In this clip I show the window switcher. It was actually that clip that motivated my post, because I felt really dumb not being able to select the history of open windows.

edit: I didn’t read closely enough, I am surprised too. It’s given me the impression that those developing for it are maybe not using it as their primary DE. Though, then again, later in this post, I do also admit that I haven’t missed it as much as I expected.

I surprisingly haven’t missed it that much. It’s just when trying to alternate through windows with a keyboard that it becomes very obvious that it’s missing. I think I just have different habits from using Windows , because I don’t know how they made the decision for a tiling window manager but didn’t already add a previous window shortcut. I don’t know, maybe there’s like something more advanced they use?

I don’t know.

edit: I don’t actually have that much bad to state. It’s an alpha version, I shouldn’t expect it to be feature complete. I like that I can write rust for interacting with Wayland, and I personally think I should just focus on contributing instead of writing criticism. I don’t really know if there are other rust attempts at a Cosmic like DE or operating system like Redox.

Action::SwapWindow => {
    let current_output = seat.active_output();
    let mut shell = self.common.shell.write().unwrap();

    let workspace = shell.active_space_mut(&current_output);
    if workspace.get_fullscreen().is_some() {
        return; // TODO, is this what we want? Maybe disengage fullscreen instead?
    }

    let keyboard_handle = seat.get_keyboard().unwrap();
    if let Some(focus) = keyboard_handle.current_focus() {
        if let Some(descriptor) = workspace.node_desc(focus) {
            let grab = SwapWindowGrab::new(seat.clone(), descriptor.clone());
            drop(shell);
            keyboard_handle.set_grab(self, grab, serial);
            let mut shell = self.common.shell.write().unwrap();
            shell.set_overview_mode(
                Some(Trigger::KeyboardSwap(pattern, descriptor)),
                self.common.event_loop_handle.clone(),
            );
        }
    }
}

I can’t immediately tell what that is doing, but I don’t think it’s the last window.

I think it’s probably better to just focus on saving the active focussed window history from the compositer. It’s definitely known, they highlight the active window. Then, the alt+tab switcher could just use that history. I just have wanted to focus on other things besides trying to submit pull requests for this type of thing. I haven’t missed it that bad.

I just took a video earlier of myself switching windows and felt really dumb doing it.

It does, I went and checked. I’ll have to continue to question my decision to continue to use Cosmic, I’m doubtful the window switcher for Mutter is compatible.

On Windows, “alt + tab” switches to the last active window first before moving through other applications. I found it helpful when I accidentally clicked off the focussed application. Is there a simple solution that has been made for Cosmic, Ubuntu, or another distro?

Focus follows cursor

Cursor follows focus

Thanks @BrodieOnLinux@mstdn.social

Just make a link post in the community. Don’t worry about the length, all that matters is if people like the content. There have been people who posted to /r/rust about starting sales for a book they just published that did really well with votes, so pay isn’t always related.

There’s lots of blog posts in /c/rust and /c/programming. Some of the blog posts in /c/rust can be really long. There was one today about async rust. There are also sometimes free book link posts.

Treating people like you want to be treated can be a decent way to evaluate yourself. Just make sure it’s relevant to the community. If there was a mistake, don’t worry about it, stuff is removed all the time in other communities and subs on other websites, and you didn’t do anything wrong.

It does work, it’s just complicated to setup.

In that picture, I’m using KDE applications that are flatpaks for Cosmic Desktop on PopOS with a Kvantum theme. I made a longer post here when I was searching for instructions for how to complete this recently.

After my experience, I don’t really know what the best solution is for setting it up. I guess it would be nice if the major platform applications for like KDE were supported for dark mode by default on the DE. I don’t know, it really bothered me though.

I forgot to say, it’s also possible to use Kvantum with KDE applications that are flatpaks.

I just had to set the theme to Kvantum in the KDE Settings. I also noticed that the theme works slightly better if the platform theme on KDE applications is exported as QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEME=kde, though it’s not necessary. One other note, QT works by using plugins. I think the export is specifying the installed plugin. That was confusing to me, I was searching for config files but it’s a plugin to QT.

edit: When opening the KDE settings, I think I also had to change the export to QT_QPA_PLATFORM=kde temporarily so that KDE recognized that it was supposed to change configuration files on the filesystem. Otherwise, I think it expects that qt6ct is managing it, and it shouldn’t do anything. (because qt6ct was likely set earlier in in either the /etc/environment or in the ~/.profile)

I don’t remember it was a requirement or not. Just that I had to change it so that KDE Settings would use the theme when I opened it.

I finally managed to theme the org.kde.kweather flatpak, but I didn’t use qt6ct.

