System76 Releases COSMIC Alpha 2 Desktop Packages

[sophisticles]

I am going to go out on a limb and say you probably were not using computers in the Windows XP era... or were a really young child... THAT was a UI built for a child.

I remember when I first saw it I was 100% convinced Bill Gates handed his kid a box of crayolas and said "Make us UIs plz!"

I hope nothing ever brings back that sense of UI revulsion... that said as an OS Windows XP is one of the gold standards Microsoft ever produced... the other being Windows 7.... I would argue Windows 98 could be a nice Silver standard because it was pretty awesome in a time that generally was awful looking back. We live in such a golden era of tech right now

As far as lousy Windows GUIs, it's a toss up between the original XP and Windows 8, both of them were horrible, idiotic designs.

For me XP64, along with Win 2k, Win 7 and Win 10, are the best OSes MS ever made, but only after the service packs were released, when they first came out I wasn't too crazy for them.

Win 98 had that great ability to use conservativefileswapusage=1 which would cause it to use up all the ram before swapping to disk.

[Quackdoc]

Sadly firefox fullscreen seems to be busted https://github.com/pop-os/cosmic-comp/issues/868 chromium browsers seem to work fine if anyone else is running into this. Im wondering if it's an arc problem specifically

[sophisticles]

Really nice DE, still on track to one day be considered the best Linux DE but hampered by a stupid ideology:

COSMIC Alpha 2 is now available for their in-house Pop!_OS Linux distribution as well as having packages available for other Linux distributions like Fedora, NixOS, Arch, openSUSE, Serpent OS, and CachyOS.

How stupid do you have to be to spend 2 years developing a unique piece of software written in a language that is not used by similar software and then not only give it away for free but also enable people to use it on OSes that enables them to avoid buying your product.

What are these people thinking?

What is their sales pitch?

Them: Want to buy a computer?

Customer: Does it offer unique hardware?

Them: No.

Customer: Does it offer unique software?

Them: Yes and No. We created a custom Ubuntu clone that will eventually feature a new in-house custom coded GUI.

Customer: Awesome! Will this GUI be unique to your systems thereby validating my decision to buy a computer from you.

Them: No, in fact we will slap our customers in the face by not only making the GUI available to everyone for free, we also allow people to download the complete OS for free so they can use on any computer they want, not just ones they buy from us.

Customer: Wait, what?

Them: And on top of that we are also providing instructions on how to install the GUI on OSes that do not originate with us, thereby completely eliminating any reason for you to buy a computer from us.

Customer: So then why would i buy a computer from you guys?

Them: To feel like a dumb ass of course.

Customer: Sounds good, I'll take 10 and please make sure you equip all of them with that scam of a processor so I can feel really stupid.

Them: Will do, and thanks for you business. Tell a friend. And possibly an enemy.

[Quackdoc]

-- snip --

the point of cosmic is to get away from gnome. S76 has stated multiple times that they are being held back by gnome, not that they can't sell enough systems

[Daktyl198]

I also am not a particular fan of the UI. I'm cool with flat UIs, but something about it feels... off? Like, just a bit too much padding, or weird spacing on where a button is clickable and where it's not. Overall, it feels very "programmer art" and not "visual design group". But I like the team behind it so I'll keep an eye on it and maybe switch when the features are there.

[zexelon]

As far as lousy Windows GUIs, it's a toss up between the original XP and Windows 8, both of them were horrible, idiotic designs.

For me XP64, along with Win 2k, Win 7 and Win 10, are the best OSes MS ever made, but only after the service packs were released, when they first came out I wasn't too crazy for them.

Win 98 had that great ability to use conservativefileswapusage=1 which would cause it to use up all the ram before swapping to disk.

Oh if we are talking about truly awful UIs (not just childish looking) then its a flat out tie for me between Windows Vista and Windows 8!

Windows Vista had the worst UX and Windows 8 the worst UI. These are the manure standards that I rate most UI/UXs to these days.

I am rating Windows 11 pretty badly these days because they took a really good OS and turned it into a desktop choking advertising platform. They added in a few really cool UI/UX tweaks that are awesome (ex. the maximize button that lets you pick a tile layout right there)... then they made a mess of the taskbar for some reason! Only recently have they started to back away from some of their stupid choices here.

I refuse to run Windows 11 for a myriad of reasons these days including the above. That said all I keep windows around for is typically CAD work or MS Office on occasion when LO cant cut it on something. I leave it in a VM for an as and when needed. Everything else runs beautifully in Proton!

[royce]

I'd love to try it out and help with testing, but sadly there's no Ubuntu build. Of all distros to miss.

[SophiaS]

Seriously, this cosmic visual and colors looks like a interface made for children's.

This kid (49) is actually very exited about.

[pWe00Iri3e7Z9lHOX2Qx]

I'd love to try it out and help with testing, but sadly there's no Ubuntu build. Of all distros to miss.

? It's up to the other distros to do the packaging.

[pWe00Iri3e7Z9lHOX2Qx]

There will be a COSMIC version to go along with the GNOME / KDE versions of Bluefin / Aurora from Universal Blue .