5 ms·
I used to hear about COSMIC and think "Glad to see more choice, but I doubt this will go anywhere". I wanted a Sway-like experience but with a desktop experien
by foxheadman 10mo ago
I used to hear about COSMIC and think "Glad to see more choice, but I doubt this will go anywhere".
I wanted a Sway-like experience but with a desktop experience, and so tried it.
It's surprisingly good: a DE with powerful enough window tiling.
It's now my daily driver.
Since they're backed by a sole company, I'm still not convinced on their longevity, but remain hopeful!
I'm not familiar with Pop OS, which I now realise is what the post is.
- nartho 10mo agoI like tiling a lot more than I like floating windows. Cosmic is my daily driver and is awesome. I just wish it had a bit more customization options, I don't want to spend days rummaging through wikis like with hyprland but having a bit more control over it would be nice, not a deal breaker though
- panick21_ 10mo agoI think even if the company goes away we will see this continue. It modern it rust and some if its fundamentals are already used by other projects. Of course not same way, but its not just going away.
- pjmlp 10mo agoI was introduced to UNIX in 1993, Linux in 1995's Summmer, and have lost count how many X Windows desktops or windows managers have come and gone in 32 years.
- criddell 10mo agoWhat's been your favorite? I wasted too much time tweaking Enlightenment. I remember that was fun but I don't really remember much about actually using it. OS/2's Workplace Shell feels like the biggest lost opportunity (and has nothing to do with UNIXy stuff). I really liked Rexx and the SOM stuff felt cleaner than what became COM in Windows.
- mghackerlady 10mo agoEnlightenment still exists and works well, I just wish more apps were written around EFL so themes were easier
- LargoLasskhyfv 10mo agoIn two variations actually. One is a fork of E17: https://mokshadesktop.github.io https://mokshadesktop.github.io https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moksha_(window_manager) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moksha_(window_manager) https://www.theregister.com/2025/12/02/av_linux_25/ https://www.theregister.com/2025/12/02/av_linux_25/
- throwaway888666 10mo agoEnlightenment? Nothing beats the bodhi moksha desktop https://www.bodhilinux.com/moksha-desktop/ https://www.bodhilinux.com/moksha-desktop/
- baobun 10mo agoSome underappreciated and forgotten tiling wms that are still viable today: - ratpoison ("tmux for X11". Ultralight, great for kiosks and similar where you barely want a WM at all) - stumpwm (ratpoison on steroids in Lisp) - Xmonad (A bit different tiling dynamic that some prefer. I dig it despite Haskell, not because of it) - Qtile (Very flexible and easily hackable in python yet reasonably stable and fast. You can reproduce for example the Xmonad or i3 experiences pretty easily)
- leephillips 10mo agoAnd the one I use and love: DWM. (which I use on top of Pop!_OS, oddly enough).
- pjmlp 10mo agoWindow Maker/AfterStep were my all time favourites in GNU/Linux world. I used to be in the GNOME camp during its early days, even wrote a tiny article to The C/C++ User's Journal regarding Gtkmm, nowadays I rather use XFCE. The original fvwm also holds a special place, that was the first I used in GNU/Linux, back in 1995, and I got to customise it quite a bit. SOM was great, it also supported implementation inheritance, and had metaclasses concept as well. I like COM as idea, I dislike how badly Microsoft keeps rebooting the developer experience, and isn't able to provide modern toolig as easy as it was from VB 6, Delphi, C++ Builder. For something that has become the central mechanism how Windows APIs are delivered.
- panick21_ 10mo agoBut X has stuck around and to think all that just because everybody was afraid of Sun.
- criddell 10mo agoI skimmed the linked story and I still don’t really know what POP!_OS is. They are using the Linux kernel and wrote their own desktop environment, but what’s in between that? Does it include all the GNU system tools? Is there a lot of software that takes advantage of the COSMIC desktop environment? Do they have an App Store? Is it closer to something like Ubuntu or is it more like Android?
- jsk2600 10mo agoIt's based on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, with their own DE
- dsego 10mo agoDoes it use snap packages?
- cguess 10mo agoyes
- akdor1154 10mo agoThey attempt to avoid them, though snaps are still available if you wish. Flatpak is installed by default and used by their app store, and Firefox is packaged as a deb so you can avoid the snap. I consider it a deshittified Ubuntu.
- KronisLV 10mo ago> I consider it a deshittified Ubuntu. This is more or less what I have used Linux Mint for (their Cinnamon desktop version is pretty okay, also used the XFCE one). Nice to have more options!
- panick21_ 10mo agoThey are vendor of hardware, so much more aggressive about pushing new hardware support.
- bryanlarsen 10mo agoHave you tried the new-ish KDE window tiling? (Super-T by default) I had a similar desire to you, and am quite happy with what KDE provided. It'd be interesting to read a comparison between the two. Although I'm happy enough with what KDE gives me that COSMIC would have to be substantially better before I'd endure the switching costs.
- tmtvl 10mo agoI hard bounced off COSMIC with the complete lack of theming. I can't even set my clock to a reasonable format in it. The only thing it has going for it is sane multi-monitor support, which neither KDE nor GNOME have gotten right so far (though at KDE there is some activity around it, dunno 'bout GNOME).
- dontlaugh 10mo agoWhat’s wrong with Gnome’s multi monitor support? My two monitors even have different pixel density.
- akdor1154 10mo agoGnome works OK with integer scaling, more granular than this and you're up shit creek. E.G. can you set one screen to 150% and one to 175%? (I think the answer to this is 'technically yes but then everything goes a bit blurry because they do it by rendering at 2x then downscaling') Proper mixed dpi scaling means stuff will render pixel-perfectly instead of downscaling hacks.
- dontlaugh 10mo agoI have two 4K monitors, one at 150% and another at 175%. Nothing is blurry. I did have to get a reasonably new Gnome, Ubuntu LTS had one that was broken with fractional scaling.
- tmtvl 10mo agoCan't switch between workspace 1 and 2 on my right monitor while leaving my left one on workspace 3. In fact, I believe by default I wouldn't even get workspaces on my secondary monitor. Because who needs 'organization' anyway?
- dontlaugh 10mo agoI see. I’ve always preferred to switch workspaces together.
- 10mo ago