System76 Reportedly Developing Their Own Rust-Written Desktop, Not Based On GNOME

System76's Pop!_OS Linux distribution already has their own "COSMIC" desktop that is based on GNOME, but moving ahead they are working on their own Rust-written desktop that is not based on GNOME or any existing desktop environment.

Stemming from a Reddit discussion over the possibility of seeing a KDE flavor of Pop!_OS, it was brought up by one of their own engineers they are working on their "own desktop".

System76 engineer and Pop!_OS maintainer Michael Murphy "mmstick" commented that System76 will be its own desktop. When further poked about that whether that means a fork from GNOME, the response was "No it is its own thing written in Rust."

Word of System76 making their "own" desktop not based on GNOME does follow some recent friction between Pop!_OS and GNOME developers over their approach to theming and customizations. Ultimately it will be interesting to see how it plays out. As well, aside from leveraging the Rust programming language, it will be interesting to see ultimately how this plays out and what features are pursued. Additionally, it remains to be seen how quickly they will be able to shift away from a GNOME base for their Linux desktop and whether they plan to use any GNOME components at all as part of their new desktop effort.