System76 Adding XWayland Support & Other Improvements To Its COSMIC DE

[mdedetrich]

That's funny. Because basically all of that is already being fulfilled by GNOME. Commercial support by an arguably much larger company (Red Hat, part of IBM, plus Canonical) and also being supported by many distributions, the language is basically irrelevant if you know what you are doing (with the arguments the Rust fanboys come with the whole Linux kernel would have to be a complete security desaster, but to mention like at least 90 % of all software), and the "one garbage" it needs to carry with it is only for the time being. They are already planning to have it ship with only Wayland and XWayland, or even without XWayland. That future doesn't seem that far fetched and by then it simply would stop shipping that old stuff.

And thanks to GSK, which is available with GTK4, you can choose from a variety of rendering backends: OpenGL, some strange other OpenGL implementation, Cairo, llvmpipe and Vulkan.

Not really, Redhat/Gnome's top priority is for their developers and for server and not general user desktop, thats not even their target market and also their commercial support. System76's target market on the other hand is general users, they are going after the same people that Apple goes after with Mac/MacOS (people can debate until the cows come home whether this is successful or not, but thats what their aim is). Unlike Redhat/IBM/Canonical, their support is for their general desktop users (System 76 has a 24/7 support line for **desktop** people). If you look at the all of the communication, messaging, debates and arguments about Gnome (and the fact that https://stopthemingmy.app/ exists), its pretty clear that the general undercurrent behind Gnome/GTK's is trying to save as much developer time as possible rather than providing the best user experience.

no. system76 is a company that has multiple revenue streams, one such stream is selling functional computers, laptops and desktops. think about it like this, there are all these foss alternatives, but the single as far as I am aware, somewhat popular company working on "linux on a consumers PC" the kind someone at a computer shop would actually sell, have looked at all these options and decided, it would be best the best use of their money and time to work on their own in house DE instead. it could just be that every one of those other FOSS DEs, have crippling issues.

first of all, we can just discard gnome and GTK apps for being sutable as they have time and time again shown that they don't actually care features consumers like and need, (still no fractional scaling in GTK apps? WTF!?).

KDE the other most popular distro, is so chalk full of bugs you would think that your PC has a termite infestation, (it also doesn't help that getting QT apps to look like the design that POP team seems to be after is a lot harder, but thats not a technical qualm really).

the issue is that there is no good solution for S76 for a DE, and as a company, who actually wants to sell products, half assing it like all the other environments isn't cutting it. all the other DEs have issues, cosmic will have issues too, no doubt. but S76 is no longer just a hardware company, they sell a product, and there is nothing that fits what their definition of a good OOB experience

Agreed, although I disagree with the KDE part, hasn't been buggy for me at all (but do note that I don't use Wayland yet, thats a separate problem)

[Danny3]

I wonder what was their reasoning for not choosing KDE Plasma.

[Quackdoc]

I believe they can really do it better then what we have now with the established solutions. Im tottally looking forward to use it.
Maybe I will try the alpha right now. But I don't have a system which is suitable for alpha testing ATM.

I think they can too since they seem to be the only company trying to turn linux into a product that someone could actually feel good selling in their stores, if you have arch I have pkgbuilds for it that works pretty well, if not. no idea how well it would work in distrobox but maybe thats an option?

[Quackdoc]

it's more about spending resources of a small hardware company on writing a piece of software we already have plenty of alternatives for. System76 is a hardware company and they should focus on the core of their business before spreading into other areas.

no. system76 is a company that has multiple revenue streams, one such stream is selling functional computers, laptops and desktops. think about it like this, there are all these foss alternatives, but the single as far as I am aware, somewhat popular company working on "linux on a consumers PC" the kind someone at a computer shop would actually sell, have looked at all these options and decided, it would be best the best use of their money and time to work on their own in house DE instead. it could just be that every one of those other FOSS DEs, have crippling issues.

first of all, we can just discard gnome and GTK apps for being sutable as they have time and time again shown that they don't actually care features consumers like and need, (still no fractional scaling in GTK apps? WTF!?).

