In addition to KDE Plasma 6.0, another exciting desktop milestone we can look forward to in 2024 is the COSMIC desktop from System76 when they end up releasing the next Pop!_OS based upon Ubuntu 24.04 LTS. The Pop!_OS / COSMIC developers continue making great progress on their Rust-written desktop environment.

System76 today published their September development update for the COSMIC desktop environment. Some of the gains made in recent weeks include:

- COSMIC has a new window-swapping mode to help with making it seamless when wanting to manually rearrange tiled windows. This new mode allows easily swapping windows using the Super +X keyboard shortcut along with your arrow keys.

- Widgets like text inputs, search fields, inline inputs, and symbolic icons have been implemented.

- COSMIC also now supports dynamic settings so that when keyboard and mouse settings are adjusted they happen in real-time.

- Optimizations for COSMIC to benefit performance and lower power consumption.

- COSMIC's compositor adds support for the pointer gestures protocol.

- Panel and dock settings have been implemented into the COSMIC desktop environment.

- Support for the Wayland security context protocol.

And here's a screenshot from them showing off one of the examples for how COSMIC can currently look:

Read their entire COSMIC September update on the System76.com blog .