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Jeffrey Seriohyperreal
Jan 22

The Rust-based COSMIC desktop environment from System76 is approaching an alpha release. It will be a while before it’s stable and desktop ready. According to one of the devs, they do not have plans to create RPM packages or COPR repository for COSMIC but they expect the communities of various distros to do so if they want it.

I’d be interested in helping to make it available on Fedora, possibly as an official spin.

One of the devs currently uses the pre-alpha version as a Fedora ostree variant, layering it over Silverblue, for development purposes. They mentioned that most COSMIC devs run Pop!_OS and install cosmic-epoch from the official dev repositories. The Containerfile for layering over Silverblue can be viewed on their GitHub repo: GitHub - Drakulix/infinity: A Silverblue based OSTree Image with the COSMIC desktop environment 396

I’m going to try out layering it over Silverblue in a virtual machine. I’ll also install Pop!_OS in a another virtual machine and install cosmic-epoch from the dev repos. I haven’t really given the new COSMIC a good look. I think I tried it once a while back but it was still pretty bare-bones at the time – there have been many new developments and features added on it since then.

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396 GitHub - Drakulix/infinity: A Silverblue based OSTree Image with the COSMIC desktop e... github.com
194 GitHub - ryanabx/fedora-cosmic-atomic: A Fedora Atomic based OSTree Image with the CO... github.com
99 Cosmic Desktop Atomic? fedoraproject.org
76 COSMIC Desktop Is Slated to Debut with Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS linuxiac.com
74 You're invited to talk on Matrix matrix.to

There are 32 replies with an estimated read time of 4 minutes.

Jeffrey Seriohyperreal
Jan 22

No it’s built from scratch with Rust.

There is a version of COSMIC that is currently shipped with Pop!_OS that is based on GNOME 3.38. But this new version is completely rewritten in Rust.

Ayush Singhayush1325
Jan 26

I would also be interested in helping to make it available on Fedora as an official immutable variant. It doesn’t seem like that can happen, at least until Fedora 41, But it would be cool to start with a rawhide build.

21 days later
Ryan BrueryanabxPackaging Team
Feb 16

Parroting the interest shown above. I’d like to help create a COSMIC SIG when cosmic moves closer to release. Being someone who currently uses Silverblue/ostree based desktops, I have updated Drakulix’s image to the latest COSMIC and created several images based on user needs: GitHub - ryanabx/fedora-cosmic-atomic: A Fedora Atomic based OSTree Image with the COSMIC desktop environment. Thanks to Drakulix for initial image. 109

If you’d like to try COSMIC in the mean time, I suggest using the silverblue-based image, as it has GNOME as a fallback DE.

495legion495
Feb 16

I actually really hoping for a spin or something.
I would very much like jumping to that Gnomeish DE.

hammerhead corvettehamrheadcorvette
Feb 16
Joseph GayosojosephMarketing Team
Feb 16

Here are instructions for making a Fedora Atomic Desktop 45 to get started. I’ll be watching this topic to help with promotion as Cosmic gets closer to stable release.

If you want to make a SIG, here is documentation for that 7! One point you may want to clarify is whether this SIG will be for a potential Fedora Cosmic or just a Fedora Cosmic Atomic spin.

The Fedora Atomic Desktops SIG has a matrix chat 7 if you want to start collaborating in there. Will be great to work in the same space as the people who bring us other atomic spins. As you grow more comfortable you may want to make your own spaces for working.

Tagging atomic-desktops

Good luck! Let us know how we can support you!

hammerhead corvettehamrheadcorvette
Feb 17

Making it a Atomic, makes it a good ground for testing. Actually ideal since it’ll be rpm-ostree with whatever the latest packages are. There seems to be some chatter here for it, would be nice if some folks got it going.

I’ll help however I can.

Looks like this is already a thing :laughing: :party:

Ryan BrueryanabxPackaging Team
Feb 17

Thank you! I will read up on the guides you showed above. My goal as things get closer to the alpha release is to develop a SIG for COSMIC, hopefully gather some people interested in helping me package rpms for COSMIC components, and then use those rpms to make a spin AND an atomic variant (I’m more of a fan of the atomic desktops myself).

