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elementaryOS seemed to be angling more directly for that market (Ubuntu was always quite Mac-ish, at least up until Unity, but still very much looked to attract

elementaryOS seemed to be angling more directly for that market (Ubuntu was always quite Mac-ish, at least up until Unity, but still very much looked to attract a more general userbase - e.g. targeting installers at Windows users, etc.), but I think elementaryOS is probably a bit young to take full advantage right now. They may have gone a little too far on the "simplicity" side for power users coming from MacOS.

peatmoss 10y ago
I always felt that ElementaryOS was a skin-deep clone. I'm not sure that having a little bit different UX is the reason Ubuntu hasn't achieved blessed third OS status from the Adobes of the world. I think it has more to do with there not being a unified homogenous target to code for. If the FOSS world wanted to reimplement our own Mac, I've always thought that doubling down on GNUStep would have made the most sense. If Linux + GNUstep were closer to source-compatible with the Mac, with a comparable desktop environment to boot, more of those apps would have likely made the jump. Even that I'm not sure about now though. Had GNUstep been a viable daily-use platform back in the early 2000s when OSX was ascendant, I think we'd have a different landscape today. Now with the web dominating so much, native app compatibility is less important than it was. You just need to be a big enough target for commercial vendors to care about. With luck, Chromebooks will help sort out the hardware compatibility issues as more and more of the chipsets are mainlined into the Linux kernel. In terms of software compatibility, I don't know, maybe desktop Android apps will ultimately be what we coalesce around.
rcarmo 10y ago
I'm good with it. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12830761 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12830761 for more. Then again, I am not the typical macOS power user and just want a good, stable UNIX with an interface I don't (ever) have to tweak.
dkuntz2 10y ago
What do you mean by "up until Unity"? Unity has always looked like a macOS desktop clone, from having the menu bar always on top, and integrating a dock by default. Unity seems significantly closer to the macOS desktop compared to the old Gnome 2 setup.
- lucideer 10y ago
  Unity still has its macish elements, true, but I think the post-Unity GTK+ and general in-default-app experiences tended to move toward "doing their own thing", rather than aping Windows or macOS. Also, while the Unity side dock is iconified like macOS', I think it's functionality more different than the old Gnome2 bottom panel was from the macOS dock. All subjective I guess.

peatmoss 10y ago

I always felt that ElementaryOS was a skin-deep clone. I'm not sure that having a little bit different UX is the reason Ubuntu hasn't achieved blessed third OS status from the Adobes of the world. I think it has more to do with there not being a unified homogenous target to code for. If the FOSS world wanted to reimplement our own Mac, I've always thought that doubling down on GNUStep would have made the most sense. If Linux + GNUstep were closer to source-compatible with the Mac, with a comparable desktop environment to boot, more of those apps would have likely made the jump. Even that I'm not sure about now though. Had GNUstep been a viable daily-use platform back in the early 2000s when OSX was ascendant, I think we'd have a different landscape today. Now with the web dominating so much, native app compatibility is less important than it was. You just need to be a big enough target for commercial vendors to care about. With luck, Chromebooks will help sort out the hardware compatibility issues as more and more of the chipsets are mainlined into the Linux kernel. In terms of software compatibility, I don't know, maybe desktop Android apps will ultimately be what we coalesce around.

rcarmo 10y ago

I'm good with it. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12830761 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12830761 for more. Then again, I am not the typical macOS power user and just want a good, stable UNIX with an interface I don't (ever) have to tweak.

dkuntz2 10y ago

What do you mean by "up until Unity"? Unity has always looked like a macOS desktop clone, from having the menu bar always on top, and integrating a dock by default. Unity seems significantly closer to the macOS desktop compared to the old Gnome 2 setup.

lucideer 10y ago
Unity still has its macish elements, true, but I think the post-Unity GTK+ and general in-default-app experiences tended to move toward "doing their own thing", rather than aping Windows or macOS. Also, while the Unity side dock is iconified like macOS', I think it's functionality more different than the old Gnome2 bottom panel was from the macOS dock. All subjective I guess.