Link: https://linuxnation.social/blog/cosmic_llm_ban/

System76's COSMIC desktop now requires contributors to certify that pull requests contain no LLM-generated content. The new template also adds a Developer Certificate of Origin.

Is anyone really uses Cosmic? In my experience, they somehow managed to create a sloppy DE even without AI

Can you elaborate?

I'm not really sure when you last used Cosmic but it's actually pretty good lately. And is also my preferred DE right now. It's a much easier way to use tiling windows and everything works pretty well out of the box. Granted it's not as customizable as some other DEs but it's got everything that I'm looking for.

Which is really the way we should look at other people's setups. I won't tell anyone their setup is wrong unless it's a security issue. We need to put the personal back in Personal Computers.

Well, I tried to use it when it came out of beta, and it was… Well, let’s call it questionable experience. It’s, of course, just mine subjective opinion.

And about “No AI policy” - it’s a good vector, but, from my point of view, Cosmic really seems as something that could benefit a lot from more rapid development cycle. Right now I use Noctalia Shell, and it’s stunning how fast it evolves.

Cosmic is insanely good now for work

Calling a beta software questionable is a very questionable take

I only started using Cosmic when Pop_OS! 24.04 came out so I never touched it before it was a stable release so I have no opinions before that. My initial impressions were that it was good enough to try as a daily driver because the things that were missing, like accessibility options, weren't things I personally needed. Did it need work, yes. Is it a disaster of a DE, No.

When it comes to the AI issue, I'm a bit torn. I think AI can be a great tool for development. The problem is having the opportunity for some slop kiddies to constantly throw a program into chaos because they put Hermes into YOLO mode. A "No AI"policy is a way to prevent problems but I don't think it's necessarily a perfect one.

I tried 1.0: when it came out of beta

It wasn’t beta. But it really felt like it.

"came out of beta", though. in the first few days, or weeks, after the official release, there was extensive discussion about the issues and shortcomings of Cosmic, if I recall correctly

edit: whoops, I was too slow

Yeah I never even got it to work because it fried my laptop trying to install it. Fuck system 76.

It was their own darter pro it did that to

I tried cosmic for a long time (yr+), but it always seemed a little unstable. Maybe my hardware, but mint is running just fine

How did installing cosmic “fry” your laptop? There where situations in the 90s where a bad x11 conf could damage your CRT, but outside of overclocking it’s pretty hard to damage your hardware now days.

Has it stuck on system 76 screen and since the model I bought came with system 76s CFW you can't just do a fresh install or you lose one of the entire selling points of the laptop because that will wipe the custom embedded firmware.

So I get to send my private laptop back to the company so they can fix it pretty much putting all of my data at risk by doing so.

Super shitty for a $2200 laptop to be honest

Not to be rude, but this has nothing to do with the post...

Hmm, with the KDE stuff going on lately I might have to check it out. I used Pop OS for a while but that was before Cosmic

I'm on a darter pro. I did a fresh install a month ago. Didn't wipe the firmware but you could update it if that happened. I love COSMIC.

I had the same experience with cosmic. It was prone to crashes. I really like the idea of combining gnome with i3wm/hyprland though. I currently have one box using gnome with a tiling shell extension, but the issue there is extensions not being well supported between gnome versions.

I wouldn't be opposed to retrying cosmic now. It's been a few years.

What's up with KDE?

It's pretty decent st this point. Imagine Ubuntu but a bit snappier. Still some isolated issues with certain games, but that's it.

Have you tried out O-tiling? It's a fork of PopShell. I've been contributing some minor bugfixes. It's been working very well on GNOME 50.

Sounds like a manufacturing defect tbh. Shitty, but it happens to some degree no matter what.

x11.conf is one of my first memories about anything Linux.

I remember when I was just trying it (back when "edgy eft" was new) via live booting it, the very first customization I had to make was editing that for to allow my extra mouse buttons to work (the back/forward buttons that are common now were pretty new-ish back then, and by default it only worked with the 2 main buttons and the wheel (and the wheel button).

Here's one who swapped out Gnome apps on the desktop for Cosmic's. Niri does windowing though. It kind of stuck, though on the laptop I still have Gnome apps and Niri.

Cosmic seems very slow but consistent in its development. Recently it got the ability to rename folders attached to the file manager side panel, been waiting for that since the switch 😂 Apps are snappy and stable though.

It's a pretty terrible one. AI is staying part of development forever.

There are problems, and there are better and worse ways to use it. Saying "no ai at all" isn't much different than saying you can't Google or use stack overflow. It's pretty similar to the "don't blindly paste code from stack overflow" problem in steroids.

The mass of ai slop contributions is a problem, yes. We need a better solution than just "let's go back to how it was before". We ain't going back, and it's a lazy fix.

That said, AI code used responsibly is nearly to completely indistinguishable from human code. This may serve to dissuade honest developers.

A lot of people have convinced themselves that kdes new policy is that you can now submit full claude vomit prs no questions asked. Its not, but thats how social media goes.

That is just dumb of them. I would expect a wholly mainline kernel supported machine. At least within 6 months of release.

You've got a backup though, right?

personal social media

No I haven't, but I think I'll give that shot. Thanks for the heads up.

Saying “no ai at all” isn’t much different than saying you can’t Google

really odd way to argue a point

There's literally no change to their policy. They opened a discussion about stricter policy for PRs, but it got derailed by a few non-devs. That's my understanding of it at least.

I daily drive it on both of my main machines. Clean, simple, and the integration of tiling and non-tiling workflows is very nice. My go-to now.

I'd definitely say try it again. It's been rock solid for me for about a year. Definitely had stability issues when it was newer.

I had tons of stability issues within the last year unfortunately, I would still recommend against it.

I love cosmic, but I'm back on plasma because of RDNA1 issues. If I can ever find a decent affordable upgrade I'll be back.