26 ms·

Elementary OS 6 Odin

547 points by jdhawk 5y ago

input_sh 5y ago
I've been using it since the weekend and it's so great! My favourite feature is that it's all flatpak, allowing smartphone-like permissions for each desktop app — both first-party and any third-party from Flathub. I like it way more than snap and am glad there's an Ubuntu fork that works so wonderfully with it.
- marcodiego 5y ago
  Flatpaks, as well as snaps and appimages to a lesser extent, are a true godsend to the linux desktop. I can finally have a stable system and software released yesterday.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
    Unfortunately each has its own drawbacks and, in typical Linux Desktop fashion, it's 3 fragmented solutions to roughly the same problem with none of them being standard or enjoying a particularly de-facto status. The end result being that you can't get everything in any one of them, and often can't get a particular application in any of them.
    - input_sh 5y ago
      Can't say I've stumbled upon a lot of desktop apps (not terminal utilities) that are not on Flathub. The list is pretty long: https://flathub.org/apps/category/All https://flathub.org/apps/category/All From my experience, most of the popular proprietary ones (think: Slack, Discord, Spotify, whatever) are distributed both as a flatpak and as a snap, while more niche desktop apps are usually flatpak-exclusive (out of those options).
      - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
        > Can't say I've stumbled upon a lot of desktop apps (not terminal utilities) that are not on Flathub. Perhaps you just don't use that many things that aren't really popular or well known? I can't find PuTTY and KeePass (though obviously there are alternatives in those cases), applications that both have Linux versions and that I use every day (and aren't even that unknown). Also, unfortunately the limitations of Flatpak mean even if what you want is there, say Wireshark, it often won't have full functionality because it is impossible to give it the permissions it needs. In Wireshark's case, it can't actually capture any packets. If you want to actually use it you'll still need to resort to a different installation method.
        workerdrone451 5y ago
        Did you try flatseal for Wireshark? It abstracts the process of messing with permissions. That being said, unless the flatpak has some features your distro version doesn't, for trusted software package is always preferred. Flatpak is really for untrusted software/proprietary and projects that update with new features often.
        AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
        You misunderstand, Flatpak has no mechanism whereby the appropriate permission can be granted. At all. https://github.com/flathub/org.wireshark.Wireshark/issues/4 https://github.com/flathub/org.wireshark.Wireshark/issues/4
        veeti 5y ago
        What is the use case for running PuTTY on Linux? I'm curious.
        AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
        It is what I use on Windows, so I'm familiar with it, and it supports serial comms.
        5y ago
    - marcodiego 5y ago
      Hi AnIdiotOnTheNet! I really appreciate your comments against linux. I'm true. Since I don't have much knowledge about NT's strengths, the comments I like the most are the ones where you highlight advantages of the NT kernel over linux. It's been some time since I last read anything like that from you. Would you mind to comment if ebpf usage and the possible new futex2 syscall helps to close the gap between linux and NT with regards to async primitives?
    - horsawlarway 5y ago
      As someone who's released commercial software on linux before - having only 3 solutions to target is actually pretty delightful (We still build .deb and .rpm as well, so 5 really, after snap, flatpak and appimage) Plus I find the general sandbox approach to be a LOT more stable - distro upgrades rarely causes issues, and dependencies are much easier to wrangle. Definitely still some hiccups, but overall it feels like it's moving in a direction that I find easier to work with - both as a user and a developer. Plus the markets are generally fairly large - sure I still dip into aur every now and then, but I mostly find the "Software I need at work" stuff available
      - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
        > As someone who's released commercial software on linux before - having only 3 solutions to target is actually pretty delightful I think that speaks to a particularly huge failure of Linux Desktop more than anything else.
        beermonster 5y ago
        In what sense? If you mean the fact there are multiple solutions, I don't think it's anything to do with Linux Desktop. I don't think that's even to do with Linux. More the plethora of alternatives in general when using FOSS. But that to some is its strength, not failure.
        AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
        I disagree. Now to ensure I can install software I need not just one package manager, but at least 2 or 3 (atp, flatpak, snap). Of course that doesn't cover all the bases either, I'm still occasionally going to have to compile something from source because the developer didn't even bother making a binary because they don't want to build it for 5+ different packaging formats, several of which will need constant maintenance. When it comes to platforms[0], you need to be able to depend on certain things being there and working a certain way. Fragmentation of a platform is bad, and Linux Desktop is so fragmented the various distros style themselves as entirely different OSs! [0] As opposed to applications. Part of the problem is that historically there has never been a clear delineation in Linux Desktop.
- sylens 5y ago
  That feature does seem like the standout of their release notes to me
- imglorp 5y ago
  Do any of the Flatpak advocates have a response to this security criticism? Eg - https://flatkill.org/2020/ https://flatkill.org/2020/
  - input_sh 5y ago
    See: https://theevilskeleton.gitlab.io/2021/02/11/response-to-flatkill-org.html https://theevilskeleton.gitlab.io/2021/02/11/response-to-fla... There's also Flatseal (https://flathub.org/apps/details/com.github.tchx84.Flatseal https://flathub.org/apps/details/com.github.tchx84.Flatseal) as a user-friendly way of managing permissions for flatpak apps. This version of elementary OS comes with its own permission manager, but with my limited experience with both, it seems like it allows tweaking less permissions than Flatseal.
