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.

    • ownsauce@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      2 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.

        • ownsauce@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          2 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)