Me seeing this video, "Is the alpha out? Where can I get an ISO? Hmm I can't find it." Starts watching video: "I was fortunate to get an advance ISO", ah that explains it
I'm definitely most excited for your point about this being a customer rather than community focused DE. I think Cosmic being able to be responsive in the commercial way but still have open source code that can inform and inspire its peers is an opportunity for really healthy growth in the end-user space of Linux.
The best part is that it isn't committee driven, we already see the results of such a structure with Wayland. Although, it's probably a big advantage to have to satisfy actual customers needs instead of being able to sit in an ivory tower and shove things down customers throats, like a certain other project...
Yep, I feel the same. Until now, that's what Cinnamon is in a way. But in contrast to Cosmic, it's stuck in the past because it relies on the old GTK3. Also, while providing a nice balance between features and ease of use, it's too Windows-like for my taste. Cosmic is something I really want to use!
It’s an alpha release. Of course it won’t blow you away. Checking this out at this point is really about seeing its potential and there’s a tremendous amount potential here.
The modernity and ability to seamlessly use either tiling or free-floating is going to win a lot of people over from a lot of the alternatives. Smart distros should be jumping all over it once it's out of alpha, and I'll be choosing the best of them once that happens and switching to it. People are sick of KDE's bugginess and GNOME's inflexibility. Wayland is finally pretty much ready for prime time and the other desktops now have a lot of cruft. It's why Hyprland is so popular and why there's so much hype for COSMIC. From what I understand of what's already put out there about dependencies and configuration, it'll be very easy for distros to ship their own version of COSMIC that looks and behaves how they want it to, and won't be a nightmare to include in their repos. They've gone about designing it in a very clever and forward-thinking way, with the goal of widespread adoption. All that really remains to see is how eager devs are to make new Rust apps for it, or how quickly System76 can fill out the roster themselves. Still a lot of gaps.
This feels like the combination of Gnome and i3 I've always wanted. Config files you're able to copy and paste, great tiling and workspace support, all with nice easy-to-use guis and a pretty theme even without tinkering too much. Really looking foward towards Cosmic's future!
@@happygofishing Yes, yes, the Windows registry is very bad. A single database used for the users own data, and the system data at the same time is very bad.
I have Cosmic pre-alpha installed in a VM on a Pop!OS 22.04 base, and it already feels great! Everything that works is implemented in a really nice way. Many things are still missing, but we'll get there. I particularly like how tiling feels, and the way it supports multiple workspaces on multiple screens. Theming is done nicely since colors are likely to matter most to people, followed by density, icons and corner sharpness. This keeps the risk of broken theming pretty low and allows for creating a matching Qt theme. GTK apps with the colors applied already blend in very nicely. Now they need to (and will) focus on accessibility (e. g. keyboard focus/navigation) and adding the missing features. I can see this becoming my favorite desktop environment!
the tiling features are amazing, completely crushes what other DEs even with extensions. per monitor workspaces are also huge, since i think theyre the only DE that supports this atm
More full time contributors and a financial incentive to listen to the users will definitely take this to places Gnome and KDE can't, but we'll need to see how a non-gtk non-qt desktop gets adopted as well I guess? All in all, I think the compositor is the coolest part that you won't notice hehe, also even the basic portals are ready!
For 8:20, I personally use krohnkite from anametologin (not the old one for kde 5) with only "floating" and "spiral" enabled and set the keybind to switch to the next tiling layout to super + t, it gives me the same workflow than forge on gnome or pop-os.
If krohnkite works for you, fine, but you should try a real tiller instead to understand how it isn’t as good and where it completely fails to work as expected.
@@jfftck Yeah I've tried qtile, awesome and sway and still prefer full DE. On my main laptop I run Gnome with forge which is way better than krohnkite, but krohnkite is still the best option for KDE, and Nick asked for a KDE option.
Nick thanks again for another great video - the wife and I are planning a trip to France in March and I will be sporting my Linux Experience shirt in Paris. You now have 20 new followers here in Leesburg, VA - based on our groups last drinking night out. Please keep going on the channel.
Hey man, I'm a rather devoted follower of the channel, and for years now. I do watch your channel from home, but the biggest pro is that you're what keeps me from looking at how much time is left on my treadmill, while at the Gym. I know, I know, I'm great at flattery😁 To be honest, your channel is what kept me invested into the Linux ecosystem, even when I have strayed the path and accepted the OS whose name we shall not speak. Anyhow, beyond the dumb jokes, I really just wanted to say I appreciate the work you do a lot. It's, for me, the best source of info from the Linux and FOSS world. I also like the personal touches, the jokes, and I like that you seem like a balanced dude. The videos are very well made, the information is relevant, all in all, a premium product, and this video keeps up that bar. All in all, Kudos on all your work, from now on you've got me as your channel member. Regarding Cosmic, I am quite impressed with what they are delivering here as an alpha product, even if it's clear that they are borrowing a lot from Gnome, and more specifically their own customized Gnome DE. I like it a lot that it gives you basically all the customisation options I typically aim for with Gnome, but with out the extensions hassle, while not being, for me, overwhelming as KDE is. Have you tried any gaming on it? How are things on the Steam/Lutris front, cause I am really itching to give this thing a try on one of my secondary partitions (at this point my Grub menu is longer than my wife's shopping lists 😁)
It looks so good for first alpha! People should understand that all the quirks will be eliminated in next versions. I am pretty sure they gonna improve A LOT
@@TheLinuxEXP I won't argue with you there, it is a bit odd, although, in System76's defense, it can be useful to separate programs and files if some of each share similar names. I've gotten used to it after a while of using Pop, but it would be nice for it to be toggleable. (I looked it up and the launcher regex entries are in /usr/lib/pop-launcher/plugins/ but it doesn't seem worth the trouble to mess with them lol.)
