Pop!_OS' COSMIC Desktop Finishing Up Work On App Store

[guiaiolfi]

I was looking at https://whimsical.com/roadmap-iced-7...Lp3TmYH4WeYwLM to see what to expect from iced and unfortunate, it seems there are a lot of basic stuff missing. What the system76 people are managing to accomplish is stunning. Imagine what they will be able to do after all the foundation is stable and feature complete. I have never been so hyped since the Unity 8 days.

[Sethox]

I have reservations about calling the software manager the App Store because the word Store brings certain implications that a software manager doesn't like buying, selling, reviews, support, payment management, cloud services, user and system wide usage management, and more. Finding, installing, removing, and updating are just part of what an actual App Store is supposed to do. The word Store also implies that it's a For-Profit program where System76 gets a vig like Steam, Google Play, Microsoft Store, or Apple's service marked App Store.

Regardless of the implications of the word Store, Apple is sue happy and y'all are using their name. Y'all should probably call it anything else than the seemingly generic sounding App Store.

Narrator: It wasn't generic.

FWIW, I feel the same way about store.kde.org. It's also not a store. It's more of an exchange, repository, depository, library, etc. It's Discover on a web site. Speaking of which, the COSMIC App Store screenshot reminds me of KDE Discover with CSD.

Devils advocate here, one can argue that an app store is not all about the selling part (like a convenient store), but more about what do the platform have in store, i.e what extra apps being kept in store for me as a user to use this desktop environment.

[Daktyl198]

I have reservations about calling the software manager the App Store because the word Store brings certain implications that a software manager doesn't like buying, selling, reviews, support, payment management, cloud services, user and system wide usage management, and more. Finding, installing, removing, and updating are just part of what an actual App Store is supposed to do.

I'd argue that familiarity trumps all forms of connotation. Calling it an "app store" makes new users feel at home using it. They will know instantly how it works, as they are already familiar with the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store. The connotations of "store" are weakened anyway in a digital landscape, as the biggest apps on both Apple and Google are free. The majority of users never pay for an app. And most existing Linux users won't care, either because they know what it is and just don't care what it's called, or because they use the terminal anyway.

[Vistaus]

I really don't see the difference between Cosmic, Budgie and Cinnamon. All three are in the same vein.

Is there a beta or daily image where I can test Popos24 with Cosmic Desktop?

Don't forget about Maui Shell.

[sophisticles]

I really don't see the difference between Cosmic, Budgie and Cinnamon. All three are in the same vein.

Budgie and Cinnamon are based on Gnome 3, COSMIC is a clean sheet design written in a different programming language meant to replace Gnome on PoP_OS.

[skeevy420]

I'd argue that familiarity trumps all forms of connotation. Calling it an "app store" makes new users feel at home using it. They will know instantly how it works, as they are already familiar with the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store. The connotations of "store" are weakened anyway in a digital landscape, as the biggest apps on both Apple and Google are free. The majority of users never pay for an app. And most existing Linux users won't care, either because they know what it is and just don't care what it's called, or because they use the terminal anyway.

But that's not how those operating systems work. Those have both Stores and OS Software Managers where one is a combination of adware, FOSS, and paid software from who knows where using certain guidelines and regulations and the other is the operating system software from the OS vendor. Linux equivalent would be Flatpaks/Snaps/AppImage/etc compared to Ubuntu's mirrors and apt. Windows has the Microsoft Store and a generic Apps in their OS settings that manages Windows exclusively. Stores and OS Software Management are different entities on those platforms.

This combines the Software Manager and Store, blurring the lines between what's a system app and a store/sandbox app. That's different than what all the other major operating systems do. GNOME and KDE's software both do it that way. That kind of operation, combining third party and operating system software in one place, is how Linux desktops work and it kind of sucks because local user, local root, and local sandbox all behave differently and have different needs, requirements, permissions...

Words have meanings and implications. Stores imply multiple kinds of apps following specific guidelines and rules. Repositories and OS software management doesn't necessarily have those implications. Not everything in the Ubuntu repositories follow XDG standards or the Wayland protocol to the letter. You get what you get, how it comes, however the author wrote it. It isn't forced into Kotlin or Metal or WTF ever Google or Apple mandate.

[johnandmegh]

Words have meanings and implications. Stores imply multiple kinds of apps following specific guidelines and rules. Repositories and OS software management doesn't necessarily have those implications. Not everything in the Ubuntu repositories follow XDG standards or the Wayland protocol to the letter. You get what you get, how it comes, however the author wrote it. It isn't forced into Kotlin or Metal or WTF ever Google or Apple mandate.

And I would argue that it's worse to make an implicit promise with a familiar word choice, then break that promise with the actual delivered product, than to use a less-familiar word - as long as that less-familiar word is intuitive. Canonical almost got it right with the "App Center" name for the Snap Store in Ubuntu 24.04, except they made the icon a shopping bag...

[Quackdoc]

I was looking at https://whimsical.com/roadmap-iced-7...Lp3TmYH4WeYwLM to see what to expect from iced and unfortunate, it seems there are a lot of basic stuff missing. What the system76 people are managing to accomplish is stunning. Imagine what they will be able to do after all the foundation is stable and feature complete. I have never been so hyped since the Unity 8 days.

iced is for low level stuff, libcosmic is what you will want to directly use to make applications

I think if Cosmic won't have its own io library, then gio would be better. KDE suffers from the notorious freezing under heavy io, which AFAIK is an issue with kio. There is no such issue with gio.

gio will thrash your hdds for literally no reason though. possibly not a great issue on SSDs an NVMes but it is on hdds. disk usage plummets when I swap to dolphin. both are bad but I prefer kio

[ehansin]

I've praised Cosmic Desktop here before already, but excited about all of this. I've been booting into Cosmic by default for a while now, courtesy of the available Fedora Copr.

It has not updated in a while, but I also noticed the GitHub page for "cosmic-epoch" had not changed for a couple of weeks, now has changed. I'll keep tabs, but looking to get on the latest and keeping running with this already great "pre-alpha" software. Also, not sure if I initially DNF installed from the Copr as comsic-epoch or cosmic-desktop, but see now asks to do the later. Not sure if that affects anything, I'll take a look.

Thanks System76 and everyone else involved!

[mmstick]

I highly recommend everyone to give `cosmic-store` a try. Whether you use COSMIC or not, it's fully functional on any desktop environment, and is already packaged for Pop!_OS, Fedora 40 (via COPR), and Arch (via AUR). All that it requires is packagekit for system packages, and libflatpak for Flatpak packages. Be sure to add Flathub to your system if it's not already there.