System76 today is releasing an alpha build of Pop!_OS 24.04 that is built atop Ubuntu 24.04 LTS and making it very interesting is that it includes the alpha version of their Rust-written COSMIC desktop environment. I've been playing around with this Pop!_OS 24.04 alpha in advance of today's embargo lift and it's been working out quite well.

COSMIC is an interesting Rust-based desktop environment that System76 has been developing. It's focus is on their Pop!_OS distribution but there have been other distributions like Serpent OS expressing interest as well along with the likes of Redox OS.

COSMIC is a Wayland-native desktop but does support XWayland. It has all the usual features one would expect from a compositor including fractional scaling and being able to cope with NVIDIA hybrid graphics. COSMIC continues supporting auto-tiling along with various other windowing features.

The alpha release of COSMIC is off to a nice start but some features missing like the copy/paste not working with their text editor. System76 also has to finish up work on the settings area, variable refresh rate, the COSMIC Files file manager, and other refinements.

The stable release of Pop!_OS 24.04 and COSMIC will take place later in the year.

COSMIC is off to a nice start and those wanting to learn more or give the alpha ISO a whirl can find the details on System76.com .