COSMIC is a Wayland desktop environment for Linux that is written in Rust with Smithay and Iced. COSMIC applications are developed with the libcosmic platform toolkit, which is based on iced. They are cross-platform and supported on Windows, Mac, and Redox OS in addition to Linux.

As COSMIC nears its alpha release in Q1 of 2024, we have thus far developed a terminal, file manager, and text editor for our desktop environment within the last few months.

See cosmic-epoch for instructions on building and installing COSMIC.

  • @simple@lemm.ee
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    2511 months ago

    Between this and KDE 6, it’s going to be a great year for the Linux desktop experience.

  • @cygnus@lemmy.ca
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    711 months ago

    They are cross-platform and supported on Windows, Mac, and Redox OS in addition to Linux.

    I never made this connection until now, but of course that makes sense… Very cool.

  • @eos300v@lemmy.world
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    211 months ago

    I really like the idea of COSMIC apps and rust powered cross platform dev tools. But I think that the design language of COSMIC so far still needs some polish, so far it seems like there is so much white space, like they’re afraid to show more information on one screen. :(. Also not a fan of rounded corners. I hope this changes soon after it matures a bit.

    • Michael Murphy (S76)OP
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      11 months ago

      I don’t think you can say that because we haven’t published our design language yet. Only a handful of design mockups have been published so far. The screenshots here are not design mockups but a work in progress implementation. Hence the “In-progress” part of the title.

      Rounded corners are a user preference in the Appearance page in COSMIC Settings.

  • circuitfarmer
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    111 months ago

    I love that it isn’t all soft corners everywhere, but the pill-shaped buttons and selections seem out of place. I hope they can be made more square.

    • Michael Murphy (S76)OP
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      211 months ago

      Corner roundedness is personal preference in the Appearance page in COSMIC Settings. Similar to interface density.

  • It is looking very promising. I was a bit skeptic at first, but everything is looking quite polished. I am wondering, Will the terminal have support for images, in similar way to kitty or iterm2? And also another thing, Will the file manager has a three pane view? (macos finder, or ranger (tui) style)

    I know those two things are missing from gnome equivalents, and are quite handful for productivity, at least for me. Being more advance than gnome, but simpler than KDE would make COSMIC appealing for a lot of people I think.

  • @dino@discuss.tchncs.de
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    -611 months ago

    Can somebody explain to me, why we need another terminal, file manager, text editor and such? Just to call them all “cosmic apps”? Also who the fuck is going to use any of this on windows or even macOS?? Why waste manpower on this cross-platform compatibility?

    • Michael Murphy (S76)OP
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      11 months ago

      It’s been explained 100 times ad nauseam over the last two years. Go read comments from previous months’ updates if you want to catch up.

      As for cross-platform compatibility, this should not come as a surprise because everything is written in Rust, and the libraries we use are already cross-platform by default in most instances. Supporting multiple platforms takes almost zero effort on our part. Especially when we could design something from the ground up that’s easy to adapt.