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Cosmic: A New Desktop Environment

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101–110 of 207 posts

Re: Cosmic: A New Desktop Environment

#101

I wish ChromeOS's desktop environment gets ported and reimplemented across mainstream Linux and we're all freed from the GNOME/KDE GTK/Qt hell. It's just sad that Google's Linuxes (Android and ChromeOS) can do things like HDR, VRR, decent fractional scaling, decent font rendering, etc. but desktop Linux is still starved for these things to this day.

Given Google's backdoor in Chromium (to ping google servers), I don't trust they would do anything different with their OS.

Eventually it'd become a liability for any linux user knowingly or not.

Re: Cosmic: A New Desktop Environment

#102

Neat, any word on getting this working on Arch. I use Majaro now and KDE is okay, but I'd like to try something new.

There's literally a link right on TFA to the Arch Wiki on how to do exactly that. https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/COSMIC

Re: Cosmic: A New Desktop Environment

#103
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They released their first alpha build today.

I think GP is asking if there are any new ideas in it. I'm also curious if it is a fork of something or truly greenfield development?

Ah, apologies on the misread, then. I'm not able to say what parts are new versus them doing a solid stab at it.

Re: Cosmic: A New Desktop Environment

#104

I see a slightly restyled Mate desktop environment. Nothing really new, some marginal advantage like a tiny bit more visible window focus. Scrollbars still invisible. Buttons even harder to distinguish from not-buttons, and not clear how a disabled button can look when everything is so graywashed. Generally, looks like another designers take on style, not usability.

I couldn't agree more. I feel like as the computer literacy of the people making decisions in tech companies has gone up, the care that's being invested into actually making good user interfaces has gone down. This applies to Macs, Windows, and also to Linux desktop environments. Just 15 years ago, there was a heavy focus on usability and making user interfaces clear and readable. Now, the focus seems to be much more…

> Just 15 years ago, there was a heavy focus on usability and making user interfaces clear and readable. Now, the focus seems to be much more on aesthetics.

I'm going to make an argument I don't fully agree with, but I think is worth discussing: the dramatic increase in digital literacy affords us the ability to focus on aesthetics more now. When no one knew how to use a computer or what it could do, everything needed to be extremely descriptive and often needed a metaphor back to the "real world." This isn't (as) true anymore.

Re: Cosmic: A New Desktop Environment

#105
post #85

Looks like all the UIs are made with iced, a new UI library. My question, is this missing all the accessibility features found in uikits like Gtk and Qt? Does each app respect my system theme?

They've created a new theme engine for their DE, they've also done minimal integration for Gnome apps (many of the non-iced apps are still Gnome based). Where KDE theme integration is on the backlog.

Re: Cosmic: A New Desktop Environment

#106

I see nothing really "different" or "better" here, in terms of visuals or ease of use. To that end... I don't see the point in imitating a desktop experience that is pretty stagnant and moving in the wrong direction (macOS; I'm a user myself) when there are the decades that preceded Y2K that could be mined for much more usable an interesting desktop experiences. There's BeOS, Amiga Workbench, Atari ST various windowi…

You still use System 7?!

Re: Cosmic: A New Desktop Environment

#107

A lot of shallow "but the buttons!" comments here... no need to be so negative. This is the first alpha release of a full new desktop environment, built on a new GUI toolkit (based on Iced) and a new Wayland compositor, together with a suite of applications, all built from scratch in Rust .... give it some time. Most interesting to me is the integrated tiling support. I've been on i3/sway for many years, but a lean,…

Yes, I'm using Hyprland at the moment but it's got a chaotic community and it's still pretty buggy (though heading in the right direction), but I'd love an advanced tiling Wayland WM that is less "hobbyish" as my daily driver.

Re: Cosmic: A New Desktop Environment

#108

I see nothing really "different" or "better" here, in terms of visuals or ease of use. To that end... I don't see the point in imitating a desktop experience that is pretty stagnant and moving in the wrong direction (macOS; I'm a user myself) when there are the decades that preceded Y2K that could be mined for much more usable an interesting desktop experiences. There's BeOS, Amiga Workbench, Atari ST various windowi…

I'm really astounded that macOS window management is so bad. For a company lauded for their UX decisions, how can they accept the current full screen/splitting workflow as "good enough"?

Re: Cosmic: A New Desktop Environment

#110

A lot of shallow "but the buttons!" comments here... no need to be so negative. This is the first alpha release of a full new desktop environment, built on a new GUI toolkit (based on Iced) and a new Wayland compositor, together with a suite of applications, all built from scratch in Rust .... give it some time. Most interesting to me is the integrated tiling support. I've been on i3/sway for many years, but a lean,…

Yes, I'm using Hyprland at the moment but it's got a chaotic community and it's still pretty buggy (though heading in the right direction), but I'd love an advanced tiling Wayland WM that is less "hobbyish" as my daily driver.

I don't know if you would consider Sway "hobbyish", but it has been rock solid for me for 4 years.
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