It’s an Ubuntu downstream maintained by Linux box maker System76 which is targeted for both general usability and design/media applications. They will soon be debuting their own home-spun desktop environment, Cosmic DE, which is highly anticipated by the Linux community.

How does the community here feel about this distribution and the company that has brought it to us? How do you feel about the projects that they’re working on, and their goals for the distribution moving forward?

  • Muffi@programming.dev
    0·
    11 months ago

    Made the switch to Pop!_OS from Win10 half a year ago, and my machine’s been purring like a happy cat ever since. All my games still run (thanks, Proton!) and some even had a significant performance boost (RDR2 being the best example) with a 3090. Only problem I had was getting DaVinci Resolve to work properly, but I caved and bought the Studio version which runs perfectly.

    • HereIAm@lemmy.world
      0·
      11 months ago

      I’ve only used DaVinci for small projects, so I don’t know their eco system too well, but what made you buy a product when you were having problems getting it to work? :O Does the studio version offer better hardware acceleration or something like that?

  • burgermeister@lemm.eeEnglish
    0·
    11 months ago

    Visuals were striking, but on non-System 76 hardware the thing as a whole broke several times cuz updates. Would love to try out some System76 hardware one of these days though.

    • azron@lemmy.ml
      0·
      11 months ago

      Ive had good success across three non system 76 machines. It is Ubuntu under the covers. I’d expect most of it to work as well as ubuntu does.

    • gregorum@lemm.eeOPEnglish
      0·
      11 months ago

      Personally, I’ve installed it on at least a couple of dozen machines that definitely weren’t from system 76, and not one of them them had a problem.

      I’m curious, what sort of issues did you have?

  • Doods@infosec.pub
    0·
    11 months ago

    A semi-rolling distribution, with access to Ubuntu’s many PPA’s, and easily removable extensions that reveal the lovely vanilla Gnome experience, it’s great!

    Also they are making a Rust desktop, which I am currently running, though not daily driving.

      • Doods@infosec.pub
        0·
        11 months ago

        I am on Pop!_OS, I ran sudo apt install cosmic*.

        Don’t worry, you’re not missing out on much, running video games, or any OpenGL thing including 2D games and GPU-accelerated terminal emulators is a bad experience, and alt+f4 isn’t implemented, and f11 to fullscreen is janky, and theming for buttons and such is clearly alpha.

        The promise of an Arabic-supporting, Rust based, GPU-accelerated terminal is too attractive, however, as I was teared between multilingual terminal, Wezterm, Alacritty and Kitty for a while.

        The first is horrible at everything but supporting languages, the second is really janky, the third doesn’t support tabs, the fourth has bad theming and customization.

        • theshatterstone54@feddit.uk
          0·
          11 months ago

          You’re not missing out on much

          Seems that you’re right. It’s almost usable currently, but it lacks some essential things for me, mainly some further snappiness and customisable key binds (old habits die hard and I’m not adapting my habits and workflow to new keybinds).

          But after these get fixed, I can see myself potentially running COSMIC. This makes me even more excited for what the future will bring.

          Edit: Also, sloppy focus aka focus-follows-mouse

          And an option for static workspaces i.e a set number of workspaces that are constantly there, instead of dynamic workspaces that close with your windows and change your workflow because you closed the window on Workspace 4 so workspace 5 is now workspace 4 so when you go looking for the window on workspace 5, it’s not there.

          • Doods@infosec.pub
            0·
            11 months ago

            Also, sloppy focus aka focus-follows-mouse

            It’s one of those features I always wanted to try, but always forget to look up how to actually enable and start using it, so I never actually tried it.

            • theshatterstone54@feddit.uk
              0·
              11 months ago

              Highly recommend trying it, especially on a tiling window manager! (doesn’t seem to be available for COSMIC yet, and I don’t think it’s in other DEs either, but I know floating WMs like Openbox had sloppy focus iirc.

        • Michael Murphy (S76)@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          11 months ago

          What GPU configuration do you have? I don’t have any of these issues. If NVIDIA, you have to wait for NVIDIA to release explicit sync Wayland drivers.

          • Doods@infosec.pub
            0·
            11 months ago

            Inaccurate report,

            I just ran Neovim in terminal and was used to Neovide, so I thought it was choppy.

            Intel HD 630.

            There is, however, a 2D game - which I am not going to disclose the name of - that’s pretty broken. (It uses Adobe Flash as an engine)

            Also the steam client doesn’t maximize properly with tiling but I am sure that’s reported.

            I have been daily driving Cosmic for a week now; it caused me Arch-syndrome, everyday I run sudo apt update hoping to get some polish to the desktop.

            Edit: there’s more…

            Neovide’s transparency is completely broken, and shows a blank, though not a pitch black, color and screenshotting it results in seeing the text with a checkered background. (In the resulting screenshot only) (Running on Proton 8.0-5)

            clipboard=unnamed plus, the setting supposed to unify Neovim’s clipboard and system’s, doesn’t work. clipboard: error : Error: target STRING not available

            I also was unable to transfer a file to my phone using Cosmic Files, but Nemo worked, though I read that’s fixed in some Blog.

            Edit II: I just discovered popdev:master it seems to be a general unstable branch instead of just Cosmic things, but I took the risk and added it, I just have to remember to remove it once 24.04’s released

              • Doods@infosec.pub
                0·
                11 months ago

                running video games, or any OpenGL thing including 2D games and GPU-accelerated terminal emulators is a bad experience

                The thing you replied to; I don’t open social media often enough to reply on time, so I sent you a late reply.

  • z00s@lemmy.world
    0·
    11 months ago

    I suspect it will replace Ubuntu as the new noob distro, which is a good thing. Doesn’t run as fast on older hardware as mint w cinnamon, but that’s not a big deal. I’m hoping the new DE will improve that.

