COSMIC Alpha Reaction: My First Thoughts on System76’s New Desktop!
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- Опубліковано 18 вер 2024
- My first impressions of the COSMIC Alpha by System76 left me both excited and intrigued! In this video, I dive into the early access release of COSMIC, the much-anticipated desktop environment crafted by System76. Join me as I explore the features, design choices, and performance of this new Linux desktop environment. Whether you're a Linux enthusiast or just curious about what System76 has in store, this reaction video provides an in-depth look at what COSMIC offers in its alpha stage. Watch as I navigate through its interface, test out its functionality, and share my initial thoughts on where COSMIC is headed. Don't miss out on this first look at what could be the next big thing in the Linux world!
#linux #opensource #system76 #firstimpressions
Great video! Btw Variable Refresh Rate is for games to not feel choppy if the fps goes below the monitor refresh rate and not tearing if the fps is above the monitor's refresh rate, not for multi-monitor refresh rate.
Oh oops! Thanks for letting me know, much appreciated
yeah, its basically inverted Vsync, instead of the GPU waiting for the display to show a frame, the display waits for the GPU to render a frame, then shows it immediately. i'm sad my early 120hz monitor doesn't support it, but for my next monitor i am very excited for it.
It's truly amazing @@xymaryai8283
So I have a 60Hz and 165 Hz monitors; with COSMIC if I have 2 monitors plugged in then my 165HZ->60Hz? COSMIC will goto the lowest Hz? If it is like that, right away I will not use it, I need 165Hz for gaming. When is this COSMIC EPOC release date will VRR be fixed by then? Right now, I am just using Gnome 46 and works fine; but I am considering KDE PLASMA 6.1. COSMIC in 1-2 years might be up to par with the other, at least there is a future alternative and some people don't care much for VRR.
@@cybernit3 no it’s has nothing to with multiple monitors. Multi monitor with different refresh rates should be fine.
Thanks for covering this.
This really seems like a proper tiling window manager with proper desktop features.
Once you get in to tilling, there is no going back I'm telling you and Cosmic DE is the place to be!
i didn't jump into tiling managers yet. it looked like a lot of work. but with cosmic everybody can have tiling 👍
Plasmas power level is over 9000!! ⚡⚡⚡
Thx Michael, it was cool to see you play with Tiling features, it all look new to you, i don't know any Linux person that don't know Tiling features so i got to think again..
Thanks so much. I have used tiling before but it has been over 10 years at this point so I don’t remember most of it lol
I am a Plasma guy, but I can't wait to test this on Tumbleweed or Slowroll.
well... i hear that and think what did you take and can i have some Michael, the whole reason they add all the tiling is because Devs use i3 and other tiling WM, and they wanted devs to use they hardware out of the box with they need to install i3.
they also talk about they don't want to go settings heavy as KDE, as they is more for normal users that want to play around, so no to KDE ... :D
@@zeocamo I don't know what that has to do with what I said, but O.K.
The hybrid approach mixing floating and tiling window features seems perfect for a mouse-heavy workflow. Excited to see this desktop once it's finished!
28:18: Xfce is the first one that does that. There's more too.
Super + DblClick: (Un)Maximize
Super + MiddleClick: Send to the back (doesn't minimize but becomes the last window in the stacked windows)
Super + DblRightClick: Expand the window width or height-wise
Xfce is my favorite desktop environment and I didn't even know that.
@@fredmckinney8933 🙂
I tried Pop!_OS 22.04 on my HP ENVY 360 but the sound did not work, even after upgrading the kernel to 6.9 which worked on Ubuntu 24.04. I just downloaded and installed COSMIC 24.04 Alpha and the sound worked out of the box. AWESOME!!! Looking forward to see this develop further. Enjoy your channel greatly!
15:05 "don't watch this super late " (looks at clock, sees that it's 20 to midnight)
Sounds like a pretty promising Hybrid DE. Can't wait for it to become available on OpenSuSE.
