System76 Developing “Cosmic” Desktop Environment
blog.system76.com
blog.system76.com
[1] https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+Ryzen+7+PRO+585...
You'll have to wait for a proper review that does power measurements to get a sense for how they actually compare on that front.
And that's with the M1 having 4 slow cores for better battery life / consumption (with 8 full speed cores it would obliterate the 5850U).
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/Apple-M1-8-Core-3200-MH...
Apple M1 - CPU Mark: 14,872 / Single thread: 3,630
AMD Ryzen 7 Pro 5850U - CPU Mark: 20,659 / Single thread: 3,237
The AMD is 38.9% faster on the multi-core benchmark, and 10.8% slower on the single-core benchmark.
It's not really that simple. An M1 with 8 full speed cores would also consume significantly more power and would no longer work in something like the MacBook Air. On paper these CPUs are both targeting the same power budget, so if AMD can put 8 full-speed CPUs in the same power budget that Apple can "only" put 4 full-speed and 4 low-power then why shouldn't AMD get a win from that?
1: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/Apple-M1-8-Core-3200-MH...
In contrast to the M1 which is so efficient that Apple doesn't even put a fan in it on its lower end models, and it still barely gets warm.
Also the battery life is a lot better on the m1.
Can you buy one today other than the HP EliteBook 845 G8, which starts over $2300? Because you can buy M1 laptops yesterday for less than half that and I can't find any other 5800U series laptops for sale.
Lenovo has a number of 5000U models coming out (including various Thinkpads), but if I were looking for an upgrade this year, I think I'd be most excited about the 5800H Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 Pro (available for preorder now).
Regarding H vs U processors, based on my testing of a previous-gen 4800H laptop, it benchmarked comparably on a perf/W basis to the U series, but via 3rd party tools (I use RyzenAdj) you can easily set whatever TDP you want (eg from 10W or 15W to match a U up to 65W+).
But this is also just a single test result that's going to be far from comprehensive.
My laptop is 'only' at 226dpi (16") and I can't see pixels unless I bring my nose to the screen.
I'd imagine anyone who can "easily" see 4k pixels on a 15" screen would have text characters around 1mm tall.
Bullshit. Unless you literally push your face close to the monitor and view it from a normal viewing distance, you won't be able to see the pixels.
I have used retina Macbook screens for extended periods of time and increasing the DPI seems like overkill to me.
While QHD is enough for me, 4K is great because it is a factor 2 compared to 1080p.
I strongly disagree. QHD is perfect for me, because everything renders natively and looks beautiful. 4K without scaling is unusable, and 4K scaled up is just 1080p - You lose all the screen real estate you paid for.
I'm holding out for 13" 1440p, which is a perfect 2x.
Marketing specs?
They seem to be several months behind new hardware launches, which as I understand is partially because their value-add is rigorous testing and hardware support for linux. They will often patch or back port the newest kernel for the latest drivers.
I bought an Acer at the tail end of last year because I need color accuracy (and couldn't get my hands on high-end HP or Dell or Lenovo in Thailand because markets).
You know, I thought that that would bother me on a keyboard. However, it turned out that having PgUp/PgDn/Home/End on Fn+arrow keys, after getting used to it, is a speed improvement (at least for me). I don't have to move my hand as much. In fact, I liked so much that I have Alt+Left/Right arrow mapped as Home/End in AHK (on normal keyboards).
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2019/11/20/syste...
You can offer suggestions for their laptop manufacturing project here:
You'd think the amount of business laptops still made by Dell and HP would lead to a better set of mobos for laptops in general (since they are made by such a smaller number of vendors I think), but it is dog slow. The Desktop is supposed to be totally dead but the mobo support for features runs way ahead of still kind relevant laptop market by 12-18 months.
Really like what I see from PopOS and I will probably buy from them next time.
Linux runs great on it. It costs ~$1000
Rant aside, I'll definitely give it this a go. PopOS is a really nice distro.
