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Elevating The Linux Desktop with COSMIC DE

Title

Elevating The Linux Desktop with COSMIC DE

Speaker(s)

Victoria Brekenfeld
Carl Richell

Date and time

2025-10-24T10:20:00Z

Session type

:speech_balloon: Talk (25 minutes)

Abstract

With the first release of COSMIC DE complete, we’ve laid a strong foundation for a desktop environment built from the ground up—modern, performant, and purpose-driven. In this talk, we’ll take a brief look at what was accomplished with the initial release, including key architectural choices and user experience improvements. We’ll then explore how this foundation sets the stage for a new era in Linux desktop computing.

Looking ahead, we’ll share our vision for elevating the Linux desktop experience, with a focus on innovative features designed to streamline and empower the developer workflow.

Speaker(s) bio

Carl Richell is the Founder and CEO of System76 and Victoria Brekenfeld is a System76 Engineer working on COSMIC DE.

:question: Questions about this session? Please reply to this topic, top questions may be featured during the live event!

6 Likes
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Are there any unique, planned accessibility features that set COSMIC apart from other desktop environments?

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  • How are some wayland related stumbling blocks working in cosmic DE?
    e.g. when i changed to wayland i had issues with screencapture utilites and even OBS not working.
  • in case of sync of dotfiles, what if we screw up and break the UI, will it break all the synced devices too, any way to revert settings when they dont open.
  • How can we by join in the team and contribute to system76 popOS cosmic …? if we are locate not in your country
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Much of the discussion around COSMIC is desktop focused. It seems it’s flexibility lends itself well to other use cases like kiosks, interactive panels, embedded devices, etc. Have you received any interest from parties looking to use it outside the traditional desktop?

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Can you briefly explain the power behind the Application Launcher?

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Is it possible to configure which settings you want to sync, i.e. specify sync groups?

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A post was split to a new topic: Installing Cosmic DE on Ubuntu