22:10 The bug is caused by the Settings window content scaling, but not the Arrange Displays widget's pixel math. It's visually scaled, but not logically.
So, arranged the displays as if they were 8K, but opening the Displays page refreshed the logic, showing you the actual sizes.
Great video. I watched it all and enjoyed it. Would like to see you do one on the file manager, as it makes or breaks a desktop in my opinion.
Thanks so much for your comment, I am glad you enjoyed it. That is an interesting point about the file manager thing. I will make sure the next time I look at it to dive into the file manager much more. The only reason I didnt do it this time is I knew there were going to be bugs because they warned me about it like not having the option to extract archives yet but it is something that will be there so covering that now would make it seem like it is half baked and well it is half baked and that kind of thing can be forgiven for an Alpha so I want to test the file manager when they say it is ready to go for features.
@@michael_tunnell Thanks for replying. I see the logic in your decision. Perhaps a controversial opinion, but the Windows file manager is much better than Linux file managers and is thus a barrier when switching to Linux, so I hope Cosmic can step-up to the mark with its file manager.
3:51: Ah yes... Fixing a web pages UI/UX with the console or the inspector. Now you are talking my language! 🤣
For something you've never done before, it is pre-tty-goo-d indeed. I've seen so many "first impression" videos in which the reviewer spends so much time "evaluating" the wallpapers and color scheme, that I've gave up watching this kind of video (even Jay Lacroix did it more than once). Your's, however, focused on checking how things are laid down, how they work together, even suggested (and explained why so) better naming options (Files, Pop Shop etc).
Hat off. I enjoyed a lot. Thanks!
Thanks so much! I really appreciate it! I did compliment the wallpaper in the recording but i didn’t include it because there was so much stuff to look at already. I didn’t even think to look at the rest of the wallpaper options and I still have no idea what they are lol
Thanks again for your feedback
Thanks for showing the desktop in action :).
i have Pop_Os installed on one laptop and there is already the tiling support. I am more fond of using sway/i3 as tiling wm though thats a different topic ^^.
about the dialogue boxes pop up centered. try to see it from a mainly keyboard driven user interaction. i have a feeling there it makes more sense to have those things always appear in fixed spots. i never looked st something anyway to activate it.
Are there shortcuts for those actions in CosmicDE?
That keyboard driven approach is the reason why i mainly use krunner on plasma as the „start button“…
Pop Shop is a cool name, but it is too tied to Pop OS. And this DE, as I understand it, is positioned as distro-neutral. There was even talk about using it in RedoxOS.
Thanks for covering this Michael. I'm looking forward to test out the Cosmic desktop and happy you're taking the pain for me testing the Alpha ;) - Currently a Sway user and the idea of having a DE with a good tiling system is really appealing.
The idea of theming all toolkits seamlessly is something I think we've needed for a long time - I know GTK is mentioned but do you know if QT apps will get the same treatment?
You’re welcome and yes they do plan to do the same for Qt apps but no info on when that will happen
I am hoping they will eventually put in a feature that puts the clock and applications to be in the dock like a dde install.
I think you can put the clock in the dock if you want to, that is in the applet system and I am pretty sure you can already do that but I didnt check that.
variable refresh rate is not that, it is for some screen that support this they can dynamic switch up and down in refresh rate depending on what's rendered.
I'm a big fan of their Pop Os.
The Nightlight and the HDR are kind of related in terms of where they fit into the compositor. Other colour management can also tie into that.
If i install cosmic alpha LTS. Would it be automatically update to stable update, when it released?
I don’t think so, it’s possible but there’s bound to be a ton of changes between now and then so I wouldn’t recommend it. Beta release is more likely to offer that but I would expect that to not happen for the Alphas
@@michael_tunnell ah okay. If that possible it would be great, so i can gave them new issue without uninstall the de.
@@riufq I actually asked them, and they said yes, your alpha will automatically change into beta and then into stable through updates.
@@piet-0 where you can ask them? Please let me know 🙏
@@riufq I just sent them an email. They replied that the email is just for their computer sales, and referred me to the dev chat to ask Cosmic specific questions, but they still answered my question.