For KDE you can try Kronkite and Polonium. Brodi just put out a couple of videos about those. I have not had a chance to try them yet, but apparently with the Classy theme added, they work pretty similarly. I'm also excited for the fedora project based around cosmic. So I'm probably going to end up replacing my gnome workstation with a cosmic one on my laptop.
I'm quite excited for this DE, specifically because of one key aspect you highlighted: consumer focus. I think the choice we have right now is not that great, with GNOME being too philosophical to the point where it sometimes ignores the ugly reality (system tray comes to mind) and KDE being too "everything goes", so that you end up with a desktop that's more of a buggy pile of random settings, none of which work that well, than a useful piece of software. I hope COSMIC will find that right middle that focuses on polish and quality, without compromising on realistic needs (or wants) that people have. I also hope COSMIC will not "lose" itself in the quest for allowing users over customization (think KDE) - I'm not a graphic or UI designer, nor are most people, therefore it is the job of the product maintainer to make something that's a good experience out of the box. Personally anything beyond changing the accent color, I don't care, as long as the core is good and professionally designed. I would not hesitate to pay for a good experience.
I'm excited for Cosmic, not planning to use it but I love having another option, especially for the mac lovers out there. As a developer, I think it's a little annoying to have another DE but in this case I think it's good especially since I don't think System76 is going anywhere anytime soon, so this is a modern, forward looking DE with good support.
As long as there's no global menu bar this isn't an option for Mac lovers. It's one of the main reasons I'm using Plasma exclusively, as it has that option, even if it doesn't work for every app.
Being the first desktop environment to have native first-class support for tiling makes me think that it will probably be the first desktop environment that many users will have tried in a long time. Nothing on Gnome or KDE comes close to the kinds of experiences you get on window managers like i3, sway and Hyprland. Cosmic is another story while still being a holistic desktop experience like this former two.
I set super to show Workspaces like on Gnome, but now there is no way to launch apps, so I'm forced to use the launcher if i want to launch anything. I really hope we get the option to launch the Workskspace overview with the super key and then also search in there, as the ability to search in Workspaces was removed for some reason.
It's the Unix philosophy: do one thing well. So, there are three paths to search and launch applications: the Dock, which has quick launch icons and icons for the launcher and applibrary. It has the launcher itself. It has the application library. In general, I *hate* launching apps from a workspace view. I want the workspace view for workspace management. So, it makes sense to me - I'm glad they broke it out. For you, you might be better with gnome, as you seem to gel with their design philosophy. Kinda the nice thing: both Gnome and Cosmic get to be things.
There's a lot of documented asks for this so I'm hoping they enable the ability to use a single entry faster workflow where you only need to know one key instead of multiple multi-key shortcuts. Would be easy to add an option to run launcher upon typing when in workspace overview
First rust-based desktop environment... I say that's a great accomplishment for both rust and linux! I wonder if we will get some kind of interview with the developer about the process. I think it was done with GTK4 right...
I am generally excited about Cosmic and don't mean to disrespect it, but I wonder if I am alone in finding it visually unimpressive. To me, the design seems at least unpolished, and in some places it makes the impression like not much thought has gone into it. Considering how ambitious Cosmic is in itself, I personally think that a more innovative UI (in concept and execution) would have suited the project better than this somewhat antiquated approach. But again, I am thrilled to sea this project grow and wish it much success.
I personally am a fan of the looks. It does need more polish, (most actions lack animations atm) but its still in alpha so that's expected. i like the overall look of the iced toolkit, reminds me of GTK4, but with less exaggerated padding and none of the shit libadwaita brings with it (difficult theming, client side decorations) I think a big attempt at innovation would be too polarizing for an attempt to become a major DE.
Visuals will improve with time, with more feedback and time. İced/libcosmic is still in heavy development, in one release all UI may change. Just give it more time.
Gnome tries to be innovative with their approach and a lot of people hate it, me included. Cosmic isn't there to be innovative as such but to satisfy their customers' needs. And I doubt that many of those would want to get used to an extremely different UI-structure than they're used to.
It's subjective, but I think it looks a bit flat. It's ok for me, just flat and a bit boring to look at. It's probably partly a result of how ambitious the project has been, since iirc they also had to contribute to Iced so it could do what they needed, so they had a lot of work to do. That said, I think for the first release they are probably aiming for something similar to what they already had with Pop OS 22.04 so it doesn't feel like a downgrade or something. Then after that they might begin to diverge. Or at least that's my guess, I don't know if that's their plan or not.
Alrright, as a preview I like it. As a Gnome fan who, no matter how mice other desktops get, keeps going back to Gnome, when this hits release, I might give it a fair shot. I like what I see.
I love the functionality of Cosmic. The way it can toggle between tiling and floating is especially cool. I just wish that it took more design cues for GNOME to have that extra layer of visual polish, if it did that maybe I'd install it
I love this stacked windows thing. Loved it in fluxbox, and in i3wm too. It would be awesome if we could also save stacked layout groups so that next time I start one of the stacked apps, the others in the whole group will open automatically as in the saved layout.
Plasma has got less than 12 months to get its act together and adopt a lot of these Cosmic features (truly frameless, better tiling etc) or it'll lose half it's current user base next year and beyond. Competition is great!
Krohnkite and Polonium are two KDE extensions which give you Tiling Window Management capabilities. There is also Bismuth as another solution for KDE tiling window extensions but since the launch of KDE 6 it has been discontinued because Bismuth was developed for KDE 5 series
Recently Brodie made two videos on two kde (kwin script) extensions for tiling. First one was called Polonium and the second one was Krohnkite. The latter was much better in his tests.
Basically, they rewrote their old Gnome-based desktop in Rust, which is probably why development was so fast, since it wasn't from scratch. The configurations seem interesting, reminding me a bit of Budgie Desktop and Cinnamon. Unfortunately, I found the look very ugly, and that was already something I didn't like about Pop_OS. They urgently need to hire a designer. I find the contrast between the side panel and the central panel, with the inverted colors, bizarre. The mix of menu bar and CSD, the window hint activated by default, and the choice of Fira Font, a monospace font, as the system font.
Honestly if there was more smooth animations, it would kind of feel pretty polished. Ofc a setting to not animate should be an option. I just like how macOS and gnome animates. Also swipe to top left to open app tray maybe like gnome.
Yes! So now I just need a reason to buy another pc to run this without virtualization 🙂. In Pop! OS I never felt the need to mess around with themes because the default interface was so good.
As an old fart xfce user, which isn't into "decorative" desktop environments and dislikes effects, gestures, animations, etc, i have to admit that this looks very consistent.
@TheLinuxEXP - as always a great video - chock full of information. I think COSMIC is important for the Linux community as it is focused on a particular vision. Having said that the highlight of the video was your Cowboy accent. Well played sir.
Thank you for emphasizing the key differences of the DE. I wish the system76 a success because it seems like in this case they will have enough money and vision to have a coherent look that can compete with the macOS design. And I mean not to "look exactly the same as macOS", but share the same strength, that is consistent design code across the whole OS and keeping up with modern design trends.
Definitely exited to give this a try on my nixOS laptop, used to use GNOME before it started to fall behind but really fell in love with how it went about things like workspaces and its overview. Here's to the Cosmic Epoch!
Thanks for the fast review. I'm using Cosmic Desktop pre-alpha sinc end of june and now the alpha. There is a lot of possibilities that this desktop become very popular when it will be more near the first official full desktop. Many distro are going to make it available to all linux users.
FYI on my main gaming rig I am running Mint XFCE 21.3 with a RTX3080 (proprietary driver) on a 144Hz Gsync ultrawide with a 60hz secondary monitor and its all working extremely well. The only "problem" I have is in every game no matter what Vsync locks me to 60fps instead of 144 but I use other methods to cap at 141Hz to stay in my Gsync range.
Cela semble vraiment prometteur! J'ai hâte de le tester. Il y a juste un truc qui me choc de fou, c'est le border radius du dock et le padding 😆 Peut-être une déformation professionnelle de mon métier de dev web mais c'est pas hyper harmonieux je trouve. Il faudrait soit retirer du border radius afin de coller un peu plus avec l'arrondi des fenêtres, soit ajouter du padding pour que les icônes ne soient pas autant collées aux bords. Merci pour la vidéo Nick 😉
Cosmic seems more stable in its Alpha state that other DEs on their major launch states. Thanks as always for the coverage, Nick! Once I jump back into Linux, I think I'll be using Cosmic, despite it being in a barebones state, it has what I need to function, which is to watch TH-cam videos and game.
@@ethansilverstein26 that was my poorly made point. Scrolling back toward yourself makes the text on the page go up, scrolling away makes the text go down. Natural scrolling flips it around and looks at it from the perspective of the page. If I scroll forward I want the text to go down, I don’t care if technically the page is actually going up.
polonium is currently the best way to get tiling on KDE (for plasma6), but its still not a native implementation so it can be pretty buggy sometimes. I wish something like this was implemented natively in the big desktop environments, automatic tiling is the main reason I'm using linux atm.
probably won't use it until it gets bigger adoption, but that actually looks good. Cosmic was already promising when it was just a bunch of extensions and enhancements of GNOME, so seeing it transformed into a fully-blown DE made me feel happy. just waiting for it to mature so i can give it a fair try, until then not even thinking about crawling out of my Xfce cave
I am getting a tingle in the trouser department looking at the cosmic desktop alpha release. You can see the amount of work that the team of Sysstem76 have put into this. Way to go System76.
Cosmic is exciting for Linux - it is a future looking approach without the legacy dependency (e.g., X11 gone) -- and it may accelerate application development and enhance the user experience. At least System 76 seems committed to the project.
Very happy for the team. Great achievement and it's on its way to greatness. I personally can't daily drive it unless/until they allow searching/launching apps from workspaces view. Single entry (1 key) faster workflow that avoids cognitive fatigue is just a requirement for me. They have a stated goal to let people be able to work their own way so I'm hopeful they will add the ability to search via launcher upon typing when in workspace overview. Small change to let many many people work the way they're used to. KDE even implemented it.
