6 ms·

Every workstation in my office runs Elementary. Around half of our employees came to the company with little or no prior technical experience, and it's worked o

by _bxg1 7y ago

Every workstation in my office runs Elementary. Around half of our employees came to the company with little or no prior technical experience, and it's worked out pretty well.

leppr 7y ago
Would be interesting to know what kind of work is done on these machines.
- flatiron 7y ago
  My guess is “typing stuff into a website using chrome” which I guess elementary isn’t a terrible choice.
  - anderber 7y ago
    I do development on my elementary OS machine.
    - rehemiau 7y ago
      Does elementary still return their release codename instead of the base ubuntu release for `lsb_release -cs` in shell?
      - anderber 7y ago
        That's correct. They do show the Ubuntu build on the "About" section.
      - cassidyjames 7y ago
        Yes, because elementary OS is not Ubuntu. In the past, we carried newer versions of GTK or other core libraries, so pretending to be Ubuntu would actually do more harm than good. However, we have added an `--upstream` or `-u` flag to lsb_release like other Linux-based OSes to point to an upstream release if the downstream release is not supported. I believe this has been adopted for installers of tools like Ruby and Node.
        rehemiau 7y ago
        Makes sense, I hope all installer tools will start using it
  - cttet 7y ago
    What else do you need for an OS now? As a developer what I need is a browser a terminal and an IDE. Everything else just need to be fast and non-distracting.
- _bxg1 7y ago
  Half the people do Lisp development, half stay mostly within Chromium
  - mega-tux 7y ago
    great to see Lisp alive & kicking...what variant? Thoughts on Clojure?
saintPirelli 7y ago
Just last week I wrote a blog post about installing eOS on my SO's parents PC. They are not technical at all yet they have had (close to) no problem with switching from Windows to Linux thanks to eOS.
- eptcyka 7y ago
  I have the exact opposite experience - the microphone doesn't work, everything is incredibly slow, my SO is buying a Windows 10 licence this christmas. It's a shame, the user was just fine with Cinnamon on Debian 5 years ago, but that machine and software is no longer good enough.
  - zozbot234 7y ago
    "Linux" and "everything is incredibly slow" should not belong in the same sentence. Did you try installing an up-to-date Debian? Not sure if Debian packages Pantheon desktop already, but there are plenty of workable alternatives. For the microphone not working, you'd have to check what's going on in Pulseaudio and ALSA - both of these can be problematic at times.
    - Wowfunhappy 7y ago
      > Not sure if Debian packages Pantheon desktop already It does not, sadly. There is an unofficial third party repo but it’s very much unsupported by both Debian and elementary.
    - izacus 7y ago
      Slowness is usually a side effect of not having correct graphics drivers for 3d acceleration / composition. It seems that the poster doesn't have a Linux compatible laptop so eOS or any other distro won't work well.
      - zozbot234 7y ago
        > Slowness is usually a side effect of not having correct graphics drivers for 3d acceleration / composition. This is generally fixed by installing "non-free" firmware. Some distros may also work better than others, e.g. some hardware is better supported in Fedora than Debian or its derivatives.

by _bxg1 7y ago

Every workstation in my office runs Elementary. Around half of our employees came to the company with little or no prior technical experience, and it's worked out pretty well.

leppr 7y ago

Would be interesting to know what kind of work is done on these machines.

flatiron 7y ago
My guess is “typing stuff into a website using chrome” which I guess elementary isn’t a terrible choice.
- anderber 7y ago
  I do development on my elementary OS machine.
  - rehemiau 7y ago
    Does elementary still return their release codename instead of the base ubuntu release for `lsb_release -cs` in shell?
    - anderber 7y ago
      That's correct. They do show the Ubuntu build on the "About" section.
    - cassidyjames 7y ago
      Yes, because elementary OS is not Ubuntu. In the past, we carried newer versions of GTK or other core libraries, so pretending to be Ubuntu would actually do more harm than good. However, we have added an `--upstream` or `-u` flag to lsb_release like other Linux-based OSes to point to an upstream release if the downstream release is not supported. I believe this has been adopted for installers of tools like Ruby and Node.
      - rehemiau 7y ago
        Makes sense, I hope all installer tools will start using it
- cttet 7y ago
  What else do you need for an OS now? As a developer what I need is a browser a terminal and an IDE. Everything else just need to be fast and non-distracting.
_bxg1 7y ago
Half the people do Lisp development, half stay mostly within Chromium
- mega-tux 7y ago
  great to see Lisp alive & kicking...what variant? Thoughts on Clojure?

saintPirelli 7y ago

Just last week I wrote a blog post about installing eOS on my SO's parents PC. They are not technical at all yet they have had (close to) no problem with switching from Windows to Linux thanks to eOS.

eptcyka 7y ago
I have the exact opposite experience - the microphone doesn't work, everything is incredibly slow, my SO is buying a Windows 10 licence this christmas. It's a shame, the user was just fine with Cinnamon on Debian 5 years ago, but that machine and software is no longer good enough.
- zozbot234 7y ago
  "Linux" and "everything is incredibly slow" should not belong in the same sentence. Did you try installing an up-to-date Debian? Not sure if Debian packages Pantheon desktop already, but there are plenty of workable alternatives. For the microphone not working, you'd have to check what's going on in Pulseaudio and ALSA - both of these can be problematic at times.
  - Wowfunhappy 7y ago
    > Not sure if Debian packages Pantheon desktop already It does not, sadly. There is an unofficial third party repo but it’s very much unsupported by both Debian and elementary.
  - izacus 7y ago
    Slowness is usually a side effect of not having correct graphics drivers for 3d acceleration / composition. It seems that the poster doesn't have a Linux compatible laptop so eOS or any other distro won't work well.
    - zozbot234 7y ago
      > Slowness is usually a side effect of not having correct graphics drivers for 3d acceleration / composition. This is generally fixed by installing "non-free" firmware. Some distros may also work better than others, e.g. some hardware is better supported in Fedora than Debian or its derivatives.