I actually think the _poweruser_ thing is more of a curse of the alpha status.
Things look really promising so far and I can clearly see the middle ground between Plasma and GNOME already.
Personally I love the surrounded active windows too. Would love to have this optionally on every windows but a different one for those inactive or not in focus as I have something similar on Plasma and it makes the all dark desktop at least somewhat colorful.
That Light Theme however... man... Discord wants its money back.
I think you can have a coloured border for inactive windows, too. In the appearance settings.
33:33: O find that interesting. In my DE, workspaces are 2D. They are both horizontal and vertical at the same time. They are numbered from left to right, up down. However, I can be in the 3rd one and just easily go up for the 1st workspace or right for the 4th workspace, without having to specify a concrete number.
Oh yea, you can lay them out in a grid in Plasma for example so it’s both horizontal and vertical but the downside of that is adoption can be difficult for beginners. I used to do it myself though
@@michael_tunnell OK. Then I misunderstood from the UI shown.
That's great then!
Oh to be clear I’m not saying that COSMIC has the feature. They might at some point but not at the moment
I thought all (or at least most) WMs had the option to resize and move a window with the left or right buttons and either the super or meta keys. In 25 years, I don't recall ever missing this function.
LXDE, LXQt, MATE, Cinnamon don't have either last I checked. GNOME only has super+left click in order to move the window but doesnt have the right click resize option. It is certainly possible that more can do it but I know GNOME only has that and Cinnamon doesnt have either because I have tested both of them fairly recently with Cinnamon I am using right now.
@@michael_tunnell Interesting. I wasn't aware of those that didn't have both of those functions.
I hope they fix the jerkiness of resizing in tiled mode. The gap between the windows should be kept constant at all times. And the window border should follow the mouse cursor smoothly.
👍👍!
Personally I'd rather distributions would put more energy into making apps interoperable and having a common interface to exchange themes between different desktops/environments etc instead of ANOTHER new desktop. Re-inventing the wheel and still have spokes missing in the many earlier ones.
Mic sound is delayed with your video + low FPS /choppy. You're videos are like that since one month. I dont know what you've changed or what is happening but something is clearly wrong. Only your videos does that so clearly it's on your side not UA-cam. Just informing you. Ain't as fun to watch compared to your older content.
yea I have noticed, you have no idea how annoying this is and how much troubleshooting I have done to figure out what the issue is because it has annoyed me for a very long time lol . . . anyway, I think I found the problem yesterday or day before, it seems like my capture card (Elgato CamLink) is wearing down or something. I have been using that camlink for many years. It started going bad right when I made changes on the camera itself and the timing of that made the troubleshooting so bad lol. Anyway, the next episode of TWIL is going to be bad still because I recorded it before I found the solution and the editing was too much to re-record the whole thing. However, next content after that should be much much better
@@michael_tunnell Nice! I hope you found the problem mate you deserve it. Your videos are too good to be seen at 20 fps haha. Have nice one!
Thank you very much for the kind words! The next video will be much better for sure, I’m confident about that 😎
You genuinely seem like a cool guy. I like your since of humor. If cosmic is aimed at the power user, the settings app is severely lacking in the alpha stage
liking the tiling implementation
What GUI toolkit do they use, or have they implemented the entire stack themselves?
We built our own theme engine and widget library around iced, called libcosmic.
@@aleclowry7654 Yikes
@@mmstick will it support server-side decorations?
@@monochromeart7311 It already does
@@mmstick Right, so GTK and Qt haters, and double-haters, can't complain about anything. Cool, checking out their website now.
🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰
Once COSMIC comes out of beta and reaches stable versions, I am hoping that it muscles out GNOME and dominates its marketshare. The fact that it is modular and highly customizable (both things that cannot be said about GNOME) while retaining that classic and familiar look and feel will take it far.
I am looking forward to one day having a new Fedora install with COSMIC desktop. 😁
Talking about "muscling out competitors" and "dominating the marketshare" is a philosophy that's in a bit of a disconnect from ideas of FOSS...
