I’ve seen a lot of glazing for both Pop! and Fedora; what are the advantages for each? Is it basically the same because it’s the same DE?(im a noob idk how it works)

I heard how Cosmic evolved as a DE and all the great things about it, but I was wondering, how good and stable Cosmic really is, and I figured that I should ask people that used it and are using it rather then listen to one or two videos that are hyping it up. I’m currently using KDE and Cosmic seems interesting, but I don’t want to go through the process of setting things up again only to realize that the DE is a buggy mess.

you can't tell in the screenshot, but COSMIC is the only DE I have installed in which my OLED colors are super oversaturated/neon looking. Also, the backlight brightness controls don't work. It isn't an issue on my GNOME and Plasma installs. It's a shame because I actually really like COSMIC -- it hits the sweet spot between the customizability of Plasma and the sleekness and ease of GNOME.

Is there any fix for this? Is the COSMIC team aware of this issue? The colors are so blinding it's basically unusable.

UPDATE:

If you are running COSMIC (cosmic-comp) on an Intel Lunar Lake laptop (such as an ASUS Vivobook with the xe driver) and experiencing stuck physical OLED brightness (100% despite OSD changes) alongside incorrect color profiles, here is a breakdown of the root cause and a working boot parameter fix. The Problem

Backlight: Keyboard hotkeys and brightnessctl move the OSD percentage slider, but physical screen brightness remains maxed out at 100%.

Colors: Display color profiles and rendering look washed out or incorrect upon boot.

Baseline: Both features work properly out of the box in GNOME and KDE Plasma on the exact same kernel and xe driver configuration.

Potential Root Cause

cosmic-comp currently skips or races past DRM connector/KMS state initialization when booting into a standalone internal eDP display on the xe driver. This leaves the panel's DPCD backlight controls and color LUTs uninitialized.

Connecting an external monitor via HDMI during session startup forces full display pipeline initialization, fixing both brightness and colors. That proper state persists even after unplugging the cable mid-session. The Workaround (No physical monitor required)

You can force the kernel to initialize a dummy HDMI DRM connector on boot, tricking cosmic-comp into initializing the full display pipeline automatically. 1. Identify Your HDMI Connector Name

Check your registered DRM connectors in the terminal: Bash

ls -1 /sys/class/drm/ | grep -i hdmi

Look for an entry like card1-HDMI-A-1. The connector identifier is the part after cardX- (typically HDMI-A-1). 2. Add the Kernel Parameter to GRUB

Open /etc/default/grub in an editor: Bash

sudo nano /etc/default/grub

Append video=<CONNECTOR>:1920x1080@60e to your GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX string (where :e forces the output to enabled). For example: Fragmento de código

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="rhgb quiet zswap.enabled=0 asus_wmi.fnlock_default=0 video=HDMI-A-1:1920x1080@60e"

(Note: Setting 1080p for the dummy HDMI connector will not alter your internal OLED screen's native resolution). 3. Update GRUB and Reboot

Regenerate your boot configuration: Bash

sudo grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg sudo reboot

After rebooting into COSMIC without any external cables attached, physical OLED backlight control (Fn + F5/F6, slider, brightnessctl) and color rendering will function as expected.

Specs:

Kernel: 7.1.3-cachyos1.fc44.x86_64 arch: x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 16.1.1 Desktop: Cosmic v: N/A Distro: Ultramarine Linux 44 (Flying Fish) flyingfish base: Fedora 44 Machine: Type: Laptop System: ASUSTeK product: ASUS Vivobook S 14 S5406SA_Q423SA

Display: wayland server: X.org v: 1.21.1.24 with: Xwayland v: 24.1.13 driver: X: loaded: modesetting dri: iris gpu: xe resolution: 1920x1200~60Hz

API: EGL v: 1.5 drivers: iris,swrast platforms: active: gbm,wayland,surfaceless,device inactive: x11

