COSMIC Desktop ALPHA: a unique & important project for Linux!

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Timecodes:
00:00 Intro
01:06 Sponsor: Proton Mail
02:10 Desktop Layout
04:27 Layout customization
06:33 Window management
09:26 Theming
12:28 Applications
16:24 General info & why it's important
20:17 Support the channel

#Cosmic #linux #linuxdesktop #popos

The default will be very, very familiar to anyone who already used PopOS. You have a bottom dock and a top panel. The dock has your app icons and access to the app library and the launcher, the top panel lets you access the workspaces, the apps, the time and date, and your system tray.

The settings let you do whatever the hell you want to these panels and docks. You can move any of these to any screen edge, you can move any applet from one to the other, size them how you want, make them fully transparent, you can replicate any layout you'd like, basically, and if you'd like to just have one single taskbar at the bottom, you can always make the top panel transparent, and auto hide it, after removing all of its applets.

Of course, one of the main advantages of PopOS was always its auto tiling features, and they return here in Cosmic. You can obviously manually tile windows on screen edges, or corners, to half tile, maximize, or quarter tile, but you also get the nice auto tiling applet in the top bar.
You can turn on auto tiling for the current workspace, and keep a different behavior for other workspaces, and you can even set that behavior for any new workspace that is created, since these are dynamic, like in GNOME.

After that, you can either navigate using the keyboard or the mouse, and you have a nice visual hint around the currently focused window as well. You can also stack windows by placing them on top of one another, and this will add tabs in the titlebars of these windows. These stacks will persist even if you untile the desktop, and you can create these stacks even with floating windows, and if a stack is currently focused, all new windows will open inside of this stack. You can destack things by just dragging them out of it.

Now, in terms of theming, Cosmic has the usual light and dark mode, and accent colors, from a palette, or with a color picker. Then, you can change the other colors: you can change the window background color, the color of containers, so the sidebars and options popovers, the color of the interface text, the tint of the controls, and the color of the hint for the active window, if you want it to be different from the accent color.

Other options let you change the shape of the controls, rounded, rounded squares and pure squares. And as the cherry on top, you get the ability to change the icon theme, and to apply your color theme to Gnome apps, including libadwaita and flatpak apps.

Finally, let's look at the apps. The app store is nothing crazy, it works with apps from the PopOS repos, and flatpaks as well, with flathub being turned on by default, at least in the PopOS alpha, you can't see app permissions, links to the developer's website, verification status, or anything like that.

The terminal has themes, profiles, lets you split the current terminal, it supports tabs, it can even be semi transparent. it's a good terminal app for most people.

The Text editor will be fine for most people as well, it does have some development oriented features, like tab width settings for identation, or a project view for navigating a directory. It also has git management features baked in, but it won"t replace your favorite IDE any time soon.

Finally, the file manager is very barebones for now, it does support tabs, and it has a sidebar, you get a grid view and a list view, the ability to show hidden files, and a few view settings, but that's it. No archiving features, no split view, no terminal integration, no side panels, it's more Nautilus than Dolphin for now.

[maasteeve]

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

[bokocchop]

I think Cosmic becomes the sweet spot between KDE and Gnome, Functionality and beauty. Perfectly balanced, as everything should be

[Jokrono]

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.

[skelebro]

We actually got COSMIC Desktop before GIMP 3 🤯

[Snowylynn]

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!

[gavinmurambadoro]

Good job System76. COSMIC is indeed a modern desktop environment that respects the user's preferences and customizations.

[aviralomar]

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.

[Linux_ASMR]

Cosmic is an enhanced version of Gnome. Not having to rely on extensions to tweak a few simple customisation options should be the default.

[TheBitPianist]

"This will not blow you away if:" * starts listing every possible scenario *

[AtomToast]

Config files? Holy shit, this may actually be good

[Beryesa.]

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!

[VeitLehmann]

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!

[quasigod]

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

[jumpyVi]

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.

[isuckatsoldering]

Cowboy Nick needs to be a recurring character

[prakharmathur]

Just happy that it will have touchpad gesture support

[RagnarinVa]

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.

[AndreiIorgulescu]

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 😁)

[egarcia]

2:45 To search for files, type "find" and then the file name (in both GNOME w/ pop-shell and COSMIC).

[TheFeelTrain]

I am probably staying on Plasma but I was waiting to finally see Cosmic in action