tl;dr (understandable, to be honest): on a technical level, modern GNOME prioritizes polish at the expense of flexibility, and COSMIC is focused on customizability. Bad communication aside, they have fundamentally different goals and audiences.
Acknowledging that this is a 4-year-old article, I think it's important to read this as a very one-sided perspective. However, I am certainly not defending System76, as it does seem like some pretty poor behavior if the article is to be believed.
I'm going to look past the issues over communication and behavior, as others have already addressed that in this thread. Other than that, it seems that the main issue is arguing over the role of GNOME in the software ecosystem. How I see this is that:
System76 is arguing for backwards compatibility and and more customizability.
GNOME is arguing for "bulletproof" theming of apps by restricting user choice and modularity.
Honestly, I think this is pretty reflective of how the current state of the respective DEs.
GNOME is the cleanest, most polished Linux desktop environment, if you use it exactly as the designers of GNOME envision. If you want any options outside the extremely limited set GNOME provides by default, you need to rely on extensions, which are less stable and less polished, and may or may not be updated to new DE versions.
COSMIC is a clean-sheet implementation designed around modularity. It's really the main thing they talk about. It has the advantage of being Wayland-only, and (supposedly) pretty much every element of the DE is modular, and there is a pretty substantial amount of customization available even in the fairly barebones 1.0 implementation.
In terms of COSMIC "just being GNOME with extra color options", I disagree. I really like the UI design concept of GNOME, and ten versions ago I used it all the time. However, over the last few versions it's become very locked-down into only supporting one narrow way of using the desktop, and I need features outside that (e.g. system tray, options for window tiling, etc.). Even with ten extensions modifying the behavior -- which causes stability issues when I get a new GNOME version -- I still find things which bother me and are only fixable with manual dconf editing, which means I just can't daily-drive GNOME.
I think that's who COSMIC is really for: someone who wants less windows-y, more intentional UI design than KDE, but with good customizability. It sucks if the creators of a pretty neat new DE were not effective participants in their previous DE, so I really hope they don't make the same mistake with COSMIC, and manage it properly as an open source project.
Krohnkite is incredibly janky, I tried it recently and it made all the window animations lag. Also every third boot or so it would fully stop kwin from starting, and lead to a black screen on login.
I do love my bangle.js 2. i was feeling some nostalgia for my Pebble Time 2, so I pulled it out to try it with the new app, but then I remembered that I hadn't updated anything on my Bangle in ages (dont generally have chrome enabled ony phone) and the updates made everything so much smoother. No reason to switch back to pebble, especially in its current state.
My only complaint is that there is no way for the watch to tell if it's on your wrist, and the heart rate monitor and screen can't be woken up separately. So it can be annoying at night, when unless it's fully shut off the HRM and screen will light up the room every 10min.
I know what you asked about is the Machine and Frame, but I'm super excited about the controller. I love my old steam controller I got on fire sale, but its an extremely flawed device. If they can polish that to the standard of the Deck, I'm so in, especially since you know it'll work well on Linux with no firmware BS.
I had no idea! It seems like it was a really unruly project to manage, but it's a shame to lose the centralization of having one app that can configure anything. I don't see any problem in having package management split off into Myrlyn, but it sounds like Cockpit is much more limited in scope, which is a shame, since handling the edge cases gracefully was what made YaST so useful.
Zettlr! Its designed around writing manuscripts in markdown+latex, then exporting to pure LaTeX, PDF, or any other Pandoc-supported format via a builtin Pandoc GUI. The only thing that doesn't work particularly well is the table editor, but they're working on it.
It is electron based, but almost all graphical editors for markdown + inline latex are (obsidian, etc.) because MathJax & KaTeX are the most mature method to render LaTeX inside other document formats.
Obsidian is also good, but it's not FOSS and their built-in export isn't great.
Well, Typst is explicitly a no-go for anyone who has to submit a manuscript, until it they get a damn HTML representation, so Pandoc can get it to LaTeX. There's practically nowhere I could use Typst except my own notes, and I've tried!
For easy setup and a choice between Plasma and Gnome, I'm partial to Manjaro. Its pretty lightweight pleasant to use, only change from Ubuntu is that it doesn't use the apt package manager, but its an easy switch.
Dear god, please do not recommend arch to people without telling them what to expect...
OP: With Arch, expect to spend a couple hours setting it up before seeing a GUI, and be ready for periodic system-breaking updates which have to be resolved.
How did I not know about bangs til now, I've been using DDG for years! I've just been relying on the @ codes in the Firefox search bar, which are super limited. Thanks for the tip!
DDG actually uses Bing's search indexing last time I checked! Startpage uses Google's, which the major difference between them. Brave does its own thing, I think.
Don't love this, DHH is a self-proclaimed Nazi
tl;dr (understandable, to be honest): on a technical level, modern GNOME prioritizes polish at the expense of flexibility, and COSMIC is focused on customizability. Bad communication aside, they have fundamentally different goals and audiences.
