System76 Developing a New Desktop Environment
The makers of Pop!_OS are currently in the early stages of creating a brand new, non-GNOME, desktop environment.
System76 is never one to settle. Consider what they’ve done to the GNOME desktop environment with their COSMIC treatment. Effectively, the company has made GNOME their own. But that wasn’t enough, so the developers have set out to create a brand new DE, from scratch, using Rust.
Why? Michael Murphy, Pop!_OS maintainer for System76, said, “There are things we’d like to do that we can’t simply achieve through extensions in GNOME. Extensions in general feel like a hack. And what we want to do with our desktop differs from GNOME, so it’s not like the option to merge pop-shell and COSMIC into GNOME Shell would be a welcome thing.”
Although the new desktop will not be a fork of GNOME, the developers do plan on reusing some of the current GNOME tooling, such as Mutter, KWin, and Wlroots. On this issue, Murphy said, “We’re already using gtk-rs for all of our stuff. My assumption is that it’s likely to see some components in GTK for the foreseeable future.” Murphy continues, “The shell itself though is lower level than a traditional desktop GUI toolkit. It’ll use primitives from the window manager it builds upon. If a mature Rust GUI turns up, then it could be used in the future of course. I’d generally like to use the best tools where possible.”
The System76 desktop will also be distribution-agnostic, so it won’t require Pop!_OS to run. As well, the developers plan on sticking to (when possible) the standards, set by FreeDesktop.
Don’t expect this new desktop environment to appear any time soon. Since this is a brand new project, it'll take some time. Keep a close watch on the System76 blog for more updates.
Issue 266/2023
Buy this issue as a PDF
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Find SysAdmin Jobs
News
-
Xfce 4.18 is Coming Soon and Offers Subtle Improvements
The Xfce team has announced the release date of the next iteration of the desktop, which includes a good number of features to polish the fan-favorite Linux UI.
-
Orange Pi Board Has Arch-Based Linux Distribution in the Works
The developers of the Orange Pi board are planning to release an Arch-based Linux distribution available for its hardware as an alternative to Orange Pi OS.
-
Alpine Linux 3.17 Now Available to the General Public
The developers of Alpine Linux have officially announced the release of the latest version of the security-focused Linux distribution.
-
The New StarFighter Linux Laptop Now Available for Preorder
A new, completely customizable Linux laptop is now available to preorder from Star Labs.
-
Critical Escalation Vulnerability Found in the Linux Kernel
A new local privilege escalation vulnerability has been discovered in the Linux kernel and users are encouraged to upgrade/patch immediately.
-
AlmaLinux 8.7 Now Available
The developers of AlmaLinux have released the latest version of the OS, named Stone Smilodon, to the general public.
-
New Arch-Based Linux Distribution Aims to be Beginner-Friendly
CachyOS has been created to serve as a Linux distribution for everyone, even while being based on the more complex Arch Linux.
-
elementary OS 7 Getting Closer to Release
The team behind elementary OS has announced they are now focused on putting the finishing touches on the next major release of the Linux distribution.
-
Nitrux 2.5 Released with Kernel 6.0 and KDE Plasma 5.26
Nitrux 2.5 has been officially released and is the first systemd-free distribution to include both kernel 6.0 and KDE Plasma 5.26.
-
Zorin OS 16.02 Now Available
Zorin OS 16.2 has been officially released just seven months after the first point release of the user-friendly Linux operating system.