    - BeefWellington 5y ago
      > See: https://theevilskeleton.gitlab.io/2021/02/11/response-to-fla https://theevilskeleton.gitlab.io/2021/02/11/response-to-fla... Everything in that reference basically says "yep the criticism is valid" and in a few cases the author expands on that with "but it's ok because..." and then lists various reasons why it's fine that it's still a problem but that's it's being worked on. They also had to correct a good chunk of just outright incorrect information they were supplying mid-post about system updates. One item was addressed, which was that flatpak now notifies the user that sandbox escapes are possible based on the app's configuration. As a response to the criticisms, it's not a great one. Consider also, there are better ways that some of these issues could have been tackled. Why not have flatpak prompt for permissions as they're used, e.g.: "This app wants to open your home directory" rather than at install-time. That would make it abundantly clearer to the end users this is aimed at.
      - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
        > Why not have flatpak prompt for permissions as they're used, e.g.: "This app wants to open your home directory" rather than at install-time. That would make it abundantly clearer to the end users this is aimed at. I'm going out on a limb and guessing that it is because that's what is done in mobile, and it's usage in mobile has re-taught everyone the lesson that constant dialog prompts just train users to click through dialog prompts without reading them. That's bad, and annoying. I do still think there are better solutions to that problem, but it would require more effort from users to get applications working if they weren't designed with sandboxing in mind, which is the vast majority of applications, which in turn means that Flatpak probably wouldn't have grown as quickly.
- BiteCode_dev 5y ago
  Does flatpack have solved the theming problems they had 2 years ago ? And the perf issues ?
  - schmorptron 5y ago
    Those were issues snap had though, I'm not aware of flatpak having those problems.
trts 5y ago
Elementary is great, the couple times I've tried it, I wasn't into the desktop paradigm it was encouraging me to use (e.g., no minimize button, native apps that are pretty and consistent but less functional). Will look forward to giving it another spin. Having recently begun using a Mac for the first time, and after having had to suffer with Win10 for a few years, I have to say that I didn't appreciate that several out-of-box linux desktop experiences are now superior to commercial options. Ubuntu for example is quite stable, has attractive defaults that aren't garish or trying to be too unfamiliar, and otherwise never does anything I don't expect. Especially when it comes to finder/explorer/nautilus. All major desktops now have a dock, some tray icons, and a notification area. To me the differentiator is just staying out of my way.
- yboris 5y ago
  How can one live without the minimize button? What does the OS recommend instead?
  - Flex247A 5y ago
    You get used to the dock real quick. Or just install Elementary Tweaks.
    - input_sh 5y ago
      FYI it's re-branded as Pantheon Tweaks for this release.
    - onli 5y ago
      > You get used to the dock real quick. What's the connection between the dock and minimizing windows? I use a WM with a dock and that supports minimized windows just fine.
      - input_sh 5y ago
        If the app is in focus and you click on it on the dock, it minimizes itself. You can also do Super+H. Personally I put it back to "Windows" layout (min/max/close on the right), even though I mostly use Super+H.
Flex247A 5y ago
2 years in the making. Been waiting for this since last year!
wlesieutre 5y ago
That trackpad gesture support where it actually tracks with your finger movement looks really nice. Is this typical in Linux distros now, or is elementary going above and beyond the rest with that?
- mssdvd 5y ago
  Gnome 40 can do the same.
  - Flex247A 5y ago
    But overall, it's much smoother in Pantheon than in Gnome 40.
- solarkraft 5y ago
  It’s not typical at all. Only in the recently released version 40 Gnome has shipped what feels like a prototype of this. Before then only the obscure Wayfire had a similar gesture for desktop switching (actually good) and there were a few projects hacking it up with simulated keyboard shortcuts (obviously not the same at all).
- amilios 5y ago
  Honestly I think this is the most exciting thing, and I'm very glad to see support for it from the DE itself. Currently I think as someone else mentioned it's only GNOME that does it, otherwise you have to use hacky third party programs like touchegg which essentially just emulate certain keyboard shortcuts. So don't even think about finger movement tracking
gabereiser 5y ago
For cloud workloads, I prefer alpine on Amazon Linux 2 hosts. For desktop, I prefer Elementary. It's great to see an update on the best (imho) desktop distro.
RandallBrown 5y ago
I've never heard of Elementrary before. Is the goal to have the look and feel of macOS?
- gogopuppygogo 5y ago
  It’s like popos but with MacOS look and feel.
  - FinalBriefing 5y ago
    I'd say more "macOS UX" than "look and feel".
    - xtracto 5y ago
      Does it allow you to drag a file into a terminal and get a path to that file in the prompt? That's a VERY neat user experience I like about OSX that I miss in my Linux Mint PC. Those sort of things would make it a "UX alike" instead of only "look and feel"
      - follower 5y ago
        > Does it allow you to drag a file into a terminal and get a path to that file in the prompt? I just tried this in the previous Elementary OS version and, yes, it works. (Tested using "Files" & "Terminal" applications.) It also shows a little green "+" circle hint (i.e. copy) when the file icon is dragged over the Terminal window.
        xtracto 5y ago
        Thats so cool. Thanks for sharing.
  - blacksmith_tb 5y ago
    Hmm, my impression of Pop!_OS is that it's a more opinionated Gnome desktop on a pretty standard Ubuntu base (I like their tiling options). elementary seems like a more ambitious project, but since they don't make and sell hardware too, (unlike System76 and Pop!) it seems like they have more of an uphill battle.
Flex247A 5y ago
Elementary is really great. I have to admit that no other OS (other than alpine/void/arch) can run smoothly on my Intel Atom N450 netbook.
