COSMIC desktop environment on Fedora

Project Discussion
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The Rust-based COSMIC desktop environment from System76 is approaching an alpha release. It will be a while before it’s stable and desktop ready. According to one of the devs, they do not have plans to create RPM packages or COPR repository for COSMIC but they expect the communities of various distros to do so if they want it.

I’d be interested in helping to make it available on Fedora, possibly as an official spin.

One of the devs currently uses the pre-alpha version as a Fedora ostree variant, layering it over Silverblue, for development purposes. They mentioned that most COSMIC devs run Pop!_OS and install cosmic-epoch from the official dev repositories. The Containerfile for layering over Silverblue can be viewed on their GitHub repo: GitHub - Drakulix/infinity: A Silverblue based OSTree Image with the COSMIC desktop environment

I’m going to try out layering it over Silverblue in a virtual machine. I’ll also install Pop!_OS in a another virtual machine and install cosmic-epoch from the dev repos. I haven’t really given the new COSMIC a good look. I think I tried it once a while back but it was still pretty bare-bones at the time – there have been many new developments and features added on it since then.

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Is it forked GNOME? Looks like gnomeish kde :face_with_spiral_eyes:

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No it’s built from scratch with Rust.

There is a version of COSMIC that is currently shipped with Pop!_OS that is based on GNOME 3.38. But this new version is completely rewritten in Rust.

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I would also be interested in helping to make it available on Fedora as an official immutable variant. It doesn’t seem like that can happen, at least until Fedora 41, But it would be cool to start with a rawhide build.

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Parroting the interest shown above. I’d like to help create a COSMIC SIG when cosmic moves closer to release. Being someone who currently uses Silverblue/ostree based desktops, I have updated Drakulix’s image to the latest COSMIC and created several images based on user needs: GitHub - ryanabx/fedora-cosmic-atomic: A Fedora Atomic based OSTree Image with the COSMIC desktop environment. Thanks to Drakulix for initial image.

If you’d like to try COSMIC in the mean time, I suggest using the silverblue-based image, as it has GNOME as a fallback DE.

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I actually really hoping for a spin or something.
I would very much like jumping to that Gnomeish DE.

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Here are instructions for making a Fedora Atomic Desktop to get started. I’ll be watching this topic to help with promotion as Cosmic gets closer to stable release.

If you want to make a SIG, here is documentation for that! One point you may want to clarify is whether this SIG will be for a potential Fedora Cosmic or just a Fedora Cosmic Atomic spin.

The Fedora Atomic Desktops SIG has a matrix chat if you want to start collaborating in there. Will be great to work in the same space as the people who bring us other atomic spins. As you grow more comfortable you may want to make your own spaces for working.

Tagging atomic-desktops

Good luck! Let us know how we can support you!

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Making it a Atomic, makes it a good ground for testing. Actually ideal since it’ll be rpm-ostree with whatever the latest packages are. There seems to be some chatter here for it, would be nice if some folks got it going.

I’ll help however I can.

Looks like this is already a thing :laughing: :party:

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Thank you! I will read up on the guides you showed above. My goal as things get closer to the alpha release is to develop a SIG for COSMIC, hopefully gather some people interested in helping me package rpms for COSMIC components, and then use those rpms to make a spin AND an atomic variant (I’m more of a fan of the atomic desktops myself).

Currently my COSMIC image just compiles everything manually and puts stuff where it needs to be in the filesystem, but rpms are the eventual goal :slight_smile:

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Breaking news! (From yesterday actually)

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Repost from Cosmic Desktop Atomic?

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Ah, I didn’t see your post. My apologies.

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I’m going to try this out on my laptop soon. I’m just curious if anyone knows why it’s necessary to disable SELinux. Do some COSMIC packages not work with it?

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Likely because there’s just nothing in Fedora’s default SELinux policy to deal with Cosmic at the moment.

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I suppose I can try installing it without disabling SELinux and see what happens. Maybe it’s not infeasible to use ausearch and audit2allow to create policies for it.

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There were a couple of open issues regarding SELinux
on the cosmic desktop github repo. You may want to
contribute to that discussion, and (help) create an
appropriate selinux policy.

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Ah, that’s a good place to start. Thank you.

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Yeah, you may want to add selinux as tag.

The packaging seems in a good state!

Here is the issue on SElinux

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FYI: The COSMIC SIG matrix chat is now open! https://matrix.to/#/#fedora-cosmic:fedora.im

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