Changes/FedoraCOSMIC

Fedora COSMIC Spin

This is a proposed Change for Fedora Linux.
This document represents a proposed Change. As part of the Changes process, proposals are publicly announced in order to receive community feedback. This proposal will only be implemented if approved by the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee.

Summary

Create an official Fedora Spin with the upcoming COSMIC desktop environment.

Owner

• Name: Ryan Brue, Neal Gompa
• Email: ryanbrue.dev@gmail.com, ngompa13@gmail.com

Current status

• Targeted release: Fedora Linux 42
• Last updated: 2024-12-10
• [Announced]
• [<will be assigned by the Wrangler> Discussion thread]
• FESCo issue: <will be assigned by the Wrangler>
• Tracker bug: <will be assigned by the Wrangler>
• Release notes tracker: <will be assigned by the Wrangler>

Detailed Description

The COSMIC Desktop Environment is a new rust-based desktop environment developed by System76, makers of Pop!_OS. The desktop environment is set to reach maturity in the first quarter of 2025. COSMIC has many unique features, such as hybrid per-workspace window/tiling management, window stacks with tabs to switch between windows, and robust customization features that integrate with GTK and (later on) Qt!

Benefit to Fedora

Fedora is already one of the most popular distro choices for COSMIC, being the first result past Pop!_OS on the official COSMIC website of where to try it out. Having an official spin for COSMIC is a logical next step to bring these users to a more streamlined experience, for example making use of ISO generation for spins. COSMIC is also shaping up to be a great quality desktop experience.

Scope

• Proposal owners:

• • SIG (Already created) [1]
  • Comps (Already created) [2]
  • Create fedora release variant for COSMIC (fedora-release-cosmic): TODO
  • kiwi-descriptions: TODO
  • livesys-scripts: #23
  • pungi-fedora: TODO

• Other developers:

N/A

• Release engineering: #12494

• Policies and guidelines: N/A (not needed for this Change)

• Trademark approval: TODO

• Alignment with the Fedora Strategy:

Upgrade/compatibility impact

N/A (New spin)

How To Test

NOTE: To test in a VM, make sure you have graphical hardware acceleration enabled, COSMIC's compositor does not support software acceleration (it is planned).

• Install any Fedora release 41 and up
• Install the COSMIC desktop by installing the environment group: dnf install @cosmic-desktop-environment

User Experience

The experience of the COSMIC desktop aims to be most similar to GNOME, given that the System76 team previously used GNOME for Pop!_OS, the inspiration is there. It takes some elements from KDE though in terms of customization and support for various wlr wayland protocols.

Dependencies

N/A

Contingency Plan

• Contingency mechanism: Delay to Fedora 43
• Contingency deadline: Beta freeze
• Blocks release? No

Documentation

N/A (not a System Wide Change)