Cosmic Desktop: Hammering Out New Cosmic Features

https://blog.system76.com/post/hammering-out-cosmic-features

by pantalaimon • 2 years ago

207 110 2 years ago

blog.system76.com

hkwerf• 2 years ago

It's good to see that it still seems to be reasonable to create new compositors. The amount and diversity of requirements regarding this type of software seems to be still managable. That was one of the concerns I had regarding giving up Xorg.

mrmlz3• 2 years ago

I've been using linux for some 15-20 years depending on how you count. The last 3 i've been using PopOs! as a complete windows replacement. Gaming works great (with the usual caveats) and everything has been a pleasant experience.

I've never been a gnome fan almost always switching to xfce but on PopOs! its alright!

I'm very much looking forward being able to drop Gnome and use Cosmic instead - having thumbnailsupport is going to be an improvement.

thrawaway3292• 2 years ago

having thumbnailsupport is going to be an improvement

What is this referring to?

unwind• 2 years ago

Probably this [1] bug which was pretty high-profile.

[1] https://www.omglinux.com/gnome-thumbnails-file-picker/

Perizors• 2 years ago

Afaik thumbnails have already been fixed in gnome

mrmlz3• 2 years ago

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/4379

Do they actually generate a thumbnail or do they just show the available ones? Honestly I don't follow the issue I just know that thumbnails have been an absolute mess in gnome as long as I remember.

tigerlily• 2 years ago

Vaguely related I'm finding UIs are so flat, we must be getting close to single gold atom thickness. I wonder when bevels and skeumorphs will be back? These days there's tons of nostalgia for 90s magazine style serifs, but without the gonzo UI. What gives?

Waterluvian• 2 years ago

Came to say almost exactly that. It’s interesting how much nostalgia there is for peak 90s UI, but not even Linux distros can escape the flat, uncontrasting, large padding interfaces.

voxadam2• 2 years ago

I don't know about anyone else but in my mind the best UIs of the 90s were all pretty much created by or heavily influenced by Kai Krause.[0][1] The interfaces for Kai's Power Tools[2] and and Bryce[3] are pure 90s nostalgia for me.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kai_Krause

[1] http://kai.sub.blue/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kai%27s_Power_Tools

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryce_(software)

logicprog• 2 years ago

Probably because most people actually prefer them, now that the vast majority of people are past the point of needing skeumorphic metaphors to understand user interfaces, because we grew up with computers. I would certainly throw my computer out and go live in the woods if I had to deal with beveled, gradiented garbage with dense, tiny interfaces cluttered with stuff with no proper spacing to let it breathe. When I upgraded mg family computer from Vista to 8 as a kid, or when iOS went from skeumorphic to flat a bit later, I was so relieved, it was like getting a cold glass of water.

marginalia_nu2• 2 years ago

I've gone full Chicago '95[1] mostly because I struggle so much with parsing flat GUIs. Having the UI be a carbon copy of Windows 95 is mostly a side-effect, it's simply the easiest way I've found to get a user interface where I'm not constantly confused as to whether UI elements are interactible or not, which elements are resizable, and where icons have easily distinguishable colors and details instead of being elder futhark line-art. I've gotten it to do a surprisingly good job of applying this theme, not just to GTK widgets but also Qt widgets (although they pull a bit more toward Windows XP).

Only apps that refuse to comply with native styling is web-browsers and IntelliJ.

Although I've found an old qtwebkit based browser called Falkon that, despite running an outdated engine, does a decent job of rendering most websites I visit, while having a working native scroll bar and mostly not fucking up the native controls with CSS crap. It's what I daily drive for most of my surfing.

My eyesight is kinda garbage and this theming is mostly an accessibility accomodation, not so much a nostalgia thing. For all the attention accessibility gets in UI/UX circles, it's kind of ridiculous how Windows 95 absolutely takes most modern UIs to school in that regard. 100% of the software I struggle to use is born out of state of the art design sensibilities.

[1] https://www.marginalia.nu/uses/screenie.png

titzer2• 2 years ago

All the padding is because of touchscreens. It's ruined the web and now ruining desktop. Low information density, superfluous animations, icon-ese everywhere, losing tooltips, it all sucks.

voxadam2• 2 years ago

Bring back Blue Steel on Enlightenment!

https://i.redd.it/2ua33higrtic1.png

cbm-vic-20• 2 years ago

For the youngsters out there: Enlightenment was released at a time when Unix desktop environments were mired with twm and Motif, or OpenLook if you were adventurous. These were very sparse (twm), or trying to ape the Windows 3 look and feel (in the case of Motif). This was a time where many display drivers only supported 256 colors, and your entire X desktop would shift colors when hovering over windows that had different palettes.

