Grid workspace for the COSMIC compositor

Description and use

The COSMIC patch adds a 5×5 workspace grid with edge‑wrapping, intuitive gesture and keyboard navigation, a 2D grid overview, and safe install/rollback scripts.

Problem

COSMIC’s default linear workspace layout made navigation cumbersome; users needed a bounded 5×5 grid with edge‑wrapping and intuitive gesture controls.

Outcome

The patch adds a 5×5 grid workspace layout with edge‑wrapping, intuitive gesture and keyboard navigation, a 2D grid overview, and safe install/rollback procedures. No compositor crashes observed after a month of use.

Workflow

• Patch cosmic-comp and cosmic-workspaces to branch cosmic-grid
• Add optional workspace_grid config field in cosmic-comp-config
• Map 4‑finger swipe and Super+Arrow to grid deltas (±cols or ±1)
• Compute idx = row * cols + col over existing Vec
• Emit set_workspace_coordinates with row, col
• Render 2D grid sidebar in cosmic-workspaces
• Build patched binaries with scripts/build.sh
• Install with scripts/install.sh (backup stock, install patched, hold packages)
• Rollback with scripts/rollback.sh if needed

Evidence

The patch branch cosmic-grid on cosmic-comp carries two commits on top of the pin: dbe7678 and 54f7719

Source

I've been running this grid as my daily driver for about a month now. Navigation genuinely beats Alt+Tab

Source

The build and rollback story was designed for safety from day one. scripts/install.sh backs up the stock binaries to stock/, installs the patched binaries to /usr/bin/, and runs apt-mark hold on both packages

Source