System76 today is releasing an alpha build of Pop!_OS 24.04 that is built atop Ubuntu 24.04 LTS and making it very interesting is that it includes the alpha version of their Rust-written COSMIC desktop environment. I've been playing around with this Pop!_OS 24.04 alpha in advance of today's embargo lift and it's been working out quite well.

COSMIC is an interesting Rust-based desktop environment that System76 has been developing. It's focus is on their Pop!_OS distribution but there have been other distributions like Serpent OS expressing interest as well along with the likes of Redox OS.

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COSMIC is a Wayland-native desktop but does support XWayland. It has all the usual features one would expect from a compositor including fractional scaling and being able to cope with NVIDIA hybrid graphics. COSMIC continues supporting auto-tiling along with various other windowing features.

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The alpha release of COSMIC is off to a nice start but some features missing like the copy/paste not working with their text editor. System76 also has to finish up work on the settings area, variable refresh rate, the COSMIC Files file manager, and other refinements.

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The stable release of Pop!_OS 24.04 and COSMIC will take place later in the year.

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COSMIC is off to a nice start and those wanting to learn more or give the alpha ISO a whirl can find the details on [8]System76.com .



[1] https://www.phoronix.com/image-viewer.php?id=2024&image=cosmic_alpha_1_lrg

[2] https://www.phoronix.com/image-viewer.php?id=2024&image=cosmic_alpha_2_lrg

[3] https://www.phoronix.com/image-viewer.php?id=2024&image=cosmic_alpha_3_lrg

[4] https://www.phoronix.com/image-viewer.php?id=2024&image=cosmic_alpha_4_lrg

[5] https://www.phoronix.com/image-viewer.php?id=2024&image=cosmic_alpha_5_lrg

[6] https://www.phoronix.com/image-viewer.php?id=2024&image=cosmic_alpha_6_lrg

[7] https://www.phoronix.com/image-viewer.php?id=2024&image=cosmic_alpha_7_lrg

[8] https://system76.com/cosmic