I’ve tried dozens of Linux desktops, and COSMIC feels like the future

Pop!_OS has a strong following, and one reason is its COSMIC desktop. Being unfamiliar with both, I decided to take a look at COSMIC and see what all the fuss was about. Could it make me give up my go-to Xfce?

What is the COSMIC desktop?

A new spin on the Linux desktop

The COSMIC desktop is a Linux desktop developed by System76, a Denver-based maker of Linux PCs. COSMIC is the default desktop of its flagship Pop!_OS distro, based on Ubuntu.

Apart from a custom desktop, COSMIC has a couple of interesting technical ideas that it’s built on. It uses Wayland, a graphical windowing standard that’s intended to replace the X11 standard that’s been ubiquitous on Unix-like systems and has little changed since 1987.

Another technical feat of the desktop is that it’s written in Rust. Desktops and window managers have typically been written in C. Rust, like C, is a compiled language, meaning that compiled programs are fast, but Rust is memory-safe. This means that there should be fewer crashes due to memory errors.

COSMIC is also meant to be more secure against security breaches like the installation of keyloggers. This is a feature of Wayland itself, though it has made it difficult to run certain apps like screen capturing tools. Some Linux users have complained about it on Reddit, claiming that Wayland’s security model is “paranoid.”

COSMIC is based on the Qt toolkit. Pop!_OS’s desktop, like its parent Ubuntu, was originally a modified version of GNOME, but System76 decided to create its own desktop due to conflicts with GNOME’s upstream direction of development.

Where can you get COSMIC?

You don’t have to use Pop!_OS

While Wayland is the default desktop for Pop!_OS, you don’t have to use Pop!_OS to get it. You can download custom spins of Fedora with COSMIC, as well as install it on major distros like Arch Linux and OpenSUSE.

The route I went with was to download a stock ISO of Pop!_OS and install it in a VirtualBox virtual machine. I was able to boot into the live environment, which used COSMIC. I could probably have just used that, but since I’d never installed Pop!_OS before, I wanted to see how a typical user would experience installing it and using it.

The installation program was nice enough. As much as Linux distros try to make installing Linux friendlier, you still have to know a little bit about your machine, such as how its disks are organized. This isn’t a Linux issue; it’s just an operating system installation issue.

First impressions of COSMIC

Nice, despite the occasional disappearing panel

Using COSMIC felt pleasant. The performance felt a bit sluggish on my machine, but that was mainly due to running in a virtual machine. The recommended configuration for Pop!_OS is 4GB of RAM, which is the same as Windows 11’s minimum requirements. COSMIC seemed to run better after I bumped up the video RAM and enabled 3D acceleration in VirtualBox.

I’d accepted a dark theme, since the installation program seemed to indicate it as a default.

Apart from its quirks, the system seems attractive. On installation, you’re given a choice between a Windows-like or Mac-like way of setting up your desktop.I chose the latter.

The aesthetics when the system came up were pleasant. I felt mostly comfortable. I had an odd issue where the panels would occasionally disappear, leading me to have to log out and back in to restart them. Since I tweaked the graphics settings for VirtualBox, COSMIC seems to work more reliably.

COSMIC seems keyboard-oriented, which will appeal to power users. Pressing the “Super” or Windows key will bring up the Launcher menu where you can search for items, such as programs.

Included Apps

A custom editor, file manager, terminal, and more

A lot of the apps that come with COSMIC, at least with Pop!_OS, seem standard. There are the familiar Mozilla Firefox and the LibreOffice productivity.

There are also some custom app, such as COSMIC Files, the file manager, and COSMIC Editor. Since I spend most of my time on Linux in the terminal, that was the first thing I tried. As with GNOME, COSMIC has developed its own apps. The terminal was attractive.

Window management

While windows are stacking by default, it’s possible to tile them. You can drag a window to a side or corner of the screen to create a tile, then click another window to display it side-by-side. This is handy if you need to work on a document while comparing it to another, such as a word processing document and a web page, or writing code in an editor and having the documentation for a language or library handy.

While I’m somewhat skeptical of tiling window managers, these are cases where tiled windows are useful. You can use whatever mode makes sense for what you’re working on.

Is COSMIC for you?

Good for Debian/Ubuntu power users but usable for non-geeks

System76 seems to target their systems toward power users, and the software seems to go the same way. I found the desktop pleasant enough to use. This is something that I could easily imagine using as a daily driver, assuming that the issues with the disappearing panels were resolved. It helps that I’m familiar with the broader Debian/Ubuntu ecosystem, which Pop!_OS is based on.

It’s still simple enough for less sophisticated users to use a an all-around desktop.

An interesting newcomer to the Linux desktop scene

Being based on some new technology in the Linux world, namely Wayland and Rust will make COSMIC a desktop environment to watch, on Pop!_OS or elsewhere.