We created https://kbin.social/m/pop_os
I haven't been able to contact the owner of https://lemmy.ml/c/pop_os
There's several things that make Rust more ideal for writing software that makes efficient use of resources than C or C++.
One of these is how cumbersome it is to use tagged unions in C/C++. They're integrated as a first class citizen in Rust in the form of enums, and both the standard library and all Rust projects as a whole utilize them extensively. An example would be the Cow<'a, T> type. The compiler also has some clever tricks like zero-sized types which can reduce the size of types which contain them.
On the surface, the borrowing and ownership model is useful for guaranteeing memory safety. Yet if you take that a step further, it's the perfect tool for finely optimizing resource usage with confidence. In comparison, defensive programming practices are the norm in C and C++ because resource management is risky. So applications written in Rust are more likely to be better optimized.
It's already packaged on multiple distributions, albeit in an unofficial capacity. If you are on Pop!_OS, you can install the cosmic-session package today, then enable Wayland in the gdm3 config. We have an apt-manage tool which you can use to add development branches. A popdev branch is created for each branch on GitHub pushed by a team member. Which can be useful to quickly add a branch to validate a fix by a developer.
COSMIC is not using GTK. It has its own design language and toolkit built around the iced Rust library.
Gestures are a planned feature for cosmic-comp.
We use casey/just as a better makefile alternative. Shared system library dependencies will be listed in the debian/rules file, and most things should compile and install with just && sudo just install.
NVIDIA graphics is already well supported by cosmic-comp for those that want to give it a go on Pop!_OS. I'm typing from a laptop with NVIDIA hybrid graphics in the discrete graphics mode. Hybrid and integrated graphics modes are also working well. In addition to the iced library, slint is already a decent alternative to QML.
It will not be using GTK for first party applets and applications. COSMIC is being built with libcosmic, which is a cosmic-themed widget library built on top of iced. The design team also has a collaboration with Slint so that Slint can be used to make applications with the same look and feel as libcosmic.
Tiling window management is one of the core focuses of the cosmic compositor. Taking what made pop-shell great and taking it to the next level. So you might be interested in it.