Michael Murphy, the lead developer of the Pop!_OS distribution and a contributor to the Redox operating system, has confirmed information about System76's development of a new desktop environment that is not based on GNOME Shell and is written in Rust.
System76 specializes in producing laptops, PCs, and servers that come with Linux pre-installed. Their own version of Ubuntu Linux, Pop!_OS, is under development for this purpose. After Ubuntu switched to the Unity shell in 2011, Pop!_OS introduced its own user interface based on a modified GNOME Shell and several GNOME Shell extensions. Following Ubuntu's return to GNOME in 2017, Pop!_OS continued to provide its shell, which transformed into the COSMIC desktop in the summer release. COSMIC continues to utilize GNOME technologies but includes conceptual changes that go beyond GNOME Shell extensions.
According to the new plan, System76 intends to completely move away from building its user interface based on GNOME Shell and develop a new desktop using Rust for its development. It's worth noting that System76 has extensive experience in Rust development. The company employs Jeremy Soller, the founder of the Redox operating system, the Orbital graphical shell, and the OrbTk toolkit, all written in Rust. Components such as the update manager, power management system, firmware management tools, application launcher, installer, configuration widget, and configurators are already delivered in Pop!_OS and are developed using Rust. Pop!_OS developers have also previously experimented with creating a new cosmic-panel, which is written in Rust.
The motivation for moving away from the GNOME Shell is attributed to maintenance issues — each new GNOME Shell release leads to compatibility breaks with the extensions used in Pop!_OS, making it more practical to create a fully-fledged desktop environment rather than continue struggling with the maintenance of tens of thousands of lines of code with changes. It is also mentioned that it is impossible to implement all the desired functionality solely through GNOME Shell extensions without making modifications to the GNOME Shell itself and reworking certain subsystems.
The new desktop is evolving as a universal project, not tied to a specific distribution, compliant with Freedesktop specifications, and capable of running on top of existing standard low-level components such as compositors. servers mutter, kwin, and wlroots (Pop!_OS intends to use mutter and has already prepared a Rust wrapper for it).
The project is planned to develop under its previous name — COSMIC, but it will utilize a completely rewritten user shell. Applications are likely to continue being developed using the gtk-rs wrapper. Wayland is announced as the primary protocol, but the possibility of functioning on top of server X11 is not ruled out. Work on the new shell is still in the experimental stage and will be activated after the next release of Pop!_OS 21.10 has been completed, which is currently the main focus.
Source: opennet.ru
