5. Pop!_OS
In this chapter, you’ll learn how to install Pop!_OS, explore the COSMIC desktop, customize your system, and manage apps with the COSMIC Store.
If you've been following this series, you've seen distros designed around familiarity - Ubuntu's approachable GNOME, Linux Mint's Windows-like Cinnamon, Zorin OS's layout switcher, and elementary OS's macOS-inspired elegance. They all do a great job of easing you into Linux.
Pop!_OS takes a different approach entirely.
Built by the American Linux computer manufacturer System76, Pop!_OS isn't designed to look like Windows or macOS.
It's built for people who want to get things done, such as developers, makers, power users, and anyone who wants a fast, focused, and deeply customizable Linux system that gets out of your way and lets you work.
And with the December 2025 release of Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS, that vision just took its biggest leap yet.
What is Pop!_OS?
Pop!_OS is a free, open-source Linux distribution based on Ubuntu, developed and maintained by System76 - a company based in Colorado, USA, that has been building Linux computers for over 20 years.
Pop!_OS was first released in 2017, initially as a polished Ubuntu experience for System76 hardware, which quickly gained a following far beyond System76 customers, thanks to its excellent out-of-the-box NVIDIA support, thoughtful keyboard-driven workflow, and strong developer tooling.
For years, it ran a customized GNOME desktop, but in 2021, System76 announced something ambitious: they would build an entirely new desktop environment from scratch, written in the Rust programming language, called COSMIC (Computer Operating System Main Interface Components).
Three years in development, COSMIC made its stable debut with Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS in December 2025, and it's unlike anything else in the Linux world.
Some of the reasons people love Pop!_OS include:
- Purpose-Built for Productivity - Keyboard-first workflow, powerful window tiling, and workspace management designed around how developers actually work.
- Outstanding GPU Support - Separate ISOs for AMD/Intel and NVIDIA hardware, with automatic hybrid graphics switching for laptops.
- COSMIC Desktop - A brand-new, Rust-based desktop environment built from the ground up, which is fast, modular, and deeply customizable.
- Strong Developer Tooling - Built-in support for TensorFlow, CUDA, and Python environments out of the box.
- Free & Open Source - Pop!_OS and COSMIC are completely free to download and use.
- Active Community - A growing, enthusiastic community of developers and Linux users.
For this guide, we'll be using Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS, which was released on December 11, 2025, built on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, and shipping with the first stable release of the COSMIC Desktop Environment (Epoch 1).