Enlightenment was one of the first window managers that used bitmapped assets for window decorations. IMO, it was one of the first UI things that distinguished Linux and its community from that of the older corporate UNIXes.

mr_sturd• 2 years ago

Still waiting for them to drop Magnum.

cess11• 2 years ago

Been like twenty years since IceWM was my daily driver but as I recall things like that were relatively easy to implement.

Seems they still have similar examples on their screenshot page: https://ice-wm.org/screenshots/

cjk2• 2 years ago

Oh man that was my desktop for about 3 years.

Had an already fairly obsolete dual Pentium 3 Dell precision workstation which was spray painted black because it had gone embarrassingly yellow and looked like someone had peed up it.

Edit: looked it up, Precision 420. Matrox, ECC, dual P3, SCSI disks. Felt like royalty owning that.

rayiner• 2 years ago

Oh, nostalgia.

noisy_boy4• 2 years ago

I remember rotating between Enlightenment, Fluxbox and WindowMaker.

skerit2• 2 years ago

It's kind of crazy that Gnome only went "full flat" in september of 2022, with Gnome 43. Such a stupid move, in addition to making it harder to actually change the theme.

Even though Cosmic has a similar flat look, I'm still looking forward to it since theming does seem to be something they're open to.

smokel• 2 years ago

You mean like Goldene [1]?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40071956

PixelForg• 2 years ago

Thanks to your comment I finally understand what flat means in the context of UIs :)

titzer2• 2 years ago

Looking back, one of my regrets is that I didn't make my own Window manager, or at least customize or skin one with longevity and stick to it. I am pretty much tired of being jostled around by UX engineers repeatedly reinventing the wheel in dozens of lumpy ways. The fads just keep going around and around and around.

Barrin92• 2 years ago

I wonder when bevels and skeumorphs will be back?

I don't really understand the purpose to be honest. With the exceptions of interfaces that are explicitly designed to simulate physical environments, what's the point? Flat designs are a logical consequence of form reflecting function, you're interacting with digital, binary elements that are on or off. Skeuomorphism existed because familiarity of mechanical or analog elements was maybe useful for someone who didn't know digital interfaces, but we've grown out of this.

zozbot2344• 2 years ago

Flat designs are a logical consequence of form reflecting function, you're interacting with digital, binary elements that are on or off.

A finger or mouse is not a "digital, binary element", it needs to be actively pointed at and grab stuff. The whole point and "function" of 3D depth in UI is to highlight things that you can aim at and grab.

jchoksi• 2 years ago

I am looking forward to trying this. Currently use KDE(Wayland) and was looking to move to Wayfire as I really don't need all the things being offered in KDE and Wayfire satisfied all my needs from a WM/Compositor.

CarVac• 2 years ago

Dragging your cursor to a window’s title bar to move it takes an unneeded level of precision. To maintain focus — as well as comfort on trackpads — simply clicking any region of a window while holding Super will allow dragging it to your preferred location and quickly get back to your important task.

On most Linux DEs you hold Alt for that...

skerit2• 2 years ago

I remapped it to Super in Gnome, makes more sense. But I do consider this to be an essential feature

exe342• 2 years ago

Oh so now I need both hands to move a window? Thanks.

abhinavk• 2 years ago

What you get is an option.

eviks5• 2 years ago

What does your other hand do when you're moving a window?

darthrupert• 2 years ago

What is your other hand busy with?

beepbooptheory• 2 years ago

The context here though is trying to make a friendlier i3/sway type wm. This is exactly the behavior we have for those with floating windows.

da_n• 2 years ago

I love this feature in Gnome and use it all the time, I actually miss this feature when I use macOS, would love to be able to hold command and drag a window without needing to select title bar. It sounds like System 76 are really working on a super productive desktop, I look forward to trying it some day.

directmusic• 2 years ago

You can do this on macOS. However, you need to hold Cmd+Ctrl.

defaults write -g NSWindowShouldDragOnGesture -bool true

honeybadger1• 2 years ago

I was working with a product designer as a UI/UX test subject a few years back before the first release of Cosmic. What a long way it has came since then! I am a huge fun of the effort put in to PopOS to make Linux interesting to the average desktop user.

curt15• 2 years ago

What's the SDK story for Cosmic? Do they provide an alternative to GTK/Glib/GIO?

panick21_5• 2 years ago

The use a library called 'libcosmic' that uses Iced framework that is written in Rust.

mmstick768• 2 years ago

libadwaita/GTK4 is to GNOME what libcosmic is to COSMIC.

