Pop!_OS

Matt Holder discovers what System76’s Cosmic desktop and Pop!_OS distribution have to offer.

Apart from being a typographical nightmare, Pop!_ OS, which we’ll refer to as Pop from A now on, is a Linux distribution sponsored by System76, a US-based company that sells laptops, desktops, servers and peripherals. System76 specialises in providing the devices it sells with support for either Ubuntu or Pop, which come pre-installed. Selling devices with Linux is no simple task because drivers need to be written where they don’t currently exist and configuration needs to be made for function keys and other built-in hardware.

So, let’s have a look at Pop and see what it provides that isn’t available from other distributions.

Pop is based on the most recent Ubuntu Long Term Support (LTS) release and its take on the desktop is provided by its own extensions and theming on top of Gnome. This turns out to have been an incredibly smart move because the team can build on the huge amount of security and other work that has been carried out by Canonical’s Ubuntu engineers as well as the team working on Debian.

Pop differs from standard Gnome in that it uses a dock at the bottom of the screen and has a custom- made extension that allows the best of both worlds, with a tiling mode as well. The Pop installer also offers slightly different options from that of Ubuntu. The Pop software store gives access to the standard DEB files as well as the more modern Flatpaks.

Floating or tiling?

The debate between which desktop environment model is best is nearly as old (and as dangerous a question to ask in polite company) as which text editor is better. As in most situations, the answer is nuanced and different users weigh features in different ways. Floating window managers are the sort that you are most used to – every application opens a new window, leaving you to drag it to the size and location you want. Proponents of tiling window managers have a number of arguments, including that using the mouse is slow and bad for your wrists. The main difference between the two is that when opening a window on a tiling window manager, it’s added to a grid with other windows. This means that all windows are in focus at once and there is no manual work required to lay them out. Keyboard shortcuts are available to select