Pop_OS! 24.04 with COSMIC desktop
The COSMIC desktop by System76 is the new kid on the block, but what does it bring to the table?
The Linux ecosystem is forever evolving and never at stand still. Once in a while great innovations are made that have the potential to change the way we experience personal computing, but others feel pointless immediately at launch. The new COSMIC desktop by System76 falls somewhere in between.
System76 is a specialized laptop vendor selling computers that come preloaded with Linux. In 2017 they released their own custom tailored version of Ubuntu Linux with an awkward name - Pop_OS! They innovated their own value adding changes, such as the tiling window manager extension for Gnome, which received a lot of praise. Building on solid Ubuntu foundation, Pop_OS became relatively popular and was definitely one of the better distributions out there, with genuine thought put into the added features.
In 2021 things took an unexpected turn. The Pop_OS development team got frustrated with the Gnome project (understandable) and announced they will be building their own desktop solution from the ground up and now, only four years later, it is time for the first release.
Meet the COSMIC desktop
Building a whole new desktop environment is a massive development effort from a small team with limited resources - hats off to System76! However, in four years they have hand crafted something that looks and feels very much like...Gnome. The Pop_OS! 24.04 beta version based on Ubuntu 24.04 has been out for a while, due to final release in 11th of December 2025. This is however destined to be an interim release, as the next one is planned for release already in April 2026, following the Ubuntu 26.04 LTS release schedule.
The COSMIC desktop has the usual elements, such as top panel, bottom dock, system tray for indicator and so forth. It is reasonably configurable via the Settings app. The default cyan accent color is a awkward as it has always been. Several applications are COSMIC specific (video player, text editor, file manager, screen shots...), while some rely on familiar Gnome applications. COSMIC does not bring any ground breaking changes to the UI/UX that we have learn to expect from personal computers during the last 20 years. The app store however deserves a special mention, as it seems very promising already – the stores have been an unexpectedly weak link in many Linux distributions. Pop_OS! relies on their own package repository and Flathub.
The key selling point of Pop_OS! and COSMIC is the tiling window manager.
Tiling the windows automatically is an efficient way of organizing on-screen applications and making use of the available screen estate. In combination with multiple monitors and switchable workspaces, it makes an powerful working environment for anyone who needs to operate multiple windows at the same time. In other words, it has great appeal to nerds and power users, but benefits are limited to the Joe Average surfing the web.
Pop_OS 24.04 feels snappy and works quite well for a beta version. There are some bugs and minor quirks, but this is expected and accepted. My presumption is that 26.04 is their real target to strike gold, but System76 felt pressure to release something in order to get the COSMIC out for a wider audience.
The key question is why?
I totally understand the developers' frustration with Gnome. The COSMIC desktop has been a huge push by System76 and they will get some ROI in streamlined development and releasing processes in the future, but still I have to wonder why?
The desktop Linux space did not need yet another desktop environment - there are plenty of them. While COSMIC may be excellent from software technology perspective, the end user does not really see or care about this. COSMIC does introduce any new usage paradigms, provide a quantum leap in usability, nor does it have any ground breaking new features. They have essentially re-created Gnome, or something slightly better, using a different programming language. They seem to push COSMIC for wider adoption, as there is already a Fedora COSMIC spin and some others too. In the actual goal to push the arrogant Gnome project aside? On the other hand, we already have KDE Plasma desktop, which is built on a great software stack and is highly performant - someone would just need to sanitize it a bit to make it truly fantastic.
I have not doubt that Pop_OS! will remain to be a great Ubuntu based operating system and COSMIC will be just fine, especially in the 26.04 release cycle, but so far I fail to see the point. I just does not bring anything new to the table. At the same time there are much more interesting developments going elsewhere in the world of Linux, like the Fedora Silverblue atomic distros, or the Universal Blue variants based on it. These projects actually change the way we run operating systems on personal computers, offering new real-life potential for the end users.