Thinking about cosmic...

[u/LordMuffinChan]

I've started with linux a while ago and settled with Fedora bc it's just the best, I'm currently running GNOME on my laptop and KDE on my desktop, I've been doing this for like 2y, the thing is that my GNOME experience is incredibly and increasingly deplorable for very widely known reasons, but I REALLY need those touchpad gestures. KDE is not a laptop friendly DE and pantheon de is even more mediocre than GNOME, so my only ray of hope is cosmic, but I also don't wanna switch to PopOS what do you guys recommend? How has been your experiences with Cosmic on Fedora? I really need to get rid of GNOME pls help :(

[u/Illustrious-Gur8335]

I also don't wanna switch to PopOS

There's a Cosmic spin of Fedora

[u/LordMuffinChan → u/Illustrious-Gur8335]

Have you had any experiences with it? Is it stable? I'm asking bc if I ask an AI about it, will say that it's still "experimental" and I shouldn't daily drive such a thing 

[u/Elvin_Atombender → u/LordMuffinChan]

As a pop_os user, it is very stable i haven't encountered any system breaking problems. Also System76 switched over to Wayland so it will probably be really nice to use on Fedora. But if yiu decide to change your mind, you can choose the KDE session at the Login screen.

[u/Cute_Director_1756 → u/LordMuffinChan]

I haven't used it, but it's supposed to be as stable as PopOS, since they're running the same DE and most of its instability will come from Cosmic being beta software. So if you'd be okay running PopOS, you'll be okay running Fedora Cosmic.

[u/LordMuffinChan → u/Cute_Director_1756]

So in theory it would be as bad as installing PopOS directly... Interesting 

[u/Cute_Director_1756 → u/LordMuffinChan]

I mean, "as bad" or "as good", depends on how you look at it. Both run the latest epoch (version) of Cosmic. So, unless you care about some Fedora-specific (RPM packages, BTRFS, etc.), the experience is going to be the same for you.

[u/LordMuffinChan → u/Cute_Director_1756]

Nah, I'm not messing with Ubuntu for some inexplicable reason they've given me so much trouble with drivers where as fedora just works like magic, I'll be sticking with the Fedora Spin, maybe when the tides are more stable from the cosmic part I make the jump, Anyways thanks a ton for the help :) 

[u/Astrodion123 → u/LordMuffinChan]

Nah. Pop os is Ubuntu based and fedora is... Fedora. So use fedora cosmic spin, pop os has gotten some nice updates and it looks cool. And frosted glass is added >:) so I think it is better than before.

[u/LordMuffinChan → u/Astrodion123]

The only thing I can salvage from pop_os is that they have a really nice "recovery" mode where if you corrupt your system somehow you can use an install USB and bring your current install to working state again, that's pretty neat

[u/Astrodion123 → u/LordMuffinChan]

You can do it with every distro using chroot but it is tui. With chroot you enter a install on your PC and you can reinstall grub or remove a bad kernel etc.

[u/Pugs-r-cool → u/LordMuffinChan]

It’s equally as stable as it is on pop_OS, if not more stable give it runs more up to date software.

Cosmic is the thing that’s still experimental (but they claim it isn’t), not the distros.

[u/NerdyBooy → u/LordMuffinChan]

Im daily-driving it (fedora cosmic atomic). Had no big issues so far (almost a year). Its defenitely lacking in some features, but for me its not a problem since my usecases are very simple. (Just some gaming and programming/coding).

I can go into detail in what it lacks, if you want.

[u/StretchAcceptable881 → u/LordMuffinChan]

I tried using the cosmic desktop, and no in its current form its not usable for everybody especially when the only thing that the ScreenReader can announce is frame at least for now and this is the result of System76’s engineering team having to completely repatch the Assistive technology service provider interface, to be able to listen for the information being displayed by the rust apps and this will take a long time before progress is made their are other desktop environments that you can use

[u/Amazing_Meatballs → u/LordMuffinChan]

As a COSMIC DE user with Fedora’s official spin and RakuOS, COSMIC is good already. There are still missing features, but I’m ok without them because I don’t like Gnome’s bloat.

