CachyOS August 2024 Release Adds Support for the COSMIC Desktop Environment
With this new ISO release, CachyOS now supports System76’s COSMIC Alpha desktop environment written in Rust. This can be installed on the distribution using the sudo pacman -S cosmic-session command in a Terminal app after installing CachyOS.
NVIDIA GPU users will be happy to learn that the new CachyOS release ships with the NVIDIA 560 Beta graphics driver, which defaults to the open GPU kernel modules. As such, CachyOS devs implemented hardware detection to automatically use the open GPU kernel modules if your NVIDIA GPU is supported.
Linuxiac:
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CachyOS August Update Brings Open NVIDIA Modules and COSMIC DE
A month after its previous July update, the Arch-based CachyOS has rolled out its ninth release of the year, focusing on robust hardware detection, seamless software integration, and substantial infrastructure upgrades.
The distro now defaults to using NVIDIA’s open modules for hardware detection, enhancing compatibility and performance. Users preferring the traditional closed-source approach can still easily switch back.
Furthermore, introducing the NVIDIA Beta driver 560 promises stability and cutting-edge graphics performance.
And now to something exciting. The release marks the debut of the COSMIC Desktop Environment on CachyOS. Available for installation, users can now enjoy a refreshed desktop experience with additional packages like cosmic-text-editor and cosmic-terminal.
Linux Magazine:
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CachyOS Adds Support for System76's COSMIC Desktop » Linux Magazine
If you're a fan of testing alpha releases (especially in the realm of desktops), then CachyOS has something pretty exciting for you. The August 2024 ISO snapshot of this Arch-based Linux distribution will include the first alpha of System76's COSMIC desktop. I've tested this desktop environment on both Fedora and Pop!_OS. Somewhat Gnome-ish in look and feel, COSMIC should be a simple desktop to try for anyone who's worked with a modern Linux user interface.
The CachyOS developers will be following the upstream release of COSMIC for packaging, with packages based on the latest commit available (though not used for installation).
On top of including COSMIC desktop, the next release of CachyOS also includes the NVIDIA 560 Beta graphics driver that defaults to open source kernel modules. CachyOS defaults to the Plasma Desktop with version 6.1.4 shipped with the latest ISO and up-to-date core components.
The developers also are providing an Arch Linux mirror and worldwide CDN cache (sponsored by CDN77) for the default installation, which addresses previous issues of the OS selecting outdated mirrors. As well, the kernel manager has received several fixes, and a script has been added to easily handle Secure Boot.
OSTechNix:
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CachyOS August 2024 Release Notes
CachyOS has released its ninth update of the year, this time focusing on improved hardware detection and infrastructure enhancements.
Major changes include automatic utilisation of open NVIDIA modules, the inclusion of the latest NVIDIA Beta driver, and the availability of the Cosmic Desktop Environment as an installation option.
Infrastructure improvements include CDN77 sponsorship, providing a worldwide cache CDN for faster connection speeds, and the introduction of a dedicated Arch Linux mirror to prevent dependency issues.
Other notable additions are a Secure Boot script, automatic user partition mounting in cachy-chroot, and official support for the Ally X in the Handheld Edition.
The update also includes numerous bug fixes and improvements to various components, such as the Kernel Manager, ISO, and game-performance script.
Another One From Bobby Borisov:
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COSMIC Desktop Landed in Manjaro Linux
Arch-based Manjaro Linux has been quite active lately. Having recently redesigned its site and started work on an immutable version, the distro released a new stable update today, bringing fresh excitement to its global user community.
This update cycle brings critical kernel upgrades from version 4.19 to the experimental 6.11.0 rc3, along with real-time versions ensuring robust performance for critical applications. Desktop environments have also received substantial updates...
LWN:
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COSMIC desktop makes its debut
Linux hardware vendor System76 started promoting its work on a Rust-based, Wayland desktop environment for its Pop!_OS Ubuntu-derivative distribution almost two years ago. On August 8, the company released an alpha version of the COSMIC desktop environment for users to test out. While it has rough edges and missing features, it is stable enough to get a good feel for what the finished product has in store—and the initial results are promising.
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System76 sells Linux laptops, desktops, servers, and other hardware. The company was founded in 2005, and preinstalled Ubuntu as the default operating system on its offerings for many years. In 2017, the company created its Pop!_OS distribution after Canonical discontinued its work on the Unity desktop. Pop!_OS started out using GNOME with just a few tweaks, but over the years the distribution has diverged farther and farther from stock GNOME. In 2018, with the Pop!_OS 18.10 release, the company added its own software "store" called the Pop Shop. The 20.04 LTS release introduced tiling features to the desktop with a GNOME extension called Pop!_OS Shell.
The 21.04 release introduced the "COSMIC" name by using it to describe its customizations to GNOME. The name was initially expanded as "Computer Operating System Main Interface Components", but the company seems to have abandoned that unwieldy backronym, which is probably for the best. Changes in 21.04 included the addition of a dock (a fork of the Dash to Dock extension), trackpad gestures, and other various and sundry modifications.
According to the README for the tiling shell extension, the original plan was to propose integration of the tiling window management features to GNOME upstream. It is unclear if that ever happened, but a recent blog post about building the desktop indicates that it was unsustainable to maintain COSMIC as an extension, since upstream GNOME changes could cause the extension to break. The team also considered forking GNOME, but that would entail ""taking on decades of legacy code and adapting it to fit what we want to build"". That was ruled out, which left building a custom desktop from the ground up.