COSMIC has no need for an alternative to GLib or GIO. Rust's standard library, the futures crates, and tokio are more than sufficient for handling I/O and asynchronous code execution. libcosmic uses tokio executors for handling application commands by default. You can bring your own executor and thread pool libraries if you want.

gradstudent• 2 years ago

I wonder if the launcher file find has improved. it's barely functional at the moment, and miles behind Spotlight

eviks5• 2 years ago

Dragging your cursor to a window’s title bar to move it takes an unneeded level of precision

So does ... to a windows's resize border. Have they/do they plan to implement a similar thing for resize where instead you can drag to any ~20% of the side (with a modifier)?

paranoidxprod2• 2 years ago

This is actually similar to how I use Hyprland

Super + Left Click lets me drag a tiled window to a different location, while Super + Right Click lets me drag to resize. I usually do both with my keyboard but it's nice to have the option.

eviks5• 2 years ago

Can you do holdKey + Drag to resize (especially useful for touchpads)?

troyvit• 2 years ago

KDE does this too, and I'd be non-functional without it. Grabbable window decorations seem a thing of the past.

zozbot2344• 2 years ago

This is a big deal if you want to use common Linux desktops in pure "tablet" mode, with no keyboard or mouse attached. You can move windows easily enough by grabbing the header bar, but there's no equivalent for resizing. You can of course rely on full-screen or half-screen tiled windows, but it's a big UX downgrade compared to using a mouse and/or keyboard.

(Mind you, a tablet PC running Linux will nonetheless be vastly more productive than even an iPad. But still.)

eviks5• 2 years ago

Haven't heard of great UI solutions here, though it might be better to have some customizable gesture for window management trigger, after which you can do the same as on a desktop holding a modifier:

touch/drag from window center area to move

touch/drag ~20-30% of window's sides/corners to resize in that direction

shortformblog2• 2 years ago

A warning for anyone who tests the Cosmic Desktop on their distro: It’s possible (if very much in a pre-alpha state), but it makes your file system read-only, which can be a bit of a surprise if you’re not aware it’s coming.

It’s easily reversible, fortunately, but it really threw me for a loop when I wasn’t able to update my Tumbleweed packages. Heh.

pxc5• 2 years ago

o.0 how is that the business of a desktop environment?

shortformblog2• 2 years ago

Here’s the part that explains it from the GitHub page (https://github.com/pop-os/cosmic-epoch):

  Read-Only Filesystem: If you're not on an immutable distro you may notice that /usr/ and /opt/ are read-only. this is caused by systemd-sysext being enabled, when you are done testing you can disable systemd-sysext (sudo systemctl disable --now systemd-sysext)
  
  It is thus no proper method for long term deployment.

It makes sense to me but it definitely caught me off-guard.

mmstick768• 2 years ago

This is not true, and I do not know what gave you that impression. What you're describing is a side effect of using systemd-sysext, but I do not know why you would be using that.

redder23• 2 years ago

Did I miss the link or so they not have one to actually test this "pre alpha" version?

I would like to fire up a VirtualBox VM to try it out.

sphars• 2 years ago

There's some instructions on their GitHub page that should point you in the right direction: https://github.com/pop-os/cosmic-epoch

dartharva• 2 years ago

They set out to build a superior alternative to GNOME. What I see is functionally just another GNOME.

If this was all it's going to be I don't understand what the point was.

walteweiss3• 2 years ago

I see an inferior alternative to Gnome.

laerus• 2 years ago

You realize they created that in what? less than two years? Completely from scratch with the whole stack in Rust. GNOME is 25 yo and it's superior to a alpha software DE but only barely. So I guess it wont be long until potentially GNOME would be ridiculously inferior to COSMIC like it already is to KDE. (I have used GNOME since forever btw)

pxc5• 2 years ago

Imo we shouldn't expect opinionated desktop environments like GNOME (and maybe Cosmic) to be directly comparable along objective lines. When desktop environments are inflexible/opinionated, they can be well-executed but still a poor fit for some users.

Cosmic isn't trying to be a GNOME clone but to present an alternative vision. So if stock GNOME is lacking for you, Cosmic is an exciting alternative that may suit your needs as it matures. But if you're happy with GNOME, that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with Cosmic's design.

kule• 2 years ago

I seem to remember one of the points was the way GNOMEs plugin system was implemented plugins have no isolation so one bad plugin can cause all sorts of problems.

They were also limited in things they wanted to do with the default window tiling ui.