- input_sh 5y ago
  That's precisely what got me into Linux desktop as well. After trying out dozens or so distros, my beaten up Asus laptop kept running absurdly hot (like 80 degrees celsius). elementary OS 0.2 (Luna) was lightweight enough that it was the first distro I've tried that I could actually use as a daily driver. I've been using elementary OS since. I've tried some other distros, but those experiences usually ended up with me trying to recreate elementary feeling, failing, and then returning back to elementary OS a couple of weeks later.
pmarreck 5y ago
Whoa. Congrats! Very nice OS.
wlesieutre 5y ago
Looking great, I've been a long time Mac user and I think I actually like elementary's evolution of the UI styling (from when it started as a pretty direct clone) better than I like Apple's in Big Sur. Tried elementary before (Luna and Freya IIRC) and while it hasn't replaced my Mac for development or my Windows desktop for gaming, I'm definitely keeping an eye on it. Can't help but notice that the Sound indicator's dropdown doesn't line up with the icon above it. But the fact that a single UI glitch is a notable item now says a lot about the overall quality. Very tidy, still customizable, and a suite of built-in software that ought to cover most users. Good stuff.
- jonpurdy 5y ago
  Long time Mac user (1992); I think the Mac UI peaked at Mavericks (some would argue Snow Leopard due to the dumb Save workflow in Lion). As soon as Yosemite started trying too hard to be minimal it started a descent into prioritizing style over UX. I haven't touched Big Sur yet and probably won't until I'm forced to with a new Mac. Looking at screenshots of Elementary, it's so much more obvious how things work and what widgets do than on modern Mac OS. I've been running it in various VMs for a few years but didn't seriously consider switching to it full time until Big Sur was announced. I have too many paid-for Mac apps like Alfred, Keyboard Maestro, Hazel, Photo Mechanic, and others that prevent me from moving to Linux full time.
  - Normille 5y ago
    Another long-time Mac user, who is also increasingly frustrated with how dumbed down & bloated OSX is becoming [I'm sticking on Mavericks for the foreseeable future and only 'upgraded' from El Capitán because more and more of my apps were breaking after applying updates]. With all OSX Finder's faults and all the annoyances of the OS, I still think it's miles ahead of any Linux distro I've tried to get on with. Two words "Quicklook" --OK. that's one word made of two. I find it incredible that no Linux desktop environment has something like this. Pressing spacebar to preview the content of a file without needing to open it first is something I do literally every single day and often multiple times. Why, in 2021, does every single Linux desktop require me to open a file first to see what's inside it? That's my biggest bugbear with Linux desktops. Other annoyances are more vague. Mostly to do with the inconsistencies in the interface. Coming from something like OSX which, for all its faults, presents a completely consistent user interface, every Linux desktop I've tried [even the polished ones like Ubuntu & Mint] always have those annoying glitches & inconsistencies which just scream 'Designed by Committee' [which I suppose they are, to an extent]. As regards apps; a big part of what I do is graphic design and that pretty much rules Linux out for anything work-related. Whatever you think of Adobe, Photoshop and Illustrator just blow The Gimp [dire!] and Inkscape [tolerable but clunky] out of the water. I did have high hopes that new kids on the block Affinity might bring their Photo and Designer [which actually do give Photoshop and Illustrator a run for their money] to Linux. But it seems they've decided to follow Adobe's lead and make thei offerings OSX & Windows only. About the only quality graphic design app I've seen available for Linux is Krita. But it's more of a digital painting app than an image manipulation one. And, of course, no vector graphics.
drcongo 5y ago
Elementary is starting to actually look nicer than macOS. There's still some janky details here and there, but the overall design language is very nice.
- unicornporn 5y ago
  As long as you only use GTK apps that is... Half (?) Of the apps I need are Qt and they will look out of place.
  - dubcanada 5y ago
    Qt look out of place no matter what OS you use them on though. So I don't feel that is a fault of Elementary OS.
    - unicornporn 5y ago
      I've been running KDE Neon and they don't look out of place.
      - babypuncher 5y ago
        KDE does a better job of naturalizing GTK apps than the other way around.
        BearOso 5y ago
        I just use the Arc GTK theme and use the kvantum Qt theme’s Arc preset. Makes both look pretty much the same. Qogir is another one that’s kind of cross-desktop.
- bobbylarrybobby 5y ago
  It's a sign of how crappy mainstream UI design has gotten that the thing that is really drawing me to elementary OS are the gradients, shadows, and edges that give its UI sense of depth -- not the Linux underpinnings, multitouch, or "App Store". It makes the UI 1000x easier to grok at a glance than the flat crap Microsoft and Apple have been pushing out over the past few years, and just plain looks good! I'd love for it to kick off a move back to that kind of design, but sadly it doesn't look like that's the direction things are heading.
imwillofficial 5y ago
So happy to see them continue their work of a solid, unified desktop Linux. Perhaps this year is the year of desktop Linux!
temp8964 5y ago
I have tried Linux desktop. One of the couple things I can’t get over with is remote. It seems there’s no straight and reliable way to remote to the same session of the host desktop. In addition, Windows RDP can also reliably adjust to client screen setup.
- blacksmith_tb 5y ago
  Hmm, VNC would normally be the way to handle that on Linux? If you have a session going and fire up your VNC server of choice, you should be able to connect to it from another machine (I can't say I do that much personally, though I did set up a little fanless box as dashboard kiosk that way for my team a while back).
  - n8cpdx 5y ago
    Last I checked, VNC wasn’t really comparable to RDP in terms of performance. I work in a remote session basically all day long and it’s suitable for graphics and video among everything else. Has that changed recently?
