The problems and shortcomings of Cosmic
28 VIII 2024
15.5k
For what is essentially, a buggy, barebones alpha at best, the coverage of COSMIC has been overwhelmingly positive.
That must mean it's great, right?
Well, not exactly.
System76 (the authors) are reposting en masse only the positive quotes from the reviews they cherry-pick. Any negative comments on reddit are being downvoted.
The reception is mixed, but sys76 and hardcore Linux nerds want you to see Cosmic as the next coming of Jesus Christ himself. Why? Well, for the rust cultists, that's obvious, cuz "my rust". For others, dunno, maybe they are fed up with Gnome or KDE.
This blogpost will serve as a bit of a balancer, to put some doubt and criticism into Cosmic, obviously bearing in mind it is, indeed an Alpha.
Am I rooting for cosmic? No, I don't root for software. Do I hope it succeeds? Honestly, I don't think it will change anything for me, so I am at a "whatever" here. With those two, as you can see, no beef with Cosmic or System76.
As you may know, I am the creator and lead developer of Hyprland and the entire ecosystem around it. You might say I'm biased, but I try to approach this from a quite objective side.
Cosmic is not my direct competitor - Hyprland is a compositor for advanced users, Cosmic is (what it's meant to be, at least) a user-friendly DE.
My first impressions with cosmic were terrible to say the least. Amongst the sea of complete dealbreaker issues (horrible stutter and lag, inability to use 240hz, mouse sensitivity not working, etc) the general implementations atm are janky to say the least, tons of empty menus, wasted space, small annoying bugs.
I do realize it's an alpha, though, so I won't focus on the "small bugs" that can probably be fixed in 15 mins and will be fixed... in the future.
The current design language, IMO, is one of the worst I've seen in a while, but I don't wanna focus on this as it's all subjective, after all.
In this blogpost I want to focus on the broader ideology behind it, the direction and selling points.
Although most of the reception has been positive, some hasn't been. I've seen a few posts / videos that criticize Cosmic get downvoted and bullied to hell, especially on Reddit.
System76 is not helping either, as they will proudly claim every 30 minutes that another person said "cosmic looks cool hehe!" and quote it on their twitter and website.
To be frank, most of the quotes on System76's website are instantly sticking out as borderline idiotic to anyone that thinks more about them:
"The foundation seems very solid"
"There’s such cool power-user potential here"
"I can imagine this becoming really popular"
"It’s a very good desktop. I love the functionality"
"Now I’m more excited than ever"
Are we out of our minds? It's a barely functional alpha. All those quotes (and those are just a few) are at best running on "hopes and prayers" and not the actual experience. What foundation? Moving floating windows? MS Windows 3.0 had that. What potential? To... add more code? Just like to... anything at this stage?!
"COSMIC is designed to be a modern, customizable, and performant desktop environment"
What is "modern"? Barely functional? "customizable"? The current alpha is less customizable than gnome. Performant? Because it's barebones.
KDE is "modern" too. So is Windows. Or Mac.
Basically, System76 will | grep "modern|cool|good" > ~/posts/newBlogpost.txt.
Someone might say "oh what are we supposed to say then", to which I say: simple. Say what you see. Claiming this is the next coming of God will hurt it more than help it. On that, a bit later.
To be honest, I am not sure what System76 wants Cosmic to be. Hear me out.
If someone wants a clear, simple, "it just works" experience, they go Gnome. If someone wants to tinker, they go KDE.
Where do you go Cosmic? And why would you want to?
So far, all I can see is three reasons:
great if you are a rust cultist, "absolutely dont care" if you aren't.
if you like tiling, you likely don't want a DE. If you are an average user, you don't want tiling. There is a reason regular users don't use tiling. There is a reason Windows, Mac, and big Linux DEs don't do tiling.
Uhh, if you gain any foothold at all based purely on this, it's a very flimsy position, as Gnome can just... implement it.
Sooo... Cosmic is for the tiny sliver of users that want a DE... that tiles? Or those that buy a System76 machine and never change the DE?
IMO, if nothing else is presented, Cosmic will become another XFCE. Not XFCE 12 years ago, XFCE now. A small, loyal fanbase, nothing more.
A project needs, absolutely needs a clear and catchy goal. NEEDS. Without it, you're just another nobody in a sea of alternatives. There is a reason Hyprland has grown so fast.
You NEED to make the average user go "ah! [project name]! the project that is [3-5 non-generic, catchy words]". For example "ah! KDE! the project that is a heavily customizable Linux desktop!"
"ah! Cosmic! the desktop that.... is rust" is not catchy to anyone (but the rust cultists)
There is surprisingly a lot of wrong with too positive reviews. Mostly, though, two:
You're creating a bubble. Expectations grow, grow, "it's great.... just in a moment!!!" until it bursts because people's expectations became completely unrealistic. Once the bubble pops, you get a lot of negative PR that could even destroy your project.
Basically what happens with big companies when they are monopolists, or dictatorships when they are only given the good news.
Developers think that "we're making a great desktop!", do whatever, stop listening to criticism as "you're rude!!!" or "hater!!!!" and inevitably crash the entire project into the ground.
I've posted a small pasta after the alpha arrived with my (very negative) first experiences with Cosmic and was later shared a screenshot from an internal System76 channel where out of 5 developers, only ONE (1) said "hey we can't repro that but it sounds like valuable feedback" because everyone else was like "no one reported this, he's lying" or "dude is mad and biased".
I wish it wasn't the case, but it feels like the developers are already riding on the endorphins from all the praise and forget their software is after all in a rough state.
Cosmic is a desktop that, for now, to me, has no goal. Is not catchy. Has not much to offer. I don't know where System76 wants to take it, but if this doesn't change, it's not difficult for me to imagine a future where Cosmic ends up like Unity or Mir. Forgotten and barely used.
It's receiving a lot of overly-positive reviews based on hopes and prayers, with little to be based on reality, or what we have right now.
This, adding to the aggresive marketing, makes the developers already quite hostile to negative feedback.
Cosmic is, in my opinion, on a not-so-good path at the moment, despite what those news outlets might claim.
Sure, one might hope that they find an audience, hope that they find a goal, hope that they stand out, but I don't hope, I see what is happening right now and draw my conclusions from that.
Even though this is a quite negative blogpost, if any of the developers at Cosmic are reading this: Stop riding on the great reviews. Accept criticism, because you know full well Cosmic is very rough at the moment. Criticism is the thing that will drive your code forward. Saying "it's cool" doesn't help you. Saying "this is wrong" does, because you know how to improve your product. Stop acting like Cosmic is some breakthrough. It isn't. Keep a low profile, post updates, let people know you're working on it, but Christ, your marketing is borderline narcissistic.
I want to remind you that back when Hyprland was a new project, I did not go around the internet saying "BRO HYPRLAND ROCKS LOOK AT THOSE 5 STAR REVIEWS".
Good PR comes from organic reviews. Not from you shilling yourself. That's self-promo. Everybody hates shameless self-promo.
Does Cosmic have the potential to become a great DE? Sure, it does. Will it? Time will tell.