COSMIC Desktop and Pop!_OS 24.04: A Rust-Built Desktop Arrives
On December 11, 2025, System76 shipped Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS, and with it the first stable release of COSMIC, the company's own desktop environment. New desktop environments are rare. Building a full one from scratch, with its own panel, file manager, terminal, text editor and settings, is a major commitment, and the result is one of the most interesting developments on the Linux desktop in years.
Why System76 built its own desktop
Pop!_OS used to be built on GNOME, with a tiling window extension that System76 maintained. According to LWN's coverage, that extension became hard to maintain as GNOME evolved, and the company decided it needed to control its own stack. The outcome is a desktop designed around a particular idea of how people work, including built-in tiling that works for beginners and experts alike.
Built in Rust, running on Wayland
COSMIC is written in Rust, the same memory-safe language now accepted in the Linux kernel, and it is Wayland-only. Using Rust throughout brings safety benefits and makes it easier to build a responsive, parallel interface. The first alpha appeared in August 2024 and the first beta in September 2025, so the project took roughly sixteen months to reach a stable release.
What ships in the box
- COSMIC Files, a native file manager.
- COSMIC Terminal and COSMIC Text Editor.
- COSMIC Media Player.
- Flathub enabled by default, so a large catalogue of third-party apps is a click away.
These applications replace the GNOME components Pop!_OS used before, which means the desktop looks and behaves consistently rather than mixing toolkits. The release is called COSMIC Epoch 1, and the project has continued to ship updates since.
Tiling that is easy to start with
Tiling window managers arrange windows automatically so they never overlap, which keeps screens tidy and reduces mouse use. They are popular with power users but usually demand a lot of configuration. COSMIC makes tiling an option inside a conventional desktop. You can float windows as usual, or turn on tiling and let the system organise them.
Kernel and hardware support
Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS launched with the Linux 6.17 kernel series. One review noted it still shipped Mesa 25.1 graphics drivers at the time, which is a reminder that long-term-support releases do not always carry the newest graphics stack. System76 sells its own laptops and desktops, and Pop!_OS has a reputation for working well with NVIDIA hardware.
Should you try it?
If you enjoy new software and want something different from GNOME and KDE, COSMIC is worth a live USB session. Expect a young desktop: it will have rough edges and missing features compared with projects that are decades old, and the ecosystem of themes and extensions is still small. On the other hand, the pace of development is fast, and being a first-generation project means you can influence its direction by filing detailed bug reports.
COSMIC beyond Pop!_OS
COSMIC is not limited to System76's distribution. It is a separate project that other distributions can package, and some already offer it as an optional desktop. That makes it easier to try on Fedora, Arch or other systems, and increases the chance that it becomes a lasting part of the Linux landscape instead of a single vendor's product.
Common questions
Can you run COSMIC on a different distribution? Yes. It is a separate project from Pop!_OS, and other distributions package it as an optional desktop. Does Pop!_OS still use GNOME applications? Not for the core experience, since System76 replaced several GNOME components with its own COSMIC apps, although you can still install GNOME software from Flathub. Is the tiling feature mandatory? No. You can use floating windows exactly as on a traditional desktop and enable tiling only when you want it. How do you report problems? COSMIC is developed in the open, so detailed bug reports with your hardware and steps to reproduce the issue are welcome and genuinely influence what gets fixed first.