I tried COSMIC expecting a half-finished beta, and now I don't want to go back to KDE or GNOME

Published Jul 29, 2026, 9:00 AM EDT Simon is a Computer Science BSc graduate who has been writing about technology since 2014, and using Windows machines since 3.1. After working for an indie game studio and acting as the family's go-to technician for all computer issues, he found his passion for writing and decided to use his skill set to write about all things tech. Since beginning his writing career, he has written for many different publications such as WorldStart, Listverse, and MakeTechEasier. However, after finding his home at MakeUseOf in February 2019, he would eventually move on to its sister site, XDA, to bring the latest and greatest in Windows, Linux, and DIY electronics. KDE Plasma was one of the big reasons I stuck with Linux without bouncing back to Windows. Even today, I'll pick Plasma as my desktop environment of choice when installing a new distro. One day, I caught wind of a new desktop environment on the block called COSMIC. It was rapidly gaining fans across the Linux community, which is surprising, as it had only hit version 1.0 in December 2025. Sure, the version number may say 1.0, but let's be honest here; it's way too soon for the desktop environment to feel like anything more than a half-finished beta, right? So, I gave it a try. As it turns out, that wasn't the case at all. COSMIC feels snappy to use It's something I really like about it I'm currently rocking openSUSE Tumbleweed, so grabbing COSMIC was as easy as telling zypper to go fetch it and install it onto my PC. Once it was downloaded, all I had to do was sign out, select COSMIC on the login screen, and sign back in again. Swapping desktop environments has to be my fave part of Linux. One thing I noticed immediately about COSMIC is how snappy it is. The whole thing has been written in Rust and doesn't have the same baggage as other desktop environments that need X11 and Wayland support. Apps and menus felt like they opened quicker, and apps responded faster when I expanded them from a minimized state. COSMIC has amazing dual-monitor capabilities It does things I haven't seen other desktop environments do I use a dual-monitor setup, and something I really love about COSMIC is how it handles each monitor separately in the UI. It means you can set everything up one way on your primary monitor and differently on your secondary. For example, COSMIC comes with a nice window tiling feature. You can toggle it on and off at will, but the kicker is that it toggles it on a per-monitor basis. I like to set it up so that the primary monitor, where all the important stuff happens, uses the tiled layout so that windows don't pop over what I'm looking at. Meanwhile, my secondary monitor has them untiled, allowing me to arrange them however I like. You can also switch between workspaces on a per-monitor basis. Usually, on something like KDE Plasma, changing the workspace means both screens change to the new layout. With COSMIC's ability to only send one monitor to another workspace, it means I can set up my primary to feature all the important things and my secondary for the miscellaneous stuff. Then I can swap the workspaces at will without losing whatever I have open on the other monitor. However, it's not quite 100% there just yet There are some parts I miss from KDE Plasma So, do I miss KDE Plasma? Well, yes, a little bit. I wouldn't say that COSMIC is strictly better than KDE Plasma just yet, but it's mostly because KDE Plasma has had more manpower and time behind it than COSMIC. For instance, one thing I really miss about KDE Plasma is its widgets. If you want a widget on your system, you can add it pretty much anywhere you like. And I do mean anywhere; a widget that can sit on the desktop can also be squashed into your taskbar, if you want. COSMIC has a lot of customizability right now, but I haven't found anything that replicates KDE's widgets. Also, I absolutely adore KDE's KRunner. If you've never used it before, it's a bar that comes down from the top of your screen when you start typing on the desktop. It's a great way to launch an app without going through the application menu. It even comes with some handy features, such as a calculator, that you can invoke at any time with a hotkey. So, it's not all roses over on COSMIC. However, as I said, I feel that it's only because COSMIC has only a single year under its belt, while KDE Plasma has been out for decades now. COSMIC has me seriously reconsidering going back to KDE For a desktop environment that got a public stable release just over half a year ago, COSMIC is leaps and bounds ahead of what I thought it'd be like. While it does lack some features, I feel that's more down to it being a brand-new desktop environment than any fault of its dev team, System76.