Cosmic Desktop: Hammering Out New Cosmic Features

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Overall sentiment on COSMIC and Pop!_OS

  • Long-time Linux users report Pop!_OS as a solid Windows replacement, especially for gaming.
  • Many are excited about dropping GNOME in favor of native COSMIC, but note it’s still pre‑alpha.
  • Some see COSMIC as promising and “super productive”; others see it as just another, currently inferior, GNOME-like desktop.

Comparison to GNOME/KDE and design goals

  • Motivation: GNOME’s plugin fragility and opinionated direction made it hard for System76 to maintain their customizations.
  • Some argue COSMIC offers as distinct a vision from GNOME as KDE does; others say the screenshots look similar and less polished.
  • There’s disagreement over whether “superior to GNOME” makes sense for highly opinionated desktops, since fit depends on user preferences.

UI/UX design: flat vs skeuomorphic, nostalgia, accessibility

  • Strong nostalgia for 90s UIs (Windows 95, Enlightenment, HP VUE, Kai Krause tools), with praise for higher contrast, clear affordances, and information density.
  • Others strongly prefer flat, low‑chrome designs and find beveled, skeuomorphic interfaces visually exhausting.
  • Several note modern flat UIs can be hard to parse, especially for users with poor eyesight; themes mimicking Windows 95 are used as accessibility aids.
  • Touch-first design and large padding are blamed for low information density, though some argue touch doesn’t truly require that much padding.

Window management and ergonomics

  • COSMIC’s “hold Super + click anywhere to drag windows” is widely liked; many already remap similar behavior in GNOME/KDE/tiling WMs.
  • Concerns: needing two hands (modifier + drag), and lack of equivalent easy gestures for resizing, especially important on tablets or touchpads.
  • Some want modifier+drag resizing on any window edge/area, inspired by Hyprland/KDE tiling behaviors.

Technical architecture and SDK

  • COSMIC uses libcosmic, a Rust-based toolkit built atop a modified Iced; it doesn’t depend on GTK/Qt.
  • Rust’s standard library, async ecosystem, and tokio executors are considered sufficient instead of GLib/GIO.
  • Third‑party apps can use the same public APIs as built-in COSMIC components.

systemd-sysext and read‑only filesystem surprise

  • Testing instructions using systemd-sysext can make /usr and /opt appear read‑only on non‑immutable distros, surprising some testers.
  • This is explained as a systemd overlay mechanism for extending immutable or base images; disabling systemd-sysext reverts the behavior.
  • One commenter disputes that COSMIC itself forces this, framing it as a side effect of how testers set things up.

Ecosystem apps, “NIH”, and consistency

  • Some question why COSMIC builds its own terminal, file manager, etc. instead of reusing existing apps.
  • Others argue:
    • A DE is a coherent set of core apps; mixing toolkits leads to inconsistent behavior, theming, and menus.
    • Owning the stack lets System76 ensure quality, fix bugs they ship, and harden their toolkit via real apps.
    • GTK/Qt apps can’t fully showcase COSMIC’s capabilities or design language.

Desktop fragmentation vs coherence

  • Mixed views:
    • One side sees Linux’s many DEs on the same distro as “absurd fragmentation” that multiplies bug combinations.
    • Another side calls it a bazaar‑style strength that offers choice; Mac/Windows also have multiple toolkits and styles in practice.
  • Some note that a typical GNOME/KDE setup can actually feel more visually coherent than modern Windows or macOS, despite Linux diversity.

Configuration, scripting, and reproducibility

  • Users want scriptable DE automation and reproducible setups (e.g., declarative extension lists and settings import/export).
  • NixOS and home-manager are cited as current ways to get close to a one‑file, fully reproducible environment, and are seen as attractive for desktop setups.

Other usability notes and concerns

  • Some complain COSMIC’s current app launcher search/file-finding is “barely functional” compared to macOS Spotlight.
  • Ensuring correct behavior for maximized windows at screen edges (e.g., not triggering resize when aiming for scrollbars/close buttons) is considered critical; bugs in other compositors are referenced as cautionary examples.
  • There is interest in how well COSMIC will handle system tray icons, taskbar mapping, and third‑party integration (e.g., KDE tray apps, Dropbox).