System76’s COSMIC Rust-Based Desktop Nears Its First Stable Release
I’ve been using Pop!_OS since I purchased my first System76 desktop (a Leopard Extreme). Since then, I’ve retained the company’s OS on every desktop machine I’ve purchased (which is two Thelios). Not only have I found Pop!_OS to be one of the best-performing distributions I’ve used in a long time, it doesn’t hurt that Pop!_OS also happens to be one of the more elegant Linux desktop environments.
That’s a bold statement, especially given that Pop!_OS makes use of a modified GNOME DE desktop environment.
That’s a key piece of the puzzle.
Based on GNOME
The Pop!_OS desktop environment has been based on GNOME since the beginning. Eventually, however, System76 decided it was time to break free of GNOME and create something from scratch. That something was COSMIC desktop, and it was written in Rust and utilized Rust-based libraries, such as iced and libcosmic.
Thanks to this move away from GNOME, System76 has more control over the desktop, its over the ecosystem. COSMIC also makes use of Rust to build applications like the Cosmic app store, Cosmic terminal, Cosmic screenshot, Cosmic text editor and more.
One of the reasons why this is so exciting is because Rust is well-known as a fast language. And although COSMIC is still in alpha (v 6 at the moment), it’s already showing signs of stability and (especially) speed.
There’s one thing you should know about COSMIC desktop — it pretty much looks the same as what you see on current Pop!_OS releases.
That’s right! System76 decided to stick with what works, so you’ll find a GNOME-like layout, with a top bar, a dock, a work spaces overview and an applications overview. The applications overview comes by way of a pop-up window (similar to what Pop!_OS has now), so everything is going to be immediately familiar to anyone who’s used Pop!_OS.
In my humble opinion, that was the smart way to go, as we’ve all seen what happens when a development team suddenly changes course (think the switch from GNOME 2 to GNOME 3, or KDE to KDE Plasma). If you didn’t follow along with those two changes, know that both the GNOME and KDE communities were up in arms about how the developers decided to evolve their respective desktops. Fortunately, both GNOME and KDE were better for the changes. So System76 sticking with what works was the right call.
If it isn’t broken after all.
I’ve been kicking the tires of COSMIC desktop since the first alpha release was made available, and I’ve been impressed from day one. Keep in mind that System76 started from scratch, so creating a desktop that has the look and feel of what previously accompanied their hardware was an impressive feat, and although COSMIC is still in alpha, it’s already showing signs of just how amazing it’s going to be.
I upgraded my current COSMIC virtual machine to the latest alpha release (v 6) and one of the first things I did was open the Pop Shop. The reason for this is that the Pop Shop on my currently installed Pop!_OS (running on a beast of a Thelios desktop) is awful. The thing is, it’s been awful for a long time. Pop Shop either opens very slowly, crashes or doesn’t open at all. There have been many instances over the years when I’ve had to resort to running updates via the command line. That’s fine, only because I’m well-versed in the Linux command line, but this issue should have been resolved long ago.
Fortunately, the Pop Shop on COSMIC opens almost immediately, doesn’t crash and has yet to show signs of what caused the previous iterations to, quite frankly, suck. I love that I don’t have to resort to the command line now. I also happen to really like the changes they’ve made to Pop Shop. It’s now much easier to navigate and find the applications you’re looking for (Figure 1).
Figure 1: The old Pop Shop is on the left.
One thing to keep in mind is that almost every app listed in Pop Shop is now installed via Flathub. This is fine, but some users might scoff at not having a .deb option. I don’t mind this because it makes for much better continuity.
Out of the box, COSMIC ships with a somewhat bare minimum of applications. You’ll find Firefox, Thunderbird, a document viewer, the COSMIC apps (terminal, editor, etc.) and a few system apps. Fortunately, you only have to open Pop Shop, search for whatever app you need and install. And because most of these apps are installed via Flathub, you don’t have to type your user password to install them.
Yeah, that could be seen as either a positive or a negative. But because Flatpak apps are sandboxed, you don’t have to worry so much about them.
The Theming
Unfortunately, COSMIC isn’t quite as customizable as some desktop environments, but that doesn’t mean you can’t tweak it. Pop!_OS was never known for being highly customizable. You can switch from the default dark theme to a light theme; adjust the transparency of the dock; switch the dock to a panel; customize your accent color; customize the application/window background color (which also changes the top bar and window title bar color); customize the top panel; and a few more options. One cool thing you can do is change the top bar to more of an island, which makes for an interesting and clean desktop (Figure 2).
Figure 2: It doesn’t take much to customize COSMIC Desktop.
One thing I did notice is that even after switching to a light theme, the application overview didn’t make the transition. If the developers could add that into the mix, it would make me one happy lil’ penguin.
I’ve not been this excited about a Linux distribution release in a very long time. While I am certainly not going to install COSMIC alpha as my primary desktop OS, once the stable release is available, you can bet it’ll replace the current Pop!_OS I’m using.
Year after year, I have been impressed with System76 and what they’re doing with COSMIC is very much on-brand for a company I highly respect and that has never failed to produce high-quality hardware and software.
You can download the alpha 6 release of COSMIC from the official System76 site.
