System76, a company developing LinuxThe Pop!_OS distribution has released the sixth alpha version of its COSMIC desktop environment, written in Rust (not to be confused with the older COSMIC, which was based on GNOME Shell). ISO images of the latest version of COSMIC are available for testing, built on top of alpha builds of the upcoming Pop!_OS 24.04 distribution for systems with NVIDIA (3.1 GB) and Intel/AMD (2.6 GB) GPUs. Ready-to-use packages for Fedora, NixOS, and Arch are also being created. Linux, openSUSE, Serpent OS, Redox and CachyOS.
COSMIC is being developed as a universal project, not tied to a specific distribution and corresponding to the Freedesktop specifications. To build the interface, COSMIC uses the Iced library, which uses safe types, a modular architecture and a reactive programming model, and also offers an architecture familiar to developers familiar with the Elm declarative interface language. Several rendering engines are provided, supporting Vulkan, Metal, DX12, OpenGL 2.1+ and OpenGL ES 2.0+. Developers are offered a ready-made set of widgets, the ability to create asynchronous handlers and use adaptive layout of interface elements depending on the window and screen size.
In addition to using the Rust language, COSMIC's key features include hybrid window tiling and stacked window docking (window grouping similar to browser tabs), which can be enabled when linked to virtual desktops. The project is also developing a composite server cosmic-comp is based on Wayland. The first stable release of COSMIC is scheduled for Q1 2025.
The main changes compared to the fifth alpha version of COSMIC:
- Added support for placing icons on the desktop. Using the context menu displayed when you right-click on an empty area of the screen, you can enable the display of icons for directories, drives, and the Recycle Bin, as well as select the size of the icons and the amount of space between them. Files and directories can be moved between the desktop and the file manager using the mouse.
- Added additional zoom settings. Maximum zoom level increased to 210%. Added a setting for additional zoom of 5-20% relative to the base zoom.
- Expanded capabilities virtual desktopsAdded support for scrolling between available desktops in overview mode. In addition to desktop thumbnails, names and numbers are now displayed. The ability to move minimized windows between desktops using the mouse is now available.
- The "Attract floating windows to nearby edges" option has been added to the settings. When enabled, moving windows will automatically align to the edge.
- The Launcher interface now supports scrolling in search results.
- Provided display of a countdown timer for actions such as shutdown and reboot.
- The file manager now supports auto-completion of file paths (to auto-completion of the path in the search bar, you can press the down arrow). The ability to copy a file path for pasting in other applications has been added. The Home and End keys are used to navigate through files. Support for creating and unpacking password-protected zip files has been added.
- For visually impaired people, a tool for enlarging individual areas of the screen has been added. The tool can be activated via the Settings > Accessibility settings, via the Accessibility applet on the panel, or using the key combinations Super + "+", Super + "-", and Super + mouse wheel.
- The Accessibility applet has been implemented for the panel, through which you can enable a screen reader and a tool for enlarging screen areas. In the near future, the applet is planned to add options for turning on the contrast mode, inverting colors and color filters for color blind people.
- A navigation bar for viewing the directory tree has been added to the COSMIC Media Player. During playback, the song title, album, musician, and year of the composition are displayed. Support for playback control from the volume control applet has been added, using the MPRIS protocol. A File menu has been added with operations for opening files and directories.
- The COSMIC Edit text editor now has a function for undoing all changes and returning the file to the last saved state. The menu now has a "File > Close Project" item for closing a project and starting work on a new document. The Ctrl+Tab and Ctrl+Shift+Tab key combinations have been implemented for switching between tabs. The "View" menu now has buttons for changing the scale. The spell check menu has been returned. All matches are highlighted in the text when searching.
- Opens Sans has been used as the default font instead of Fira Sans.
- Reduced memory consumption in the file manager, when working with virtual desktops, when minimizing windows, and in the handlers of multi-line fields (cosmic-text) and icons (freedesktop-icons). Changes were added to the libcosmic library to prevent memory fragmentation. Optimization of the screen configurators and desktop wallpapers was performed.
- Added support for copying and pasting from the clipboard using the middle mouse button.
Source: opennet.ru
