The long-awaited beta release of the Pop!_OS 24.04 Linux distribution and the closely-aligned COSMIC desktop environment will be happening in late September.

Carl Richell, System76 Founder and CEO, announced this evening that the much anticipated Pop!_OS 24.04 beta and their in-house, Rust-based COSMIC desktop will be reaching beta in late September. They are hoping for this big beta milestone release on 25 September.

Carl posted on [1]X that they will hopefully be good for the beta release in just shy of three weeks from now.

Their original COSMIC desktop has taken much longer than anticipated to progress past the alpha stage and has continued in development albeit with a lot of polishing and features being constantly added. That in turn has put a drag on Pop!_OS 24.04 for the System76 Linux distribution based on the Ubuntu 24.04 LTS package set plus COSMIC and other extra packages.

In a follow-up comment he noted it's still too early to determine when the final release might take place, when asked if it could be out by November.

Benchmarks and testing on Phoronix as the Pop!_OS 24.04 release nears.



[1] https://x.com/carlrichell/status/1964078668625465541?s=09