Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS beta launches COSMIC desktop and new native apps

Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS has entered public beta, featuring the new COSMIC desktop environment as the default and marking a significant shift from GNOME Shell. The COSMIC desktop, developed in Rust, provides a Wayland-native experience, while X11 applications continue to run via Xwayland. Underlying this environment is the libcosmic toolkit, which is based on Iced and Elm and remains compatible with GTK, Qt, and other major interface toolkits.

The desktop offers a layout familiar to Pop!_OS 22.04 users, with a panel, dock, workspaces, launcher, app library, tiling features, and applets for network, sound, Bluetooth, power, notifications, and calendar. A new Settings app provides system configuration options, and customization is a central feature: panels, docks, and applets can be moved or hidden, and interface elements such as fonts, spacing, and icons can be adjusted. Work has also begun on a dedicated icon set, with themes allowing users to mimic Ubuntu, GNOME Shell, macOS, or Windows 11.

The beta introduces COSMIC-native apps, including Files (with previews and network mounts), a GPU-rendered Terminal, Player (with VAAPI, Vulkan, and subtitle support), and Edit (with git integration and Vim bindings). Software installation is handled through the COSMIC Store, which combines Ubuntu, Pop!_OS, and Flatpak repositories. Pop!_OS 24.04 runs Linux kernel 6.16, Mesa 25.1.5, and NVIDIA 580 drivers, and test builds are available for Intel/AMD and NVIDIA systems.