Cosmic looks and feels promising so far. I just installed it on my Fedora 40 system (there's a COPR repo available) and gave it a spin, it's not bad. It does tiling exactly the way I want, per workspace. As soon as it gets a little more fleshed out, I could see myself using Cosmic as a daily driver.
Re KDE - There are tiling extensions for KDE, but COSMIC is the first I've seen to do tiling with a lot of desktop support. Even actual tilers don't generally have that level of indication for the tiling placement or ease of setup. COSMIC looks to be shaping up nicely -- I might test consider switching from my actual tiler if this keeps up.
indeed... stop with the "desktop" focus on functionality and use, enough with useless shit for the geeks, that real user that do work will never use! Linux lately is like fast fashion, new shit is applauded until the next new shit comes out!
This is NOT the first wayland only DE, although phosh is mainly targeted to phones, its also used for desktop, being wayland only (also, there are other wlroots de out there)
@@TheLinuxEXP i get what you mean, but i think you could phrase that in a better way, like, it is a DE built to work wayland only, that's very important by itself, i don't think being the first or the last should matter
As i did with plasma, im gonna wait for this to release and stabilize before i try it out, i waited until kde 6.1 and jumped from 5.27 and i was blown away
Try out Proton Mail, the secure email that protects your privacy: proton.me/mail/TheLinuxEXP
Nice mail. Using it
Proton revealed activist IP address in 2021
Can we change pixel formats?
Me seeing this video, "Is the alpha out? Where can I get an ISO? Hmm I can't find it." Starts watching video: "I was fortunate to get an advance ISO", ah that explains it
Hack his system and copy the ISO, it's the only way
Now available on the System76 homepage, but not mentioned on the Pop OS page!
You can install using the AUR
system76.com/cosmic
its out now
We actually got COSMIC Desktop before GIMP 3 🤯
HOLY SHIT, YOU'RE RIGHT, THAT IS HILARIOUS
The GIMP project has 1.3 million dollars in donations just sitting unused in a Bitcoin wallet since 2014. Shocking waste of resources.
Alpha. So that's still a development version, just like GIMP has development version 2.99. :P
@@lornelorne5727 They probably lost the wallet credentials
Krita is better, I stop using Gimp
I'm definitely most excited for your point about this being a customer rather than community focused DE. I think Cosmic being able to be responsive in the commercial way but still have open source code that can inform and inspire its peers is an opportunity for really healthy growth in the end-user space of Linux.
The best part is that it isn't committee driven, we already see the results of such a structure with Wayland. Although, it's probably a big advantage to have to satisfy actual customers needs instead of being able to sit in an ivory tower and shove things down customers throats, like a certain other project...
@@stephanhuebner4931Whatever grievances you have with Wayland isn't Wayland's fault.
@@stephanhuebner4931Windows
I think Cosmic becomes the sweet spot between KDE and Gnome, Functionality and beauty. Perfectly balanced, as everything should be
_snaps_
Yep, I feel the same. Until now, that's what Cinnamon is in a way. But in contrast to Cosmic, it's stuck in the past because it relies on the old GTK3. Also, while providing a nice balance between features and ease of use, it's too Windows-like for my taste. Cosmic is something I really want to use!
@@VeitLehmannthat’s what puts me off a lot of Linux distros, too Windows like, cosmic looks so good
If RAM usage is the same as KDE or less, then I'm all for it.
"This will not blow you away if:" * starts listing every possible scenario *
“If you have ever used any other desktop ever”
It’s an alpha release. Of course it won’t blow you away. Checking this out at this point is really about seeing its potential and there’s a tremendous amount potential here.
@@kylerjohnson988 Sure, I'm not hating at all, looks interesting! Just thought the way the script was structured was unexpectedly funny
Good job System76. COSMIC is indeed a modern desktop environment that respects the user's preferences and customizations.
The modernity and ability to seamlessly use either tiling or free-floating is going to win a lot of people over from a lot of the alternatives. Smart distros should be jumping all over it once it's out of alpha, and I'll be choosing the best of them once that happens and switching to it. People are sick of KDE's bugginess and GNOME's inflexibility. Wayland is finally pretty much ready for prime time and the other desktops now have a lot of cruft. It's why Hyprland is so popular and why there's so much hype for COSMIC.
From what I understand of what's already put out there about dependencies and configuration, it'll be very easy for distros to ship their own version of COSMIC that looks and behaves how they want it to, and won't be a nightmare to include in their repos. They've gone about designing it in a very clever and forward-thinking way, with the goal of widespread adoption. All that really remains to see is how eager devs are to make new Rust apps for it, or how quickly System76 can fill out the roster themselves. Still a lot of gaps.
This feels like the combination of Gnome and i3 I've always wanted. Config files you're able to copy and paste, great tiling and workspace support, all with nice easy-to-use guis and a pretty theme even without tinkering too much. Really looking foward towards Cosmic's future!
Cowboy Nick needs to be a recurring character
Hahah he can
Yeah he should be😀, and he has to be😈
up
Good god.....
@@TheLinuxEXP i miss the nick imprisioned in the system lol like when he types "help me im writing from this coment send help"
Config files? Holy shit, this may actually be good
Congratulations to System76 for not re-implementing the Windows Registry
Tbf the registry is mainly bad because developers misuse it, not because it's inherently bad.@@necuz
@@happygofishing Yes, yes, the Windows registry is very bad. A single database used for the users own data, and the system data at the same time is very bad.
