COSMIC Team Interview: Building Your Own User Experience
Quoting: System76 Blog —
The COSMIC desktop environment — the part of an operating system that determines how windows are drawn, how applications are built, what settings are available to the user, and how the user navigates their OS — began as a pros-and-cons list for determining the future of Pop!_OS. We wanted to make the OS more flexible for our users, make advanced features more user-friendly, and the team was trying to figure out how to proceed.
First was the GNOME DE (desktop environment) extension by the same name, released for Pop!_OS 21.04. However, building and maintaining an OS experience on top of an extension was unsustainable, as changes to the main project could break the extension with profound impact for Pop!_OS users.