cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ndlug.org/post/1129664

COSMIC Alpha 2 is landing on September 26th. Repositories will be tagged with the new release for distribution packagers.

Pop!_OS 24.04 Alpha 2 ISO’s will also be available for download! #COSMICdesktop #COSMICDE

    • Markaos@lemmy.one
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      2 months ago

      They probably fixed all the bugs they considered essential, and the rest is just nice to have fixes that can be moved to the next cycle if necessary (and they still have a week to work on them before release, although they might be careful not to introduce severe bugs now).

      The general idea with this approach is that it doesn’t make sense to block a release on a few bugs worked on by only a subset of available developers and having the rest idle - the project can be finished faster by moving the remaining tasks over to the next release and accepting the bugs in the meantime.

      • Vincent@feddit.nl
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        2 months ago

        Especially if it’s just another alpha release. They could have 20 more of those, for all I know.

  • Russ@bitforged.space
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    2 months ago

    Oh wow, I didn’t expect another release so quickly! Props to the COSMIC team! I can’t recall where the roadmap for the features and their targeted releases went, but I hope we can get Night Light/Blue Light filtering soon.

    I also did not know they had a Mastodon account, thanks for the shout so that I could give 'em a follow.

    • DesolateMood@lemm.ee
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      2 months ago

      New desktop environment being made by the guys who make PopOS. It is currently in alpha version 2

  • skymtf@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    2 months ago

    I love cosmic a ton, I wonder how well alpha 2 will function, for me it was mostly usable unless I wanted full screen

  • Eugenia
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    2 months ago

    Question: if I download the current alpha, does it only contain Cosmic, or also the normal Gnome DE?

  • boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net
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    2 months ago

    Tbh as long as COSMIC lacks 1:1 theming support for KDE apps, it is not usable.

    I love KDE Apps. There are also some GTK Apps I use, but the big ones (Dolphin, Okular, Gwenview, Ark, Spectacle Editor) are all KDE.

    • theshatterstone54@feddit.uk
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      2 months ago

      All those apps are tied to Plasma, pull Plasma as a dependency, and as such, are not what you’d want to use unless you want to keep 2 DEs around. Okular is an exception, but I know for a fact that Dolphin pulls all of Plasma with it. For an Ark alternative, just use xarchiver (contrary to the name, works perfectly on Wayland). Gwenview is just an image viewer. Use ristretto or something else. COSMIC comes with its own screenshot utility as Spectacle replacement (and COSMIC Screenshot is quite good in my experience). And just replace Dolphin with COSMIC files (for a simpler experience) or Thunar (for something more powerful) and you’re good to go.

      Edit: But I agree QT theming should be added. IIRC, they’ve talked to the Plasma team, but it was just too time consuming so they’ve put it of for now, but will have this done eventually. It’s a promised feature, it just probably won’t happen soon.

      • boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net
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        2 months ago

        Already did that. Those apps are themed horribly and are thus unusable. Afaik there is also no scaling setting for 3rd party toolkits in the COSMIC settings.

        Ark can do more, like compress in detail, from the filemanager.

        Gwenview is an image editor with many basic features you want.

        Spectacle has another image editing feature, for some reason KDE has 4 implementations of that, Spectacle has the only good one. This can be used standalone with the Dolphin extension “annotate it”.

        Dolphin is waaay better than COSMIC files, absolutely no comparison. If it is just a customizable GUI, custom icons for everything, extensions.

        I dont ger Thunar. pcmanfm-qt is the best alternative to Dolphin I know. At least the theming works on KDE, may be different on other desktops

        • RightEdofer@lemmy.ca
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          2 months ago

          Dude it’s an alpha. Honestly sounds like you should just stick to KDE anyway.

          • boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net
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            2 months ago

            I explained KDE Apps.

            COSMIC is fine and a really great project. But they are simply lacking like 10 years of development behind KDE.

            Not gonna say that once ready it could simply be better, faster, more streamlined, no cruft. But yeah, not in the next few years.

      • boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net
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        2 months ago

        Interesting, thanks!

        I know Fedora has some meta-theme package, they should add that to Workstation too.

        It includes the breeze themes.

        Then a flatpak env var or /etc/environment could work