System76’s COSMIC desktop continues to take shape with the release of a third alpha snapshot.
The first alpha brought the basics, the second alpha added a bunch of new features, and the third alpha fills in gaps, fixes bugs, and finesses the users experience further.
Of note, COSMIC now lets you set a custom system font (if the default Fira Sans isn’t your fave), and accessibility gets a boost with initial support for the Orca screen reader, albeit not currently in native COSMIC apps – but accessibility is a priority, so “soon”.
COSMIC Files adds a hover effect as you mouse over files and folders; supports running AppImages from folders; adjusts menu entries/working; amongst other changes.
The Settings app improves importing of WireGuard configuration files; COSMIC Store has a ‘Made for COSMIC’ section to highlight software built and designed for the desktop; and there’s a new system-wide icon for toggling the sidebar.
COSMIC Alpha 3 also brings a lot of bug fixes, performance tweaks, code cleanups, and package updates (from System76 and from the underlying noble repos).
When I wrote about the second alpha release some early comments appeared to overlook the ‘alpha’ label, taking issue with missing features, or performance quirks.
System76 stress that people trying these preview builds shouldn’t do so expecting a flawless or fully-featured experience:
As the third alpha version of COSMIC Epoch 1, it is incomplete. You’ll most certainly find bugs. Testing and bug reports are welcome and appreciated. New feature requests will be considered for Epoch 2, COSMIC’s second release.
More COSMIC DE alpha releases are planned, and will periodically pop out until everything planned for the first release (Epoch 1) is in place – bootstrapping an entirely new Linux desktop environment, compositor, UI toolkit, and suite of core apps doesn’t happen overnight, y’know!
If you’re not afraid of rough edges and want to ride the wave of what’s next, you can download the Pop!_OS 24.04 Alpha 3 ISO to try it out or, if you use a Linux distribution which packages the COSMIC Alpha and its apps natively, try it there instead.
Let me know what you think down in the comments – but please: be civil, constructive, and keep in mind that COSMIC DE is free, open source software developed (primarily) in a different set of technologies and languages to other Linux DEs.
But when people – be it a newbie coding to learn or a team doing similar things in a new way – choose to work on things they want, and make it available for others to use if they want, that is not counter to the spirit of open-source – it is the spirit of open source.