Sorry bit vague it was ages ago I listened to the talk - probably this one: https://youtu.be/ioswlaxdhSA?si=DlVQ-jDu5G3A3Iru

noisy_boy4• 2 years ago

Did they say that they set out to do that? (not sure, genuinely asking)

I was under the impression that the point of doing this was to have control over the hardware and the software to build a complete package a-la-Apple (though nowhere as deep) because once they have the software stack too, they have the flexibility to quickly add a lot of end-user life-improvement enhancements. Maybe I was presuming too much.

panick21_5• 2 years ago

They did like GNOME, but needed it to costumize it to fit their needs. And that what 'Cosmic' plugins do for GNOME. But with the newer version Gnome would have broken many of their plugins, a frequent issue with Gnome. They are currently selling products with Gnome as default.

So they could either spend resources continually keeping up with Gnome and adopting all their changes, or they could go away from Gnome. Gnome is increasingly pushing in their own direction, so this would increasingly get harder and more time consuming in the future.

Given what their costumers expect, it makes sense not to go into a totally different direction and invent something totally new and revolutionary. The new Cosmic should be reasonably close to the older Gnome based Cosmic.

They now have the freedom to evolve their DE away from Gnome, they are no longer constrained by Gnome applets (and their long term support) and I suspect in a couple years the difference to Gnome will be bigger then it is now. This is already visible, with the raw default version of newest Gnome (not the one Ubuntu or PopOS delivers) being quiet a bit different from what you get with Cosmic DE.

What would you have liked to see be different is maybe a more interesting question.

g5095• 2 years ago

Why? like.. why does every desktop need to build yet another terminal app, another file explorer? NIH

skottenborg• 2 years ago

It's a complete ecosystem with design and functionality being consistent and on par.

yjftsjthsd-h2• 2 years ago

Because if you don't do that then you end up with inconsistencies across the stack because you used apps with different conventions. (Things like the help menu being in the wrong place, or a core app suddenly not having a menu bar at all because GNOME decided those are obsolete, or some applications ignoring the system theme, or OK/Cancel being in the wrong order...)

panick21_5• 2 years ago

Because the are not using an existing toolkit like GTK or QT. They use Iced, a pretty new toolkit. Developing applications helps them making that toolkit fully production ready.

The can reuse the same libraries and components across lots of applications, terminal, editor, settings and so on. Look at 'cosmic-text' for example.

Plus it makes sense since apps developed with GTK/QT will not show of the full advantage of the new DE.

System76 has to support everything they shit to costumers. So if they ship Alacritty and it has a bug they need to fix it.

So it makes sense to have tight set of libraries and application that they control.

mmstick768• 2 years ago

Technically, COSMIC uses libcosmic rather than iced. It is a custom toolkit based on a modified version of iced.

mmstick768• 2 years ago

What do you think a desktop environment is? Name one desktop environment that does not have its own file manager or terminal. Name and shame the platform and toolkit that lacks these basic necessities.

sandreas3• 2 years ago

The main problem I have with modern desktop environments is the lack of scriptable automation... I really hope they build something like this.

Although I could just save all dotfiles, configs and extensions via file backup, I always struggle to create a script based setup.

I would love to maintain a list of extension names, settings etc and have something like:

  gnome-extension install --config-file my-extension-config.txt
  kde-plugin install --config my-plugin-config.txt

  gsettings set --config-file my-settings.txt

just a little more reliable... Maybe a hard problem, but I think this would be great.

Export settings would also be great.

  gsettings export --to my-settings.txt

:-)

stijnveken• 2 years ago

It's probably overkill for what you are trying to do. But I have been using home-manager [0] as a way to quickly restore my working environment.

[0] https://nix-community.github.io/home-manager/

sandreas3• 2 years ago

I'm planning to go NixOS as soon as possible. That is exactly what I would like to have - a fully working environment with one set of config files.

micimize• 2 years ago

What level are you interested in scripting? In KDE Plasma you can interact with the desktop UI via JS: https://develop.kde.org/docs/plasma/scripting/

And then for something more sophisticated there are extensions like https://github.com/Bismuth-Forge/bismuth.

It does all feel a little disorganized/wild-west-y compared to say, a .vimrc with a list of plugins and bindings, which is something that makes a system like Nix (or a fully containerized DE of some kind) appealing

sandreas3• 2 years ago

It does all feel a little disorganized/wild-west-y compared to say

That is exactly what I'm missing. NixOS is pretty high in my todo list.

MatthiasPortzel• 2 years ago

I have mixed feelings about Cosmic.

On one hand, the amount of fragmentation on desktop Linux is absurd. On Mac and Windows the desktop environment is synonymous with the operating system. On Linux, you can run one of 30 different desktop environments on the same distribution. This means that userspace bugs can manifest for any desktop-distro combination.

