System76, the company developing the Linux distribution Pop!_OS, has released Desktop Environment COSMIC 1.3.0. Packages with COSMIC 1.3.0 are available in the Pop!_OS 24.04 distribution and will soon be expected in Fedora, NixOS, Arch Linux, openSUSE, Aeyrin OS, Redox, and CachyOS. The code is written in Rust and distributed under GPLv3 licenses (applications) and MPL-2.0 (libraries).
COSMIC develops as a universal project, independent of any specific distribution and compliant with Freedesktop specifications. The interface in COSMIC is built using the Iced library, which employs safe types, a modular architecture, and a reactive programming model, offering an architecture familiar to developers acquainted with the declarative interface building language Elm. Several rendering engines are provided, supporting Vulkan, Metal, DX12, OpenGL 2.1+, and OpenGL ES 2.0+. Developers are offered a ready-to-use widget set, the ability to create asynchronous handlers, and utilize adaptive layout of interface elements depending on window and screen size.
In addition to using Rust, notable features of COSMIC include hybrid tiled window layout modes and stacked window anchoring (grouping windows like browser tabs), which can be enabled in conjunction with virtual desktops. The project is also developing a compositor server cosmic-comp based on Wayland.
Key Changes:
- A 'Frosted Glass' transparency effect has been added, blurring the background image that overlaps the window, reminiscent of the Liquid Glass effect in macOS. This effect is implemented using the Wayland protocol ext-background-effect, which enables the styling of semi-transparent parts of Wayland surfaces.
- The network connection management applet and configurator have transitioned from direct access to NetworkManager to the use of the nmrs layer.
- The keyboard layout switching applet (input-sources) has been adapted to use the Wayland protocol cosmic-keymap-unstable-v1, which is supported in the composite manager cosmic-comp and the background process cosmic-settings-daemon.
- Support for Avif image format in the cosmic-bg wallpaper installation service has been enabled using the libdav1d library.
- The file manager now includes the ability to select subclasses when filtering content by MIME types.
- The cosmic-monitor application, which displays information about the system, running processes, and resource consumption, has added support for statistical collection for Intel GPUs, implemented power consumption calculations for AMD and Intel GPUs, and provided displays for GPU power consumption data and video memory status.
- The panel has improved positioning for applet popup windows. Options have been added for hiding the panel and maintaining style when maximizing windows.
- Support for using AVIF images as wallpaper has been added to the configurator.
- The context menu now defaults to displaying the discrete GPU.
Source: opennet.ru