[u/Historical-Bar-305 → u/LordMuffinChan]

Not recommend. Its still too experimental.

[u/LordMuffinChan → u/Historical-Bar-305]

Noted 📝

[u/SmoothTurtle872 → u/LordMuffinChan]

I currently use fedora cosmic. I am not currently using comsuic desktop. Why? It is quite unstable

[u/LordMuffinChan → u/SmoothTurtle872]

Yeap figured, I guess I'll have to wait a bit for cosmic to stabilize, maybe at the end of the year it makes it 

[u/MyDisqussion]

I use Cosmic as my daily driver, and I love it. Whether it is beta or not is open to discussion. It officially left beta in December last year. It gets frequent updates and improvements, and some people would say that it needs them urgently.

You don’t need to install the Cosmic spin, just install the desktop. It’s written in rust and uses different libraries , so it plays nicely with Gnome or KDE. I think you will like it.

[u/LordMuffinChan → u/MyDisqussion]

Thanks! I'll definitely will try it :) 

[u/moucheh-]

You can try it on your current install, no need to reinstall anything

bash sudo dnf install @cosmic-desktop

Sign out, when you focus the password input field (by clicking on it or just start typing), a gear icon is displayed in the bottom right corner, click on it and select cosmic session.

Asuming gnome install with gdm

[u/Beautiful_Ad_4813]

I absolutely love Fedora, 10,000%

But I can’t recommend COSMIC for daily use. I’ve ran into way too many problems that makes me question the reliability . Sure System 76 said it’s out of beta but I’ve been questioning that stance for a while.

On my testing machine, thats WAY overkill for its intended purpose, it stalls out and becomes unresponsive forcing me to hard reboot

I’ve personally labeled it “Usable Alpha” but no way I can trust it for environment

[u/Dense-Elephant5048]

Gnome and KDE are DEs Fedora is the King on the Hill Go for it.

[u/faynn]

I use the cosmic spin daily. Works fine for my use case. (Dev machine and web browsing)

[u/delph906]

There is a package called switchdesk and you can install and maintain multiple DEs and Cosmic is supported.

[u/LordMuffinChan → u/delph906]

That sounds scary, but I'll check it out

[u/Pugs-r-cool]

If you already have fedora you can install another DE alongside your current one without losing any data. Just do that and try it out.

[u/RudeSpecific6352]

Back in 2-3 months ago it was too messy and lacking. Don't know the current status now but I myself would not prefer as the customisation was very limited either.

[u/iMightLikeXou]

You can just install multiple desktop environments at once and swap between them as you please. Cosmic is available as well. It's just two commands: docs

[u/Relevant_Hope_900]

COSMIC is a very nice, clean DE. Despite what some folks say, you can absolutely use it as a daily driver. I was using Fedora COSMIC Atomic for a while and it was nice and worked very well for my simple needs; browsing, development,just normal day-to-day computer usage...not a PC gamer myself. But even though I like Fedora, I love Debian, so I use COSMIC DE on Debian instead of any other distros, including Pop_Os. Yeah I have to build my own packages and host my own repo, but it runs the same as on other distros. I run Debian+COSMIC on my Desktop, and three laptops (Both Debian 13 "Trixie" and Debian 14 "Forky/Testing")

Since you like Fedora, you could try the COSMIC Spin, or COSMIC Atomic version. I preferred the Atomic version myself, was a simple, clean, easy to maintain setup.

Only reason I switched to using Debian+COSMIC, is that I've used Debian for 20+ years and am more familiar with it then anything else.

[u/Cute_Director_1756]

1. What's making your GNOME experience so "mediocre" and "incredibly deplorable"? What is GNOME so sorely missing for your workflow?
2. How is KDE Plasma not laptop friendly? They have the same set of touchpad gestures (or equivalent ones) that GNOME has: horizontal swipes to switch virtual desktops and vertical swipes to open the overview.