    - blacksmith_tb 5y ago
      No, it's not nearly as performant, that's for sure. I haven't used it personally, but there is Xrdp[1] which might be better for more serious usage. 1: https://linuxize.com/post/how-to-install-xrdp-on-ubuntu-20-04/ https://linuxize.com/post/how-to-install-xrdp-on-ubuntu-20-0...
      - temp8964 5y ago
        It will create a separated session different from the local session. Basically if I used my desktop in office, and when I remote in from home, it won't show me the same windows I opened before.
  - temp8964 5y ago
    My experience is that VNC won’t remote to the same session. And it can’t adjust to client resolution, so not very useful to me.
Mikeb85 5y ago
Wow looks great. This fell off my radar for a bit, looking pretty nice now. Not gonna lie, having Gnome + Flatpak on Ubuntu LTS base already puts it near the top of my list, the styling and added usability features puts it over the top. Ubuntu LTS base is also great for developers, as it seems most cloud images these days are just that. I've tried installing/building tools on other distros that I like more than Ubuntu but they always seem to use wonky options, libraries that are too old/new or in strange places, and I end up back at Ubuntu.
- b2ccb2 5y ago
  FYI, it doesn't use Gnome. It uses it's own DE based on Vala/GTK+/libmutter.
  - SkyMarshal 5y ago
    Aka, "Pantheon": https://www.fosslinux.com/4652/pantheon-everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-elementary-os-desktop.htm https://www.fosslinux.com/4652/pantheon-everything-you-need-... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elementary_OS#Pantheon_desktop_environment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elementary_OS#Pantheon_desktop...
DenverCode 5y ago
Question, best solution for running it on an M1 Mac?
- babypuncher 5y ago
  A virtual machine. Running Linux natively on Apple Silicon is not ready for daily driving.
brundolf 5y ago
The main things keeping me from using Linux as a daily driver are: 1) My personal desktop has Windows for games 2) My laptops (personal and work) are Macs because Apple simply makes the best laptops When I've dual-booted in the past it's been a huge pain, and I didn't end up bothering to switch to Linux very often in practice anyway. Linux laptops exist, but they tend to be spotty in terms of build-quality and power. Gaming on Linux can technically be done, but I don't want my expensive machine to be unable to play some things because of the OS. There are lots of little things, most of which could be overcome with effort, but these days I'd rather use my devices than tinker with them most of the time. I guess I just wish I had an excuse to use something like Elementary or PopOS. I would if I had an a) desktop that b) was mainly for projects. But alas, I don't.
- tomc1985 5y ago
  On the desktop front, I've been hearing about virtualizing windows on Linux with a framebuffer that maps directly to the GPU. Then you get to keep something like 95% performance. I forget what it's called, but I remember seeing a subreddit for it. FBIO?
  - _sigma 5y ago
    https://www.reddit.com/r/VFIO/ https://www.reddit.com/r/VFIO/
  - brundolf 5y ago
    I wasn't talking about performance, I was talking about compatibility with games. Sorry if that wasn't clear; I've edited. Valve has been doing amazing things in this space, but for now my understanding is that it's more of a "most games will work pretty well" scenario, which is not really what I want for my primary games machine.
    - tomc1985 5y ago
      Well thats the perk, you get games compatibility. Windows runs in a window with direct access to the GPU. I primary Windows because of games and music software, and I'm looking forward to trying it out. As another comment points out, its called VFIO. From that subreddit: "VFIO stands for Virtual Function I/O. VFIO is a device driver that is used to assign devices to virtual machines. One of the most common uses of vfio is setting up a virtual machine with full access to a dedicated GPU. This enables near-bare-metal gaming performance in a Windows VM, offering a great alternative to dual-booting"
gclawes 5y ago
Are there still Pinebook Pro builds available?
- cassidyjames 5y ago
  Yes, still experimental. We recently merged in the ability to cross-compile Flatpak apps across x86 and ARM, so hopefully that leads to a more official status soon.
  - gclawes 5y ago
    Awesome, thanks!
OJFord 5y ago
I'm surprised they spend so much (presumably) time and effort on applications, especially 'Web' and 'Terminal'. How many users are actually going to use 'Web' as their browser? That said, I wish them all the best, because I use 'Files' (but not the distro) since it's the best I've found for the odd occasion where I think using a GUI file manager will be easier than the command line. I still wouldn't say it's good, just the best I've found. (Not opening everything on a single-click is a vast improvement!)
- seltzered_ 5y ago
  I keep wondering about this too, perhaps the intent is that there's some known component that works well with the ux goals - so if someone builds a native application (with vala), they can reference the eos 'web' app when implementing a web view. It's still something I'm leary about. I switched from a mac to ubuntu (gnome) recently, and wonder how much lack of facilitation/communication leads to so many separate or incomplete apps. For example, I may use the gnome calendar app but also still have thunderbird setup to handle calendar links. Or evince (akin to preview.app) doesn't support drag/drop editing of pages so I have to also install 'pdf arranger' to do this. I think there's a chaos tolerance one has to have in approaching linux, which is fine! On the plus side I've really appreciated hearing quickly from developers when filing bugs. For anyone curious, I keep track of cross-platform workflows here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/148zTJUwfVv9xfDcpSoH3mF-c4vqV3CqyEWXuqaAiXoA/edit?usp=drive_web&ouid=115795755008503287756 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/148zTJUwfVv9xfDcpSoH3...
- caslon 5y ago
  Web is just GNOME Web.
