System76 Now Planning For COSMIC Desktop Alpha Release In Late May

[pharmasolin]

That is really great to hear. I have a Framework 16 arriving tomorrow, and I think I'll try COSMIC on it.

Well, only as a second DE (it's easily installed as separate DE), it's really pre alpha. But I tried to open 2 google chromes (both are maximized, behind is a tab with a video on a page, and on the front one, some feed, for example twitter and tried to scroll the feed, it worked smoothly). Why this case is important for me? Because if you use gnome and mutter, and you have a google chrome browser and you have a twitter opened and there is a video playing and on top of that chrome window you have some electon app - for example VS Code, you from time to time will lose an ability to scroll (lol) you will need to (alt + tab) several times to revive a gnome. This bug was in 18.04 with nvidia for me, in 20.04, and in 22.04 (so in gnome 42) I don't know if they fixed it in gnome 46, will see in new LTS release (I think they didn't).

[darkonix]

This is my point exactly, the Gnome people arbitrarily decided that 8 was the magic number and went to far as to say it is "disrespectful" if you use any other number.

I wouldn't consider using their DE much less contribute a single line of code to them.

In fact, I am thinking of submitting a slew of patches with 9 indentations just out of spite.

Everyone should already know that 4 spaces is the perfect indenting. Because I say so.

[sarmad]

See what you just said, this has been my point to the System76 people about not releasing COSMIC for general use, just keep it for their clients.

People are not saying "I can't wait to buy one of their systems", people are saying "I can't wait for the distro I normally use to have it in their repos so I can use it on a system other than their hardware".

It does the System76 people no good how many people adopt their DE, in fact it hurts them.

My point was actually more about them needing to first make a quality hardware than focusing on better software. As you said, Cosmic is not enough reason for people to buy their hardware, since people can install Cosmic anywhere. Also, we already have few decent DEs. Even on the software side they could've spent the resources improving other aspects related to better drivers and hardware management, than a new DE. If Gnome wasn't good for them they could've simply switched to KDE and customized that rather than starting from scratch. I have a feeling that few Rust fans within the company wanted to work on some Rust project and managed to convince the management to fund the project. Anyway, I still wish them success despite believing this was a mistake from a business perspective.

[Quackdoc]

My point was actually more about them needing to first make a quality hardware than focusing on better software. As you said, Cosmic is not enough reason for people to buy their hardware, since people can install Cosmic anywhere. Also, we already have few decent DEs. Even on the software side they could've spent the resources improving other aspects related to better drivers and hardware management, than a new DE. If Gnome wasn't good for them they could've simply switched to KDE and customized that rather than starting from scratch. I have a feeling that few Rust fans within the company wanted to work on some Rust project and managed to convince the management to fund the project. Anyway, I still wish them success despite believing this was a mistake from a business perspective.

If you are selling PCs like S76, no linux DE IMO is suitable (unless you consider chromeOS' DE) KDE is far to buggy. Gnome is just trash for hundreds of reasons, and nothing else is really acceptable for a modern PC environment IMO. to me, I dont think they had any alternative BUT to make their new cosmic DE if they want to be serious.

as for quality hardware, they already have that IMO

[sophisticles]

If you are selling PCs like S76, no linux DE IMO is suitable (unless you consider chromeOS' DE) KDE is far to buggy. Gnome is just trash for hundreds of reasons, and nothing else is really acceptable for a modern PC environment IMO. to me, I dont think they had any alternative BUT to make their new cosmic DE if they want to be serious.

as for quality hardware, they already have that IMO

Re: quality hardware, I agree. While i think they are charging way too much for what they offer, it's hard to argue that the processors they use and the graphics cards they offer are quality products.

As i have stated i would not have gone with the commodity hardware they use, since they want to target the scientific and academic markets, I would have used Xeons with built in accelerators, meaning Xeon Silver at a minimum and Nvidia Quadros with ECC vram and Supermicro motherboards.

There's an old saying that you don't sell the steak you sell the sizzle and frankly for the AI and scientific workloads they want to target, I don't think their systems are the best choice.

Regarding DEs, everyone knows how i feel about Gnome and frankly they made a big mistake ever using it at all.

KDE is very buggy as evidenced by all the open bug reports but I think it can be fixed with the right management, I do wonder why they didn't fork it and just concentrate of fixing the bugs instead of starting from scratch.

The other guy that said he believed that a couple of Rust fans managed to talk management into giving the green light for COSMIC may be on to something.

I think they made a big mistake using a commodity distro, I would have used a custom built from scratch distro.

[mmstick]

I have a feeling that few Rust fans within the company wanted to work on some Rust project and managed to convince the management to fund the project. Anyway, I still wish them success despite believing this was a mistake from a business perspective.

Management was already developing an operating system (Redox OS) in Rust as a hobby long before Pop!_OS was a concept, and even before Rust had its first stable release. All hires for Pop!_OS are Rust developers, and all Pop!_OS projects were already written in Rust. Use of Rust to build COSMIC did not require any convincing.

[sophisticles]

Management was already developing an operating system (Redox OS) in Rust as a hobby long before Pop!_OS was a concept, and even before Rust had its first stable release. All hires for Pop!_OS are Rust developers, and all Pop!_OS projects were already written in Rust. Use of Rust to build COSMIC did not require any convincing.

Wait a second, you guys are the Redox people?

Redox already has a DE. Orbital; is COSMIC an evolution of Orbital?

Will System76 one day move away from a Ubuntu based distro to using their own custom in-house OS, Redox?

You already know I think it would be great of they did that.

[darkonix]

Wait a second, you guys are the Redox people?

Redox already has a DE. Orbital; is COSMIC an evolution of Orbital?

Will System76 one day move away from a Ubuntu based distro to using their own custom in-house OS, Redox?

You already know I think it would be great of they did that.

Redox current maturity level is many many years away of being able to replace a mature OS like Ubuntu. I respect the project but it is not going to happen in this decade.

[Quackdoc]

Redox current maturity level is many many years away of being able to replace a mature OS like Ubuntu. I respect the project but it is not going to happen in this decade.

Honestly I could see it being great in library and fleetPCs