Pop!_OS 24.04: Linux Distro with New COSMIC Desktop

Pop!_OS 24.04 Linux distro review, including extensive coverage of its new COSMIC Epoch 1 desktop environment, and driver support for older NVIDIA cards.

You can download Pop!_OS 24.04 from System76: https://system76.com/

If you enjoy this video, you may be interested in some of my other distro reviews, including:

Ubuntu 24.04: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNK-tmMz618

Linux Mint 22: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qZI6i21jB4

Zorin OS 18: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nplI2lvKu94

And you can find all of my Linux distro reviews and guides here: https://www.explainingcomputers.com/linux_videos.html

BOOTING FROM USB DRIVE
Exactly how you boot from a USB drive does I’m afraid depend on your particular computer. Often a boot menu can be accessed by pressing a specific key when you power-on, which may be F12, F11, F10 or Esc. And if you can bring up such a menu, you can simply select the USB drive.

Alternatively, you can enter the BIOS/UEFI, again by pressing an appropriate key on boot, which is commonly F2, Del or Esc. Once in the BIOS you can hopefully find a setting that will change the boot order to have USB first, so that your computer will always first try to boot from an inserted USB drive. This said, in the BIOS, there is also often an “Exit” or similar menu (usually on the end on the right) which offers a “boot override” facility. And this allows you to select to boot from a USB drive without having to make any BIOS changes. So here you would select your inserted USB drive, and your computer would then happily boot from it.

Sadly, UEFI/BIOS settings and USB boot configurations are not standardized, so I cannot give you a definitive set of instructions here. But I do provide more guidance in my video on “PC BIOS Settings”, where you can see various examples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezubjTO7rRI

TURNING OFF SECURE BOOT
To install Pop!_OS 24.04, you must turn off secure boot in your PC’s BIOS/UEFI, which you can enter as above. And here, you may have to hunt around for the secure boot setting, although it is often found in a section such as “security”, or indeed “boot”. Again you can see more in my “PC BIOS Settings” video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezubjTO7rRI

More videos on computing and related topics can be found at:
http://www.youtube.com/@ExplainingComputers

And more videos on film and other making, plus retro tech, can be found on my Christopher Barnatt channel: http://www.youtube.com/@ChristopherBarnatt

Chapters:
00:00 Titles & Intro
00:42 System76 (includes ISO download)
05:40 Installation
09:26 COSMIC
19:35 Very Cool (desktop customization)
21:33 Legacy NVIDIA GPU Support
24:45 A Fantastic Contribution

#PopOS #Pop!_OS #COSMIC #Epoch1 #Linux #ExplainingComputers