    Love how feature rich it is, especially love the switch to toggle tiling windows on the desktop.

  • Dumpdog@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    11 months ago

    POP is an excellent distro for a number of use cases. I can’t speak to System 76 hardware but Pop is definitely one of the good Distros. I have used it for about 5ish years to run Davinci Resolve on video editing laptops and workstations. Another use case for POP was for breaking Mac OS acclimated relatives out of their walled gardens. Relatives as old as 80 have had very little problem adjusting to it after having help installing it. Looking forward to Cosmic but I will make sure I have backups and other stuff to tinker with during the transition - was the same way during Wayland transition on my other machines.

    Positives

    • Davinci Resolve working with a little bit of fiddling and continues to run solidly.
    • No hassle with Nvidia drivers on editing laptop.
    • 4-5 years daily driver on Thinkpads (t460,13) and other older laptops (daily use)
    • Gaming on Nvidia good.
    • Elder folks adjust easily from Mac OS. Its basically Macbuntu for them without the complete pile of shit that is Snaps.

    Negatives

    • POP Shop was kinda shite. Had a few problems years ago. Wasn’t patient during upgrades or used terminal. A couple of shitty things happening recently but looking forward to testing out everything Cosmic (I have a rock solid edit station that will remain AMD on Endeavour OS to make sure I can still work).
    • Name doesn’t bother me, but would be better as just POP OS
  • Lettuce eat lettuce@lemmy.ml
    0·
    11 months ago

    I’m interested to try their Cosmic desktop later this year.

    Overall, seems like a solid company, I’ve heard good things about their laptops, although I’ve never had one myself.

    Pop_OS as a distro, heard generally good things about. The few times I’ve messed around with it have been fine. The folks that stick with it seem to like it.

  • Octorine@midwest.socialEnglish
    0·
    11 months ago

    Ive been using it for several years. I hardly think about it at all, which is pretty high praise.

      • Michael Murphy (S76)@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        11 months ago

        Ubuntu is Debian with more up-to-date packages and a lot of additional third party packages. There’s a lot of companies who produce development toolkits, frameworks, and applications that are explicitly built for the Ubuntu base. Some governmental agencies and organizations also require access to packages and repositories that have been audited by security agencies, which Ubuntu has gone through the process of getting certification for certain kernels and their Ubuntu Pro repositories. All of which are useful for real world customers.

        Regardless of shortcomings in Snap, Pop does not rely on Snaps, and offers its own packaging for things that would otherwise require Snap on Ubuntu.

        • haui@lemmy.giftedmc.com
          0·
          11 months ago

          Thanks for elaborating. Learn something new every day. :)

          I use pop os extensively so I knew about that but the government/security stuff was interesting. The main reason I went away from ubuntu was snap and pop is very useful.

    • acockworkorange@mander.xyz
      0·
      11 months ago

      If a company with some resources makes a good Debian unstable based distro with a decent release cycle (could even be yearly), they’ll dominate the desktop market.

  • GloriousGouda@lemmy.myserv.one
    0·
    11 months ago

    It was too far from the metal for me. But it is a great distribution. Especially if you’re looking for fancy pants gaming ability or just turn-key ready to roll MS alternative.

  • youmaynotknow@lemmy.ml
    0·
    11 months ago

    I have a Gazelle 16 laptop, and was in PopOS for a while too, even before this laptop, when I had a 17" Alienware. However, I’ve moved on to Fedora now, and can’t go back to anything Ubuntu or Ubuntu based again. Fedora is just too great a balance between stable and cutting edge, Ubuntu feels old real quick, and so do all it’s derivatives and downstreams.

    I loved the Gnome based Cosmic, best Tweak of Gnome ever in my opinion, but other than that, I just can’t leave Fedora behind anymore. Even Ublue distros are amazing.

    • gregorum@lemm.eeOPEnglish
      0·
      11 months ago

      Care to elaborate on what really sold you on fedora?

      Also, the new cosmic DE will be available for all distros

      • youmaynotknow@lemmy.ml
        0·
        11 months ago

        First, an integral distaste for everything remotely associated with Ubuntu, on a principle as well as on a stability and usability front. As I mentioned, the best balance between stability and cutting edge tech is on Fedora and other Fedora based distros. No other come close to that balance. See some people mention DNF, but for me that’s just another packager, could not care less.

        As for the atomic versions that I see many mention regularly, I’m giving them a try, even have bazzite running on my laptop right now trying to see if I can actually like it, but it’s not looking promising. Atomic versions I’ve tried seem to be slower than regular distros for boot an apps launch (work fast enough after, though). Then there’s the fact that, while they are great for “fire and forget”, that same feature makes them very convoluted to achieve some system level stuff,reqyiring morework and tinkering than with a regular distro.

      • different_base@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        11 months ago

        Not OP, but my reasons for choosing Fedora is, it just works. I use the Atomic version of it which is an image based operating system. Installing packages or updates does not leave the system unstable. I can simply rollback to previous version. Also Fedora pushes entire Linux community forward by adopting potential technologies like Flatpak, PipeWire, Wayland etc earlier compared to other distros.

        (I also run NixOS which I believe has more potential and solves many problems than Fedora).

        Having said that there are two downsides to Fedora.

        • Fedora is closely associated with Red Hat. I wish it is purely community driven.
        • Fedora does not offer LTS kernels (Maybe it would threaten Red Hat, if Fedora is too stable).
  • haui@lemmy.giftedmc.com
    0·
    11 months ago

    I use pop for my nvidia laptop and it works great. System76 seems to be on the right track and I‘m curious what they have in store for the future.