I asked on the bug tracker if Evince could have a tabs feature, so I can have 10 pdfs open in one Evince window. They asked me to cite a usability study showing that it would objectively improve user experience.
However, I don't think it's unreasonable for a developer to do so if the person commenting explicitly claims that not having a feature hurts usability:
https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/evince/-/issues/182#note_3837...
Also to be pedantic, there are plenty of desktops that don't use a dock, in the form of most window managers. I'm currently running opnebox with no dock and it's totally fine, though the approach is better suited to tiling window managers.
All in all, I honestly don't really care about the changes they made to the dock. As long as my shortcut buttons work, I can deal with some small changes if they improve the polish of the system overall. I like the Gnome aesthetics that improve with every version, so I'm open to the tweaks made in Gnome 40.
I like the dock on the left of my screen and I'm happy that there is ways so everyone can customize this the way they want.
Seldom used applications don't make that cut, but they're... seldom used. I tend to switch to them using alt-tab rather than clicking through on the dock.
In general, I prefer using the keyboard, so I have never once wished that a dock was more prominent in GNOME. I'm glad it stays out of my way until I explicitly summon it with a keypress.
Although I know some who would say Gnome has never been good. Opinions on DEs can be pretty harsh.
I actually like GNOME 3 as a desktop: the streamlined process of hitting the Super key or moving the mouse toward the corner and typing in the application name that I want to launch, with the whole screen used for the preview. I also never put anything on the desktop (as in icons, files etc.). Even saying this I get strange flashbacks to 2000s computing.
What pushed me away from it at the end (to KDE) was the applications. The trend in GNOME is clearly removing or at best hiding everything except the barest minimum required for pretending we have an app. At some point it shifts from very annoying to unusable. And now I'm putting up with KDE's own weirdnesses, like insisting on creating a cryptographic wallet for everything, or broken hibernation on desktop (a.k.a. big people computer). I hope it's just standard Linux jank and not sign of decline of the space.
There seem to be 25 popular choices especially now with the GPU-accelerated ones. Tried a few of the classics like Termite and they all seemed painfully outdated and crappy compared to iTerm.
On Linux, I just use whatever ship with the distro Gnome Terminal, Konsole... and they work fine.
Every terminal app I've tried on Windows or Linux insists on having a goddamn window border. I don't want even a single pixel of border.
And yes, this is enough to make me a die-hard iTerm2 user.
(users care about little things more than developers sometimes realize)
This functionality may be available in other terms, but iTerm just seems to nail pretty much everything in one package. I just wish it was available for Linux.
What initially invited me to test iTerm2 was the one button quake style scroll-down terminal, but I stayed for the better tab management and much more customizable options.
workflow was such a game changer for me, it’s so snappy.
Could probably be configured on other terminals?
Its GPU accelerated and super fast. hard to go back to term after feeling how snappy it is. Plus its available on linux as well!
Now, do we need another DE? Dunno, wouldn't make the top of my wishlist. I realize the good I'm getting comes much more from intelligent choices of sensible defaults rather than specific features. It's removing - or, if you prefer amend - the noise (apps/utils/extensions/clutterware) the key here, even more so for the open-source software ocean of half-baked solutions. Yes, that's what distributions are for but unfortunately even the biggest struggle to keep a steady route (think Ubuntu and Unity, for instance) and often fall for the latest shining tech everybody wants (hint: no, there's a whole lot of people who'd better like a stable, predictable, coherent environment to a new set of flashy icons and widget palettes).
And if you wonder what would make the top of my whishlist, it's solid a development environment (again, a-la macOS but it's actually a-la OpenStep and NextStep, where it all started) enforcing good defaults at the OS level, letting people/companies build quality apps easily and preventing them to disrupt/reinvent existing OS patterns/paradigms (without a reason). Or we could keep on downloading browsers-disguised-as-applications and call it a day.
In the following years Unity kinda grew on me, so I'm sad that it was axed and now everyone use this Gnome3 abomination. It is not as bad as it was five years before, but loss of top menu and general preference for biggins buttons instead of drop-down menus is a bad idea for desktop computers.
