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Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS Released: A Letter From Our Founder

Posted by Rianne Schestowitz on Dec 12, 2025,

updated Dec 13, 2025

Quoting: Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS Released: A Letter From Our Founder —

If you’re ambitious enough, or maybe just crazy enough, there eventually comes a time when you realize you’ve reached the limits of current potential, and must create something completely new if you’re to go further.

This year, System76 turned twenty. For twenty years we have shipped Linux computers. For seven years we’ve built the Pop!_OS Linux distribution. Three years ago it became clear we had reached the limit of our current potential and had to create something new. Today, we break through that limit with the release of Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS with the COSMIC Desktop Environment.

Read on

OMG Ubuntu:

Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS Released with New COSMIC Desktop - OMG! Ubuntu

It’s been a “long ride” to get here (building an entirely new Linux desktop, compositor, widget toolkit, and suite of first-party apps is no mean feat). System76 announced plans to build COSMIC in 2021, and a series of alpha and beta builds followed.

Now, it’s out in orbit, joining the constellation of Linux distros (cheesy, eh).

Carl Richell, Founder and CEO of System76, says the company is “proud of this contribution to the open source ecosystem”, and adds...

Linuxiac:

Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS Launches With COSMIC Desktop 1.0 Stable

It finally happened! We have an early Christmas present. Powered by Linux kernel 6.17 and built on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS has arrived, marking the first stable release of the COSMIC desktop environment and closing more than three years of development at System76.

Also:

Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS with the COSMIC Desktop Environment is out now | GamingOnLinux

System76 have today finally released Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS with the newly launched COSMIC Desktop Environment. Giving the team at System76 their own foundation to build upon and help make their hardware more tailored and unique, it will be interesting to see the wider reception for the COSMIC desktop.

System76 Launches First Stable Release of COSMIC Desktop and Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS

Linux hardware vendor System76 launched today the first stable release of the Rust-based COSMIC desktop environment, along with the stable release of the Ubuntu-based Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS Linux distribution.

Based on the Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (Noble Numbat) operating system series, Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS ships with the brand-new COSMIC desktop environment written in the Rust programming language, designed and developed by System76 for all GNU/Linux distributions.

Previous Pop!_OS releases used a version of the COSMIC desktop that was based on the GNOME desktop environment. However, System76 wanted to create a new desktop environment from scratch while keeping the same familiar interface and user experience built for efficiency and fun.

DW and LWN:

Distribution Release: Pop!_OS 24.04

Pop!_OS 24.04, a major new version of System76's desktop Linux distribution, has been released. Based on Ubuntu's latest long-term support version, Pop!_OS 24.04 is the project's first stable version that ships the COSMIC desktop environment, developed in-house: [...]

Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS released

Version 24.04 LTS of the Ubuntu-based Pop!_OS distribution has been released with the COSMIC Desktop Environment:

Today is special not only in that it's the culmination of over three years of work, but even more so in that System76 has built a complete desktop environment for the open source community. We're proud of this contribution to the open source ecosystem. COSMIC is built on the ethos that the best open source projects enable people to not only use them, but to build with them. COSMIC is modular and composable. It's the flagship experience for Pop!_OS in its own way, and can be adapted by anyone that wants to build their own unique user experience for Linux.

In addition to the COSMIC desktop environment, Pop!_OS is now available for Arm computers with the 24.04 LTS release, and the distribution has added hybrid graphics support for better battery life. LWN covered an alpha version of COSMIC in August 2024.

FOSS Force:

Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS Launches with Scratch-Built COSMIC Epoch 1 - FOSS Force

Finally, I’ll be able to write my 2025 Top Five Open Source News Items article. That’s because System76 — the folks who make high end Linux hardware –released Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS on Thursday. Considering how popular the distro has become, that’s a pretty hard story to eclipse. However, it has been eclipsed, because Thursday also marked the release of Cosmic Epoch 1, the long awaited, built from scratch, and not based on anything but itself release of Pop’s default desktop environment.

If you’re thinking you were certain that Cosmic (officially presented in all caps) was based on Gnome, then you must have been sleeping in class. Quite a while ago the folks in Denver — that’s where System76 is from — announced that for several reasons (but mainly because they wanted to take Cosmic to places Gnome didn’t want to go) they were dropping the Gnome base in favor of building their own original desktop using the Rust programming language (proving that Neil Young was right when he said that Rust never sleeps).

It's FOSS:

Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS Review: Is This the Linux Distro of the Year 2025?

The wait for Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS with COSMIC has been a long one. After numerous alpha and beta releases spanning quite some time, we finally have a clear look at what System76's hard work has resulted in.

Based on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, this Pop!_OS release is powered by Linux kernel 6.17, bringing with it a polished desktop experience, expanded hardware support, and many other enhancements.

UbuntuHandbook:

Pop!_OS 24.04 Released with COSMIC Desktop & ARM Computers Support | UbuntuHandbook

After more than two months of Beta testing, System76 finally announced the release of Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS.

As the version number indicates, Pop!_OS 24.04 is based on Ubuntu 24.04, but features Linux Kernel 6.17 and its new COSMIC desktop environment.

How-To Geek:

COSMIC desktop for Linux exits beta with Pop!_OS 24.04

System76 has been working on its own desktop environment for Linux, called COSMIC, intended to fully replace GNOME Shell on the company's Pop!_OS distribution. Now, the COSMIC desktop environment has finally reached stable status.

Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS with COSMIC Desktop Environment Epoch 1 is now available, marking the official release of the new desktop after over a year of public testing. You can try it out today in Pop!_OS, and other distributions using COSMIC (like the Fedora spin) should have the latest version soon, if they don't already.

COSMIC is a customizable and modular desktop environment, with horizontal or vertical workspaces, tiled windows you can control with a mouse or keyboard shortcuts, and robust multi-monitor support with per-screen scaling. It's highly customizable, with multiple dock and panel options and the ability to build your own themes.