System76's COSMIC Desktop Adds New Window-Swapping Mode, Dynamic Settings

In addition to KDE Plasma 6.0, another exciting desktop milestone we can look forward to in 2024 is the COSMIC desktop from System76 when they end up releasing the next Pop!_OS based upon Ubuntu 24.04 LTS. The Pop!_OS / COSMIC developers continue making great progress on their Rust-written desktop environment.

System76 today published their September development update for the COSMIC desktop environment. Some of the gains made in recent weeks include:

- COSMIC has a new window-swapping mode to help with making it seamless when wanting to manually rearrange tiled windows. This new mode allows easily swapping windows using the Super +X keyboard shortcut along with your arrow keys.

- Widgets like text inputs, search fields, inline inputs, and symbolic icons have been implemented.

- COSMIC also now supports dynamic settings so that when keyboard and mouse settings are adjusted they happen in real-time.

- Optimizations for COSMIC to benefit performance and lower power consumption.

- COSMIC's compositor adds support for the pointer gestures protocol.

- Panel and dock settings have been implemented into the COSMIC desktop environment.

- Support for the Wayland security context protocol.

And here's a screenshot from them showing off one of the examples for how COSMIC can currently look:

Read their entire COSMIC September update on the System76.com blog.