I wish someone would fix Gnome3 by making it look back like Unity .
Of course if there was a major reason to switch away from Ubuntu or their default DE, I would, but it's the pragmatic choice. The constant "finding" of the perfect fit gets in the way of actually doing stuff. Once you adjust expectations towards a system, I'm still far happier with Ubuntu I could ever be with macOS or Windows, and don't waste time having a different system to work with every two weeks (slightly exaggerating).
Is it perfect? No. Is it good enough? Yes. Is it great compared to alternatives (factoring in speed of deployment and productivity from the get to)? Definitely yes.
I'm glad popOS uses Ubuntu and Gnome as backbone and tries to give you a customized experience rather than completely reinventing everything. Though for me, as long as Canonical doesn't screw it up in a major way, stock Ubuntu it is.
It's not like they're not trying, with snaps and all... we shall see.
You will have a modern desktop with a global menu.
I could never understand the strong revulsion some people have with that design language. To me the Windows 95 "File Edit etc." toolbar is terribly eye straining and has no place in the 21st century. Besides, with the ubiquity of touch screens in laptops the GNOME team has been entirely vindicated in their decision to take a more touch oriented approach. Larger buttons are easier to click with the mouse too.
There's a Unite extension for that: https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1287/unite/
- Breaking alt-tab
- Moving window controls
Full disclosure: I'm a former EM for the Unity dev team. I have heard more mindless opinion disguised as fact than you can possibly imagine.
Also, I looked at the github repo for cosmic under pop!_os's stuff and there's no actual code. It's all boilerplate with a single gsettings schema .xml file. There's no DE in that repo.
I'm currently using XFCE on two computers with key bindings for snap left/right and snap top-left/top-right/bottom-left/bottom-right. On a big display, this setup is excellent. On a laptop it works, but often feels a little cramped, and it's particularly painful with a laptop trackpad instead of a mouse. It would be nice if there was an option to split ~67%/33%... apparently Windows(!) can do that.
I've also been playing with i3 on another laptop, and for a lot of things the experience is clearly better (e.g. web browsing on a laptop without a mouse), but for others (e.g. kicad) it either doesn't work well, or I haven't managed to configure it well enough yet. The rabbit hole is infinitely deep, and while I enjoy tinkering with it every now and then, I'm probably not going to use it as a daily driver anytime soon.
I've been using it for a year and love it--typing this reply in a browser window tiled next to a terminal. It's easy to add little exceptions too for modal apps you want to hover outside the tiling.
Additionally, it's by far the best tablet experience I've had not just on Linux, but period.
Really, I'm not a Linux power user who is happy to hack for hours to make audio work. It's amazing the degree to which this just worked out of the box
The software and drivers also work fantastically, and are open source -- I've even contributed a line or two.
BTW I use arch :). But I mention that to say it works great on Arch too.
System76 may have actually bring about the era of the linux-first desktop/laptop, and I'm glad I bought it instead of a Lenovo.
[EDIT] whoa the post is from 2019, it's been like 1.5+ years. Time flies.
[0]: https://www.vadosware.io/post/starting-my-journey-with-the-s...
Things System 76 refuses to do: usbc PD
I say this as a very happy S76 customer
Right now I am on battery and am only drawing 28W, so I think it could manage most of the time.
Direct from their website Charger 65 Watts, AC-in 100~240V, 50~60Hz, DC-out 19V, 3.42A, USB Type-C Charging Compatible
And: LVFS
Also, all we don't need is another fork. The biggest problem with open source is that there are so many forks that there's no focus on polishing what we already have. https://itsfoss.com/desktop-linux-torvalds/
I've looked at the code and it is quite a terrible mess. It's no two line patch to change settings anymore because everything gets reset multiple times in functions you don't expect.
The amount of fragmentation in Linux desktop environments, window managers, etc. is amazing.
... but they lost me at "GNOME-based". [extends hands and head upwards:] Why, ye gods, why?