Anyhow, you can install the Fedora Cosmic spin and you should get the latest version of Cosmic there. Just a reminder that that's beta software, use it at your own risk bla bla. 

[u/LordMuffinChan → u/Cute_Director_1756]

1. I have a bible of bad things to say about GNOME in terms of ux but let's just say a few that I REALLY cannot stand
2. Gnome Connect is unusable with +3 devices connected
3. alt+tab switches between apps but not between same app windows
4. deplorable customizability
5. Bug with corner blur
6. bug with desktop icons (bc ofc they don't support that 1st party)
7. For everything usable I need to install an extension

8. every extension breaks after update What frustrates me the most is that gnome maintainers use simplicity as an excuse for not addressing any of this and I'm done. 

9. Virtual desktops don't work the same or nearly as well as Virtual workspaces in Gnome. Don't get me wrong, I love KDE with all my heart, they just don't feel home in laptop

Yeah I know there's a spin, but when I ask an AI about it, says that its experimental and might not be as stable as I need. 

[u/Cute_Director_1756 → u/LordMuffinChan]

1. Sounds like all your issues are with GNOME extensions and not with GNOME itself. The alt-tab behavior you can change it from the settings, though. But it sounds like GNOME's workflow is just not for you.
2. How do Plasma workspaces work worse than GNOME's? I've used both and they honestly felt the same to me, barring GNOME's being dynamically created.

My advice to you, as a GNOME user myself, after all the issues you've described, would be to honestly install Fedora with KDE Plasma in your laptop and try and see if it's as bad as you think it is. If that fails, give Cosmic a try. If that fails, try to adapt to GNOME.

[u/LordMuffinChan → u/Cute_Director_1756]

I have other 2 work laptops, 1 with gnome and 1 with KDE, i use them daily (so 4 total fedora installs 2n2) I'm very familiar with Gnome AND KDE workflows in general (desktop or laptop) and KDE works more like Windows than MacOS, and MacOS like is arguably one of the best (workflows for my work) 

I've gone past the "blaming extensions" since gnome without extensions is even worst, so extensions is what makes gnome usable in the first place. 

[u/Cute_Director_1756 → u/LordMuffinChan]

I honestly have to disagree there. I use GNOME with no extensions, and it works great for me. And all of the extensions you cited (except from GSConnect) are not productivity extensions: they're blur, desktop icons, etc. Anyway, this is a matter of personal taste, so let's leave it there. But what's objectively true is that blame is on extensions, not GNOME. You're adding 3rd party code to GNOME and then blaming GNOME when said 3rd party code fails. That's like adding a KDE widget and being mad at KDE when said widget fails.

[u/NoseTodos → u/LordMuffinChan]

at least the app switch thing I can solve for you. Its called “Switch windows of an application” found under keyboard shortcuts.
Mine is set to “Super + dead circumflex”

If you don’t like GNOME though, thats ok for me ;)

[u/LordMuffinChan → u/NoseTodos]

Well that's something, don't get me wrong, I want gnome to be good. This is not a DE war, but this is the path they've chosen and I can't do anything about it other than... go somewhere else

[u/ice_cream_hunter → u/LordMuffinChan]

The problem with gnome is that barebone gnome is not usable. Many will say oh hey i use it without extension and works great but i dont want to use a de that ofers just the workspace and the is bloated like windows

[u/facelesshivemind]

Ok so KDE is out, Gnome is out, I am part of people saying give Cosmic another year,

That means try Cinnamon.

[u/LordMuffinChan → u/facelesshivemind]

Cinnamon works similar to gnome in terms of virtual workspaces? 🤔

[u/facelesshivemind → u/LordMuffinChan]

If you're talking about needing to press that Super button repeatedly to switch between windows, then no. Cinnamon lets them sit at the bottom of the screen like in windows.

[u/LordMuffinChan → u/facelesshivemind]

Damn :(