FWIW, I have been running regular Pop using the Cosmic Store for a while now. It's nice and snappy.
Seconded, the Cosmic Store is a massive improvement... I do wish they'd make flathub vs packages slightly more obvious of a selector though.
> The bundled Pop!Shop app store is the notable turd in the pool, but it's optional.
I agree. It’s the second most irritating thing. I am glad that I have written my tiny `update` bash script, which takes care of installing all updates (apt, flatpack, brew, etc.) without touching "app store".
I believe the bundled Pop!_Shop originates from Elementary OS and suffers from issues with proper background job processing. I find all those “store” apps for GNOME to be poorly written, often displaying incorrect numbers of updates, and generally slow.
When I have had trouble (e.g. stuck updates, other apt woes, Bluetooth weirdness), System76's help pages have been great. If they don't cover it, I just search +Ubuntu and the advice I find almost always works.
I have no idea what WM or DE or anything I'm running, it's just here and it stays out of the way so there's no situation where I would be confronted by having to know its name. That's a bit annoying (I did finally find out that "Files" is actually "Nautilus", which helped when searching to understand some behaviors) in that it limits my ability to meaningfully search for, or change, these details, but I think if it was a big deal, I'd figure it out. It's just fine.
That I can run an OS for 5 years and not know my WM or DE, is pretty cool, IMHO.