If this is a one config file and your set up thing I am even more sold then I was before
@@CalvinB_ They're putting settings and state in separate files, so as to be more portable and sync-able.
5:10 You can already disable the dock and move all applets it has to the panel so you get a single panel layout like Windows.
Can the top icons be merged to a single one like on gnome? I don't like that many icons, looks cluttered
I have Cosmic pre-alpha installed in a VM on a Pop!OS 22.04 base, and it already feels great! Everything that works is implemented in a really nice way. Many things are still missing, but we'll get there. I particularly like how tiling feels, and the way it supports multiple workspaces on multiple screens. Theming is done nicely since colors are likely to matter most to people, followed by density, icons and corner sharpness. This keeps the risk of broken theming pretty low and allows for creating a matching Qt theme. GTK apps with the colors applied already blend in very nicely. Now they need to (and will) focus on accessibility (e. g. keyboard focus/navigation) and adding the missing features. I can see this becoming my favorite desktop environment!
the tiling features are amazing, completely crushes what other DEs even with extensions. per monitor workspaces are also huge, since i think theyre the only DE that supports this atm
Per monitor is definitely a very big deal.
Cosmic is an enhanced version of Gnome. Not having to rely on extensions to tweak a few simple customisation options should be the default.
More full time contributors and a financial incentive to listen to the users will definitely take this to places Gnome and KDE can't, but we'll need to see how a non-gtk non-qt desktop gets adopted as well I guess? All in all, I think the compositor is the coolest part that you won't notice hehe, also even the basic portals are ready!
Reset to defaults is always my favorite feature.
For 8:20, I personally use krohnkite from anametologin (not the old one for kde 5) with only "floating" and "spiral" enabled and set the keybind to switch to the next tiling layout to super + t, it gives me the same workflow than forge on gnome or pop-os.
I tried krohnkite but it is just not as smooth as hyprland. I'm back on hl.
If krohnkite works for you, fine, but you should try a real tiller instead to understand how it isn’t as good and where it completely fails to work as expected.
@@jfftck Yeah I've tried qtile, awesome and sway and still prefer full DE. On my main laptop I run Gnome with forge which is way better than krohnkite, but krohnkite is still the best option for KDE, and Nick asked for a KDE option.
Just happy that it will have touchpad gesture support
Nick thanks again for another great video - the wife and I are planning a trip to France in March and I will be sporting my Linux Experience shirt in Paris. You now have 20 new followers here in Leesburg, VA - based on our groups last drinking night out. Please keep going on the channel.
That’s excellent, thank you very much 😁
Hey man, I'm a rather devoted follower of the channel, and for years now. I do watch your channel from home, but the biggest pro is that you're what keeps me from looking at how much time is left on my treadmill, while at the Gym. I know, I know, I'm great at flattery😁
To be honest, your channel is what kept me invested into the Linux ecosystem, even when I have strayed the path and accepted the OS whose name we shall not speak.
Anyhow, beyond the dumb jokes, I really just wanted to say I appreciate the work you do a lot. It's, for me, the best source of info from the Linux and FOSS world. I also like the personal touches, the jokes, and I like that you seem like a balanced dude. The videos are very well made, the information is relevant, all in all, a premium product, and this video keeps up that bar. All in all, Kudos on all your work, from now on you've got me as your channel member.
Regarding Cosmic, I am quite impressed with what they are delivering here as an alpha product, even if it's clear that they are borrowing a lot from Gnome, and more specifically their own customized Gnome DE. I like it a lot that it gives you basically all the customisation options I typically aim for with Gnome, but with out the extensions hassle, while not being, for me, overwhelming as KDE is.
Have you tried any gaming on it? How are things on the Steam/Lutris front, cause I am really itching to give this thing a try on one of my secondary partitions (at this point my Grub menu is longer than my wife's shopping lists 😁)
It looks so good for first alpha! People should understand that all the quirks will be eliminated in next versions. I am pretty sure they gonna improve A LOT
I am probably staying on Plasma but I was waiting to finally see Cosmic in action
Yeah, for now, I’ll stay on Plasma, but Cosmic definitely deserves a shot
There are some interesting ideas, and my hope is that Plasma takes some inspiration from the project or possibly even fork parts to integrate them.
Likewise. Despite some jank annoyances (cough kwallet cough), at least Plasma does what I want it to and is easy to use.
You can install Cosmic on your current distro and other ones too once the stable version is released.
2:45 To search for files, type "find" and then the file name (in both GNOME w/ pop-shell and COSMIC).
Yeah, but why isn’t it part of the default search, like in Krunner? It’s so weird to require a specific prefix
@@TheLinuxEXP I won't argue with you there, it is a bit odd, although, in System76's defense, it can be useful to separate programs and files if some of each share similar names. I've gotten used to it after a while of using Pop, but it would be nice for it to be toggleable. (I looked it up and the launcher regex entries are in /usr/lib/pop-launcher/plugins/ but it doesn't seem worth the trouble to mess with them lol.)
Not really. I strongly disagree with you on this. I’d prefer having it this way.
I'm sure it'll be customisable eventually to be a part of the default, having that separation helps avoid a lot of happy mistakes. :)
I can't believe how much more work I can get done with this desktop. My productivity is gonna go thru the roof!
