COSMIC Epoch 1.10 Fixes the 1fps Launcher — GPU Acceleration, Tablet Mapping, and More

by Geth Author

System76 released COSMIC Epoch 1.10 on October 8, 2026, two weeks after version 1.9. The headline change is straightforward but significant: the COSMIC Launcher now uses GPU-accelerated rendering by default, powered by WGPU.

Earlier builds of the Launcher used a software renderer that performed badly on many systems — users reported scroll rates dropping to roughly 1 frame per second on hardware that should have had no trouble. That problem is now fixed at the source rather than worked around.

What's New in 1.10

Beyond the Launcher, the release includes a handful of quality-of-life improvements across the desktop:

  • Drawing tablet support: Tablets can now be mapped to specific displays in a multi-monitor setup, which was a notable gap for artists and designers who use COSMIC on workstations.
  • cosmic-store screenshot gallery: The app store viewer now shows screenshot galleries and caches preview images, making it easier to evaluate software before installing.
  • Terminal tab movement: The COSMIC Terminal gained keyboard-driven tab reordering, a small but frequently requested feature from power users.
  • Compositor cursor auto-hide: The cursor now hides automatically while you're typing, reducing distraction during text-heavy work. The implementation was overhauled from an earlier version that had timing issues.
  • Cleaner initial setup: The WiFi configuration page in the setup wizard no longer appears on systems without a WiFi adapter, which was a source of confusion on desktop machines.

Where COSMIC Stands

COSMIC is System76's Rust-based desktop environment, built as a replacement for GNOME on their Pop!_OS distribution. It hit its 1.0 release earlier this year and has been shipping incremental updates on a roughly two-week cadence since then.

The project is notable for being one of the few serious attempts to build a Linux desktop environment entirely in Rust, and for its strict contributor policies — including a ban on LLM-generated code contributions that System76 announced in early October. The team argues that AI-generated contributions tend to introduce subtle bugs and shift maintenance burden onto human reviewers without providing proportional value.

The GPU-rendering fix in 1.10 addresses one of the more visible rough edges that users noticed after the 1.0 launch. The two-week release cadence means issues that would have waited months for a fix in a more traditional distribution cycle are being resolved continuously. For users on Pop!_OS who switched to COSMIC at 1.0, version 1.10 is a worthwhile update.