COSMIC lock screen will be customizable with themes (fosstodon.org)
from mmstick@lemmy.world to linux@lemmy.ml on 12 Oct 2023 22:30
https://lemmy.world/post/6719750

cross-posted from: lemmy.ndlug.org/post/280126

Jeremy Soller shares some examples of the COSMIC lock screen that Pop!_OS is working on.

#linux

threaded - newest

torvusbogpod@lemmy.world on 12 Oct 2023 23:20 next collapse

Bruh COSMIC is looking unbelievable. I can’t wait to see it in action. Is it still on track for 1.0 before the end of the year?

mmstick@lemmy.world on 12 Oct 2023 23:36 collapse

This year? No. We are still working on achieving our Alpha 1 milestone.

torvusbogpod@lemmy.world on 13 Oct 2023 04:26 collapse

Ah, I must have misunderstood. At any rate, y’all are doing great and I can’t wait for the final product.

MonkCanatella@sh.itjust.works on 12 Oct 2023 23:52 next collapse

Looks great! I can’t wait, cosmic is already my favorite out of the box DE by a long shot

meteokr@community.adiquaints.moe on 13 Oct 2023 02:16 collapse

How do you run it? I admit I haven’t dug too deep, but I haven’t seen a release post. I’ve only seen Dev blog posts about the work being done.

ardent_abysm@lemm.ee on 13 Oct 2023 03:42 next collapse

Here are instructions for installing the current state of Cosmic m.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZCCVRbYYRM

It is in a very pre-alpha state. The promoted demonstrations are being made by people developing Cosmic, so have a deep knowledge of how to configure it manually, or are using features that haven’t been merged into the currently distributed package.

Apparently, some people that work at System76 are daily driving Cosmic, but they must be using a different configuration than what is part of the shipped package. As is, I find it basically a demo that is functional enough to attempt using for more than 5 minutes, but giving up not long after.

PipedLinkBot@feddit.rocks on 13 Oct 2023 03:42 next collapse

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

https://m.piped.video/watch?v=3ZCCVRbYYRM

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.

meteokr@community.adiquaints.moe on 13 Oct 2023 05:20 collapse

Thank you, unfortunate it is a video but at least there’s something. I feel like my requirements of a DE are pretty low, so if it does work, and can open a window with AMD GPU acceleration then cool. I’m not fully aware of how much I actually use specific DE features, so this would be a good way to find out haha. I’d love to give it a shot on NixOS.

MonkCanatella@sh.itjust.works on 13 Oct 2023 04:01 collapse

I’m just talking about cosmic gnome hahaha. I’m not running the rust version

simple@lemm.ee on 13 Oct 2023 00:00 next collapse

Man that’s so exciting, I despise how boring the gnome lock screen is. The default gray background just looks so bland.

I can’t wait for Cosmic. I might even make the switch when it hits alpha, I’ve had quite enough of Gnome lately.

kugmo@sh.itjust.works on 13 Oct 2023 00:48 next collapse

Is the DE still reliant on GTK? Will there be thumbnails in the filepicker?

hojjat@lemmy.ml on 13 Oct 2023 04:04 next collapse

The DE is not reliant on Gtk, it uses Iced, which is fully written in Rust. And the Gtk file picker also has thumbnails now.

kugmo@sh.itjust.works on 13 Oct 2023 04:38 collapse

Have the cosmic devs said if their file picker portal will support thumbnails?

hojjat@lemmy.ml on 13 Oct 2023 04:47 collapse

They haven’t created the file chooser portals yet. But I saw a comment from mmstick a few months ago on reddit that he said it will support it. I mean it’s a simple basic- feature, gnome could’ve had it if they cared.

independantiste@sh.itjust.works on 13 Oct 2023 15:42 collapse

Gnome has it now! It only took 20 years which makes it so much better to see it in action. Thanks to the person who made that contribution!

mmstick@lemmy.world on 13 Oct 2023 09:24 collapse

We have been developing our own toolkit, libcosmic, which is being used for everything. From the lock screen, compositor, applets for the desktop, and the applications themselves. There is an examples directory for third party developers to learn hope to build their own applets and applications with.

Indra881@lemmy.ml on 13 Oct 2023 11:18 collapse

Which display manager do you guys plan to use?

mmstick@lemmy.world on 13 Oct 2023 11:22 collapse

You’re looking at it.

merthyr1831@lemmy.world on 13 Oct 2023 09:43 next collapse

Brilliant work! COSMIC is a breath of fresh air for the Linux desktop community.

two questions:

  1. Is COSMIC DE going to be exclusively Wayland? Would make sense but I’m just curious.

  2. will COSMIC DE be available separately from Pop!OS? I think this could be a very popular choice for people getting into Arch or Nix, for example.

mmstick@lemmy.world on 13 Oct 2023 09:47 collapse

  1. Yes
  2. That depends on those other distributions willingness to package it for their distributions.
merthyr1831@lemmy.world on 13 Oct 2023 12:31 next collapse

Brilliant!

MrPenguinSky@lemmy.world on 13 Oct 2023 16:52 collapse

Hoping someone packages it for gentoo 🤞

NiaTheCat@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 13 Oct 2023 12:22 next collapse

Recently moved to PopOS and while I’ve been generally aware of Cosmic I’ve been looking into it a lot recently, don’t know much about programming languages but from what I understand Rust is supposed to be really fast for this stuff.