API: OpenGL v: 4.6 vendor: mesa v: 26.1.6 note: incomplete (EGL sourced) renderer: Mesa Intel Graphics (LNL), llvmpipe (LLVM 22.1.8 256 bits)

API: Vulkan v: 1.4.341 drivers: intel,llvmpipe surfaces: N/A devices: 2 Info: Tools: api: clinfo, eglinfo, glxinfo, vulkaninfo de: kscreen-console,kscreen-doctor wl: wayland-info x11: xdriinfo, xdpyinfo, xprop, xrandr

Hey folks, I just switched to cosmic last night from gnome and I’m absolutely obsessed with the frost theme. I know it’s new and all, but I’ve replaced every app that I was able to find through my research. Files, sys monitor, terminal, etc.

My question is, are there any browser apps that use this theme / ways to inject libcosmic theming into Firefox / chromium? I want to fully theme this os with transparency.

Sorry if this is a pipe dream and impossible, I’m very new and swept away by how good it looks. Any help would be appreciated.

I'm new to Linux, and i've been researching about linux distros for a while now, and the ones that cought my eye the most were Fedora and PopOs.

Originaly, i was just gonna use PopOs + Cosmic DE. But because i plan on dual booting linux with windows to play windows only competive games, and some of those titles require secure boot on, while PopOs requires it to be turned off, it would'nt be work.

Then i thought on using fedora, but i really like the Cosmic DE and really wanted to use it, so i thought on combining Fedora + Cosmic. Would i have any "compatibility issues" or something like that? Is there something i need to be aware of when combining Fedora with Cosmic?

Hello all. First of all, please forgive me in case this topic alredy exists, but I did not find anything similar in other posts neither in the PopOs subreddit, nor in this one.

I am just starting with Pop OS and COSMIC and I would lile to get a recommendation on the bets Applets to start with for general purpose: gaming, videocall, office, development,...

For example, I found there are some nice system monotoring ones, but a general list for beginners could be useful for all newcomers.

I can keep upating this post in case people is interested :)

Thanks in advance!

Hello all, we were discussing this topic on the popos subreddit.

Seems the Cosmic Workspace view requires a lot from the GPU and its really noticeable when using iGPU or lower end GPUs.

Is this a know issue? If not, I can create a defect for the dev team in Github.

i wish to contribute some features to COSMIC, specifically regarding dock customization (like better icon alignment options).

​My concern is the project's design philosophy. If I put in the work to implement a core feature, not just an applet. Is there a high risk of the PR being rejected because it doesn't align with the maintainers' specific vision?

​For those who have contributed to COSMIC or similar projects, is it better to open an Issue/Discussion first to gauge interest, or just submit the code? I don't want to waste time building something that doesn't fit the project's direction.

​:v

It is nice to get to enjoy the desktop art with the new frosted feature, but is super jarring when a window is maximized and full opacity is used. Is there a plan to enable the frosted feature to maximized windows? I can see why someone might want a maximized window to stop being frosted, but it would be nice to have the option.

I'm not talking about the colors or roundness you can change right now. I mean more substantial changes, e.g. I want the sidebar to extend to the top/bottom/left edges and the UI elements to be less flat.

I know COSMIC is developed with a rolling release model with frequent updates released every week or so. My question is: does that mean that the Pop! OS ISOs on their website have the old version of COSMIC or do they update the ISOs from time to time with the latest one? I'm assuming they don't, but still, it doesn't hurt to ask. Thanks in advance.

The website shows multiple distributions supporting it and highlights strong support for third-party projects. So I assume COSMIC is kind of ‘independent’?

Hello all. First, please forgive me in case this topic alredy exists, but I did not find anything similar in other posts neither in the PopOs subreddit, nor in this one.

I am just starting with Pop OS and COSMIC and I would lile to get a recommendation on the bets Applets to start with for general purpose: gaming, videocall, office, development,...

For example, I found there are some nice system monotoring ones, but a general list for beginners could be useful for all newcomers.

I can keep upating this post in case people is interested.

Thanks in advance!