I just ended up doing

sudo apt install plasma-desktop

Then opening KDE Settings, changing the theme to Breeze Dark and then

sudo apt remove plasma-desktop
sudo apt autoremove

I think these steps should also work for other applications that were originally made for KDE, but I’m new to using Desktop Linux as a primary DE. I don’t really know if there are any consequences for doing this, but it seemed to work…

I think org.kde.kweather uses abnormal theming intended for KDE. I did a bunch of testing, I went back to older versions of it from months ago. I finally found a version that was compatible with Kvantum, and installed a package that makes Kvantum work with qt6ct.

The kvantum theme was mostly broken with org.kde.kweather in the older verison. And, then I found out that KDE applications read from ~/.config/kdeglobals, so I found a sample version and confirmed that I could in fact change the theme by creating the file. After this, I realized just using KDE to change the theme was probably going to be the easiest way forward, and that’s how I ended up at the above solution.

There’s some really high quality GNU software, like LibreOffice. Though, recently, when searching for a git client, I found it funny that some of the most frequently recommended git clients for Linux are proprietary, (GitKraken, Sublime) and that I couldn’t find a GNU version that works as well as it’s Windows counterpart.

I’m also not convinced the GNU license held up fully to it’s promises, Android is also open source but took 50% of the mobile market. (And companies like Amazon [outside of Google] have used it for their own devices, like the Kindle)

What about ChromeOS?

I agree, it’s usually much easier to install required dependencies with Linux. I also recently noticed that some stuff, like compiling Rust, is much faster, but I haven’t timed it.

After seeing this post I managed to get mixed themes with Kvantum between Qt5 and Qt6 with flatpaks. Though, kweather uses Qt6.

edit: I did also confirm it is possible to theme Qt6 applications with Kvantum on Cosmic.

There’s a discussion here about adding support to Ubuntu, but I just used the install instructions for Ubuntu directly from the Kvantum repository.

The QT theme can be set under cosmic. I think it’s some kind of issue with using qt6ct with flatpak. If I install qbittorrent through apt install qbittorrent then add

alias qbittorrent="export QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEME=qt6ct; /usr/bin/qbittorrent"

To my ~/.bashrc file, then I can launch qbittorrent with the settings from qt6ct when using qbittorrent from cosmic-term.

This doesn’t change qbittorrent in the applications launcher. I think that requires changing the .desktop file. I haven’t been able to determine how to launch qbittorrent with qt6ct with the version from flatpak yet.

edit: If this fails, it’s usually because qbittorrent was already running. I’m able to have it work consistently by opening the “System Monitor” and killing all processes under qbittorrent then laucnhing it from cosmic-term.

edit: I found out later that editing ~/.profile with exports is more frequently recommended. I haven’t tested it, but I just used the discouraged system wide /etc/environment file. This works for the other shortcut like ways to open files. The reason I used the /etc/environment was because I didn’t really care, and also wanted to fix the mouse and resolution issues I was having that I found very annoying.

export XCURSOR_SIZE=24
export QT_SCALE_FACTOR=1
export QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEME=qt6ct

I guess I might end facing consequences for it sometime? I don’t know, I think the worse I’m expecting is that it just applies automatically to new users, but I guess I’ll find out…

I finally looked at the source for kweather, and saw

    if (qEnvironmentVariableIsEmpty("QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEME")) {
        qputenv("QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEME", "kde");
    }

I tried

export QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEME=qt6ct

After installing qt6ct and configuring it. It didn’t work. I don’t really think this is going to be easily resolvable if it’s possible. The app looks mostly good, so I’m just not going to worry about it.

I’ve tried to switch to lots of different desktop engines and distributions. Cosmic Alpha is incomplete, but I like it more as a starting place than alternatives. I’ve been using it for at least a week now.

I don’t really like Gnome with Ubuntu. I’ve tried KDE with Fedora several times, but always break the theme somehow. The most sanest DE I’ve used is XFCE, which just seems too minimalist. PopOS with Cosmic at least starts off with drivers for a modern GPU, which I can’t say for Fedora KDE which has always required some level of using the terminal to finish the install for me.

Cosmic is in rust, it seems easy to understand and follow for me. I was able to pick of current libs from it, and start hacking on stuff, which I can’t say about other DE’s because the build process for them usually seems very complex. I think Cosmic is also written specifically for Wayland, so it avoids lots of issues that all of the other current DE’s face. (Which was a motivator in my decision to use it)

I like it. I think I’m going to continue using it. I’m just left wondering if the developers for it are using it as their primary DE, because I’m not 100% convinced.

I want to use the dark cosmic theme with kweather from flatpak. I’ve tried lots of stuff, but I don’t understand how to determine what is a valid theme from terminal, or how to add to use it with a flatpak.

Maybe share a GPU to different users of the same computer who are just using different monitors. This isn’t virtualization, it seems like it’s just workspaces created within workspaces, so it’s maybe capable of managing a workspace per monitor.

I think this community accepts posts from weeks, months, and even years older. I think it also accepts repeat articles. It’s just the format of the article makes it seem like it was published today, not months ago. It’s an ongoing legal case, and has progressed further from the the Verge’s reporting of the order from 06/24/2024.