Few days ago System76 (the company specializing in the production of laptops, PCs and servers that ship with Linux) announced the launch of the new version of your Linux distribution «Pop! _OS 21.04 », in which the main element is the integration of your new desktop environment «Cosmic».
As mentioned in the name of the new version, it is based on Ubuntu 21.04. Before the release of Pop! _OS 21.04, the distribution came with a modified GNOME Shell, a set of original GNOME Shell plugins, its own theme, its own set of icons, other fonts (Fira and Roboto Slab), modified settings, and an extended set of drivers.
In the Pop! _OS 21.04, the modified GNOME desktop has been replaced by a new environment COSMIC (Components of the Main Interface of the Computer Operating System), which is developed under the GPLv3 license.
COSMIC continues to use GNOME technologies, but has conceptual changes and redesigns More in-depth desktop features that go beyond the additions to GNOME Shell. During the development of COSMIC, such tasks were established as the desire to make the desktop easier to use, expand functionality, and increase work efficiency by customizing the environment to suit your preferences.
Instead of horizontal navigation Unified Virtual Desktops and Applications in the activities overview that appeared in GNOME 40, COSMIC continues to separate views to navigate open desktops / windows and installed applications (sections of workspaces and applications). A split view gives you the ability to access a selection of applications with a single click, and a simpler layout will allow you not to distract from visual clutter.
For window manipulation, both mouse control mode traditional, which is familiar to beginners, such as the tile window layout mode, which allows you to control your work with just the keyboard.
In tile mode, you can also use the mouse to rearrange docked windows by clicking and dragging the window to the desired location. When you start it for the first time, an initial setup wizard is presented that allows you to choose the behavior and appearance of the desktop that best suits your needs.
In the panel, you can enable or disable buttons to call interfaces to navigate open windows and applications, move widgets with a clock and notification area to the upper left or right corner, set up a call to the controller that displays the application launcher when you move the mouse pointer to the upper left corner of the screen.
When you press the Super key, the launcher interface starts by default, which makes it possible to start applications, run arbitrary commands, calculate mathematical expressions, go to certain sections of the configurator, and switch between programs that are already running.
For the control, in addition to hotkeys, the ability to use control gestures is provided on the trackpad. For example, a four-finger tap to the right launches the application's navigation interface, to the left displays a list of open windows, and up / down switches to another virtual desktop. By moving with a three-finger tap, you switch between open windows.
Among the features of the new version, also the possibility of optional placement of the buttons is highlighted to minimize and expand the windowa (by default, only the minimize button is displayed), support for updating the 'recovery' disk partition, a new algorithm for determining relevance in searching for programs, a plug-in system to expand search capabilities in the pitcher.
Finally if you want to know more about it about this new release, you can check the details In the following link.
Download Pop! _OS 21.04
In order to obtain this new system image and install this Linux distribution on your computer or you want to test it under a virtual machine. You just have to go to the official website of the distribution and in its download section you can get the image of the system.
As for people who have an older version, they can upgrade to the new version by typing the following commands:
sudo apt update sudo apt full-upgrade