It’s happening! This is not a drill! The alpha version of COSMIC, our new desktop environment for Pop!_OS and other Linux distros, has been released. COSMIC adds new features, customization, performance, stability, and security. Its “alpha” state adds bugs. Bug reports are welcome, as are screenshots of your custom themes and panels.
To make sure people are as excited about COSMIC as we are, it was essential to give it the best impression we could. Even for an alpha, most features required for daily use needed to feel polished. However, you’re bound to come across some breaking bugs before the official release, so we advise you hold off on using COSMIC for production use for now.
Here’s how to try it.
Try COSMIC on Pop!_OS
Download Intel/AMD ISO
sha256sum 894bc15abcad05839b226655121a113ad16cfbc4ada98e93e3ffb74a853fdcd4
Download NVIDIA ISO
sha256sum 3d636b705c1049395d50bbb5acd7c709fd871de78e4d95d297bcbdab7cae4e05
Try COSMIC on your favorite distro
First Impressions
We gave folks around the Linuxsphere some time to play with the Alpha COSMIC ISO. Feedback so far has overall been fairly glowing! Check out what they’re saying about their time with COSMIC:
“I tried this COSMIC desktop on a very low-end system, and it was still impressively, impressively fast.” — Linux Unplugged podcast
"The foundation seems very solid, and I wouldn't be surprised if, in a year or two, this thing was considered THE default desktop that you would recommend to anyone." — The Linux Experiment
“There’s such cool power-user potential here.” — Michael Tunnell
“What I can say about Cosmic, even at this early alpha stage, is that it's relatively snappy and cohesive compared to other systems I've used.” — Ars Technica
“I can imagine this becoming really popular.” — GamingOnLinux
“I've been playing around with this Pop!_OS 24.04 alpha…and it's been working out quite well.” — Phoronix
“Despite the alpha tag, everything runs well for daily driver usage.” — OMG! Ubuntu
“It’s pretty impressive how far they’ve come in two years working on this.” — Gardiner Bryant
“They have really focused on refining the user experience.” — SavvyNik
“I could tile windows effortlessly, with keyboard shortcuts letting me navigate between windows and workspaces without touching the mouse.” — It’s FOSS
“It has options for either vertical or horizontal workspaces, an integrated tiling system, and customizable panels for the dock and top bar.” — How-To Geek
“It’s a very good desktop. I love the functionality, it looks great, but of course there’s going to be some bugs.” — Learn Linux TV
“Now I’m more excited than ever.” — Brodie Robertson, after some COSMIC Q&A. He also had some helpful feedback for us!
“The new COSMIC desktop environment in Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS provides a solid foundation for rapid advancement long-term, a holistic design system that’s modern, fast, and responsive for a consistent software ecosystem.” — 9to5Linux
“COSMIC is designed to be a modern, customizable, and performant desktop environment.” — OSTechnix
“After the first few seconds, you already know — you’re home.” — Linuxiac
“COSMIC is a significant update to the previous Pop!_OS interface, offering a more modern and user-friendly experience.” — Nix Sanctuary
The design system
The design system determines what makes COSMIC look and feel like COSMIC. This includes typography, colors and theming system, spacing, corner radii, and sizing across COSMIC’s interface, as well as what widgets are used (or yet to be implemented for use) in COSMIC apps. Making an official design system available, albeit one still a work in progress was essential for this first release, as it also serves as a guide for anyone building an app or applet — so that it feels integrated with the rest of the desktop environment. Now app developers can provide the best possible experience early on.
App and applet template
We’ve finalized an official app template for best practices on what to include in apps developed for COSMIC. Items like support for the Launcher, what types of icons to provide, and descriptions for app stores are listed in the app template.
Likewise, check out the COSMIC applet template for building applets. Create a new repository from this template and clone it to your local machine to get started on making your applet.
Thanks to the awesome edfloreshz for the assist!
Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS
The COSMIC alpha on Pop!_OS is also an alpha for the latest Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS. When COSMIC Epoch 1 is officially released, this will be made available as an upgrade through the normal upgrade path in the OS. An upgrade path will also be available in the second alpha for testers.
Date & Time Settings
Settings for adjusting date, time, and time zone have been implemented! The time is set automatically based on your selected time zone.
Screen Capture
Share your experience with COSMIC! We’ve built functionality into xdg-desktop portal screen capture that allows you to select an output, as well as select a certain window to record.
Touchpad defaults
Changes were made to the compositor to set tap-to-click, as well as disabling the touchpad while typing, as defaults.
Building the ISO
Wrapping up the COSMIC alpha, we did a cursory test of the ISO file to get the installation working. As part of that process, screen-sharing in video conferencing apps is now functional.
Contributions from YOU
Thanks to our contributors for helping COSMIC reach its full potential!
- Koranir added a feature for using Super + Right-click + drag to resize windows.
- leb-kuchen added a feature for double-clicking title bars to maximize a window for server-side decorations.
- Additionally, they fixed a bug with minimize and maximize buttons where certain applications weren’t respecting COSMIC users’ preferences on which buttons would be shown.
Become a COSMIC Ambassador
COSMIC Ambassadors are amazing people who contribute to COSMIC or promote it on social media. They also get free swag! You, too, can become an ambassador by filling out this short form.
A lot has been developed over these past two years, but there’s still quite a bit left to be done. Here’s some areas where you can assist: