Pop!_OS 24.04 is finally here, and in this video I take an in-depth look at one of the most anticipated Linux desktop releases in years. After spending time with the new version, I’ll walk you through what’s changed, what works well, and whether this release is worth upgrading to.
This review covers the Pop!_OS 24.04 installation process, a first look at the brand-new COSMIC desktop environment, and a deep dive into the features that make Pop!_OS such a popular choice for desktop Linux users. COSMIC is no longer a set of GNOME extensions—this release introduces a completely new desktop built from the ground up, and I’ll show you how it performs in real-world use.
I also address one of the biggest questions surrounding this release: Is using Ubuntu 24.04 as the base a problem? We’ll talk about security updates, hardware support, kernel and driver backports, Flatpak support, and what this means for everyday users.
Whether you’re new to Linux, thinking about switching from Windows or macOS, or you’re a long-time Pop!_OS user wondering if this release lives up to the hype, this video will help you decide if Pop!_OS 24.04 is the right distro for you.
Pop!_OS 24.04 Review
Intro
Hello, and welcome back to Learn Linux TV!
In this article, we’re taking a look at Pop!_OS 24.04, which was released just last week as of the time I’m recording this. I’ve spent some time with it now, and I’m ready to share my thoughts. We’ll go over what’s new in this release, walk through the installation process, take a quick tour of the COSMIC desktop environment, and by the end of the article, I’ll help you decide whether or not this distro is right for you.
Pop!_OS has long been one of my favorite Linux distributions. It has an incredible attention to detail, and it’s packed with features that genuinely make using your computer more enjoyable. Things like automatic window tiling that makes better use of your screen space, a powerful app launcher that’s just one button press away, workspaces, mouse gestures—pretty much everything you’d expect from a modern Linux desktop.
And I always get excited when there’s a new Pop!_OS release to cover, but it’s been quite a while. The last time I reviewed this distro was back in April of 2022. That’s because there simply hasn’t been a new release since then—until now. Over the past couple of years, the Pop!_OS development team has been hard at work on something big: a brand-new desktop environment. In previous releases, Pop!_OS was built on top of GNOME, with custom tweaks and extensions that gave it its own personality. Now, that’s changed. The COSMIC desktop environment has arrived, and it’s the centerpiece of this release.
One thing that might be a bit confusing at first is the version number. 24.04 refers to April of 2024, and while this is technically a brand-new Pop!_OS release, it’s built on top of Ubuntu 24.04. Having a new version of Pop!_OS built on an older base might seem a little unusual, and you might be wondering whether that’s a problem in practice. Don’t worry—we’ll talk about that later in the article.
With that said, this is going to be a full review, so let’s dive in.
Distro Overview
First, let’s do a quick recap.
Pop!_OS has long been one of my favorite Linux distributions, and that’s because more than most distros, it focuses on the things that actually matter to desktop users. Hardware compatibility, ease of use, visual polish, and attention to detail are all areas where Pop!_OS has consistently stood out. This project has always been about the desktop first—it’s not a server-focused distro that happens to include a desktop version as an afterthought. Pop!_OS is built specifically for desktop users, and it shows.
Up until now, Pop!_OS has been based on the GNOME desktop environment, but heavily customized. Over the years, System76 added a huge number of tweaks and custom extensions, to the point where it barely resembled stock GNOME at all. And for a long time, that worked really well. But as the distro matured, it began to outgrow GNOME. Bugs and glitches started to creep in, likely because Pop!_OS was pushing GNOME in directions it wasn’t really designed for.
Take window tiling as an example. GNOME does technically support tiling, but it’s fairly limited. Pop!_OS added its own tiling system on top, overriding GNOME’s behavior and doing it much better. The same was true for panels and other desktop components. Over time, though, it started to feel like Pop!_OS and GNOME were occasionally working against each other, and some of GNOME’s limitations and quirks began to affect the overall experience.
That’s no longer the case. With Pop!_OS 24.04, we now have a brand-new desktop environment built entirely from the ground up. Pop!_OS is no longer a GNOME-based distro full of workarounds—it now stands on its own. This release marks the first production-ready version of the COSMIC desktop, written in Rust, and it’s genuinely impressive. It’s fast, stable, and it delivers all of the features that made Pop!_OS so popular in the first place. I’ll show off some of my favorite features in just a bit, but I’ll say this now: COSMIC is extremely well designed, and it’s already my favorite desktop environment.
What makes this even more impressive is the execution. Building a brand-new desktop environment from scratch is no small task. Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, famously attempted something similar with Unity 8 and ultimately abandoned it, returning to GNOME instead. System76, on the other hand, pulled it off—successfully delivering a modern desktop environment from the ground up, all while continuing to run a hardware business at the same time. That’s an incredible achievement.
And the results speak for themselves. Pop!_OS 24.04 is an excellent release and absolutely worth the wait. I’ll spend more time discussing the COSMIC desktop later in the article, but first, let’s take a quick detour and talk about the installation process.
Installation Process
And for the most part, the installer is pretty standard in this release and is probably the one thing that hasn’t seen as much change, at least not visually. Just like with previous releases, you’ll download an ISO image and write it to a flash drive, and once you boot your computer from it the installer will start within a minute or so. There’s a live environment you can use to test compatibility, and the installation process itself is just a matter of answering a handful of questions and within a few minutes, Pop OS is installed and ready to go.
Just like before, there’s two releases – a standard version, as well as an alternative version that’s built specifically for those of you that have an NVidia GPU. And this is great, because Nvidia can often be a pain on Linux, so having a version that’s custom tuned for Nvidia means that those of you that are gamers will have your own version that’s tweaked specifically for making the most of your hardware.
The installation process happens in two stages. The first will have you install the distribution itself, and once you boot into your installed environment for the first time, you’ll be asked a series of questions that will enable you to tweak a few more things before you start using it. After that, Pop OS will be installed and ready to go. For the most part though, if you’ve installed any other distro recently, the workflow with Pop OS is more or less the same. And that’s not a bad thing – the installer works and gets the distro installed, so you can’t really ask for more than that.
Once you do get it installed, you’ll be able to check out the brand-new COSMIC desktop. And that’s what we’re going to do in the next section, where I’ll give you a quick tour.
Older 24.04 Base
Before I wrap up the article, I want to talk about something that’s been getting a lot of attention: the fact that Pop!_OS is built on top of Ubuntu 24.04, which at this point is starting to feel a little old. After all, we’re nearing the end of 2025, and this is a brand-new Pop!_OS release built on a base from 2024. So, is that a problem? Kind of—but mostly not.
First, from a security standpoint, this isn’t an issue at all. Ubuntu 24.04 is a long-term support release and continues to receive regular security updates. That means Pop!_OS users still get timely patches and fixes as they’re released, so there’s no downside here when it comes to security.
Another concern with older bases is package freshness. Typically, an older base means an older kernel and older drivers, which can impact hardware support. However, Pop!_OS avoids this problem by backporting newer kernels and drivers. So even though the distro is built on Ubuntu 24.04, it still supports modern hardware just fine.
When it comes to applications, some system packages may be older than what you’d find on rolling or fast-moving distributions. But in practice, this affects very few people. Pop!_OS supports Flatpak out of the box, which gives you access to up-to-date versions of most popular desktop applications. Between newer kernels, updated drivers, and Flatpak for apps, the older base really doesn’t hold Pop!_OS back in any meaningful way. You could argue that this approach creates extra work for the developers—but based on the results, they’re clearly handling it well.
There’s also a very practical reason for building Pop!_OS on Ubuntu 24.04. Ubuntu LTS releases support direct upgrades from one LTS to the next. That means when Ubuntu 26.04 is released, Pop!_OS users will have a clear and supported upgrade path. In that sense, using 24.04 as the foundation wasn’t just reasonable—it was necessary.
It’s also worth pointing out that the COSMIC desktop isn’t exclusive to Pop!_OS. System76 has made it available to other distributions, including Fedora. In fact, there’s been a Fedora COSMIC spin available for a few releases now. Fedora’s package base moves faster than Ubuntu’s, so if you run COSMIC on Fedora, you’ll actually have newer system packages—even though Fedora’s COSMIC release predates Pop!_OS 24.04.
Overall, while building Pop!_OS 24.04 on an older foundation might seem strange at first, it doesn’t matter in practice. You still get security updates, modern hardware support, and access to current applications. You’re not really missing out on anything. Sure, there’s going to be edge cases, but nothing that really dampens the experience.
One issue this does cause though is a bit of confusion. With “2024” in the version number, it’ll cause some users to assume Pop OS 24.04 is an older release, even though it’s brand new. And this is a bit confusing. This will no doubt cause discussions and debates on Reddit, and that could’ve been easily avoided had Pop OS adopted a new version numbering scheme.
But honestly, if nitpicking the version number is my biggest complaint, that’s a pretty good sign. Pop!_OS 24.04 is an excellent release, and even though Fedora remains my daily driver nowadays, the COSMIC desktop has become my daily driver. It’s thoughtfully designed, performs extremely well, and is packed with useful features. I have no hesitation recommending this distro to just about anyone—and it’s refreshing to see a Linux distribution that treats the desktop as a first-class citizen, rather than an afterthought.