  - OJFord 5y ago
    ..ok. So they didn't have to put much/any effort in? Still though, how many users are actually going to use 'GNOME Web'? If I installed this, even for an elderly relative or whatever rather than myself, probably my next step would be to install Firefox. (And for others it might be Chrome of course.)
edsimpson 5y ago
I haven’t been following development closely, are there any comparisons of Elementary and Ubuntu Budgie?
AdmiralAsshat 5y ago
Can it do major version upgrades yet?
- iamcreasy 5y ago
  I don't think you can yet.
netcyrax 5y ago
Big fan of eOS. Congrats on the launch! I always wondered how an open-source project develops from scratch so many different apps (e.g. Web, Mail, Calendar, etc). Why not focusing more on the OS rather than wasting resources on apps that there are mature open-source alternatives (e.g. Thunderbird, Firefox, etc)?
_spduchamp 5y ago
Can't wait to give this version a whirl! As I've said before (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26661615 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26661615), we use Elementary OS as our point-of-sale terminals in a small chain of resale stores, and it's been super solid. It's been a good choice for us.
- zonabey 5y ago
  That sounds fantastic to see that sort of thing being used out in the open. Aside from using the Ember-electron POS app can customers access other parts of the UI or elementary OS applications? What made you choose elementary OS in particular? I'd imagine the advantage of using it over ubuntu gnome would be fairly minimised if the user would be locked to just a single application.
  - _spduchamp 5y ago
    Customers don't interact with the POS but our staff do. I tried several distributions a couple years ago and found that Elementary had the least amount of clutter in the UI. Our staff are young and most are not technically savvy. For many, an iPhone is their most familiar computing device. This was the environment that seemed most comfortable. The dock bar at the bottom also made it easy to present the limited number of apps they would need.
azinman2 5y ago
I tried eOS 5. The screenshots made it look the most user friendly of Linux distros (read: Apple knock off), and at first it feels that way. But it quickly starts to show how shallow that knock off is… and it’s a huge undertaking so I don’t blame them. First is what happens once you run anything that isn’t made by them — all of the sudden totally different UIs. Linux has this problem in spades because there is no standard (gnome, kde, whatever ppl want, etc), and there’s no one setting the bar (which Apple does on its own platform). Thus there’s no consistency to anything. Their own apps similarly look ok at first, and then you go to use them and you realize it’s all very bare bones. My system also froze/locked up a lot at random, and I don’t know why. Installing Ubuntu fixed that issue. Not sure what happened there. Again I don’t blame them; not sure how many people are working for them, but creating a modern desktop and all the apps you’d expect from scratch is a huge undertaking. I hope they do well and provide Linux a real alternative experience. I’d love to see some way that they can extend into apps to make their look and feel more consistent somehow (gnome/kde skins? Something much more? Their own forks of popular apps?), and that the community ends up focusing around them so we get a distributed effort.
- jcelerier 5y ago
  > First is what happens once you run anything that isn’t made by them — all of the sudden totally different UIs That's a weird criticism. How many competing UI frameworks with completely different look'n'feel are there in a default win10 install ? How many control panels and file dialogs ?
  - handrous 5y ago
    Sure, and everyone complains about that on Win10 because it sucks there, too. Windows the OS has improved greatly over the years, in many ways, but the UI has mostly not improved, or has even regressed, since, oh, I dunno, win98/2k. Maybe WinXP.
    - fsiefken 5y ago
      XP with the classic themes was the best. A while ago I did my best to get a decent browser that could display modern webpages running so perhaps I could use XP as a desktop. Nothing really works. Modern Java apps same thing, the JRE is frozen in time somewhere, .NET same thing. SSL isn't compatible. Perhaps one could compile a recent Wine, Mono/.NET or Java to XP and run some things. Or perhaps better, use a windows theme for a linux desktop - and stick to gtk apps. https://github.com/grassmunk/Chicago95 https://github.com/grassmunk/Chicago95
jjice 5y ago
I love the look and feel of elementary, but I'm always skeptical of trying new Linux DEs. I want them to work well, and they often do, but 4K and scaling support is very hit or miss with the ones I've used. I'm currently using Gnome and not impressed at all, just settling on it. Does anyone have experience with other DEs recently with this? Either KDE or Pantheon, or something else? I just want good 4K support and scaling that doesn't causes awful tearing or window bugs.
- 12ian34 5y ago
  Do you need a DE? Linux is my daily driver for work and home. I've tried DEs and found them bloated and slow. I have been using i3-wm for years and loving it. You can always use picom compositor on top to mitigate visual glitches.
tayistay 5y ago
- Can't publish closed-source apps on their AppCenter. "To ensure reproducible builds, transparency, and auditability, binaries cannot be uploaded or included alongside the source code to be installed on users' devices." So that precludes my apps, and probably most other devs I know. I'd guess because of this restriction, their app store is going nowhere as a business. - Their 70/30 split is higher than what Apple currently offers (85/15) for revenue less than 1m (which is going to be everyone on eOS) - While I like macOS, I think it's a shame they chose to (more or less) copy it, rather than try a new direction. But perhaps that would be too risky.
- badsectoracula 5y ago
  I have used eOS at the past and while from a superficial quick look it looks like a copy of macOS, also having used macOS for a long time i can easily say that it is far from a copy. For all intents and purposes it is doing its own thing.
