System76 has shared details on its upcoming Cosmic Desktop Environment (DE), saying it will be released in 2024.
System76 is the maker of the popular Pop!_OS Linux distro. The company is one of the only ones to offer a fully integrated option, selling hardware and making its own Linux distro to complement it. The distro is based on Ubuntu — with all the benefits it provides — but updates key components at a faster pace, such as the kernel, graphics drivers, and specific applications.
Pop currently uses a highly customized version of the Gnome DE called Cosmic, addressing many of the complaints users have about that DE. At the same time, System76 has been working on an all-new version of Cosmic, one written from the ground up using the Rust programming language. The company has been teasing updates for several months now, but its own Aaron Honeycutt shared some solid information on Reddit regarding its release schedule:
Exciting things are in the works for Pop!_OS! As we develop COSMIC DE for its 2024 release, Pop!_OS 22.04 LTS will continue to receive updates, such as the recently released system76-scheduler-2.0. Development efforts will be focused on COSMIC DE in lieu of 23.04 and 23.10.
Although Honeycutt doesn’t specify when in 2024 the new DE will be released, our money is on a release that corresponds with Ubuntu 24.04. The current version of Pop is based on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. Being based on the LTS release of Ubuntu has given System76 the ability to focus on building the new Cosmic rather than worrying about rebasing every six months on Ubuntu’s interim releases.
Releasing a new version of Pop and the all-new Cosmic DE based on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS would make a lot of sense and give System76 some much-needed stability while improving the freshly released DE.