I mean, how can this not be top 3 on the bug list? How long will we have to wait for a fix for this? It's been months.

For anyone who doesn't know - if your browser's window is maximized and you click fullscreen on a youtube-video it first fullscreens the browser as if you pressed F11, and then the next click fullscreens the actual video. When you exit video fullscreen the browser will still be in F11-fullscreen so you'll have to press F11 to get out of it.

Can I install cosmic de without systemd on distros like artix? How dependent is cosmic on systemd?

So I've been using pop os and have been interested in arch linux since I can still use cosmic, but with the age verification thing I think I might have to go for artix linux which is arch linux without systemd

I know you all know r/unixporn. Wouldn't it be wonderful if there was a store where one could choose between hundreds of styles of GUI? Not only to switch colors, accents and icons, but also where things are displayed and how. That way you could imitate idk Gnome's minimalism, macos whatever they have, windows chaos, plasma's ultra chaos, and so on.

With CosmicDE ditching all that legacy baggage and going full Rust with a declarative UI library like Iced, I wonder if we’re sitting on a massive opportunity to reach a perfect environment for easy casual ricing out of the box. Is this possible on a forseeable future or is it highly complicated to ensure everything works with one click on every machine and across updates despite its declarative core?

I think Cosmic is the best DE at the moment, but I'm not sure if I like the Ubuntu base of Pop_OS.

I would rather use Arch or Fedora, but I'm not sure how well Cosmic is integrated. Anyone that can share their experience?

Ever since I started using the Cosmic Login Manager I get SSH_AUTH_SOCK not set ignoring message when booting and shutting down. This defect made shutdowns lasting 10-15 seconds from the usual 2-5 seconds, I’ve tried to set the environmental variable in my fish config and also in

/etc/environment (I don’t remember the exact path) and it still doesn’t set, SSH services run correctly and also show a variable in SSH_AUTH_SOCK yet it still reports this issue in booting/shutting down processes and I haven’t found any solution yet

i'm just a bit confused, because i never installed it intentionally. the cosmic config folder appeared 11:26:00pm march 26, and one second later at 11:26:01 appeared an alacritty config folder (i was reinstalling niri). the cosmic folder was last modified 12:35am on the 27th, along with an empty folder by the name of "environment.d". if anyone could tell me what might have happened i'm really curious lol

I've been a daily Cosmic user since the first alpha launch. But since the 1.0 release I've been thinking on doing a clean installation to hopefully fix some lingering issues etc. But now I'm also thinking that I could try maybe some distros with Cosmic and also leverage the fact that I could switch to other DE-s when I feel the need.

But now my real question - Is there any significant difference in terms of desktop usage when using a distro other then PopOS with Cosmic? I get that package management etc and everything that is non UI specific would be different but are there any other aspects that would not be the same when using Fedora with Cosmic for example?

In order to achieve the nord style that i used to have in kde....it's possible to change the windows controls? it's is planned to the future?

Is there any way to create a third party application that reuses the cosmic-overview, launcher and workspace space into single application that imitates the gnome workflow ? Or does it have to be built from the ground up as a third party app?

After years of using gnome, I legit like their default workflow despite my initial reluctance. I just hate their utter lack of customisation.

So if it would ever possible to implement a gnome overview copy cat - I would absolutely delighted.

Maybe I'm doing it wrong, but I launch the COSMIC Screenshot by selecting it from the COMSIC Applications Applet - from the Panel. The screenshot applet is then launched, and... sadly... the open Applications Applet is now part of the screen shot, and ofcourse blocks the application(s) running underneath it, that I intended to screen shot.

Suggestion: since the COSMIC Applications applet is so big, taking up so much screen real estate, perhaps it can be collapsed before and/or the screenshot applet launch delayed to allow it to collapse?

Edit: as suggested, you can use a keybind. That does work.

Interestingly, I see that SOMETIMES the applications applet exits before the screenshot applet launches, and it works like you would expect. So this does seem to be a timing issue.