  - tayistay 5y ago
    I installed it at one point. There were so many things they just happened to do the same way as macOS for UX (not the windows way), it just didn't seem very original. I see in V6 they've copied the light/dark mode of macOS and put the setting in roughly the same place, with the same sort of icon. Oh, and it's right above the same set of accent colors on macOS, which also are shown as circles (not squares, or rounded rectangles, or a menu). There's a dock, not a task bar. And the finder windows are laid out roughly the same as some older version of macOS. The left sidebar looks like practically the same icons. App Center is laid out the same way as the Mac App Store. I could go on. (I know that the dev environment is quite different)
    - RichEO 5y ago
      I see a lot of criticism for eOS “copying” the Mac, and yet never see any criticism of Cinnamon for copying Windows. If anything, the Linux community seems to cite it as a strength.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
pjmlp 5y ago
Nice to see some Vala love.
skrtskrt 5y ago
I am sorry but those tray icons are horrific. I don't think they would have looked modern or clean or nice at any time. Just bad design for any era.
- christophilus 5y ago
  I like them. To each his own.
yosito 5y ago
Is it possible to install Elementary's DE on Ubuntu?
Royi 5y ago
I don't get how an OS is released and performance isn't mentioned. I think each OS release must include data about the performance (Speed and resources at steady state). We want performant and lean OS's.
- e3bc54b2 5y ago
  While I agree with you, this project originslly began (IIRC) to showcase a new theme for Ubuntu/Gnome. The main developers are designers first, and the target is to make Linux desktop more user friendly. You and I survived the trials amd now wamt performance. I personally will lilely never use elementary, but you and I are not the target audience.
princevegeta89 5y ago
Never had any problem with them however there were some serious usability issues like the AltTab behavior, absence of mouse focus options etc etc. I also remember the animations were laggy. Switched to KDE and it feels like the full package
tediousdemise 5y ago
FYI - there is no minimize button in elementary OS, and judging by the screenshots, this hasn't been fixed yet.
- xtracto 5y ago
  Interesting design choice. I use OSX (work laptop) and Linux Mint (home PC) and your comment got me thinking about their "minimize" button: I hate OSX behaviour of the minimize button: It hides the window and adds an additional icon in the task bar... before getting used to it for me it seemed as if OSX was "hiding" windows from me. Linux Mint has the expected (i.e. Windows 95) behaviour. Nevertheless I don't think I use a minimize button as long as I did before.
- moojacob 5y ago
  You can click an app's icon in the dock to toggle minimize.
Shadonototro 5y ago
very nice, this is what gnome should have been, they took the best of macOS however, i'm still gonna stick to XFCE4
dancemethis 5y ago
How dare them call us old geezers? It's the Isis drama they invented all over again.
SkyMarshal 5y ago
This is a big update for a relatively small community distro. Kudos to the team. A summary of some of the cooler features: Performance: General performance improvements on all hardware resulting from optimizing for Pinebook Pro and Raspberry Pi - namely, reducing and asynchronizing inter-process communication between desktop components, removing unused code, and reducing disk I/O. Firmware: Linux Vendor Firmware Service now built-in, enabling firmware updates from within the OS. Flatpak: all-in on flatpak, all AppCenter apps are flatpaks, as well as some Elementary apps like Web. Portals: apps must explicitly request permission to get access to files or interact with other apps. Can tweak these permissions in System Settings. Mail: The Mail app now sandboxes html emails. Multi-Touch: Extended from supporting just desktop to various apps now too. Multi-Tasking: Better hot corners + new window and workspace controls. CalDav: Tasks and Calendar now designed around the CalDav format, making importing and sharing of tasks and calendar items with other CalDav apps easier. Dark Theme: system-wide, applies to GTK apps too. Terminal: smart-paste protection extended from sudo pastes to multi-line pastes. More OEM/Vendor friendly: - Installer is simplified and streamlined - network connectivity, user account creation, and updates moved out of the installer and into the installed OS. Better for vendors & OEMs. - Startup is intentionally non-Elementary-branded, better enabling OEM/Vendor branded startup splash screen — "we don’t need to constantly advertise your operating system to you". There's a separate blog post on hardware-specific improvements here: https://blog.elementary.io/hardware-improvements-coming-to-elementary-os/ https://blog.elementary.io/hardware-improvements-coming-to-e...
- wlesieutre 5y ago
  >- Installer is simplified and streamlined - network connectivity, user account creation, and updates moved out of the installer and into the installed OS. Better for vendors & OEMs. Maybe the awkward stretched out time zone map is gone too? https://github.com/elementary/os/issues/164 https://github.com/elementary/os/issues/164
- schmorptron 5y ago
  "- Startup is intentionally non-Elementary-branded, better enabling OEM/Vendor branded startup splash screen — "we don’t need to constantly advertise your operating system to you"." Dang, I really like their logo and it sorta feels nice to see it on bootup. I'm sure there is some way to bring it back though, and it's a tiny thing that, like they said, will probably be far outweighed by the benefit it brings to OEMs.
HerbMcM 5y ago
Been using Elementary for a couple months and it's pretty comfortable. Every new version, however, I look to see if they've added support to increase mouse scroll wheel speed with no success. Sadly, it's still in the limbo circle of blame between GNOME,libinput,x,wayland,etc.
kaba0 5y ago
Are they planning on converting to Wayland?
