It looks exactly like Gnome. What's the point?
It's Rust based and brand new (more secure, less bagage, Wayland native, no fragile plugin system, etc). I'm really looking forward to it.
I love Gnome but I want (at least) quarter tiling, but rather have the flexible tiling KDE offers (where you drag windows into predefined areas and they snap, preferably windows always open where they are dragged once). I want speed, I want it to get out of my way. My current flow is: Open window, hit win + left arrow, open another, hit win + right arrow, have 2 windows together on ultra wide. I do the same on 2 or three other desktops. And then I start working.
Oh, something nicer than Network Manager would be nice, something simple with super simple WireGuard VPN integration, etc.
Currently I'm still very happy on (daily driver) Gnome on NixOS, but will surely check this out soon.
This is what I've used Pop!'s Gnome extension (https://github.com/pop-os/shell) for in the past. I don't think it'll receive much love after Cosmic is released (after all, Gnome itself is being dropped) but if it still works for whatever version of Gnome you use, it may be worth checking out.
After using FancyZones on Windows, Gnome's lack of tiling management on my ultrawide has become a bit of an annoyance for me. Unfortunately, my copy of Pop Shell broke at some point.
> no fragile plugin system
While I don't like Gnome's tendency to slow down or crash, I do very much like the plugin system. Things like GSConnect and various smaller tweaks improve my Gnome experience a lot.
I hope Cosmic does expose some kind of plugin system, though hopefully one that's not as prone to lag and crashes.
Its absolutely annoying. You have configured something you like, next gnome version they are gone.
Cosmic plugins are their own processes (generally written in Rust) using very fast Wayland and be much more stable. In fact, a much larger amount of the functionality already lives in plugins. Its a game changer in the long term.
The fact that they were able to release this alpha of Cosmic DE in one year just goes to show how much better a use of time it is.
You probably know this already, but I'm saying it anyway (hope you don't mind): The intuitive keyboard shortcuts would be win-right-arrow (then) up arrow for the top right corner tiling, like Windows does quarter tiling.
Also, Gnome (half) tiling has the windows sliding, your extension jumps them, and requires extra button (ctrl) ootb.
Very small things, and I will for sure keep the extension installed and use it, thank you!
Gnome comes with a lot of baggage both technical and organizational, this has lead to situations where Pop_OS! wasn't able to manage/change/improve things like they think they needed to do hence why they started to create Cosmic. Just be clear this was a business decision by system76 to some degree, not just some "I don't like it so I created something even if it doesn't make sense" decision.
it looks like Gnome because it's for people which had been using Gnome so far, but it's just similar not the same and likely will only diverge more over the next many years assuming it succeeds
At first glance, it seems like a truly massive effort for a marginal improvement, that could have been made with a fraction of the cost. I'm probably wrong though, hopefully.
I read somewhere that 50% of the development time on Pop_Os was spent simply un-breaking the Gnome shell extension between releases of GNOME.
Now they can put that time into creating what they actually want.
So to support what they wanted and what they promise their costumers they would have to do increasingly more and more work, in direct oppositon the the gnome community. Essentially eventially forking it. And then they have to maintain a huge legacy codebase.
And they didnt wirte a completly new one. The compositor was already a project. So was Iced. They use lots of other existing project in the Rust ecosystem.
Now they are on their own, free to build what they want, rather then endlessly pushing a rock up a mountain. They can now make more fundamental changed that would never have been possible in Gnome. They are also free to build the community they want rather then deal with the Gnome community. This also makes them a player in the Wayland community, another voice that can push protocols.
Hyperbole is so boring