Will using Rust cause the desktop to feel really responsive/snappy compared to other ones like Gnome or KDE Plasma (not that they’re slow), or is it more like an efficiency thing, less CPU/RAM use, etc? If this has already been answered can someone link me because I haven’t been able to find much on it

fedcon@lemm.ee on 13 Oct 2023 12:36 next collapse

Rust wouldn’t necessarily make it more responsive. It is more oriented towards safety and robustness.

Cosmic might be more responsive / efficient due to the fact that it’s a new development and they can choose to implement things better and not carry old baggage, but that’s about it. Rust doesn’t have much say in it.

Edit: Although, if they are moving away from JavaScript in Gnome as their shell language to pure Rust in Cosmic, then you would probably see some responsiveness / efficiency gains, yes.

mmstick@lemmy.world on 13 Oct 2023 12:49 collapse

Synthetic benchmarks written in Rust are as fast as those in C. In practice, Rust applications are more efficient than their C counterparts. The performance and efficiency is nice, but the main benefit will be stable software that is free of vulnerabilities caused by common mistakes in C and C++. Virtually every Curl vulnerability would not happen in Rust.

There’s half of a century of programming language theory research between C++ and Rust. Which solves many of the issues in programming that are common in C and C++. Such as the memory and thread safety violations that can be difficult to diagnose, application crashes, and critical software vulnerabilities.

The language concepts and compiler features also prevent a lot of common logical mistakes a programmer may make. Such that the best practices in C++ are the baseline for any Rust project that successfully compiles. It is easy to develop highly parallel and asynchronous software that just works and is easy to maintain and debug. As a result, you may notice Rust projects developing to maturity much quicker than you’d expect.

GlenTheFrog@lemmy.ml on 13 Oct 2023 13:02 next collapse

I love the new lockscreen. Looks great so far.

I’ve got some concerns about the screen space usage for the desktop itself however. Between the top “Gnome” bar and the bottom panel for apps, that’s a lot of vertical space used up. I can imagine this being awful for small screen laptops. Gnome doesn’t have this issue because the bottom “dock” is hidden until the actitives button is pressed. Will Cosmic in some way allow the user to hide or move the bottom panel?

mmstick@lemmy.world on 13 Oct 2023 13:19 collapse

The dock is hidden by default and appears when pressure is applied. It is also optional. Was that the only concern?

GlenTheFrog@lemmy.ml on 14 Oct 2023 14:24 collapse

Awesome! Yeah, that’s what I was a bit apprehensive about. I’ve only seen screenshots of a blank desktop so far, and they always show the dock. And the “apply pressure” method is definitely the better way to go.

lukas@lemmy.haigner.me on 13 Oct 2023 13:58 next collapse

I completely missed that system76 launched COSMIC already lol

vasametropolis@lemmy.world on 13 Oct 2023 14:11 next collapse

I don’t think they did?

I_like_cats@lemmy.one on 13 Oct 2023 15:43 collapse

It isn’t released yet but you can compile it yourself as the source code is available

independantiste@sh.itjust.works on 13 Oct 2023 15:44 next collapse

The only thing I am kind of skeptical about Cosmic is how it will handle other apps like KDE or GNOME apps, especially the Libadwaita ones. I have one question, will it be possible to kind of make them fit in the system or the other way around, make the system look like it has a libadwaita look? I just really love some consistency

mmstick@lemmy.world on 13 Oct 2023 15:51 collapse

The desktop environment doesn’t control how applications look or function. Regarding theming, GTK3 applications need a GTK3 theme, GTK4 applications need a GTK4 theme, libadwaita applications need a libadwaita theme, and KDE applications need a KDE theme. Our tooling for generating themes will attempt to generate themes for other toolkits, but COSMIC applications have a different design language than GNOME or KDE applications.

independantiste@sh.itjust.works on 13 Oct 2023 20:31 collapse

That is the answer I was looking for, thanks so much for clarifying!

sir_reginald@lemmy.world on 13 Oct 2023 16:18 collapse

This is interesting. I’m a window manager user, but currently, the Wayland Display Managers suck. I’m using sddm but I don’t like it.

I’m guessing that this one will be modular enough to be installed without the whole Cosmic DE? It seems interesting.

mmstick@lemmy.world on 13 Oct 2023 16:25 next collapse

The cosmic-greeter package is already installable today. It will work on any system that has greetd available. The Appearance panel in COSMIC Settings is not yet merged, but it is in the appearance staging branch.

fl42v@lemmy.ml on 18 Oct 2023 13:38 collapse

Tbh, cosmic-epoch itself is kinda modular, yet slightly weird. I used it on nixos for a short while (until some shit in nix changed, and pop’s flakes decided to not compile) recently.

The strangest thing is their way to store configuration: cosmic-comp (I.e. their compositor) has 2. The 1st is a “regular” file (.ron, as far as I remember) and is used to store keybindings and some other settings (for example whether to tile windows automatically, border width, etc), and the second one is like windows’s registry on top of the filesystem (I.e. you have ~/.config/cosmic/com.system76.whatever/dir0/file0 where dir0 represents some group of parameters (?) and file0 is the name of one; the value is the contents of file0. Easily manageable with nix but confusing AF to edit manually. Most if not all except the compositor uses the latter format.

On the other hand, the compositor is already quite cool with regards to animations and window/workpace movement at least, and is reasonably stable for a pre-alpha. Also, their way to make bars seems interesting: each applet itself is a graphical app using xdg-shell, and the panel uses pop’s lib to “convert” them to layer-shell.