System76 is more than just a laptop, PopOS! is great. It's also nice to have CoreBoot and a discreet Nvidia RTX GPU. With PopOS they have figured-out scaling with various monitors... I have an external ultrawide that's not even 2k and it works great with the laptop's built-in 4k with proper scaling on both (not easy to do)... a regular 1080p external also works great.
Finally, I think I configured the most expensive workstation in my life with these guys, north of $80k.
Weird thing is that Linux as a server has made great progress the last decade, but it seems that the Linux desktop has evolved backwards. It started sometime around the introduction of Gnome 3.
As I understand it, most Linux laptop manufacturers will gently modify a standard Clevo machine so it works a little better with Linux and leave it at that.
Also the planed features read a little bit funny to me, to be honest, as that are all things KDE Plasma provides out-of-the-box.
But clearly looks like an improvement over vanilla Gnome, that's sure!
As a software developer, I wouldnt ever use Pop_OS again. Vanilla Ubuntu is way better, and less complex, and has way better support. All I recall from Pop_OS related issues, on System76's behalf, are tumbleweeds.
Oh and Ive had 4 of their laptops, used primarily for software development, since 2016.
For a physical machine, its been a great experience, albeit slightly too expensive (and for that reason Im not buying them anymore).
At a software level, I am forever disinterested in whatever it is theyre offering. Even the marketing language describing this "Cosmic" thing is has hard to parse and understand as my experience with Pop_OS.
It wouldn't be the first time tailored software drove hardware sales.
Im a power user, so to say, and Ive been using pop shell for about 6-9 months now. I love not having to write my own scripts to do the most basic tasks in sway anymore.
Things like my calendar works throughout the desktop without me having to wrangle various things.
It makes sense that System76 would work toward a serviceable Linux desktop OS. For the same reason it makes sense that Apple develops MacOS but charges no license fees.
For me it’s more serviceable than anything else but as always ymmv but as a developer desktop that I do all my computing on Fedora Cinnamon is damn close to perfect, there is little I can think of to improve it.
I agree with you serviceable is a good way to describe it. It is no frills and does what I want.
Theres an open issue[1] but it hasn't been solved yet.
In my case, I've never liked the OSX style dock, and I use the super key to switch windows all the time. So the two biggest features I pulled out of that article are actually things I'll have to turn off.
Oh, and I used to love the hot corner, but it didn't work so well when I had multiple monitors on both sides of my main monitor. So I got used to just hitting super.
Also, what are they going to do once nobody is supporting Gnome 3.38 anymore, porting this to Gnome 40+ seems like it's going to be a pain in the ass. Hopefully it doesn't necessitate a Gnome Shell fork...
Now the last piece is getting big enough to develop custom bare-bones for their laptops. I hope they can pull that off.
As an aside, I really like these UI/UX videos, can anyone shed any light on how they are made?
I'm primarily a KDE user, but I'd rather see all distros ship vanilla GNOME than the inconsistent mess we have today. Every time I help a new Linux user, I find that they're using a desktop I have never seen before, and I don't know how to help them setup Japanese input or HiDPI support without switching the entire desktop.
I recently previewed GNOME40, and it's great: finally, virtual desktops and the "dock" behave similarly to any other OS, and animations are as smooth as macOS. Also, Wayland now works so well that you won't even notice you're using it.
Even Canonical has figured out how to work with upstream to resolve their usability and performance concerns. Why can't System76 engineers do the same?
It's just an extension for gnome-shell 3.38. So not a fork, but it might still delay them in upgrading to GNOME40.
The only AMD laptop they have has a numpad which off centers the keyboard which is a deal breaker :-(. I would also miss the trackpoint
If they took a design cue from https://contrastrebellion.com/ it could be good.
Wow, I used to get annoyed when product names included the plus symbol, because it made them hard to grep for and unreliable to web-search for.
This just takes it to a whole new level.
If you look at the source of gnome shell extensions and themes you'll find that they use JavaScript and CSS. If you spend enough effort you can make gnome look completely different.
