha version of COSMIC, and our initial thoughts can be summed up most briefly with this: it’s a game-changer! Above all, it is incredibly fast. And when I say fast, I don’t just mean fast – it’s fast in the blink of an eye. With that said, let’s now move on to the possibilities the COSMIC alpha version has in store.
COSMIC Desktop: Possibilities and Impressions
When you log in to COSMIC, you’re immediately welcomed by a clean and familiar desktop setup. Everything is exactly where you expect it: the dock is at the bottom, the panel is on top, the desktop switcher is on the top left, and quick settings and the system tray area are on the top right. I mean, after the first few seconds, you already know – you’re home.
The first conclusion follows – unlike other desktops, COSMIC does not attempt to re-educate you on how to work with the desktop environment. It keeps it straightforward and user-friendly. There are no unexpected surprises; it’s designed for ease of use. Call me old-fashioned, but I strongly welcome this approach.
Of course, the first thing you do is a few clicks opening some apps, and oh boy, you realize that behind that clean facade is a real beast. Everything loads instantly without any delay. Just click, and it’s open. Now, let’s go through the parts of COSMIC more closely, one by one.
COSMIC Dock & Panel
System76, thank you for getting things back to normal. Having a persistent Dock is the bare minimum a regular Linux user expects to find in a desktop environment. It’s really well done here.
The first three applets handle essential functions like searching for files, managing virtual desktops, and accessing the COSMIC dash. The rest of the buttons are for your most-used applications, making them easy to reach. That’s it – clean and simple. But the best part is yet to come.
Looking to change the dock or top panel position? Want to resize them, change the opacity and appearance, configure auto-hide, or add applets? No worries. COSMIC offers you all the options to tweak them just the way you like.
Besides the persistent dock with configuration options, the system tray is another fundamental functionality that has always been missing for GNOME users. This feature is found in all major operating systems and desktop environments, and COSMIC offers it, of course. Only if you are a GNOME user will you be able to understand my excitement about this.
Tiling Capabilities
Tiling capabilities are one of the COSMIC desktop environment’s most prominent features, and they are seamlessly integrated by default. It’s user-friendly and can be turned on or off on demand with an option in the quick settings called “Automatically tile current workspace.”
However, what I find even more impressive is the ability to set different behaviors for the windows across various virtual workspaces. For example, your main workspace can use the standard floating layout, while other workspaces use tiling. Isn’t it great?
COSMIC App Store
The software management and system update app is one of the main ones in any Linux distribution. In light of this, the new COSMIC App Store (intended to replace the current Pop!_Shop) takes things to a new level for one reason—it is incredibly fast.
In my experience, other store applications often suffer a frustrating delay between clicking the icon and opening the app. This has led me to opt for the command-line approach for these tasks.
COSMIC Store App
However, the speed and efficiency of the COSMIC App Store could change many users’ minds. It’s impressively quick, allowing you to install apps or check and apply updates with just a few clicks, all within seconds.
COSMIC Appearance Options
COSMIC doesn’t just stop at functionality. One of its best features is the high level of customization that the desktop environment offers. With just a click, you can switch between light and dark themes and choose your favorite accent color to make your desktop more visually appealing. There’s much more you can do, too.
COSMIC lets you customize the shape of desktop elements, choosing from round, slightly rounded, or square styles. You can also adjust the size of the active window hints and the spacing between windows in tiling mode. Additionally, even though it’s still in the testing phase, you can experiment with different icon themes.
Other COSMIC Highlights
The desktop environment ships with predefined core applications, such as COSMIC Terminal, COSMIC Files, COSMIC Text Editor, and COSMIC App Store. Moreover, users can leverage the Launcher and App Library to manage applications more efficiently, organizing them into custom folders tailored to specific workflows.
On the virtual desktop side, COSMIC introduces a flexible workflow system where users can opt for horizontal or vertical workspaces, enhancing multitasking capabilities across multiple displays. This Alpha version also allows the desktop to sport horizontal, numbered workspaces alongside a unified panel that neatly houses applications and applets.
The one feature I missed was the ability to create and place icons on the desktop, which right now is just a space that can’t be used. This was a frustrating reminder of my experiences with GNOME. Of course, I hope this will be fixed in the next preview releases, and in the final one, we will have a desktop that can be acted upon besides showing a wallpaper.
For more information about the new COSMIC desktop environment, check out the official announcement from System76 and download the installation ISO images of the COSMIC (Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS) Alpha version.
Bottom Line
I truly think that everyone who supports open source understands the significance of releasing even a preliminary alpha version of the COSMIC desktop environment. An entirely new desktop environment written from scratch, with ambitions to take place among the two current leaders, GNOME and KDE.
But the most exciting thing is that it has all the features needed to achieve it. We’re more than thrilled with everything we saw during our testing. Huge thanks and hats off to the developers at System76, who have invested enough resources, blood, and sweat to make COSMIC happen and give it as a gift to the open-source community. Thank you!
From here on, there is still a lot of work to do. Let’s not forget that this is just a preliminary alpha version, and there’s a lot more to go before we get to the final stable release, which will debut in the upcoming Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS.
But one thing is clear: from here on out, things will improve. It’s worth noting also that COSMIC isn’t just limited to Pop!_OS. It’s set to expand into the major Linux distributions’ main software repositories, allowing more users to benefit from it. The emergence of official flavors and spins with COSMIC is only a matter of time; there is even preliminary movement in that direction already.
COSMIC is here to thrive and stay, bringing things back to normal for the many users forced to conform to the GNOME developers’ controversial views of the desktop environment and the associated constant struggles with installing extensions to achieve functionality that should be out-of-the-box.
Of course, it’s not just GNOME users. Others who find the otherwise great KDE Plasma too complicated or rely on Xfce, MATE, and other desktop environments will probably find what they have been looking for in COSMIC. So, go, COSMIC, go!
