Linux hardware vendor System76 announced today the release and general availability of the long-awaited Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS distribution featuring the Rust-based COSMIC Alpha desktop environment.
While Pop!_OS Linux remains based on Ubuntu, the biggest new feature of the Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS release, besides being derived from Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (Noble Numbat) and inheriting its LTS (Long-Term Support) capabilities, is the brand-new COSMIC desktop environment written in the Rust programming language.
Pop!_OS 22.04 and previous releases used a version of the COSMIC desktop that was based on the GNOME desktop environment. However, System76 wanted to create a new desktop environment while keeping the same familiar interface and user experience built for efficiency and fun.
Apart from being written in Rust from scratch, the new COSMIC desktop environment in Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS provides a solid foundation for rapid advancement long-term, a holistic design system that’s modern, fast, and responsive for a consistent software ecosystem.
It comes with Settings pages and applets for daily use for most users, panel and dock customization, appearance and themes settings, and a fresh system tray area that provides easy support for connecting to Bluetooth devices and wireless networks, as well as choosing audio input and output devices.
The Rust-based COSMIC desktop also features its own apps, such as Files, Text Editor, Store, Terminal, and Settings. The UI comprises of panels, an application launcher, an app library, a greeter, and dialogs. It also features a brand-new compositor with auto-tiling, snapping, stacking, and sticky windows.
Other features of the new COSMIC desktop environment in Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS include excellent NVIDIA hybrid graphics support, fractional scaling, native Wayland support with support for XWayland apps, variable refresh rate, frosted effect for OS interfaces, accessibility, and workspaces features, animations, and refinement.
COSMIC is written in the Rust programming language because System76 engineers love working with its readability, stability, maintainability, and memory safety features. They said that Rust makes it easier to write memory-safe code. In addition, apps built for COSMIC can be designed to be fast and easy to port across platforms and integrate APIs.
COSMIC is not only available for Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS users, but also for any GNU/Linux distribution that wants to offer it to their users, including Fedora Linux, openSUSE, Arch Linux, Serpent OS, and NixOS, as well as BSD, and Redox OS platforms, and its toolkit will also be available for Windows and macOS operating systems. However, COSMIC is currently offered as an alpha release, which means that bugs are known and expected, and features are incomplete.
System76 is already working on more new features like touch screen support for the next official release of their Rust-based desktop environment, COSMIC Epoch 2. Until then, you can try COSMIC Alpha by downloading Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS for Intel/AMD or NVIDIA systems right now from the official website.
Please keep in mind that both Pop!_OS 24.04 and COSMIC are pre-release versions that you should only use for testing and not for production.
COSMIC Alpha on Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS – Image credits System76
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