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I swapped my favorite Linux desktop for System76's COSMIC alpha - and I have zero regrets

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Jack Wallen / Elyse Betters Picaro / ZDNET

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ZDNET's key takeaways

System76's COSMIC desktop will soon be in beta.

Even as an alpha release, COSMIC is impressive.

COSMIC is as fast as any Linux desktop I've experienced.

Alpha releases aren't to be used for any reason other than testing. Right?

That's the common opinion, and yet here I am, working on System76's COSMIC desktop as if it's in stable status.

It's not... and it shows.

Yes, I've experienced problems. For example, COSMIC does not like the Opera browser at all. In fact, when I first started writing this, I was using Opera, and it suffered from a memory leak, causing me to have to do a hard reboot. As soon as I logged in, I opened Zen Browser, and things are much better.

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