COSMIC is already available outside of Pop!_OS. There's already a good number of distributions (members of distributions) working on integrating COSMIC. There's Fedora and NixOS and I hear SerpentOS is interested too. Maybe Bazzite will do the work to integrate COSMIC.

I don't mind The Register, and overall I think the article was objective and informative. There's a couple things I think should be noted. Firstly, it mentioned Pop uses systemd-boot instead of GRUB and kind of inferred that was unusual. It might seem unusual when comparing it to the number of distributions still using GRUB, but if you consider things logically, using systemd-boot on a system that uses systemd it makes a lot more sense than using an old, bloated, unsecure chain-loader. Systemd-boot meets Freedesktop bootloader specifications for a bootloader with systemd. It's simple, fast and secure. You can use GRUB if you like, but it's probably only familiarity that keeps it around.

I don't think Pop's partition layout, use of encryption is "overly paranoid". It's timely and necessary!

And finally, I don't think the author completely comprehends what is possible with COSMIC desktop. I could understand their POV if COSMIC was actually like GNOME in that it is difficult to modify heavily without causing instability. Gnome modification also relies on third party software which GNOME often don't support. So saying "If you don't like GNOME, you won't like this" could be true if stock COSMIC wasn't able to be modified easily. However, COSMIC is supremely easy to modify and people who like KDE, Cinnamon or any other desktop will be surprised to learn that they will likely be able to use Pop!_OS with COSMIC and make it look like KDE, Cinnamon, Gnome or even Windows. It's only a matter of desktop configurations, most of which will be native in Settings, and with the difference being COSMIC will remain stable. I will also mention that Gnome have never had a native tiling solution.

COSMIC is not Gnome. It's not even a fork of Gnome. It doesn't even use GTK3. It's completely new, and when alpha2 is complete I'm sure many people will suddenly "get it". COSMIC is integrating many features that Gnome have been removing for years.

Register, I like you, but I think you missed some important considerations.

You CAN opt out of using anything Meta offers. Just don't use that abusive corporate crap!

The fact that they really want to disrespect your privacy, scrape every last morsel of anything they can get there grubby mits on for serving you ads, and feed you altered propaganda and shit that they think you should see says volumes about you if you allow them to do that to you. It says a lot about the Australian government too then. Here's EU taking these greedy corporate monsters to task while Australia is talking about giving them EVEN MORE personal information by trying to enforce ineffective faulty age verification with biometric government issued ID on social media. Just walk away.

Bluetooth can be managed with systemctl and bluetoothctl.

https://www.makeuseof.com/manage-bluetooth-linux-with-bluetoothctl/

In my experience I find just running bluetoothctl to enter the interactive mode easiest. You can enter commands without prepending bluetoothctl. You can use help at any stage. So you want to use systemctl to make sure Bluetooth is running, then enter bluetoothctl. Make sure the device is discoverable and pairing is set to on. Start your [headphones/whatever] in pairing mode and run devices. When you see the device run pair <numbers/address>. Only use the numbers. You may have to go into settings and select the device in the sound applet.

My situation doesn't require a logout timer, but if I'm walking away from the PC I just use the shortcut Super + ESC. Alternatively, there's many ways you can create a basic Bash script that when invoked times down to a systemctl suspend command. Or possibly the hybrid-sleep option could do what you want. See systemctl -h for possibilities.

Blanking the login screen is something that will be implemented shortly. Maybe I'll work on a script for that because it annoys me too. Fortunately I rarely use it. I'll repost if I do this.

I really don't think the two years people are saying in this thread is realistic. The hard work and core is written. What is there is stable. I think they will get this completed much sooner. They do have a hardware business to support after all.

I'm using it every day now. I have one machine installed with the 24.04 ISO and it's working fine. There's some TODO items to come which I understand will be added by Alpha2. With a little command line knowledge COSMIC is perfectly usable now and is stable.

I've been using COSMIC for a while now without problems, and the store is great. Easy to theme and the apps are pretty good. I haven't checked it lately, but I hope the greeter improves soon.

The amount of times I've seen people request help because Pi-hole was not blocking/functioning properly, well a hosts file just ensures nothing leaves that you want blocked. Besides, you may have different machines set up to be strict or permissive depending on their use case.

Absolutely. These lists are created by server admins who collect what the firewall rejects, much like you see with the Pi-hole. They'll automatically block some ads and many threats too. Another tip if you're using Librewolf, Mullvad browser or Firefox with uBlock, enable more of the filter lists.

Use both.

That's a lot of progress! Worth the read.

Pi-hole is OK, but for good measure it's easy to set up a "hosts" file that blocks all that stuff locally. You can use your findings from Pi-hole. On Linux you just pop your entries in /etc/hosts, or other OS equivalent. Here are some curated lists. For Mozilla telemetry - https://github.com/MrRawes/firefox-hosts/blob/firefox-hosts/hosts Massive list for everything - https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts

Posteo has been stable, professional and functional for many years. Tuta is another good choice.