How to install, first impressions, and what makes it ready.

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.

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We gave folks around the Linuxsphere some time to play with the Alpha COSMIC ISO. Feedback so far has overall been fairly glowing!

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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.

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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.

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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.

  • sunzu2
    11•3 months ago

    Do we have any improvements since original release?

    Has anybody been able to daily driver it?

    Anyone is gaming on it?

    • @ownsauceEnglish
      2•3 months ago

      I couldn’t get video conferencing to work (zoom/google meet) so I reinstalled PopOS. Also the timezone was stuck to UTC.

      I don’t have an extra computer lying around just to test COSMIC, but I did like what functionality was there. Will definitely move desktop and laptop over once its ready for daily driver.

      Edit: I forgot to connect to wifi before running the terminal commands to update and upgrade. I now have COSMIC working on my gaming desktop.

      • Michael Murphy (S76)MEnglish
        2•3 months ago

        It is required to install system updates before using the alpha.

        • @ownsauceEnglish
          1•3 months ago

          Thanks, that helped. I installed Cosmic on my gaming desktop yesterday, runs everything I need just fine (after a bunch of updates and restarts) - Steam, Firefox, Freetube, VLC, Chromium, Discord

          Some minor hiccups when transferring files from a flash drive or opening local files, but otherwise everything runs great on Firefox/Steam/VLC (95% of my computer usage)

            • @ownsauceEnglish
              2•3 months ago

              Yes. In Steam I tried both a native Linux game (Team Fortress 2) and a windows game (Expeditions Mudrunner) in compatibility mode with Proton. Both worked just fine but there are minor annoyances with COSMIC DE.

              • COSMIC Settings: There’s no option to set your primary and secondary display, so I had to switch around some display port and HDMI cables.

              • Display Issues: When I updated the display setting to 120Hz for my gaming monitor, it crashed the system and refused to boot the OS on restart, it would hang up with some error messages after the login screen. I had to start my desktop with a different monitor plugged in, and then connect my gaming monitor and make sure it was only set to 60hz so it wouldn’t crash again.

              • COSMIC Files: The file system doesn’t display filesize of folders or groups of files, only individual files

              Verdict: COSMIC is still in Alpha but it feels really crisp and snappy, smooth interacting with applications. You may run into some minor annoyances or bugs that could lead you to need to reinstall. If you’re like me who only uses Steam and Firefox and hardly any local files/applications, you’ll probably be fine if you run into any bugs. Also I have my laptop with Gnome POPos to fall back to if my desktop running COSMIC gets bricked and needs a fresh install.

              For now I am having a better experience in COSMIC PopOS than with GNOME PopOS. For a few weeks now I wasn’t able to get the PopStore running in Gnome DE, and also my firefox kept freezing the entire system after leaving a twitch stream running for a few hours. None of the issues I was having with GNOME PopOS are here in COSMIC PopOS. I’m looking forward to all the improvements and updates until full COSMIC launch. Also planning to get a System76 gaming desktop with AMD, probably next year when I can save up some money and maybe COSMIC will be more refined by then.