Switched daily driver OS and gained COSMIC desktop and better hardware support
I ran Linux Mint for four years. It worked great, never gave me trouble, and I never had a real reason to leave. But when System76 announced COSMIC, a completely custom desktop environment built from scratch in Rust, I decided it was time to make a move.
The Problem#
Mint is rock solid. Cinnamon is polished and gets out of your way. But after four years it started feeling like maintenance mode. I wanted something with more momentum behind it and a desktop environment that felt like it was being built for the future rather than maintaining the past.
COSMIC is System76’s answer to that. A modern compositor, a tiling window manager built in, and a design philosophy that prioritizes keyboard driven workflows. It was enough to get me to make the jump.
The Goal#
A clean switch to Pop!_OS with COSMIC, losing as little productivity time as possible and not carrying over configuration baggage from Mint that would cause problems down the road.
The Build#
The Investigation#
My personal data lives on a secondary SSD and on a shared drive mapped from my Unraid server, so there was nothing to migrate in the traditional sense. The OS drive was fair game to wipe completely.
The install process is covered in detail in the Pop!_OS installation tutorial. The short version is: download the ISO, flash it to USB, disable Secure Boot in the BIOS, boot from USB, and do a clean install with full disk encryption enabled.
What Was Different Coming From Mint#
The core Linux experience is the same. The terminal, the file system, package management, and everything under the hood behaves the way you would expect. The differences were all at the desktop level.
The app store. Mint uses the Software Manager. Pop!_OS has the Pop!_Shop, built on GNOME Software under the hood. It felt different enough that I had to spend a few minutes finding things I was used to.
Powering off. On Mint the power options are in the bottom left corner. On Pop!_OS they are in the top right system menu. Small thing, but muscle memory is real and I caught myself looking in the wrong place for the first week.
Keyboard shortcuts. Some shortcuts that were second nature on Mint do not exist or are mapped differently in COSMIC. Super key behavior, workspace switching, and window snapping all needed a mental reset. Nothing was difficult to relearn, just required adjustment.
Setting Up After Install#
A few things needed configuring after the clean install.
Mapping the Unraid share. My primary data lives on a network share on my Unraid server. I mapped it through the Files app by going to Other Locations and entering the SMB path. This gets me back to my files without keeping anything critical on the local drive.
Power profiles. I set High Performance when plugged in and Balanced on battery through Settings > Power and Battery. Pop!_OS does not switch automatically so checking this when I plug in or unplug is now a habit.
Updates. Ran sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade -y immediately after install to get everything current, then checked the Pop!_Shop for any System76-specific updates.
Results#
No regrets. Pop!_OS is fast, stable, and COSMIC is genuinely exciting to use. The tiling support alone changed how I work with multiple windows. Coming from Mint it felt like upgrading from something that worked to something that worked and had a clear vision for where it was going.
What I Would Do Differently#
I would set up a proper backup solution for the OS drive before wiping it rather than after. My data is safe on Unraid so the risk was low, but if something had gone wrong during the install I would have had no way to roll back. The backup situation for the local drive is still something I need to sort out properly.
What Is Next#
COSMIC is still in active development and gets meaningful updates regularly. The tiling workflow is already solid but there are rough edges in the settings app and some GNOME applications do not feel fully at home in COSMIC yet. I expect those to smooth out over the next few releases. For now it is my daily driver and I have no plans to go back.