By Jack Wallen, Dec. 10, 2024
System76 just took everything that was good in Pop!_OS and made it even better
Pop!_OS Alpha 4 has arrived and it’s going to be a brilliant Linux desktop.
When System76 announced that it would be creating a new Linux desktop environment from scratch and using the Rust programming language, I was skeptical, not in the company’s ability to deliver but the reason behind the choice. Pop!_OS has been an outstanding OS to date, a perfect re-imagining of the GNOME desktop (from which it was based) that was efficient and easy to use.
Then, I started seeing the early mockups and realized the company wasn’t reinventing the wheel. It was re-creating what it already had… only without the GNOME dependencies.
That’s when it all made sense. By creating the OS in-house, it could tweak it to the exact specifications needed so that it would run beautifully on its hardware. And given the speed of Rust, it also made perfect sense that it’d use that particular language to build its new platform.
According to the Pop!_OS site, System76 had this to say about its new OS: “We aim to liberate the computer with a new desktop environment powerful enough to build custom OS experiences — for users, developers, and makers of any device with a screen.”
Well, the latest Alpha of Pop!_OS (a4) has been released, and it shows just how serious System76 is with its new operating system.
I’ve been using Pop!_OS for nearly 10 years now (with a brief excursion into Ubuntu Budgie land), so I feel pretty confident when I say that the new COSMIC desktop takes everything that was good in Pop!_OS and made it even better.