Have it on my Fedora laptop and it's great!
once you go 144hz you cant go back, but before I tasted the forbidden fruit I too was ok with 60hz
im not advising for or against it
It looks really nice. I'm really sad it does not do dynamic tiling, otherwise i think i would have used it.
what do you mean? it has automatic tiling so not sure what you mean by dynamic tiling
Please explain what's dynamic tiling
The terminolgy is confusing.
We call it manual tiling when the position of a new window branches out from the window that is in focus. I3 is an example of a manual tiler.
Dynamic tiling is when any new window will open at the bottom end of a predetermined layout, tipically a master and stack layout. Xmonad and DWM are examples of dynamic tilers.
People who use tiling wms are very particular about what we like. Dynamic tiling wm guys usually don't mess with manual tilers and vice versa.
It might seem like nitpicking but the user experience is genuinely very different.
The argument for dynamic tiling is that you should not have to wonder where you are going to open your next window, whether you want to split the cell of the focused window vertically or horizontally, etc. It is perceived as a loss of time and focus.
The argument for manual tilers usually boils down to "freedom to place your windows is good because more freedom = good"
@@themroc8231they (developers) said in brodies video that they'd like to support third party tiling modes to support preferences like dwindle and master layouts. Just not now
28:10 GNOME, Cinnamon and ElementaryOS do it as well. Pretty sure most other DEs also support both window movement and resize with the super key.
GNOME supports the left click move but not the right click resize. I don’t know about Pantheon because it has been a while since I used it. Oh I just found it in Cinnamon, they do it with Alt not Super. Hmm
@@michael_tunnell I do right click resize on GNOME every day, and am doing it right now, so I can confirm you it does work perfectly.
@@michael_tunnell Where did you get that info? GNOME does resizes on Super + Right click, I do it every day and am doing it right now.
@@michael_tunnell ? GNOME does right click resize. I do it every day
@@michael_tunnell UA-cam keeps deleting my comment. TL/DP: GNOME does resize on super + right click
super + arrow keys, or the better way is super + hjkl the vim keys that is what you should use as it is on home row.
What's a power user Michael? Pumping iron while scrolling? I like the option to change the rounded corners to rounded, less rounded and square, because nowadays almost everything must have rounded corners. Why I don't know. I hate rounded corners. The windows have minimize, maximize and close buttons, but Firefox only close button🤔 You can also merge the dock and panel together, so it looks kind off like Dash to panel, which I prefer. Do more video's like this. I like seeing you stumble around in something new😜
How can you merge them? Haven't found that option.
@@piet-0 I've seen it in a video. Can't remember which one though. Sorry.
@@piet-0 Merge isn't exactly correct. I believe you can drag things from the dock to the top panel. When done disable the dock. But why don't you try it yourself in the live environment of the Cosmic Alpha😉
@@johanb.7869 Thanks, I figured that out. :)
The Firefox close, and minimize button only might be a bug because after a few restarts and updates my Firefox on cosmic had all 3 options. Or maybe having the enlarge button is a bug lol.
7:43: AFAIK, that was invented by Xfce and then adopted to KDE years after.
the super left/right click is a Tiling WM feature, they made it way in to KDE, but Cosmic got it because they copy Tiling WM here..
If cosmic had global menu available, I would give it a try. Otherwise, I will stay on plasma.
I attended a press conference about the desktop and this was asked. They are open to the idea but it will be one for later because of the development complexity involved. I like that they are open to it
Is there like a law that says you we need to use dark mode?
I did the KDE thing for most of my first year in Linux (2023). Hyprland and GTK are such a better experience for me. I am glad we have a choice. I am looking forward to the beta of Cosmic.
Too much emphasis on tiling features, I'm not feeling it.
Michael, can you report the RSS ram in use immediately after starting the desktop, please?
