This is a proposed Change for Fedora Linux.
This document represents a proposed Change. As part of the Changes process, proposals are publicly announced in order to receive community feedback. This proposal will only be implemented if approved by the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee.
The COSMIC Desktop Environment is a new rust-based desktop environment developed by System76, makers of Pop!_OS. The desktop environment is set to reach maturity in the first quarter of 2025. COSMIC has many unique features, such as hybrid per-workspace window/tiling management, window stacks with tabs to switch between windows, and robust customization features that integrate with GTK and (later on) Qt!
Feedback
Benefit to Fedora
Fedora is already one of the most popular distro choices for COSMIC, being the first result past Pop!_OS on the official COSMIC website of where to try it out. Having an official spin for COSMIC is a logical next step to bring these users to a more streamlined experience, for example making use of ISO generation for spins. COSMIC is also shaping up to be a great quality desktop experience.
Policies and guidelines: N/A (not needed for this Change)
Trademark approval: TODO
Alignment with the Fedora Strategy:
Upgrade/compatibility impact
N/A (New spin)
How To Test
NOTE: To test in a VM, make sure you have graphical hardware acceleration enabled, COSMIC’s compositor does not support software acceleration (it is planned).
Install any Fedora release 41 and up
Install the COSMIC desktop by installing the environment group: dnf install @cosmic-desktop-environment
User Experience
The experience of the COSMIC desktop aims to be most similar to GNOME, given that the System76 team previously used GNOME for Pop!_OS, the inspiration is there. It takes some elements from KDE though in terms of customization and support for various wlr wayland protocols.
If you are in favor but have reservations, or are opposed but something could change your mind, please explain in a reply.
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Please note that this is an advisory “straw poll” meant to gauge sentiment. It isn’t a vote or a scientific survey. See About the Change Proposals category for more about the Change Process and moderation policy.
Is there a desire to ship an official Fedora spin with COSMIC while COSMIC is still in alpha, or are we going to wait until it’s at reaches Beta/RC status?
If we are to believe the claimed release roadmap[1] for COSMIC, Beta should be out by the time F42 hits beta freeze[2], and the hopeful few might even keep their fingers crossed for the first stable to be released by that same timeframe.
The COSMIC desktop seems quite promising. I tried it a few times during development and found a couple of the apps to already be good enough to use as they were. So further development will make them even better.
I’m not ready to move away from Plasma just yet, but it’s good to keep an open mind, so I’ll give Fedora COSMIC a shot when it’s ready.
The hope is that COSMIC will be stable before the Fedora 42 release. If not, I’d still like to pursue the COSMIC spin. It makes sense to get the ball rolling IMO!
I personally desire having a fedora:fedora/42/x86_64/cosmicatomic as soon as possible alongside an official Fedora Cosmic Atomic .iso over the existing, more complicated out of the box pilot solution.
Even in the worst case scenario if beta slips from ‘Jan or Feb’ to after the 42 freeze, the proposal as written explicitly states that it wouldn’t be a blocker:
Further, there’s no policy that prevents an update from alpha packages to beta following a 42 release. Kinoite and Silverblue spins both do 1-2 major DE updates between Fedora’s 6 month releases, so it should be acceptable here to have an alpha → beta + beta → final RC if it comes to it.
In short, I would like an official Fedora Cosmic Atomic spin ASAP, and I don’t see a reason to delay a more accessible image by pushing another 6 months. Alpha is good enough a daily driver for me on my laptop and it will only further improve over the next 3 months.
Summary
instead of reiterating. You can even do this by email, by replying with the heart emoji or just “+1”. This will make long topics easier to follow.
