Pop!_OS

Reader supplied reviews for Pop!_OS Average rating 7.9 from 319 review(s) Please select a rating in the range of 1-10. Please write at least a few sentences about the distribution while limiting your review to 4080 characters. What are your thoughts on Pop!_OS? Please include a few pros and a few cons, along with your overall impression of the operating system. Our FAQ page has tips on writing a good mini-review. Version: -- 24.0422.0421.1021.0420.1020.0419.1019.0418.1018.0417.10 Rating:    -- 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 out of 10 Your review (minimum 250 words): Past reviews - sort by: DateVotes Version: 24.04 Rating: 9 Date: 2026-03-12 Country: United States Votes: 0 Wow, just three months after the initial Epoch 1 release, virtually all my issues (but two) have been resolved. The progress being made in this desktop environment is really impressive. Pop! is certainly ready for use as a daily driver ... as they refine the interface, add features, and fix bugs. What isn't working for me? (1) Large file transfers -- say, 80 GB of miscellaneous files and images from a memory stick to the hard drive -- are noticeably slower than the Gnome alternative. In addition, the transfer may or may not finish, topping out at 99 percent and seemingly dying. There are some tweaks to be made there still. And (2) I'd love to move the window controls the the left, a la macOS. That's on the roadmap, so I know it'll get there eventually, but the sooner the better. Anyway, good job System76. I look forward to years of improvements. Was this review helpful? Yes No Version: 22.04 Rating: 5 Date: 2026-03-05 Country: Spain Votes: 5 We had a good working relationship for about two years, but there are some fundamental weaknesses in POP!_OS that are unacceptable for more experienced Linux users. + Nvidia (RTX 4060 laptop) worked flawlessly from day one (NVidia ISO) + Gnome/X11 never caused any problems + Game Ready with Steam (flatpak) + Good system stability - Nvidia driver updates within a Gnome/X11 session have been (at least for me) guaranteed computer crashes. Fix: log out from Gnome-session, switch to a different TTY (virtual console) by using Strg + Alt + F1 (to F6), login there, update, logout, back to the Gnome login greeter, login and you're fine - System76 delivers updates that render the system irreparably unusable (welcome to 'dummy output' hell for Intel PCM sound, unfixable on my Tangfong barebone laptop). Thanks system76 for delivering that garbage to my system. - Outdated software - The Pop!_Shop is unstable and contains too much non-functional software - Somewhat active community forums are only found on 'walled garden' social media like Reddit and Discord For various reasons, I will dump 22.04 as soon as possible and won't switch to 24.04, but will look for a different distribution that better suits my personal needs. Maybe I will go back to Arch Linux (+10 years with mixed experiences) or will give NixOS a try. Anyhow. My experiences don't have to be your experiences. Have fun on your personal journey if you want to try POP!_OS. Was this review helpful? Yes No Version: 24.04 Rating: 9 Date: 2026-02-27 Country: United States Votes: 5 This is in my personal opinion one of the top three distros for former W10 users who are new to Linux and not interested in learning Linux's CLI right away and for anyone who is having trouble deciding which distro fulfills their needs. Installation is extremely user-friendly and the whole distro as whole is very straight forward and is a great starting point even if you do decide to hop to something else in the future. The COSMIC desktop environment is the main feature that defines Pop (the current description above as of me writing this is misleading; since Q1 of this year Pop is no longer based on GNOME, but on System76's own, Rust-based/Iced-based DE). It is VERY fast and responsive to inputs. It feels like it can actually keep up with me. The settings menu is beautifully simplistic in design: options are arranged horizontally across the window within a vertical list you can scroll through. No vague categories, endless hierarchies you have to click through every time to find a feature you need to change, and pop-ups full of boxes for check marks to enable obscure settings you have no idea about. It even has a search box to send you to your setting faster. However, its simplicity is partially due to the fact that as of February COSMIC is unfortunately very under-cooked in terms of advanced settings, which other DE's have. HDR support for example is not yet available (though it is on their roadmap). The COSMIC store is equally as easy to use. Just look through the categories or search manually for what application you want, and choose the package format you want for that application. On the bottom you can find the Updates section, which allows you to update your Flatpaks and Pop itself. In early January, I suffered issues with COSMIC Store freezing, but this bug eventually stopped happening altogether. Do not be misled by the Debian tag, Pop gets very frequent system updates from its developers, it is much more comparable to Ubuntu's update frequency (and in fact still draws from Ubuntu's repos), but even more proactively. The niche Pop! serves as a whole is to be an all-rounder that can be turned into whatever you want it to be on the fly. If you want your desktop layout and form factor to look and work a certain way that suits you specifically, or to resemble a different DE really, there is almost always a setting for that. I'd say it shines primarily as a workstation distro for ADHD maniacs like me, but can also be used for gaming with no problems whatsoever. And on a related note I need to talk about how amazing the workspaces are. Because Pop has been the ideal compact, multitasking, keyboard-centric OS for me. So if you are into that, then Pop is for you, but if not then it is probably still okay anyway. Need to stack programs on the same window together? Just press a macro. Want them to tile into appropriate corners instantly? Just press the macro. Want to resize and relocate applications and toss them into different workspaces so you can subdivide your workflow on top of your already obsessively organized and subdivided workflow? Just press the macros. Only own one monitor and still want to enjoy using your computer as much as everyone else? Pop lets you do that. As for the cons I will say that Pop is a particularly heavy distro in the RAM usage department, so I would strongly recommend you don't try to revive an old laptop with this or install on a device with only 4GB of RAM. You will not have a great time. This is not an lightweight distro. Best to look elsewhere. Other than that, this is an exceptionally clean, professional looking distro and it does everything I need it to do, but if you are one of those people who needs more besides "just works", Pop might not live up to your expectations. It's already excellent, but it will be more viable for a larger selection of people once they actually get around to fleshing out this OS with every feature people have been asking for. Was this review helpful? Yes No See all 319 reader reviews of Pop!_OS...