It will be possible to configure COSMIC to look like Unity out of the box. There’s only a few panel applets that need to be implemented to make the experience 1:1.
I wanna see cosmic so much. The whole hybrid graphics thing looks sweet
Test it and report bugs using this ublue image! It is pre-alpha and not guaranteed to have a working fallback session (in this case GNOME).
You can also probably run it from a rootful distrobox following this guide
I am still a bit confused that it’s considered pre-alpha, when a final release is scheduled for later this year. That will be an awfully short alpha, beta and RC cycle then.
The compositor and its applications have been developed bottom up with a full Rust stack, so stability hasn’t been a concern. We spend very little time debugging since the logic usually works if it compiles.
There’s only a handful of applications slated for the first release, and they’re almost finished. Besides core applications, we need only develop a couple additional settings pages to be ready for release, and integrate COSMIC versions of the remaining desktop portals. Altogether, that’s really not that much compared to all the work in the last two years.
Besides feature development, the main focus will be ironing out theming issues in the toolkit to adhere to our design files, and writing documentation for developers interested in building apps for cosmic. As well as the necessary work to enable a smooth upgrade from Pop 22.04 to 24.04.
Don’t get me wrong: I didn’t want to downplay the work or doubt the progress. Quite the contrary. I think the current state is alpha and once the first sets of apps are finished it should be beta. Then polishing until release, a few weeks of release candidate phase and then release.
Basically I think it’s too far along already to call it pre-alpha.
(Unless the intention is to “release” it as beta with 24.04 to emphasize the missing apps… then consider what I said pointless.)
Our internal testing won’t begin until the first ISO is ready, which marks the alpha. As it is open source, our internal testing is also publicly available to everyone interested in downloading the ISO and testing it. The Alpha will not include all features that are planned for release. Then we will switch to Beta after all featues are implemented, where QA will begin reviewing every PR to ensure that no regressions make it to release. Then it releases after we deem the beta free of oustanding issues on the board.
Thanks for the clarification. Seems sensible.
It got delayed, and that is very much needed.
COSMIC is huge, they implemented like all the base components (compositor, xwayland, font rendering, refresh rate stuff, own GUI toolkit, …) which is incredible, but the GUI is very alpha and I wouldnt like using it tbh.
Their groundwork is awesome, and with a style like KDE I think it woulf be incredible. Their apps are very fast too.
It should be noted that COSMIC itself hasn’t been delayed. Development on the core applications progressed much faster than expected, so we decided to skip the Alpha 1 release and release Alpha 2 instead.
Why wouldn’t you like using it right now? I wouldn’t call it “very alpha”.
Thanks for the reply!
I find some things confusing to use. Like maximizing/tiling windows my dragging them to screen edges doesnt work. I think documentation about the tiling would be awesome, as meta+arrows also didnt do anything.
It seems the tiling is only active when using tiling mode? That mode is slick as fuck, but having super+arrow always available or at least the tiling applet always shown would be great.
I am also not a fan of the color scheme, which is too black and I would prefer a less aggressive “active window” border.
The screenshot tool is very minimal but works well, its hard to reach a (bugfree ;D) KDE spectacle.
Same with the Filemanager and Editor, Dolphin is the best piece of software in existence, I love it. Kate is also great. (Main dolphin features: filter, search, preview size, column selector, custom right-click actions, custom buttons, custom places bar with custom names and icons,
And there is this issue with 3rd row symbols and keyboard layout not working at all. I have an en-GB keyboard, en-US either has no 3rd row or this is actually not working, and I also needs to disable capslock and use it to switch between 2 layouts.
The app menu has no “show all apps” view which makes searching a pain for me. I also prefer the layout of either GNOME (showing all apps with folders and rearranging) or KDE Kicker (WinXP like with search and favorites).
I will try and see what my problem with the search was, because that would probably be my preferred way.
The ability to remove the top panel, and to resize the applets independently of the app icons is crucial for creating a laptop-friendly one-button-panel layout. The GNOME-style only makes sense in GNOME I think.
Style-wise I think it already looks great, and its snappy and modern and has better dual-monitor support than Plasma 5, which is kinda crazy.
- That’s not implemented, but you can click the maximize button, or press Super+M to toggle maximization.
- You can open the Appearance settings page and change that to your preferred color scheme. We’ve already selected our default colors and they’re not going to change from here on out.