We are all gonna be 10x window managers bois!!
famous last words
@@MiguelGonzález-k5p It was sarcasm. 🙂
Dynamic tiling needs to come to a desktop. Thank gosh for popos
I’m perfectly happy using Gnome but nonetheless I wish Cosmic all the best!
For KDE you can try Kronkite and Polonium. Brodi just put out a couple of videos about those. I have not had a chance to try them yet, but apparently with the Classy theme added, they work pretty similarly.
I'm also excited for the fedora project based around cosmic. So I'm probably going to end up replacing my gnome workstation with a cosmic one on my laptop.
Cosmic unlocks a whole new universe of distros. Really out of this world!
Stellar!
I'm quite excited for this DE, specifically because of one key aspect you highlighted: consumer focus. I think the choice we have right now is not that great, with GNOME being too philosophical to the point where it sometimes ignores the ugly reality (system tray comes to mind) and KDE being too "everything goes", so that you end up with a desktop that's more of a buggy pile of random settings, none of which work that well, than a useful piece of software. I hope COSMIC will find that right middle that focuses on polish and quality, without compromising on realistic needs (or wants) that people have.
I also hope COSMIC will not "lose" itself in the quest for allowing users over customization (think KDE) - I'm not a graphic or UI designer, nor are most people, therefore it is the job of the product maintainer to make something that's a good experience out of the box. Personally anything beyond changing the accent color, I don't care, as long as the core is good and professionally designed.
I would not hesitate to pay for a good experience.
Very exciting. Well done Cosmic team!
I'm excited for Cosmic, not planning to use it but I love having another option, especially for the mac lovers out there. As a developer, I think it's a little annoying to have another DE but in this case I think it's good especially since I don't think System76 is going anywhere anytime soon, so this is a modern, forward looking DE with good support.
why would cosmic be for Mac lovers?
i guess it looks mac-ish by default @@archip8021
As long as there's no global menu bar this isn't an option for Mac lovers. It's one of the main reasons I'm using Plasma exclusively, as it has that option, even if it doesn't work for every app.
Ah, I have waited 10,000 years. I think COSMIC will be great for the whole Linux desktop even for people who won't find it their preference
Being the first desktop environment to have native first-class support for tiling makes me think that it will probably be the first desktop environment that many users will have tried in a long time. Nothing on Gnome or KDE comes close to the kinds of experiences you get on window managers like i3, sway and Hyprland. Cosmic is another story while still being a holistic desktop experience like this former two.
A very impressive desktop for an alpha release. Can't wait to daily drive it someday
I set super to show Workspaces like on Gnome, but now there is no way to launch apps, so I'm forced to use the launcher if i want to launch anything.
I really hope we get the option to launch the Workskspace overview with the super key and then also search in there, as the ability to search in Workspaces was removed for some reason.
It's the Unix philosophy: do one thing well. So, there are three paths to search and launch applications: the Dock, which has quick launch icons and icons for the launcher and applibrary. It has the launcher itself. It has the application library.
In general, I *hate* launching apps from a workspace view. I want the workspace view for workspace management. So, it makes sense to me - I'm glad they broke it out.
For you, you might be better with gnome, as you seem to gel with their design philosophy.
Kinda the nice thing: both Gnome and Cosmic get to be things.
There's a lot of documented asks for this so I'm hoping they enable the ability to use a single entry faster workflow where you only need to know one key instead of multiple multi-key shortcuts. Would be easy to add an option to run launcher upon typing when in workspace overview
First rust-based desktop environment... I say that's a great accomplishment for both rust and linux! I wonder if we will get some kind of interview with the developer about the process. I think it was done with GTK4 right...
We did not use GTK. It's Rust from the ground up with an entirely new Rust GUI toolkit.
@@mmstick Iirc, the toolkit is named Iced.
I am generally excited about Cosmic and don't mean to disrespect it, but I wonder if I am alone in finding it visually unimpressive. To me, the design seems at least unpolished, and in some places it makes the impression like not much thought has gone into it. Considering how ambitious Cosmic is in itself, I personally think that a more innovative UI (in concept and execution) would have suited the project better than this somewhat antiquated approach. But again, I am thrilled to sea this project grow and wish it much success.
I was also expecting it to shine at UI Department, but sadly it failed at UI Department
I personally am a fan of the looks. It does need more polish, (most actions lack animations atm) but its still in alpha so that's expected. i like the overall look of the iced toolkit, reminds me of GTK4, but with less exaggerated padding and none of the shit libadwaita brings with it (difficult theming, client side decorations)
I think a big attempt at innovation would be too polarizing for an attempt to become a major DE.
Visuals will improve with time, with more feedback and time. İced/libcosmic is still in heavy development, in one release all UI may change. Just give it more time.
Gnome tries to be innovative with their approach and a lot of people hate it, me included. Cosmic isn't there to be innovative as such but to satisfy their customers' needs. And I doubt that many of those would want to get used to an extremely different UI-structure than they're used to.
It's subjective, but I think it looks a bit flat. It's ok for me, just flat and a bit boring to look at. It's probably partly a result of how ambitious the project has been, since iirc they also had to contribute to Iced so it could do what they needed, so they had a lot of work to do.
That said, I think for the first release they are probably aiming for something similar to what they already had with Pop OS 22.04 so it doesn't feel like a downgrade or something. Then after that they might begin to diverge. Or at least that's my guess, I don't know if that's their plan or not.
