1y ago

Try COSMIC DE apps on virtual machine

install virt-manager
create a vm pop-os
start the vm
sudo apt install cosmic-session
sudo nano /etc/gdm3/custom.conf
... set .. WaylandEnable=true
reboot
at the log in screen, there is a small gear wheel on the bottom right side, choose “Pop on Wayland" (edit: if you want COSMIC DE to work too, see update below) (edit2: if you can't see the gear wheel, see update2 below)

update:

there are some settings on the virt-manager to make COSMIC DE works.

if you don't need to run COSMIC DE, can ignore the following

Display Spice : Type = Spice server, Listen type = none, uncheck password / opengl
Video : use QXL (instead of default Virtio)

new step 8. at the log in screen, there is a small gear wheel on the bottom right side, choose “COSMIC"

update2:

sudo nano /usr/lib/udev/rules.d/61-gdm.rules
Goto the line that reads LABEL="gdm_prefer_xorg"
.. commend out the next line .. #RUN+="/usr/libexec/gdm-runtime-config set daemon PreferredDisplayServer xorg"
Goto the the line that reads LABEL="gdm_disable_wayland"
.. commend out the next line .. #RUN+="/usr/libexec/gdm-runtime-config set daemon WaylandEnable false"
sudo systemctl restart gdm.service

8 comments

apps available to try with this method are:
cosmic-edit
cosmic-files
cosmic-term
That's cool. It's the latest version in the repos?
Whats your impression of it? Is it useable as a desktop system yet?
- I bet in my brief testing, it's about 70% usable.
  Some features are not yet completed:
  cosmic-file, I can't use copy/paste, open in terminal, mount any external devices.
  can't resize any of the cosmic apps, no tiling,
  setting has todo everywhere,
  can't see the workspace preview.
  .
  Some are fully usable in my use-case:
  cosmic-snapshot.
  cosmic-term.
  set background and accent colour
  pin apps to dock
  .
  Didn't test:
  audio
  .
  But, please note that I'm running it on a vm, so the exact issues might not exist on bare metal (if anyone can chime in).. In any case, the legacy apps, ex Settings, Files, Terminal still exist.
  So my procedue is to set all cosmic apps as default, and if I encounter issues, I'll just use the legacy apps for that particular tasks, and when I'm done, I go back to cosmic apps for daily use.
  
  It's totally usable for me. A little CLI and some scripts do what isn't finished yet in GUIs. If you want the absolute latest COSMIC packages use apt-manage to add the popdev-master repo. It's only a VM so you shouldn't be worried about breakage.
  
  The workspace preview is Super + W. There is also a workspaces applet that you can add to the panel.
Instructions are on https://github.com/pop-os/cosmic-epoch
Default shortcuts are included in the cosmic-comp ron config in https://github.com/pop-os/cosmic-comp
You can also try it using arch for anyone curious, I have pkgbuilds for most things here https://github.com/Quackdoc/pkgbuild-scripts/tree/Master/cosmic-epoch (dont try meta-git it breaks things) I havent clean room tested them but i've slowly been working on making sure the dependencies for everything are up to snuff but they arent all there yet

8 comments