System76 Releases Pop!_OS 21.04 With New COSMIC Desktop

[Nth_man]

If something is used a lot by something, doesn't mean it's not bad.

As it was written: "Default software doesn't mean more used software. If that was the case, Microsoft Explorer, or Edge, would be the most used web browsers."

[sarmad]

Switching to KDE and contributing to it would be more profitable than forking GNOME and trying to make it better.

I gave KDE a try (and by that I mean used it exclusively for a bit more than a year), and while it's more optimized than Gnome and more cutting edge with blur effects and stuff, it falls short on more important aspects. Here are my takes against it:
* It gives you a lot of customizations, but much of those aren't perfected and feels like it's just added quickly by a hobbyist contributor who didn't bother maintain the feature. For example, you can resize the panel but when you do that you have to be careful not to end up with cropped text or tray icons. In many cases you have to tune your customizations almost to the pixel level to avoid unintentional artifacts.
* KDE lacks an equivalent to Gnome's powerful activities view. It gives you a window spread effect, but whoever added that feature clearly doesn't know what Gnome users use the activities view for. You can spread the windows but you can't do something as simple as dragging a window to a different monitor or a different workspace.
* There is some consistency issues where some windows appear differently because they use GTK or something (ex: lacking the shadow). I believe this has been improved since I last used KDE, but not sure if it's perfect now. I still remember how ugly Chrome looked on KDE compared to Gnome.
* KDE is written in Qt, and I think you won't get as much third party apps written in Qt compared to the C-based, language-bindings-rich GTK.

Therefore, I would say System76's decision to base COSMIC on Gnome is the right decision despite the shortcomings of Gnome.

[andyprough]

GNOME, to me, is the quintessential "fuck you mouse user" desktop environment.

Although DWM is not a desktop environment, my DWM setup is still very amused by your comment. I like watching people try to use DWM for the first time, and I'd probably pay to watch more of them. Clicking everywhere and on everything but getting no response and getting more and more frustrated - it's priceless.

[extremesquared]

It is sort of funny seeing this go on their $7k+ threadripper systems. I suppose it's a valid test/placeholder os, but I can't imagine thelios systems going to many "I just want to read my hotmails" types.

[Templar82]

It is sort of funny seeing this go on their $7k+ threadripper systems. I suppose it's a valid test/placeholder os, but I can't imagine thelios systems going to many "I just want to read my hotmails" types.

Why?
PopOS is designed to be good to use with any media/engineering/programming software that works on Linux.

[extremesquared]

Why?
PopOS is designed to be good to use with any media/engineering/programming software that works on Linux.

Fair enough. Different strokes, I suppose. Sorry to be negative.

[arQon]

GNOME, to me, is the quintessential "fuck you mouse user" desktop environment.

Not sure why you added "mouse" in there... :P

[CochainComplex]

Basically because I forced myself to use POP_OS on my System76 hardware, I really tried to resist for one year; the default setup was never good for me and for making an environment comfortable for my needs I had to install more than 15 extensions that never worked 100% flawlessly. Clearly never liked Gnome3 to begin with, one of the reason is because it is clunky to customized and POP doesn't improve this condition, it adds another layer of oddity above; plus POP_OS tries to hide almost everything that is happening under the hood, it has this non-sense bias against the terminal, like all these new distros that are targeting new users and are developed like a product rather than a project; but I have the habit to update the system through apt/aptitude and what I saw was ridiculous: I saw kernel upgrade one week and the week after kernel downgrade, I saw several time updates and downgrades, of course if you use the "POP Shop" you would never notice any of this.

System76 is very unfriendly with the majority of the distros but Ubuntu, as a matter of fact by default POP wipes out all your other distro just because it uses this nice systemd-boot which is of course my favorite boot system.

Anyway when I bought my S76 I did it to support the Linux companies thinking those would support the Linux principles as well, for instance the freedom of choice, but this Linux companies behave as any other computer vendors and try to drag you in their ecosystem no matter what. Eventually I learned the lesson, next time I'll buy a very compatible Linux computer/laptop with Win (but better with FreeDOS) so when you wipe out Win no one will annoying you anymore.

Are you satisfied?

Thank you for your thoughts. Yes I'm satisfied. I dont have System76 Hardware. My stuff is DIy builds, Dell and Tuxedo, some old IBM too. My experience with PopOS was/is splendid ...not sure about COSMIC yet. But I have to admit that I'm more the gnome user. As already touched by you there might be some root cause implied by this if you going to like it or not. But your points are valid and I'm glad you have shared it. It gave me some insights of the "other side".

my I asked what your prefered Distro+WM is?

[CochainComplex]

Although DWM is not a desktop environment, my DWM setup is still very amused by your comment. I like watching people try to use DWM for the first time, and I'd probably pay to watch more of them. Clicking everywhere and on everything but getting no response and getting more and more frustrated - it's priceless.

...caught me

[JackLilhammers]

* KDE lacks an equivalent to Gnome's powerful activities view. It gives you a window spread effect, but whoever added that feature clearly doesn't know what Gnome users use the activities view for. You can spread the windows but you can't do something as simple as dragging a window to a different monitor or a different workspace.

Parachute is a Kwin script that mimics quite well Gnome activities. Of course activities has been developed for way more time and is far more polished.

* There is some consistency issues where some windows appear differently because they use GTK or something (ex: lacking the shadow). I believe this has been improved since I last used KDE, but not sure if it's perfect now. I still remember how ugly Chrome looked on KDE compared to Gnome.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I'd say that Kde handles "alien" apps better than Gnome. At least the configuration options are already in System Settings.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/KDE#GTK_application_appearance

* KDE is written in Qt, and I think you won't get as much third party apps written in Qt compared to the C-based, language-bindings-rich GTK.

That may be the case if you focus on Linux, but if you look at the whole desktop market there are way more projects using Qt than Gtk.
You can get an idea by searching Qt and Gtk on github and gitlab, the proportion is close to 10:1

Therefore, I would say System76's decision to base COSMIC on Gnome is the right decision despite the shortcomings of Gnome.

I'd be happy if System76 decided to use Kde, because it would be great for Kde (more devs), great for the users (better UX), and great for the whole ecosystem (more competition for Gnome).
That said, Gnome (or some sort of fork) is a smart choice from an economic point of view, because it's developed by Red Hat mostly, with some help from Canonical, and contributions by others, so any distro using Gnome basically has commercial backing and support for free.