Love it. No regrats.
linux as a desktop died because the majority went with gnome
Truth is that a shite miserable 25 year old xfce could be customised in a way good enough to compete with OS X. Why waste all the time on such a massive amount of extremely useless work? Just because it is fun?
And yeah, you can downvote this into oblivion, I don't care. The fact is that 80% of the comments on this thread are making fun of the very same retards for the very same reasons.
In terms of appearance, maybe. Make that work consistently with most used programs with the same shortcuts, composition, behavior and rich integration between all these apps and then we're talking.
Getting everything working reliably, beautifully, integrated and fast demands many people thinking, designing, implementing, testing and fixing. It is very expensive and only affordable for companies that can make enough money with to return the investment. Linux has no presence on the desktop because vendors that make the most money with it have 0 presence on the desktop.
And moving the needle on the out of the box usability front often requires changes that can't be made by changing the default configuration or becoming a contributor to an existing DE. The GNOME team would likely never approve of the changes seen just in the short blogpost, let alone anything more extensive.
That's kinda the point of PopOS in the first place: retrofitting GNOME and Ubuntu with extra utilities for a better "out of the box" experience. Manjaro does basically the same thing on the Arch side of the fence, and both are essential to providing that experience you're describing. The GNOME team isn't intentionally holding back features or making intentionally bad choices here, they're just part of the brick in the wall. The GNOME desktop should be bland, so that the distro can provide a default and the end user can make changes where necessary. It's all part of one big machine.
Getting everything working reliably, beautifully, integrated and fast is not a matter of manpower, it's about the modularity of your system and the power the end-user has.
I also would like it more if System76 contributed to existing project like Bugie instead. It's tiresome how GNOME monoculture is dictating everything in GTK nowdays.
Unity was perhaps the biggest blunder in all of Linux-dom in terms of getting this OS out there; Ubuntu was sitting on the perfect opportunity to pull the rug from under Microsoft at XPs end of life -- could have just done "Hey, you want a simple, ultra-stable, ultra-familiar experience now that XP is gone?" And keep something Gnome2-ish and be the Volvo of computers.
And instead went with "Let's see if we can out-sexy Apple!" No. You can't. Ugh.
I'm not say people shouldn't make what they want, but I think they'd meet their goals a lot easier contributing to an existing project instead of forking.
Sometimes it's only 'fun' swapping in alternatives of alternative system components, until you actually need to get work done. Then it must not get in the way of the user.
I prefer the desktop environment of 'It just works' and 'If it ain't broke don't fix it'. It's called macOS.
Pffft. No it's called XFCE. My Macs are broken way more often by updates and are way less compatible with my hardware than anything else in my house. They really don't just work... They're dead ass not even half as stable as Manjaro.
The move to iOS-ify MacOS with Catalyst just doesn’t work. Messages on Big Sur is effectively non-functional. I have a chat with a friend that breaks the message entry box reliably. If he sends me a message I have to create a new message to him to get the input box. It’s janky crap.
Personally I’m excited by a hardware company selling a fully integrated Linux machine and taking an interest in making a working OS. This could finally get me free of Apple’s misguided antics.
There is a lot of awesome people in the Free Desktop community, who work hard for what they believe in. Criticism is always welcome, there is a lot of work to do and a lot of stuff to improve.
But having people who use a different OS come in and ridicule all of that work is not really nice.
I've been happily using the treaded GNOME without filepicker thumbnails for 10 years now and I'm neither less productive not less happy than you.
Enjoy your Mac! OSX has a lot of great inspirations for the Free Desktop.
I've been wanting to love Linux desktop for 10+ years and I just give up. I don't have time for this stuff anymore. And I'm not using esoteric distros. Ubuntu LTS, I also tried Fedora and it was even worse.
Sorry, but none of this happens to me on macOS or Windows. They're not perfect - of course crash, have certain quirks, etc, but they waste much less of my time on basic desktop functionality being unstable or needing special treatment.