- What do you mean by minimal? The PrintScrn key opens the screenshot utility, which lets you choose between capturing a selected region, a specific window, or the whole display
- What’s wrong with the file manager and editor? You can use whatever editor and file manager you want, so that shouldn’t be a blocker for daily use.
- This can be configured in the cosmic comp config, but will be implemented in the settings app soon.
- Super+W opens the workspaces view
- Your distribution should make sure pop-launcher is installed, and each of its plugins symlinked.
- That is already possible in the Desktop and Panel settings page. As you can see, I’m not using a GNOME style panel or dock here.
- I found that it only works in tiling mode, which may be better but normal snapping in windowed mode is pretty normal I think.
- Okay thats fair
- Clicking on the notification doesnt open the image, there is no recording and it has no editing :D but it works well and way quicker than Spectacle
- Added features I like about dolphin. For sure I could install dolphin instead. I would also prefer a places bar where you can click on the parent directories, clicking on the empty space after them activates manual path selection mode. But the filemanager is already pretty nice. In the editor I would miss things like LSP and text snippets, but it seems very nice for its purpose.
- That view is nice, but the drag-drop animation is similar to KDE (apps need to already be opened) and they are not minimized during the action, so it looks a bit clunky. Also removing workspaces is kinda buggy.
Disclaimer: using the latest ublue cosmic 40 image, no idea if the RPMs are up to date.
Wait, xwayland is something that the compositor has to handle? I thought it was a separate program. Really nothing is built in with Wayland, is it?
Wayland compositors have to implement the whole display server, including special handling of XWayland windows. XWayland windows can be very finicky and require caution to handle.
Uhm I dont know, but it needs to be handled by them, there also is xwaylandvideobridge (only in KDE?) which is also important
Unfortunately, I have a Mac, so currently stuck with fedora asahi, and poor old KDE :P. Tho 6 is gonna be sooo good
Why is there no asahi atomic image? That would be so useful to consume, add the COSMIC stack compiled for ARM and you are done.
I heard mention of COSMIC on Asahi somewhere.
Hell yeah. If there’s a applet that puts the app menu on the panel I’m golden.
PRs to cosmic-panel and libcosmic are welcome
This looks great. Is there also an easy way to make it work like “dash to panel”, with open apps in the top taskbar area?
Yes, you can do anything with COSMIC’s dock and panel. No extensions needed. If an applet exists on the system, you can embed it into your panel or dock.
Whoa, nice. Sounds like the best of GNOME and KDE combined, plus extra goodies like tiling. I’m not sure I can give up the AUR so I hope I can use this on Arch one day.
you already can, While cosmic stuff is on the AUR i’ve been having issues with it so I use my own scripts I have here https://github.com/Quackdoc/pkgbuild-scripts/tree/Master/cosmic-epoch
you can add the repo as a paru repo if you have it;
[quackpkg] Url = https://github.com/Quackdoc/pkgbuild-scripts.git #Path = /home/quack/code/pkgbuild-scripts Depth = 4then install it using
paru -S --rebuild cosmic-applibrary-git cosmic-bg-git cosmic-comp-git cosmic-edit-git cosmic-files-git cosmic-greeter-git cosmic-icons-git cosmic-launcher-git cosmic-notifications-git cosmic-osd-git cosmic-panel-git cosmic-randr-git cosmic-screenshot-git cosmic-session-git cosmic-settings-daemon-git cosmic-settings-git cosmic-store-git cosmic-term-git cosmic-workspaces-epoch-git xdg-desktop-portal-cosmic-gityou will also need
cosmic-applets-gitI need to patch mine to disable LTO=fat with LTO=thin in cargo toml so it’s not part of the above command. Note I haven’t done a clean build on these, but they should mostly work. if you run into any issues lemme know and I can try and fix them.cosmic-greeter can be enabled with
cosmic-greeter.serviceI think you need to manually install greetd im not sure I have added it to deps. using cosmic-greeter isn’t necessary however.EDIT: it is somewhat likely that I may have messed something up, but as it stands i’m currently actively using cosmic comp right now
This is what I’ve been chasing for a while. Bspwm like tiling with a unity like interface for the status bar, dock, system management, etc. I’ve been debating trying this through xfce or kde but havent had the spoons to give it a go
Are there any plans for enabling a global menu like Unity had or if writing an extension for one is possible? I miss it every day 😅.
It’s looking great though! I’m very hyped to try it
Nice!
Needs the unified menu for the active/maximized window at the top. Else, it’s perfect.
Nice work
Does it look like KDE or some other DE out of the box and this is a Unity theme / skin?