KDE the other most popular distro, is so chalk full of bugs you would think that your PC has a termite infestation, (it also doesn't help that getting QT apps to look like the design that POP team seems to be after is a lot harder, but thats not a technical qualm really).

the issue is that there is no good solution for S76 for a DE, and as a company, who actually wants to sell products, half assing it like all the other environments isn't cutting it. all the other DEs have issues, cosmic will have issues too, no doubt. but S76 is no longer just a hardware company, they sell a product, and there is nothing that fits what their definition of a good OOB experience

[CochainComplex]

usually I' against fragmentation attempts. Often they are simply "Yet Another..". But if there are fundamental changes and not just a simple fork it is part of the natural cycle of software.
And the Cosmic DE is such a fundamential different WM.
Its written in Rust, Wayland based and has the potential to be Vulkan rendered. Better&more dynamic integration of hybrid graphics.
The Company behind it is pushing it as OpenSource and not CLA based OpenSource or ClosedSoruce.

Why not giving it a chance?

I believe they can really do it better then what we have now with the established solutions. Im tottally looking forward to use it.
Maybe I will try the alpha right now. But I don't have a system which is suitable for alpha testing ATM.

[cooperate]

I couldn't care less about their own DE. Why won't they fix the major issues? First add SecureBoot support to PopOS, then go play with your crayons...

Or even more importantly, violating GPL by shipping ISOs with proprietary nvidia preinstalled, or shipping patent encumbered software without licenses. Stuff like this makes you skeptical of the longevity of the company.

[Artim]

My DE is more stable. Decade old tiling WMs that have never crashed for me and are way lighter than theirs. Why don't they focus on decent hardware since we don't have any yet? Because adults have become inflantalized and would rather get paid to play with their crayons (as another commenter put it) than solve the issues we need solved.

Or at least get some working quality control system. Even with Debian Testing I never had that many problems as in the half of a year I endured Pop. So next time I got the time, this piece of garbage goes flying.

[Artim]

I wouldn't be suprised if long term it would be one of the most stable DEs around. You have commercial support, and you have it written in language pretty much (in practical meaning) preventing all memory issues and a lot of logic ones. Because it is modern it doesn't have to carry a lot of old garbage, and system76 is company aimed at average users not at server space like Red hat.

Iced toolkit also supports Vulkan rendering what is nice.

That's funny. Because basically all of that is already being fulfilled by GNOME. Commercial support by an arguably much larger company (Red Hat, part of IBM, plus Canonical) and also being supported by many distributions, the language is basically irrelevant if you know what you are doing (with the arguments the Rust fanboys come with the whole Linux kernel would have to be a complete security desaster, but to mention like at least 90 % of all software), and the "one garbage" it needs to carry with it is only for the time being. They are already planning to have it ship with only Wayland and XWayland, or even without XWayland. That future doesn't seem that far fetched and by then it simply would stop shipping that old stuff.

And thanks to GSK, which is available with GTK4, you can choose from a variety of rendering backends: OpenGL, some strange other OpenGL implementation, Cairo, llvmpipe and Vulkan.

[Khrundel]

(Speaking of stopthemingmy.app, if I didn't already feel it was too much work to hammer the Bottles UI into a shape I like, its developers signing that open letter certainly would make me look elsewhere for the functionality I need. I'm glad they offer an easy to use ^{Don't Use This App} Please Don't Theme badge though. It's a great hint that the app probably uses libadwaita.)

My condolences, it must be really painful to you to be at this site unless by a lucky coincidence its ui toolkit strictly matches your system theme.

[deusexmachina]

I wouldn't be suprised if long term it would be one of the most stable DEs around. You have commercial support, and you have it written in language pretty much (in practical meaning) preventing all memory issues and a lot of logic ones. Because it is modern it doesn't have to carry a lot of old garbage, and system76 is company aimed at average users not at server space like Red hat.

Iced toolkit also supports Vulkan rendering what is nice.

My DE is more stable. Decade old tiling WMs that have never crashed for me and are way lighter than theirs. Why don't they focus on decent hardware since we don't have any yet? Because adults have become inflantalized and would rather get paid to play with their crayons (as another commenter put it) than solve the issues we need solved.