System76's COSMIC desktop environment nears alpha, should debut with Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS

System76 has recently announced that COSMIC, the Linux desktop environment created for Pop!_OS, is nearing its alpha version. The company has finally implemented the screenshot tool, allowing users to capture images of the entire screen, specific windows, or selected areas.

The introduction of Floating Window Stacks in COSMIC is another development. This feature allows the pairing of tiled windows across applications, similar to web browser tabs. Furthermore, users can stack floating or non-tiled windows by dragging a window to the stack header.

The COSMIC team has also introduced a shape-run-cache feature in cosmic-text, which is intended to boost COSMIC Terminal performance. By caching shaping, repeated shaping operations can be rendered more efficiently, leading to higher frame rates in the COSMIC Terminal.

COSMIC’s On-Screen Displays (OSDs) designs are now complete. These graphical overlays appear when users adjust settings such as volume, brightness, or activate airplane mode. Additionally, animations for the top bar and dock have been added, which are triggered when a window enters or exits a maximized state.

The display and wallpaper settings design and implementation are now finalized. The team is currently focused on performance tests for systems using multiple GPUs.

Despite these advancements, there is still a significant amount of work ahead. The official release of the COSMIC DE is set to debut on Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS, which will be based on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS.