COSMIC desktop at Alpha 2

From the «alpha beta go» department:
Title: COSMIC alpha 2 released
Author: Thom Holwerda
Date: Mon, 30 Sep 2024 05:26:44 +0000
Link: https://www.osnews.com/story/140824/cosmic-alpha-2-released/


System76, the premiere Linux computer manufacturer and creator of the COSMIC
desktop environment, has updated COSMIC’s Alpha release to Alpha 2. The
latest release includes more Settings pages, the bulk of functionality for
COSMIC Files, highly requested window management features, and considerable
infrastructure work for screen reader support, as well as some notable bug
fixes.
↫ system76’s blog[1]

The pace of development for COSMIC remains solid, even after the first alpha
release. This second alpha keeps adding a lot of things considered basic for
any desktop environment, such as settings panels for power and battery, sounds,
displays, and many more. It also brings window management support for focus
follows cursor and cursor follows focus, which will surely please the very
specific, small slice of people who swear by those. Also, you can now disable
the super key.

A major new feature that I’m personally very happy about is the “adjust
density” feature. COSMIC will allow you to adjust the spacing between the
various user interface elements so you can choose to squeeze more information
on your screen, which is one of the major complaints I have about modern UI
design in macOS, Windows, and GNOME. Being able to adjust this to your liking
is incredibly welcome, especially combined with COSMIC’s ability to change from
’rounded’ UI elements to ‘square’ UI elements.

The file manager has also been vastly, vastly improved, tons of bugs were
fixed, and much, much more. It seems COSMIC is on the right path, and I can’t
wait to try out the first final result once it lands.

Links:
[1]: https://blog.system76.com/post/cosmic-alpha-2-press-release (link)