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Yay, finally I can upgrade to newer software versions!!!
The question is whether they will release it before or after Ubuntu 26.04 LTS…
Probably same time. Gives them enough time to work on bugs.
LTS Beta ist a bit of a strange combination
You should read it as “beta of the LTS release”, in which case it is not so strange.
Does anyone here run Cosmic DE full time? Does it have any killer features?
I actually daily drove it during Alpha for a bit but stopped using it after a couple Alpha releases because it got a bit worse with each alpha release and more slow. Haven’t tried the beta yet but will probably get around to it soon.
Killer feature? I mean if you want GNOME or a regular DE with tiling then sure…have at it. You’re not going to get anywhere near the caliber of customization you would have with say KDE Plasma or literally any other WM out there but the trade of is you don’t have to deal with config files for the tiling aspect. It’s a buggy mess though. With each added feature the bugs just increased which is sort of expected.
The last time I used it the shortcuts were a bit of a pain to get working correctly and the startup was slow. It does come packaged with its own file manager and terminal. The file manager isn’t anything special, but honestly the terminal isn’t that bad. If I recall the terminal doesn’t support images so if that’s something you want (like for me it is since I use Yazi) then I’d just uninstall it. I don’t think it has the option to style GTK stuff but I heard they might have changed that with the Beta.
It’s launcher is pretty nice and you can do a lot with it. naturally app launching but also web searching, calculator, file searching, etc.
I wish it had an option like KDE Plasma does for laptops where you can completely disable the touchpad if you have an external mouse plugged in instead of just disable while typing. But you can circumvent that if you know what you’re doing with like something like noinput cli or whatever or making a udev rule.
I think it still needs a wee bit longer to bake. If they can work out the bugs, speed it up a bit, and make the overall size of it smaller than KDE I would switch back to it. It’s pretty simple and bare bones but I mean for wayland your only options are pretty much Plasma or GNOME so having a third option is awesome.
I see it as a great middle ground for those that wanting to use tiling WMs but do not want to dabble into editing config using text files, scripts etc. I’ve been running Sway for a year and my initial feedback is really positive. A lot of stuff I had to look up a lot to implement in sway just works with no hassle.
Tiling WMs have a lot of benefit to those using it, but mainly window management becomes unbelievably easier. Not needing to use mouse for simple tasks like resizing windows, moving between programs gives you way more flexibility with what you can do with your cursor.
I like Pop, but note that Gnome has a few extensions that implement tiling (I use PaperWM). I believe KDE also has some tiling support.
Certainly, many of the hardcore tiling environments are too bare and require significant effort to get to a usable state (esp. on laptops, where you want wireless network applets), and it’s unfortunate that it is no longer so easy to mix and match components (e.g. I used to run xmonad on top of Mate).
Having said that, I’ll have another go with the beta!
exactly everything I need and nothing more. doesn’t need X. reasonably lightweight. no fiddly configuration needed. nice support for tiling alongside floating.
also, very buggy (at least as of alpha.7), somewhat fickle (at least on my hardware), and I can’t remap keyboard shortcuts.
Currently testing beta, I could remap keyboard shortcuts.
Go Input Devices / Keyboard / View and customize shortcuts and find your desired shortcut.
Do not delete the first bind before adding a new keybind. Click “Add another keybind”, hit your desired keybinds, then remove the first bind.
After using Autotiling from the Cosmic desktop, I can’t go back to anything else. I’ve tried distro hopping to Gnome based desktops for a few reasons, but always wind back up on Cosmic.
Brodie uploaded a video yesterday that should answer that question for you.
I tried a number of the alphas and just hate it. Like fundamentally hate it, not just because it was buggy.
I wish System76 would just put out a 24.10 release instead of spending all their resources on this DE.
More info in this article on linuxiac
Exciting news! I now need to decide whether to try to upgrade from 22.04 or just wipe and start over with the beta.
It’s been 1000 years…
It’s better to wait for a stable product than to release it early with full of bugs
Agreed, but I am a little annoyed that they held up all of Pop!_OS for COSMIC.
It does feel like they lost some momentum by doing that. I don’t have numbers of course, but it seemed like everybody was talking about it around the time 22.04 came out. Now I don’t hear nearly as much. Hopefully the new release will regain some of that!
I’m sure it will. A company is behind it.
I’m very annoyed - I hate cosmic and just want normal sytem updates.
After all the time they’ve spent on Cosmic, I doubt they’re going to stop using it now. If you dislike it that much, you might be better off looking for another distro that offers a different DE.
This makes no sense - Pop_OS offers Gnome, KDE/Plasma, etc. as alternatives. Why should I stop using it because I don’t like one of the other DEs?
Because you just complained about them not releasing updates? Work on the underlying distribution is most likely going to be slow for a while longer since they’re continuing to work on Cosmic. I’m sure you have your reasons for doing it this way, but you’re already using a different DE than Pop comes with. Why not put your DE of choice on another distribution where you can get the normal system updates you want?
you’re already using a different DE than Pop comes with
Pop comes with KDE/Plasma.
I use PopOS because I have a System76 laptop. It runs well on my hardware. I’m allowed to complain about things without some shit telling me to just “use another distro”. If I wanted to run another distro I’d run another distro. Lordy…