As a normal user, I'm excited to see a new DE, as a programmer, I'm excited because this is probably the biggest UI implementation in Rust yet.
Alrright, as a preview I like it. As a Gnome fan who, no matter how mice other desktops get, keeps going back to Gnome, when this hits release, I might give it a fair shot. I like what I see.
Desktop colours remind me of the old BlackBox way of theming elements, would be nice if they added gradient support as well.
I love the functionality of Cosmic. The way it can toggle between tiling and floating is especially cool. I just wish that it took more design cues for GNOME to have that extra layer of visual polish, if it did that maybe I'd install it
I love this stacked windows thing. Loved it in fluxbox, and in i3wm too. It would be awesome if we could also save stacked layout groups so that next time I start one of the stacked apps, the others in the whole group will open automatically as in the saved layout.
Plasma has got less than 12 months to get its act together and adopt a lot of these Cosmic features (truly frameless, better tiling etc) or it'll lose half it's current user base next year and beyond. Competition is great!
The tiling looks so nice! I can't wait to try it out!
This is looking very promising.
Krohnkite and Polonium are two KDE extensions which give you Tiling Window Management capabilities. There is also Bismuth as another solution for KDE tiling window extensions but since the launch of KDE 6 it has been discontinued because Bismuth was developed for KDE 5 series
7:26 Haiku users be like: "Finally someone makes a usable Linux desktop!" XD
I'm still running Pop!_OS 22.04 LTS and am looking forward to this overhaul.
Recently Brodie made two videos on two kde (kwin script) extensions for tiling. First one was called Polonium and the second one was Krohnkite. The latter was much better in his tests.
Basically, they rewrote their old Gnome-based desktop in Rust, which is probably why development was so fast, since it wasn't from scratch.
The configurations seem interesting, reminding me a bit of Budgie Desktop and Cinnamon.
Unfortunately, I found the look very ugly, and that was already something I didn't like about Pop_OS. They urgently need to hire a designer. I find the contrast between the side panel and the central panel, with the inverted colors, bizarre. The mix of menu bar and CSD, the window hint activated by default, and the choice of Fira Font, a monospace font, as the system font.
I'm counting the days until VRR and HDR, then I'm switching to this. Good luck to S76, I hope it ends up being great
Honestly if there was more smooth animations, it would kind of feel pretty polished. Ofc a setting to not animate should be an option. I just like how macOS and gnome animates. Also swipe to top left to open app tray maybe like gnome.
Yes! So now I just need a reason to buy another pc to run this without virtualization 🙂. In Pop! OS I never felt the need to mess around with themes because the default interface was so good.
I really hope I can theme it to look like Mac OS Snow Leopard or Lion or something. Circle buttons on left, etc.
As an old fart xfce user, which isn't into "decorative" desktop environments and dislikes effects, gestures, animations, etc, i have to admit that this looks very consistent.
@TheLinuxEXP - as always a great video - chock full of information. I think COSMIC is important for the Linux community as it is focused on a particular vision. Having said that the highlight of the video was your Cowboy accent. Well played sir.
Thank you for emphasizing the key differences of the DE. I wish the system76 a success because it seems like in this case they will have enough money and vision to have a coherent look that can compete with the macOS design. And I mean not to "look exactly the same as macOS", but share the same strength, that is consistent design code across the whole OS and keeping up with modern design trends.
9:57 this is gonna perfect to easily use some well known colour palettes like Nord, Solaris, Catppuccino, Dracula etc
Definitely exited to give this a try on my nixOS laptop, used to use GNOME before it started to fall behind but really fell in love with how it went about things like workspaces and its overview.
Here's to the Cosmic Epoch!
Thanks for the fast review. I'm using Cosmic Desktop pre-alpha sinc end of june and now the alpha. There is a lot of possibilities that this desktop become very popular when it will be more near the first official full desktop. Many distro are going to make it available to all linux users.
If you want tiling for kde, try the khronkite fork made for plasma 6, it's looking pretty promising!
There's also the idea of supporting NVIDIA GPUs, which means there's actually a lot to look forward to with Cosmic...!
FYI on my main gaming rig I am running Mint XFCE 21.3 with a RTX3080 (proprietary driver) on a 144Hz Gsync ultrawide with a 60hz secondary monitor and its all working extremely well. The only "problem" I have is in every game no matter what Vsync locks me to 60fps instead of 144 but I use other methods to cap at 141Hz to stay in my Gsync range.
Cela semble vraiment prometteur! J'ai hâte de le tester. Il y a juste un truc qui me choc de fou, c'est le border radius du dock et le padding 😆 Peut-être une déformation professionnelle de mon métier de dev web mais c'est pas hyper harmonieux je trouve. Il faudrait soit retirer du border radius afin de coller un peu plus avec l'arrondi des fenêtres, soit ajouter du padding pour que les icônes ne soient pas autant collées aux bords. Merci pour la vidéo Nick 😉
Absolument d’accord pour le border radius, c’est le premier truc que j’ai vu 😂
Honestly, I just hope they'll keep supporting Gnome.
I hope they allow 3 finger gestures for go forward and go back like on a mouse with side buttons.