Acknowledging that this is a 4-year-old article, I think it's important to read this as a very one-sided perspective. However, I am certainly not defending System76, as it does seem like some pretty poor behavior if the article is to be believed.
I'm going to look past the issues over communication and behavior, as others have already addressed that in this thread. Other than that, it seems that the main issue is arguing over the role of GNOME in the software ecosystem. How I see this is that:
Honestly, I think this is pretty reflective of how the current state of the respective DEs.
GNOME is the cleanest, most polished Linux desktop environment, if you use it exactly as the designers of GNOME envision. If you want any options outside the extremely limited set GNOME provides by default, you need to rely on extensions, which are less stable and less polished, and may or may not be updated to new DE versions.
COSMIC is a clean-sheet implementation designed around modularity. It's really the main thing they talk about. It has the advantage of being Wayland-only, and (supposedly) pretty much every element of the DE is modular, and there is a pretty substantial amount of customization available even in the fairly barebones 1.0 implementation.
In terms of COSMIC "just being GNOME with extra color options", I disagree. I really like the UI design concept of GNOME, and ten versions ago I used it all the time. However, over the last few versions it's become very locked-down into only supporting one narrow way of using the desktop, and I need features outside that (e.g. system tray, options for window tiling, etc.). Even with ten extensions modifying the behavior -- which causes stability issues when I get a new GNOME version -- I still find things which bother me and are only fixable with manual dconf editing, which means I just can't daily-drive GNOME.
I think that's who COSMIC is really for: someone who wants less windows-y, more intentional UI design than KDE, but with good customizability. It sucks if the creators of a pretty neat new DE were not effective participants in their previous DE, so I really hope they don't make the same mistake with COSMIC, and manage it properly as an open source project.
Krohnkite is incredibly janky, I tried it recently and it made all the window animations lag. Also every third boot or so it would fully stop kwin from starting, and lead to a black screen on login.
Yes it's placed flat, I'm not sure if it's supposed to turn off but it certainly doesn't.
I do love my bangle.js 2. i was feeling some nostalgia for my Pebble Time 2, so I pulled it out to try it with the new app, but then I remembered that I hadn't updated anything on my Bangle in ages (dont generally have chrome enabled ony phone) and the updates made everything so much smoother. No reason to switch back to pebble, especially in its current state.
My only complaint is that there is no way for the watch to tell if it's on your wrist, and the heart rate monitor and screen can't be woken up separately. So it can be annoying at night, when unless it's fully shut off the HRM and screen will light up the room every 10min.
I know what you asked about is the Machine and Frame, but I'm super excited about the controller. I love my old steam controller I got on fire sale, but its an extremely flawed device. If they can polish that to the standard of the Deck, I'm so in, especially since you know it'll work well on Linux with no firmware BS.
Only after 20 years. Light will take 10y to make it from earth to the mirror, and 10y to travel back.
Knowing how to write a good study is a matter of experience more than intelligence.
I had no idea! It seems like it was a really unruly project to manage, but it's a shame to lose the centralization of having one app that can configure anything. I don't see any problem in having package management split off into Myrlyn, but it sounds like Cockpit is much more limited in scope, which is a shame, since handling the edge cases gracefully was what made YaST so useful.
Here's a source for others who didn't realize.
My reading is that the installer is no longer based on YaST, not that YaST has been retired overall.
Yup, he was eating sodium bromide instead of sodium chloride. Any significant amount of bromide is not good for ya.
Zettlr! Its designed around writing manuscripts in markdown+latex, then exporting to pure LaTeX, PDF, or any other Pandoc-supported format via a builtin Pandoc GUI. The only thing that doesn't work particularly well is the table editor, but they're working on it.
It is electron based, but almost all graphical editors for markdown + inline latex are (obsidian, etc.) because MathJax & KaTeX are the most mature method to render LaTeX inside other document formats.
Obsidian is also good, but it's not FOSS and their built-in export isn't great.
Well, Typst is explicitly a no-go for anyone who has to submit a manuscript, until it they get a damn HTML representation, so Pandoc can get it to LaTeX. There's practically nowhere I could use Typst except my own notes, and I've tried!
That...is wine.
For easy setup and a choice between Plasma and Gnome, I'm partial to Manjaro. Its pretty lightweight pleasant to use, only change from Ubuntu is that it doesn't use the
aptpackage manager, but its an easy switch.Dear god, please do not recommend arch to people without telling them what to expect...
OP: With Arch, expect to spend a couple hours setting it up before seeing a GUI, and be ready for periodic system-breaking updates which have to be resolved.
I'm a PhD candidate in inorganic and biochemistry! Loving the chem representation here, and loving OP's username.
Yeah, I'll miss r/3dprinting, do we know if there's a 3d printing community anywhere in the fediverse yet?
How did I not know about bangs til now, I've been using DDG for years! I've just been relying on the @ codes in the Firefox search bar, which are super limited. Thanks for the tip!
DDG actually uses Bing's search indexing last time I checked! Startpage uses Google's, which the major difference between them. Brave does its own thing, I think.