Notable changes:
- Tracking improvements. For example, if you use the launcher to launch an application and then switch workspaces, it will still launch in the workspace you opened it from;
- Supported the ext-session-lock protocol, which authenticates the user and informs the compositor when the session should be unlocked
- XDG activation and DBus activation support
- work on HDR
- Ongoing work to package COSMIC on NixOS: tracking issue
Well GTK does not have theming anymore, though it still needs some way to configure fonts and icon theme.
It technically still does if you use their theming app “Gradience”. I use it currently on my laptop. Pretty nifty little app. It still doesn’t theme the shell (the panel, the password box… etc), but it does theme even flatpaks most of the time
Iirc Gradience punches a hole in the flatpak sandbox for xdg-config/gtk-4.0, which usually is in .config. This makes it work and isn’t a security problem.
Gnome Shell is unaffected because it doesn’t use GTK.
What does it use then?
It uses a custom UI framework, St, using renderer primitives built into the compositor, mutter. Whereas COSMIC is using the same libcosmic library inside the compositor, applets, and desktop applications. Thanks due to our Smithay client toolkit being used to provide a renderer for iced which supports the Wayland layer shell protocol.
So that means themes will cover everything and things will be unified, unlike how the shell is always dark on gnome? (I know they’re working on a light mode).
Yes, this can already be seen when configuring a personal theme in the Desktop > Appearances page in COSMIC Settings. Compositor elements, applets, the login and lock screens, and COSMIC applications automatically adjust in realtime to the configuration changes.