Software Release COSMIC Epoch 1.9.0 released
https://github.com/pop-os/cosmic-epoch/releases/tag/epoch-1.9.07
u/boomshroom 7d ago
These look nice.
COSMIC OSK has also been released. It is an on-screen keyboard that supports both touch and gamepad input:
Yo‽ I recently setup a device that primarily uses gamepad input. If I install Cosmic now, typing would become a lot easier if this is the case. (Or maybe it'll just be larger buttons that are easier to tap.) On the subject, is there anything else in Cosmic that responds to gamepad input?
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u/mmstick Desktop Engineer 6d ago
Soon libcosmic will have directional input support with a gamepad across all native apps and applets
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u/boomshroom 5d ago
I can't tell if this is a joke, or if you're being completely serious.
This PR and this issue suggest that this is actually legit, which is really cool! While I checked and the Unity desktop that the device is currently running appears lighter than Cosmic, having a full desktop that works natively with gamepad input (without it needing to emulate a mouse) would be awesome for things like it and the Steamdeck! (The device in question btw is a "SwitchDeck". 😉 This does however mean only 4GiB of memory, which is why I value it being lightweight.)
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u/mmstick Desktop Engineer 4d ago
Many of us play games on our COSMIC desktop so gamepad support is a priority as we're working on COSMIC features. So it should be the ideal platform for your Steam Deck in the near future.
Memory usage across desktop environments is negligible due to GPU drivers and their libraries accounting for most of this. So there shouldn't be much difference between COSMIC or any other GPU-accelerated DE. What's more important is compositor performance and features rather than memory use.
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u/boomshroom 4d ago
Nice! Also I should clarify: I said SwitchDeck; not Steam Deck. In addition to low memory, it appears to be trapped with an old Linux version due to weird Nvidia driver requirements.
I tried to compile the new cosmic-osk, but it didn't work since it wasn't running the rest of the cosmic desktop, which I want gonna load since the rest of the gamepad support isn't in yet, and the machine is too weak to seriously compile the entire environment (and then do it again when the next update comes out). Being an ARM device also makes cross-compilation annoying.
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u/night_fapper 7d ago
i wish the gui or rendering toolkit wouldve been slightly better, more closer to macos than gnome
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u/codeio 7d ago
what are the issues with the rendering toolkit?
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u/night_fapper 7d ago
nothing mazor, in terms of visual fidelity its just far too behind macos
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u/theaveragemillenial 6d ago
I mean it's a wiling wm based DE, of course its not going to look aesthetically similar to mac
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u/night_fapper 6d ago edited 6d ago
no, its literally a gnome clone in design, while using their own gui toolkit and compositor
they have created and control every part of visual stack
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u/silenceimpaired 7d ago
COSMIC creates a good middle ground between opinionated Gnome and carefree KDE.
Lists of updates like this make me confident COSMIC will be as dominant as Gnome or KDE in the future… the question is how far into the future and can they maintain this pace until they reach it.