{"id":1022,"date":"2024-08-08T17:04:02","date_gmt":"2024-08-08T17:04:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/serverhost.com\/blog\/explore-the-new-pop_os-24-04-alpha-cosmic-desktop-now-available-for-download\/"},"modified":"2025-05-07T08:43:15","modified_gmt":"2025-05-07T08:43:15","slug":"explore-the-new-pop_os-24-04-alpha-cosmic-desktop-now-available-for-download","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/serverhost.com\/blog\/explore-the-new-pop_os-24-04-alpha-cosmic-desktop-now-available-for-download\/","title":{"rendered":"Explore the New Pop!_OS 24.04 Alpha: COSMIC Desktop Now Available for Download"},"content":{"rendered":"

You\u2019ve heard about System76\u2019s new COSMIC desktop environment, you\u2019ve seen screenshots and video clips of it, but now it\u2019s time for you to go hands-on, and take it for a test flight.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yes, the first alpha COSMIC desktop environment is out, as the Pop!_OS 24.04 alpha available to download \u2014 which naturally is preloaded with the COSMIC DE and a cabal of brand new core apps.<\/p>\n

Pop!_OS 24.04 sits atop the same technical underpinnings as Ubuntu 24.04, but the similarities end there.<\/p>\n

System76 applies a considered set of modifications and adaptations of its own, opts for newer Linux kernel and graphics drivers, bundles a different set of software (and no snaps), and debuts its new Rust-based desktop environment, compositor, greeter, and core app suite.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been testing the Pop!_OS 24.04 alpha with COSMIC for the best part of a week. As it is an alpha, bugs, quirks, missing, and incomplete features, etc., should be expected. That said, even with the alpha tag, everything runs well for daily driver usage.<\/p>\n

Which is pretty incredible.<\/p>\n

System76\u2019s engineers have, in the space of just over two years, built an entirely new desktop environment, compositor, UI toolkit, theming system, core apps, and more, all from scratch.<\/p>\n

Which makes the COSMIC \u2018Epoch 1\u2019 alpha all the more encouraging: System76 was able to get from nothing to this<\/em> level of functionality in a couple of years, imagine how good it could be in a few more!<\/p>\n

COSMIC replaces GNOME Shell and the various \u2018Pop Shell\u2019 GNOME Shell extensions previous versions of Pop!_OS use, but this Rust-based revamp remains close to the UX\/UI that went before.<\/p>\n

This familiarity with the GNOME-based incarnation of the Pop Shell<\/em> experience is entirely by design. Why fix what isn\u2019t broken? Instead, System76 has chosen to reimplement the core UX but, it\u2019s no longer an \u2018add-on\u2019, able to extend, expand, and embrace new features.<\/p>\n

As such, COSMIC looks nearly identical: dock at the bottom, bar at the top, the ability to enable automatic window tiling, an OSD app picker, text-based app launcher, vertical workspaces, and so on.<\/p>\n

COSMIC is Wayland-first, but you can run X11 apps via XWayland. The compositor supports fractional scaling, NVIDIA hybrid graphics, and other efforts.<\/p>\n

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The COSMIC themeing system is comprehensive<\/figcaption> <\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

But COSMIC Epoch 1 also brings plenty of \u2018newness\u2019 to the fore too:<\/p>\n