cosmic-desktop install and experience

11:37

so...ive grown a little tired of garuda on the desktop. it was time to change things up a bit. i made sure to keep my btrfs sdd current and copied all necessary /home files etc before taking the plunge. i decided i was going to make it my only DE and so i needed to start completely over from scratch. some things are easier than others and i found that i'll need some work arounds to get things working with my server connections etc. booting it up will tell me alot.

so i started with the most recent arch iso, pulled from their repo, i found the below to download at about 10Mb/s which took like 4 min, not bad for an iso mirror. https://losangeles.mirror.pkgbuild.com/iso/2026.01.01/archlinux-2026.01.01-x86_64.iso

i used gnome-disk-utility to copy the iso to the USB and make it bootable...just use the restore function and select the .iso file and it'll take a couple minutes.

i booted the OS into my bios, setup the USB boot first, and restarted. the MSI board i have also has a boot disk menu, i just wanted to make sure secure boot was off.

on boot, the desktop, which is pretty fast, got to a prompt in about 30s. as I always do, i typed in archinstall --advanced

i went through the usual items, setup partitioning to recommended layout and used btrfs here, and also left off the 7tb ssd so files wouldn't be overwritten. in the type menu, i selected cosmic and made sure to setup cosmic-greeter as the 'login manager'. i also selected nvidia since my 4070ti was detected. i used the new 'open' drivers 590.xx which is the general direction we are moving with that stuff. no additional packages needed as i wanted to see what would come installed.

after setting up password, user and static IP, i was ready to boot. total install time from first arch prompt was about 5 min to done. reboot option selected and away we go. cosmic-greeter was nice, and set to default background both monitors came up and i entered my password i setup. i was greeted by an informational bubble to walk me through some cosmic nuances. i just clicked through it as i would rather just poke around. some main differences off the bat:

• terminal was not fish - ill change that later
• a little better notification panel out of the box over gnome (what i usually use)
• some nuances in the always-on dock (adjustable to hide)
• panel usability is a little different, not sure if ill be able to add things, like my tailscale button in the settings panel as those are all individualized
• the dock has some configurable buttons that are specific to cosmic, launcher, workspace switching, etc

some similarities:

• has a gnome (feel) to it for sure
• upper panel pretty much the same with layout, perhaps a little more control in the cosmic-tweak function
• the super button brings up the application folder, with a tabbed layout rather than scroll (grouping function seems easier), but very familiar
• easier theming than gnome through settings > appearance and cosmic-tweaks

overall a little nuanced but familiar feel. the animations are snappy and the details are nice. opted for a darker them with rounded windows and contrasting 'current window' highlights.

things i've tested out so far:

• virtualbox - same experience as garuda, causes fans to ramp even with low load in vm. ive since setup virt-manager and have been very pleased with loads dropping to near idle with vm running (seeing 1% CPU load with virtmanager, rather than 4-7% with vbox) - HUGE difference. and i'll detail that experience in another post.
• remmina - pretty much abandoned. was having vnc issues with virt-manager, just ended up installing rustdesk in my windows vm, on the cosmic-desktop and on my arch garuda laptop, works just as well maybe even a little better than remmina (has a teamviewer feel) and becasuse it keeps telling me its faster if i self-host, i'm also working on a rustdesk-server OSS implementation on my /homelab now. will detail that more later.
• apps: i dont use office or anything, so i cant speak to that, but pretty much all arch packages are installed.
• chaotic AUR: setup was pretty much the same as garuda, though not included
• system: i have a few things to do still, fstab edit for nfs mounts. i did move my /home files to the new dir from my 7tb ssd and reformatted it and added it to the new /home dir (same as last time). ive detailed that below, cause i forgot how i did it last time.

btrfs stuff:

sudo mkfs.btrfs -f /dev/sda1
sudo btrfs device add -f /dev/sda /home #this will basically do the same thing
sudo btrfs balance start /home

i redid all the git mounts to my forgejo server and setup obsidian to folder (notes). i also installed yay and used it for building trivalent-bin yay-S trivalent-bin , which is a FOSS browser (chromium-based) hardened and borrowing heavily from graphene OS vanadium browser and originally built for fedora secureBLUE. try it out if you have a chance. way better than Brave browser.

ive gotten docker up and running also, with my ollama instance on bare-metal...i've got to get openweb-UI or something else to interface with it like i did before, but i didnt save the compose file to my forgejo, so im having to work that out from scratch again...rn its not seeing my models on the disk.

that's it for now! so far smooth sailing and i might even redo the laptop at some point. the virt-manager and rustdesk solutions were probably the most difficult part of getting back to where I was. overall i had probably a 1/2 day doing setup.