What is likely the most anticipated desktop Linux launch in years kicks off on December 11 — are you ready to see the new Cosmic DE?
I could be wrong, but from where I sit I think that the upcoming release of Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS might be one of the most anticipated releases of a Linux distribution in ages. There are a couple of reasons for this. For one thing, in just eight years, Pop! has become one of the most popular desktop Linux distro’s, which is always comfortably placed in the top 10 on Distrowatch’s Page Hit Ranking.
The other reason — perhaps the biggest reason for this particular release — is Cosmic, the distro’s desktop environment which is developed in house.
It wouldn’t be hyperbolic to say that all eyes are on Cosmic as the next version of Pop! is being rolled out onto the launch pad for its expected launch in December. The launch date was announced this week by Carl Richell, the head honcho (actually, the founder and CEO) at the Linux-focused computer maker System76, which is the company behind both the distribution and its desktop.
“Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS and COSMIC Epoch 1 will be release December 11th, 2025,” he posted on Wednesday on the platform formerly known as Twitter.
Putting Pop! in Sync With Upstream
In the tweet, he also promised that after this release, Pop! and Cosmic users will be able to predict with some certainty the dates of future releases — which will be tied to future releases of Ubuntu, Pop!’s upstream source: “Future Pop!_OS releases, starting with Pop!_OS 26.04 LTS, will now align with the Ubuntu LTS release timing (approximately two weeks after the Ubuntu release date).”
That means there’ll be a quick turnaround between 24.04’s December launch and the next version, which should be released in early May according to this new timeline. The current latest and greatest version of Pop! was released on April 25, 2022, a whopping year-and-a-half ago.
Blame It on Cosmic
If you’re wondering why such a long wait for this version of Pop!, you can probably blame it on the Cosmic desktop environment, which became quite a hit in the Linux arena upon its initial release as a Gnome-based DE in Pop!_OS 21.04 which was released in 2021.
Just as Pop! hit the street as an instant winner when it was first released in 2017, Cosmic began developing a devoted following as soon as it was publicly available. December’s release is especially anticipated, because after a snag in which the Sys76 folks discovered they couldn’t take the DE where they wanted using Gnome as its backbone, they started building an all new version of Cosmic from scratch, using the Rust programming language. This version finally saw it’s alpha release in August 2024, and its first beta release on September 25, 2025.
Now that the countdown clock is running, it means that all that’s left is for all of us to get through Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday. After that, we get an early digital Christmas present from System76.
Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux
24.04 in December not 26.04 > 26.04 in May 2026
3.5 years since Pop 22 and 1.5 years since 24.04