I wont be able to test that for a bit but sure, I will get that info for you when I can but I dont think that data will be all that useful during the Alpha because I assume they have a lot of polishing left to do
@@michael_tunnell Sure, but a rough guide line compared to Gnome and Plasma would be useful. I know! Maybe I should install it and find out for myself! 🙂
@@michael_tunnell Fresh pop-os_24.04 installed in a Proxmox VM shows 1.447GB ram used immediately after boot. I was hoping for around 500MB, but it is an alpha and is based on a "heavy" Ubuntu 24.04. I would have installed it on CachyOS, but it needs to be built from scratch. I'll wait for Archlinux to provide binaries before I get too excited about it being a possible daily driver.
@@MarkConstable This value is heavily influenced by sysctl parameters and the amount of total RAM available, as well as the number of displays, resolutions of those displays, number of panels and your applet configuration. The compositor by itself needs only ~200 MB RAM to drive two 4K displays. We use a higher vm.watermark_scale_factor in Pop!_OS, which will result in a higher overall RAM usage statistic. The higher the value, the higher the threshold for retaining cache in memory, and therefore the higher the reported RAM usage. A person with 1 GB RAM will likely see 600 MB memory used. 4GB will show around 1.2 GB. 32 GB might show 3 GB memory used.
@@mmstick Heh, I just set my test VM to 1GB of ram and got Mem: 669, Swap: 370 after staring the terminal. I was impressed it booted up and ran at all! Thanks for your explanation.
your audio is slightly out of sync
Thanks for reporting this, there seems to be an issue with my capture card, I’ll figure out a solution
@@michael_tunnell Yep! Mic sound is delayed with your video + low FPS /choppy. You're videos are like that since one month. I dont know what you've changed or what is happening but something is clearly wrong. Only your videos does that so clearly it's on your side not UA-cam. Just informing you. Ain't as fun to watch compared to your older content :(
nice, thank you.
i know the Windows 8/10 start menu is the poster child of the tablet x desktop abomination, but i actually like and want a customisable canvas, like the Desktop, but not on my desktop. not like Gnome's application menu, thats too strict and janky, more free form like Windows 10, with multiple sizes, preferably also without the jank of that. still also want a list/menu with all applications though, like the Zorin menu.
5 shades of dark grey. how depressing
Unknowingly laughing for no reason
Michael Tunnell is my father
Would this possibly replace Linux Mint and can we Game on it. Specifically windows games.
Can it run Crisis???
Of course,it's still Ubuntu 24.04 at its core ,and that runs games very well. It'll be nice though as they supposedly made this version so they can update faster than the Ubuntu cycle. Google the Forbs article comparing gaming in 24.04 vs win 11.
cosmic is a desktop environment, not an operating system
@@olekaze3539 oh for gods sake, stop with this stupidity. Linux isn't an operating system either,it's a kernel. 🤡
@@cptfarzkizz8823Linux Mint is an OS...
Who here mentioned Linux on its own?
@Gfish17 absolutely, I think it will be a good option for people when it is ready for use. The gaming should be better than Linux Mint in theory due it it being based on Wayland and Rust so the performance should be even better than in Linux Mint but we will have to wait and see to do some benchmarks and stuff to know for sure but COSMIC on PopOS will be able to play any games that work with Proton.
For now i will stick around with ubuntu 24.04 is way more stable than these feature rich distro that are incomplete...ubuntu 24.04 is used by many dev and theres a reason why.
Yep, pop is trash
This is an alpha, it is incomplete by definition
Kosmic is spelled with a K, as in KDE, the Most Beautiful Desktop Environment that always puts out, and never demands alimony if you want to try others
They don't know anything about UX. I learned this when I saw their current theme didn't have a progress bar for downloads on their store app. Their new theme is ugly.
Their old theme looked better than this!
What's with the teeth?
the Pop Shop is specifically for Pop!_OS, and has its package manager/repo specific stuff, Cosmic Store is the correct distro-agnostic name.
The COSMIC Store is actually replacing the Pop Shop.
meh, budgie is still better. i hate the gnome launcher and the activeis shit up there. so clunky and shit.