Currently my COSMIC image just compiles everything manually and puts stuff where it needs to be in the filesystem, but rpms are the eventual goal :slight_smile:

Jeffrey Seriohyperreal
Feb 18

I’m going to try this out on my laptop soon. I’m just curious if anyone knows why it’s necessary to disable SELinux. Do some COSMIC packages not work with it?

Jeffrey Seriohyperreal
Feb 18

I suppose I can try installing it without disabling SELinux and see what happens. Maybe it’s not infeasible to use ausearch and audit2allow to create policies for it.

Gary BuhrmastergtbPackaging Team
Feb 18

There were a couple of open issues regarding SELinux
on the cosmic desktop github repo. You may want to
contribute to that discussion, and (help) create an
appropriate selinux policy.

12 days later
Marko Jokinenphatle
Mar 2

been testing Cosmic desctop from early development days from pre-pre-pre alpha to alpha and it is pretty amazing on performance side would love to see more of it and i heard System76 is going to move out from ubuntu and build own distro in future

Ryan BrueryanabxPackaging Team
Mar 4

Yep! Work is in progress on moving my atomic image over to the ublue namespace, and I hope that it will result in better CI integration and more image options! (For example, I’d like to see a cosmic image with nvidia drivers preinstalled)

Scott WilliamsvwbusguyTop 500
Mar 6

Having the extra drivers, etc. from Bazzite on COSMIC would be an absolutely amazing experience for a gamer image.

Stephen SnowjakfrostIn Search of the Bull (Tester I)
Mar 9

I tried it on F40 Branched from @ryanabx copr repo. It has sane keyboard shortcuts for opening standard applications such as a terminal and the browser, etc … I found most settings were not yet fulsome, but general functionality is there. I could start any of the applications I tried, and run them. I haven’t read into the settings that are user configurable from dot files yet. F40, is of course still not ready for prime time and has some annoying things such as having to redo my online accounts sign on in Gnome, again.
I reverted back to F39 and Cosmic is still an option at the GDM login, maybe I’ll try it from there to see how it works.
It seems to work well in F39.

hammerhead corvettehamrheadcorvette
Mar 9

that’s what I miss from Window managers, was keyboard shortcuts. rediscovering Gnome’s KB Shortcuts have been a huge improvement for me. I’ll still give Cosmic a spin soon.

1 month later
Stephen SnowjakfrostIn Search of the Bull (Tester I)
Apr 12

The only issue I have with Cosmic-epoch ATM, is it “looks like” my very old Gnome Desktop. Aand the pointer is sometimes erratic, so clicking on the top right corner (say) can be a challenge.

14 days later
Artem PolishchukatimPackaging Team
Apr 27

Using it now with NVIDIA 550 proprietary driver and open modules. nvidia-drm.modeset=1 needed to make it work. There is still a lot of work to be done. It’s early alpha and there many missing features but it’s already usable. And it’s great. I absolutely love it!

Why some people call it GNOME-like? There is zero similarities in appearance and literally zero dependencies on GNOME. COSMIC is not even depends on GTK lib.

Hope to see it in official repo and Fedora COSMIC spin in future.
UPD: i am late to the party. COSMIC already submitted on review and will be in official Fedora repos soon™.

Joseph GayosojosephMarketing Team
Apr 27

Yes, the Fedora COSMIC SIG is explicitly working toward a future Fedora COSMIC Spin and Fedora COSMIC Atomic. Of course they have to cross the finish line so it’s not a sure thing, but that’s the aim.

boredsquirrel
Apr 27

Do you know how far the SELinux profiles are? Because that is the biggest issue with COSMIC currently, at least in my eyes

Scott WilliamsvwbusguyTop 500
30d

I have to be clear that the COSMIC SIG stuff isn’t ready for primetime yet and there will be an announcement when it is. If you’d like to help out with SELinux policy stuff, please join in. If you’re wondering if it’s ready to generally be used outside of testing/development purposes - it is not.