Yeah, I hope so too
Cosmic seems more stable in its Alpha state that other DEs on their major launch states. Thanks as always for the coverage, Nick! Once I jump back into Linux, I think I'll be using Cosmic, despite it being in a barebones state, it has what I need to function, which is to watch TH-cam videos and game.
Natural scrolling is the pits. You don’t jump in the pilots seat and push the stick forward to go up “because it’s more intuitive”.
pushing the stick forward makes the plane go down
@@ethansilverstein26 that was my poorly made point. Scrolling back toward yourself makes the text on the page go up, scrolling away makes the text go down. Natural scrolling flips it around and looks at it from the perspective of the page. If I scroll forward I want the text to go down, I don’t care if technically the page is actually going up.
I just like that they have the toggle option! whichever camp you're in you can get the scrolling direction that works for you
@@Alan.livingstonbut on macOS with natural scrolling, scrolling up does move down?
I’m glad someone is finally making another desktop environment for Linux.
Proton Docs is very exciting in my opinion!
A global menu would be so much appreciated, really miss that since the Ubuntu Unity days
polonium is currently the best way to get tiling on KDE (for plasma6), but its still not a native implementation so it can be pretty buggy sometimes. I wish something like this was implemented natively in the big desktop environments, automatic tiling is the main reason I'm using linux atm.
As an american fan of this channel who happens to be a life long Texas resident...the cowboy nick was epic. We need more "Hick Nick" lol
probably won't use it until it gets bigger adoption, but that actually looks good.
Cosmic was already promising when it was just a bunch of extensions and enhancements of GNOME, so seeing it transformed into a fully-blown DE made me feel happy.
just waiting for it to mature so i can give it a fair try, until then not even thinking about crawling out of my Xfce cave
Shows a lot of promise as a robust poweruser DE, I will be keeping an eye on this one
I am getting a tingle in the trouser department looking at the cosmic desktop alpha release. You can see the amount of work that the team of Sysstem76 have put into this. Way to go System76.
Cosmic is exciting for Linux - it is a future looking approach without the legacy dependency (e.g., X11 gone) -- and it may accelerate application development and enhance the user experience. At least System 76 seems committed to the project.
Very happy for the team. Great achievement and it's on its way to greatness. I personally can't daily drive it unless/until they allow searching/launching apps from workspaces view. Single entry (1 key) faster workflow that avoids cognitive fatigue is just a requirement for me. They have a stated goal to let people be able to work their own way so I'm hopeful they will add the ability to search via launcher upon typing when in workspace overview. Small change to let many many people work the way they're used to. KDE even implemented it.
Liked your sepia Western bit lol
Like you for Linux news Nick
Such a great idea. There is no way currently to customize Linux. This is breath of fresh air. We can finally customize Linux. Yay
Linux enthusiast : Finally ! The power of the dragon scroll is... mine !? _Its nothing ?_
Linux_pro : *There is no secret ingredient, it is just you*
system76 feels very canonical in the unity days ngl
we need a new homer meme with "what the hell's a super key"
Sympa de voir que le développement de Cosmic avance bien, c'est prometteur pour la suite !
Cosmic looks and feels promising so far. I just installed it on my Fedora 40 system (there's a COPR repo available) and gave it a spin, it's not bad. It does tiling exactly the way I want, per workspace. As soon as it gets a little more fleshed out, I could see myself using Cosmic as a daily driver.
I'm excited for this to be usable as my daily driver DE. My first customization will always be that awful default font though.
This looks awesome. Can’t wait to see what they come up with for the full release.
Re KDE - There are tiling extensions for KDE, but COSMIC is the first I've seen to do tiling with a lot of desktop support. Even actual tilers don't generally have that level of indication for the tiling placement or ease of setup.
COSMIC looks to be shaping up nicely -- I might test consider switching from my actual tiler if this keeps up.
This needs years of extra dev, it's beyond simplistic right now.
I remember Linux Desktops from early 2000s, so much better configuration available than what we have today.
indeed... stop with the "desktop" focus on functionality and use, enough with useless shit for the geeks, that real user that do work will never use! Linux lately is like fast fashion, new shit is applauded until the next new shit comes out!
I'm very much looking forward to Cosmic coming to Fedora, can't wait to run it on my laptop
Excited about the import/export theme feature
I'm really excited for the theming capabilities and the ability to finally theme GNOME and KDE apps in one go!
This is NOT the first wayland only DE, although phosh is mainly targeted to phones, its also used for desktop, being wayland only (also, there are other wlroots de out there)
Yeah, but let’s be honest, it’s a very, very small mobile oriented project. And tiling WMs aren’t desktop environments, they’re juste a window manager
Isn't phosh based on GNOME?
@@TheLinuxEXP i get what you mean, but i think you could phrase that in a better way, like, it is a DE built to work wayland only, that's very important by itself, i don't think being the first or the last should matter
@@plumcakey it is built with GNOME technologies, but it's not based on GNOME shell, there is a mobile GNOME shell, but it's different from phosh
i feel like cosmic should go ahead and create support for menu exporting, developers typically won't support what there's no demand for
I’m so excited!!
I’m as excited as I was with steam proton
As i did with plasma, im gonna wait for this to release and stabilize before i try it out, i waited until kde 6.1 and jumped from 5.27 and i was blown away
Got ProtonVPN to watch the climbing in the Olympics!
it's as good as i expected :D especially for an alpha!
Watching this on the new Cosmic DE,loving it so far