171
I'm excited for Cosmic Desktop
(lemmy.ca)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
From a quick view, it mostly looks like ElementaryOS's DE to me. What's the big deal with Cosmic? I really want to know, sell it to me!
For me I'm interested in it for four main reasons:
a) It's intuitive, even if you've never used Linux, while also being very customisable.
b) It's new. The DE world at the moment is almost entirely Gnome and KDE, with some XFCE and Cinnamon. COSMIC adds to it with their own coat of paint and a very clear, professional outloom on it and clear goals.
c) It's in Rust. I don't know Rust, but I know it's loved by the community and will bring in contributors as well as the bug-related stuff at compile time which is handy.
d) System76 needs to sell it. Normally I'm not a fan of companies being involved in my OS, but I like the way System76 does it: They make laptops that come pre-installed with Pop_OS! and then sell those, so while technically the hardware is their source of income they'll have to improve their software in actually meaningful ways for it to be appealing to customers. One of the best and also worst things about the open source community IMO is that there's a lot of very niche stuff- like how 7-zip supports selecting multiple items, compressing them, and then emailing the .zip all in one mouse click. Really cool for whoever wants to do that, but no one wants to do that.