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Pop!_OS 24.04 and new COSMIC desktop hit alpha • The Register
(www.theregister.com)
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this post was submitted on 12 Sep 2024
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Pop!_OS (Linux)
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I don't mind The Register, and overall I think the article was objective and informative. There's a couple things I think should be noted. Firstly, it mentioned Pop uses systemd-boot instead of GRUB and kind of inferred that was unusual. It might seem unusual when comparing it to the number of distributions still using GRUB, but if you consider things logically, using systemd-boot on a system that uses systemd it makes a lot more sense than using an old, bloated, unsecure chain-loader. Systemd-boot meets Freedesktop bootloader specifications for a bootloader with systemd. It's simple, fast and secure. You can use GRUB if you like, but it's probably only familiarity that keeps it around.
I don't think Pop's partition layout, use of encryption is "overly paranoid". It's timely and necessary!
And finally, I don't think the author completely comprehends what is possible with COSMIC desktop. I could understand their POV if COSMIC was actually like GNOME in that it is difficult to modify heavily without causing instability. Gnome modification also relies on third party software which GNOME often don't support. So saying "If you don't like GNOME, you won't like this" could be true if stock COSMIC wasn't able to be modified easily. However, COSMIC is supremely easy to modify and people who like KDE, Cinnamon or any other desktop will be surprised to learn that they will likely be able to use Pop!_OS with COSMIC and make it look like KDE, Cinnamon, Gnome or even Windows. It's only a matter of desktop configurations, most of which will be native in Settings, and with the difference being COSMIC will remain stable. I will also mention that Gnome have never had a native tiling solution.
COSMIC is not Gnome. It's not even a fork of Gnome. It doesn't even use GTK3. It's completely new, and when alpha2 is complete I'm sure many people will suddenly "get it". COSMIC is integrating many features that Gnome have been removing for years.
Register, I like you, but I think you missed some important considerations.
Yeah, the author normally rarely misses an opportunity to complain about KDE being too complex in his articles - and COSMIC aims to fall in that sweet spot between the extremes that are GNOME and KDE, while adding features like optional but native tiling.
The applet concept where applets live in their own process and communicate via Wayland protocols (behind a COSMIC API) is also less likely to break than GNOME plugins that are horribly injected into its bowels.
Given the toolkit, organized development and UX decisions being up-front designed with figma sketches, etc. that are reviewed before implemented, and having both paid developers and community contributors it has a lot of potential.
Even better. A COSMIC API was not necessary since Wayland protocols already exist for this (layer-shell and security-context).
Could you explain a little more on that? Just curious.
Wayland compositors use IPC over a UNIX socket to communicate with Wayland clients. To increase security and enable sandboxed applet support, COSMIC applets use the security-context protocol for their IPC connection to the compositor. To be an applet, COSMIC applications use the layer-shell protocol to behave as an applet. Neither of which were made for COSMIC. Some other Wayland compositors support these protocols. You can see which compositors support the protocols at the bottom of the wayland.app protocol pages.
Do you think it will be long before COSMIC is available outside Pop_OS? I love Pop_OS but I've started running Bazzite with GNOME/Pop Shell but I know that'll get left behind once COSMIC gets a full release.
It already is available. See the links on the COSMIC webpage: https://system76.com/cosmic
COSMIC is already available outside of Pop!_OS. There's already a good number of distributions (members of distributions) working on integrating COSMIC. There's Fedora and NixOS and I hear SerpentOS is interested too. Maybe Bazzite will do the work to integrate COSMIC.