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My experience with elementary had a lot of the same warts. It looks nice and I want to like it but the packages are way too out of date, considering I was used

My experience with elementary had a lot of the same warts. It looks nice and I want to like it but the packages are way too out of date, considering I was used to using Arch and OSX with Homebrew. I just dont see why elementary cant just be a shell (DE) project instead of a full OS.

sacheendra 10y ago
The shell of elementary OS, called Pantheon, can be installed on Arch linux. https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pantheon https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pantheon
- wezm 10y ago
  I tried that and it doesn't look right because the elementary theme hasn't been updated for GTK 3.20/22. It only looks right on GTK 3.18.
  - rhodysurf 10y ago
    Yup... all because they use super outdated packages
tornadoboy55 10y ago
.. that's like saying 'why can't macOS just be a DE on top of Linux/BSD?' If you want something that's totally cohesive, centralization is the way to go. Having said that, there are definitely some major issues. One of the most contentious is not having a minimize button by default. Their reasoning is 'well if you close one of our apps, it resumes state when you start it up again, which is effectively the same as minimizing'. Not only do their apps not reliably resume state, most other apps don't support this, and their response is 'well that sucks.. but they should adjust their app to work with our specific distro gimmick kthxbai'. Another big one is multiple Window management: if I have 5 windows open of the same app and want to temporarily hide two of them, minimize accomplishes this easily. With Elementary, I have to pick which one I close last because that one will 'resume state'. Another baffling thing is them not using the 'global menu' in the menubar that Ubuntu (and macOS) have. The global menu is probably one of the main reasons people like macOS so much (even though they don't realize it).. you know that whatever app you're in, you can always find all actions in the menu bar. Preferences are always under $APPNAME, Print is always under File, Hiding and viewing interface elements is always under View, etc. Their (Ubuntu's as well) installer also doesn't use home partition encryption by default, nor does it offer an easy way to set up LVM on LUKS. This is a problem with most distros though.. with macOS having your disk FileVaulted is extremely straightforward and simple. It's literally flipping a switch. And the use of it is simple as well: Boot up, enter user password (which is also the encryption password) -> decrypt disk and login. They also do some funky stuff to the Ubuntu installer since installing 16.04LTS gives me working Wi-Fi on my MBP 2015 Retina, but installing Elementary OS (which is based on the same 16.04LTS) doesn't even detect my Wi-Fi chip. The firmware and driver are there, so it should work (doubly so because same base distro), but it simply doesn't.
- rhodysurf 10y ago
  I guess my point is that I don't see Elementary as doing anything that really requires an entire new OS. If they did enough special things it would be worth it. I totally agree on Global menu. I use Gnome and I miss global menu dearly
rcarmo 10y ago
I've been quite happy with Elementary as a development environment, and use Docker to host both dev tools and packages I need. I've also had zero issues with installing .debs, including Slack, so I wonder if the problems the OP faced were just lack of familiarity (I had no troubles when switching from Fedora to Ubuntu a long while ago, and am constantly amazed at how Linux folk tend to have visceral reactions to different package managers and distros).

sacheendra 10y ago

The shell of elementary OS, called Pantheon, can be installed on Arch linux. https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pantheon https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pantheon

wezm 10y ago
I tried that and it doesn't look right because the elementary theme hasn't been updated for GTK 3.20/22. It only looks right on GTK 3.18.
- rhodysurf 10y ago
  Yup... all because they use super outdated packages

tornadoboy55 10y ago

.. that's like saying 'why can't macOS just be a DE on top of Linux/BSD?' If you want something that's totally cohesive, centralization is the way to go. Having said that, there are definitely some major issues. One of the most contentious is not having a minimize button by default. Their reasoning is 'well if you close one of our apps, it resumes state when you start it up again, which is effectively the same as minimizing'. Not only do their apps not reliably resume state, most other apps don't support this, and their response is 'well that sucks.. but they should adjust their app to work with our specific distro gimmick kthxbai'. Another big one is multiple Window management: if I have 5 windows open of the same app and want to temporarily hide two of them, minimize accomplishes this easily. With Elementary, I have to pick which one I close last because that one will 'resume state'. Another baffling thing is them not using the 'global menu' in the menubar that Ubuntu (and macOS) have. The global menu is probably one of the main reasons people like macOS so much (even though they don't realize it).. you know that whatever app you're in, you can always find all actions in the menu bar. Preferences are always under $APPNAME, Print is always under File, Hiding and viewing interface elements is always under View, etc. Their (Ubuntu's as well) installer also doesn't use home partition encryption by default, nor does it offer an easy way to set up LVM on LUKS. This is a problem with most distros though.. with macOS having your disk FileVaulted is extremely straightforward and simple. It's literally flipping a switch. And the use of it is simple as well: Boot up, enter user password (which is also the encryption password) -> decrypt disk and login. They also do some funky stuff to the Ubuntu installer since installing 16.04LTS gives me working Wi-Fi on my MBP 2015 Retina, but installing Elementary OS (which is based on the same 16.04LTS) doesn't even detect my Wi-Fi chip. The firmware and driver are there, so it should work (doubly so because same base distro), but it simply doesn't.

rhodysurf 10y ago
I guess my point is that I don't see Elementary as doing anything that really requires an entire new OS. If they did enough special things it would be worth it. I totally agree on Global menu. I use Gnome and I miss global menu dearly

rcarmo 10y ago

I've been quite happy with Elementary as a development environment, and use Docker to host both dev tools and packages I need. I've also had zero issues with installing .debs, including Slack, so I wonder if the problems the OP faced were just lack of familiarity (I had no troubles when switching from Fedora to Ubuntu a long while ago, and am constantly amazed at how Linux folk tend to have visceral reactions to different package managers and distros).