On the other hand, System76 is well positioned to create a desktop environment that is cohesive and complete since they’re trying to sell computers running them. Linus on the server has financial backing, and Linux on the desktop has precious little.

smashed• 2 years ago

Linux is a bazaar. Very chaotic, nothing is ever perfect, but there is something for everyone that sets foot.

tracker13• 2 years ago

I'm sorry, but windows itself, let alone applications are anything but consistent. There are still corners of the UI that have a look and feel dating back to NT4/Win9x. And some of the new functionality is oddly worse UX.

In terms of fragmentation, gnome and kde are the vast majority of configurations. Even other DE are likely using the underlying graphics library.

Given the level of customization that System 76 has to do with gnome for every release, it's probably easier for them to just create something more congestive for their designs.

And given that they actually sell and support hardware, are far more likely to make better choices for more general users than a lot of other DE in my opinion.

I do wish they'd make a deal with framework to get it with Pop as an in the box option supported by System 76... I'd pay a bit extra for that.

pxc5• 2 years ago

I'm sorry, but windows itself, let alone applications are anything but consistent. There are still corners of the UI that have a look and feel dating back to NT4/Win9x. And some of the new functionality is oddly worse UX.

A typical KDE or GNOME system is more coherent than either Windows or (at least as I'm using it) macOS. On Windows, built-in GUIs don't even use all the same look-and-feel. On macOS, some vital third-party apps (e.g., Contexts) don't even respect dark mode in their configuration windows.

mmstick768• 2 years ago

There are dozens of GUI libraries and platform toolkits available to both Mac and Windows. In fact, there are plenty of GTK and Qt applications floating around on these platforms. As well as a lot of applications using custom frameworks. Then of course the unfortunate web-apps-as-desktop-apps pipeline in the form of Electron. Fragmentation is a very loaded and derogatory term used to express disdain for the openness and freedom that open source desktops have. Fragmentation is a strength of open source.

noisy_boy4• 2 years ago

The link is returning 500 - archive.org link: https://shorturl.at/eiuNR

nazgulsenpai• 2 years ago

I appreciate that System76 is making the changes that they want to see in the DE themselves, and I think overall it looks very cohesive and I can understand what they are trying to achieve. But unfortunately it has the same problems that I have with modern GNOME - it looks like a mobile phone/tablet UI. I really can't understand the design trend of hiding all but basic functionality behind a hamburger menu, or if you're lucky a few unlabeled toolbar icons to decipher, on a destkop PC. Or shoving a search bar and all of the application's menu/toolbar (what's left of it) into the title bar. It makes perfect sense on a small screen, but their flagship products are desktop and laptop PCs.

panick21_5• 2 years ago

I dont get why you want a titlebar. Like what does it add? Its literally empty space with no function.

You can still grab the window or double click it even if part of it has a search bar in it.

mmstick768• 2 years ago

Have you never heard of tiling window management? You do realize that tiling window managers are used on multi-display setups with multiple 4K displays, right? Windows have to be responsive to very narrow widths to be comfortable for use in a tile. Regardless if you have a small screen, or use 4K displays like I do.

ln_00• 2 years ago

Why does Jetbrains IDEA in the App Store Screenshot use the Godot Game Engine Avatar?

tracker13• 2 years ago

My biggest curiosity is how easy it hard it will be to use their UI widgets for third party software and release on other DE.

I like the idea of writing more apps with Rust and if the ergonomic fit is better than alternatives, this could be a great way Forward. Bridging themes with gnome/gtk in the other direction likely a necessity for that use case.

My only other concern is getting kde tray apps to work out of the box. With budgie/Gnome, I've had to install an add on for that.

Not that I have a lot of things needing the integration. Variety and Dropbox being the main ones for me.

It's also annoying when Windows don't have a corresponding handle in the taskbar.

If they deal with these annoyances well, I'll be more than happy with the next Pop release.

mmstick768• 2 years ago

Third party developers have access to the same APIs that COSMIC applets and applications use. It's not possible for a crate to prevent use of public APIs based on who is importing the crate.

entropy1111• 2 years ago

Unusable until moving your mouse to the edges of the screen and clicking makes it hit the scrollbar, or the exit button. Right now it initiates a resize. For maximized windows.

Illustrated example from a different compositor https://github.com/WayfireWM/wayfire/issues/570

It's the only DE I'm excited about it so I hope they fix that. Very very promising and the best part is that it made the GNOME people mad.

GNOME: "Sorry I don't see the use case for that, PR closed. Make your own project."

Cosmic: "Yes"

Cosmic Desktop: Hammering Out New Cosmic Features

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