- commoner 5y ago
  Yes, elementary OS is preparing for an eventual switch to Wayland. > The primary motivation for this change is the eventual move to Wayland (a protocol that will make your device faster and safer), but this also gives us more creative control over these features. https://blog.elementary.io/platform-changes-in-elementary-os-6/ https://blog.elementary.io/platform-changes-in-elementary-os...
qwerty456127 5y ago
I would migrate an office of dozens computers to this if only it used classic packages and dndn't depend on Flatpaks. I already tried to migrate to Pop_OS! but it failed to install. So I had to keep with Ubuntu.
greyivy 5y ago
Congrats Elementary team! The focus on accessibility and inclusivity (gender neutral iconography too!) is awesome! Not a fan of Debian-based distros, but still tempted to take it for a spin.
schmorptron 5y ago
I really like elementary and the ecosystem-like, but open approach they're taking to desktop linux. One aspect of it I feel often goes underappreciated is how lightweight it is. Provided you have a reasonable amount of RAM for the tasks you're trying to do, e.g. 4GB+ for normal desktop usage and an SSD, you can run it on fairly old CPUs and it will be blazing fast still. Congrats to the team!
spindle 5y ago
I love elementary OS and would use it on all my computers if I didn't love NixOS even more (and sometimes I use NixOS with Pantheon, elementary's window manager). > all AppCenter apps are now packaged and distributed as Flatpaks, a modern container format that keeps apps siloed away from each other—and your sensitive data All apps are siloed from your sensitive data? That is a little um simplified or misleading or something. They may have done a great job with security now that they have Portals, but it is surely a much more complicated story than the above quote suggests.
stonogo 5y ago
The Mail app now sandboxes html emails ... but it still loads remote resources by default. Seems like a strange combination of defaults.
neilalexander 5y ago
This is a great looking release and I really don’t think enough attention is being drawn to just how lovely the elementaryOS desktop looks and feels on a hi-DPI display, which is not something I can say for most Linux desktops. Also the font hinting/text rendering looks excellent too.
andrekandre 5y ago
wow, the icons, window borders, shading, everything is crisp and just pops maybe just me but i felt a lower cognitive load compared to big sur, and especially monterey where everything is super low contrast, large margins between items, and all the icons are hard to differentiate same-color outlines... looks nice!
Sammi 5y ago
The wallpaper is of this view if you're interested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drangarnir https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drangarnir https://visitvagar.fo/welcome-to-vagar/activities/hiking/drangarnir/ https://visitvagar.fo/welcome-to-vagar/activities/hiking/dra...
thewrinklyninja 5y ago
My main issue is still app notifications in the panel. IF I'm running a syning app like Insync. I want to have the app notifier in the system tray so I can see the status without having to check the service manually to see if its running.
pull_my_finger 5y ago
Would I be correct to say that AppCenter releases are tied to GitHub exclusively[1] or can you use other version control hosts? [1]: https://github.com/elementary/houston/wiki/Submission-Process https://github.com/elementary/houston/wiki/Submission-Proces...
gytdev 5y ago
The biggest hurdle Linux has to overcome is somehow convincing major players to release Linux version of their apps. Making a beautiful skin is not going to solve the main Linux catch-22: not enough market share to have main apps, not enough main apps to increase market share. Excel, Power point (essential for business and school) creativity apps like Photoshop, Premiere, etc. Their are essential to most people work-flows and the biggest hurdle to adoption. VM's partly solves the problem, but You need to have a decent computer and small technical chops.
wraptile 5y ago
I have a rather weird question: can Elementary be tiled and keyboard driven (at least for windows)? I like the general app visuals and their GUI philosophy but floating windows are so passé.
fattybob 5y ago
hmm, not so impressed, ran it up and its a bit of an all or nothing ultimatum on boot - i won't be running that instead of my osx for a while yet...
- fattybob 5y ago
  ASnd I just received an update from AirSend / another quiet mover, can’t say I interact with it much, bu they have an app now!

547 points by jdhawk 5y ago

I've been using it since the weekend and it's so great! My favourite feature is that it's all flatpak, allowing smartphone-like permissions for each desktop app — both first-party and any third-party from Flathub. I like it way more than snap and am glad there's an Ubuntu fork that works so wonderfully with it.

marcodiego 5y ago
Flatpaks, as well as snaps and appimages to a lesser extent, are a true godsend to the linux desktop. I can finally have a stable system and software released yesterday.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
  Unfortunately each has its own drawbacks and, in typical Linux Desktop fashion, it's 3 fragmented solutions to roughly the same problem with none of them being standard or enjoying a particularly de-facto status. The end result being that you can't get everything in any one of them, and often can't get a particular application in any of them.
  - input_sh 5y ago
    Can't say I've stumbled upon a lot of desktop apps (not terminal utilities) that are not on Flathub. The list is pretty long: https://flathub.org/apps/category/All https://flathub.org/apps/category/All From my experience, most of the popular proprietary ones (think: Slack, Discord, Spotify, whatever) are distributed both as a flatpak and as a snap, while more niche desktop apps are usually flatpak-exclusive (out of those options).
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
      > Can't say I've stumbled upon a lot of desktop apps (not terminal utilities) that are not on Flathub. Perhaps you just don't use that many things that aren't really popular or well known? I can't find PuTTY and KeePass (though obviously there are alternatives in those cases), applications that both have Linux versions and that I use every day (and aren't even that unknown). Also, unfortunately the limitations of Flatpak mean even if what you want is there, say Wireshark, it often won't have full functionality because it is impossible to give it the permissions it needs. In Wireshark's case, it can't actually capture any packets. If you want to actually use it you'll still need to resort to a different installation method.
      - workerdrone451 5y ago
        Did you try flatseal for Wireshark? It abstracts the process of messing with permissions. That being said, unless the flatpak has some features your distro version doesn't, for trusted software package is always preferred. Flatpak is really for untrusted software/proprietary and projects that update with new features often.
        AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
        You misunderstand, Flatpak has no mechanism whereby the appropriate permission can be granted. At all. https://github.com/flathub/org.wireshark.Wireshark/issues/4 https://github.com/flathub/org.wireshark.Wireshark/issues/4
      - veeti 5y ago
        What is the use case for running PuTTY on Linux? I'm curious.
        AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
        It is what I use on Windows, so I'm familiar with it, and it supports serial comms.
        5y ago
  - marcodiego 5y ago
    Hi AnIdiotOnTheNet! I really appreciate your comments against linux. I'm true. Since I don't have much knowledge about NT's strengths, the comments I like the most are the ones where you highlight advantages of the NT kernel over linux. It's been some time since I last read anything like that from you. Would you mind to comment if ebpf usage and the possible new futex2 syscall helps to close the gap between linux and NT with regards to async primitives?
  - horsawlarway 5y ago
    As someone who's released commercial software on linux before - having only 3 solutions to target is actually pretty delightful (We still build .deb and .rpm as well, so 5 really, after snap, flatpak and appimage) Plus I find the general sandbox approach to be a LOT more stable - distro upgrades rarely causes issues, and dependencies are much easier to wrangle. Definitely still some hiccups, but overall it feels like it's moving in a direction that I find easier to work with - both as a user and a developer. Plus the markets are generally fairly large - sure I still dip into aur every now and then, but I mostly find the "Software I need at work" stuff available
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
      > As someone who's released commercial software on linux before - having only 3 solutions to target is actually pretty delightful I think that speaks to a particularly huge failure of Linux Desktop more than anything else.
      - beermonster 5y ago
        In what sense? If you mean the fact there are multiple solutions, I don't think it's anything to do with Linux Desktop. I don't think that's even to do with Linux. More the plethora of alternatives in general when using FOSS. But that to some is its strength, not failure.
        AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
        I disagree. Now to ensure I can install software I need not just one package manager, but at least 2 or 3 (atp, flatpak, snap). Of course that doesn't cover all the bases either, I'm still occasionally going to have to compile something from source because the developer didn't even bother making a binary because they don't want to build it for 5+ different packaging formats, several of which will need constant maintenance. When it comes to platforms[0], you need to be able to depend on certain things being there and working a certain way. Fragmentation of a platform is bad, and Linux Desktop is so fragmented the various distros style themselves as entirely different OSs! [0] As opposed to applications. Part of the problem is that historically there has never been a clear delineation in Linux Desktop.
sylens 5y ago
That feature does seem like the standout of their release notes to me
imglorp 5y ago
Do any of the Flatpak advocates have a response to this security criticism? Eg - https://flatkill.org/2020/ https://flatkill.org/2020/
- input_sh 5y ago
  See: https://theevilskeleton.gitlab.io/2021/02/11/response-to-flatkill-org.html https://theevilskeleton.gitlab.io/2021/02/11/response-to-fla... There's also Flatseal (https://flathub.org/apps/details/com.github.tchx84.Flatseal https://flathub.org/apps/details/com.github.tchx84.Flatseal) as a user-friendly way of managing permissions for flatpak apps. This version of elementary OS comes with its own permission manager, but with my limited experience with both, it seems like it allows tweaking less permissions than Flatseal.
  - BeefWellington 5y ago
    > See: https://theevilskeleton.gitlab.io/2021/02/11/response-to-fla https://theevilskeleton.gitlab.io/2021/02/11/response-to-fla... Everything in that reference basically says "yep the criticism is valid" and in a few cases the author expands on that with "but it's ok because..." and then lists various reasons why it's fine that it's still a problem but that's it's being worked on. They also had to correct a good chunk of just outright incorrect information they were supplying mid-post about system updates. One item was addressed, which was that flatpak now notifies the user that sandbox escapes are possible based on the app's configuration. As a response to the criticisms, it's not a great one. Consider also, there are better ways that some of these issues could have been tackled. Why not have flatpak prompt for permissions as they're used, e.g.: "This app wants to open your home directory" rather than at install-time. That would make it abundantly clearer to the end users this is aimed at.
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
      > Why not have flatpak prompt for permissions as they're used, e.g.: "This app wants to open your home directory" rather than at install-time. That would make it abundantly clearer to the end users this is aimed at. I'm going out on a limb and guessing that it is because that's what is done in mobile, and it's usage in mobile has re-taught everyone the lesson that constant dialog prompts just train users to click through dialog prompts without reading them. That's bad, and annoying. I do still think there are better solutions to that problem, but it would require more effort from users to get applications working if they weren't designed with sandboxing in mind, which is the vast majority of applications, which in turn means that Flatpak probably wouldn't have grown as quickly.
BiteCode_dev 5y ago
Does flatpack have solved the theming problems they had 2 years ago ? And the perf issues ?
- schmorptron 5y ago
  Those were issues snap had though, I'm not aware of flatpak having those problems.

trts 5y ago

Elementary is great, the couple times I've tried it, I wasn't into the desktop paradigm it was encouraging me to use (e.g., no minimize button, native apps that are pretty and consistent but less functional). Will look forward to giving it another spin. Having recently begun using a Mac for the first time, and after having had to suffer with Win10 for a few years, I have to say that I didn't appreciate that several out-of-box linux desktop experiences are now superior to commercial options. Ubuntu for example is quite stable, has attractive defaults that aren't garish or trying to be too unfamiliar, and otherwise never does anything I don't expect. Especially when it comes to finder/explorer/nautilus. All major desktops now have a dock, some tray icons, and a notification area. To me the differentiator is just staying out of my way.

yboris 5y ago
How can one live without the minimize button? What does the OS recommend instead?
- Flex247A 5y ago
  You get used to the dock real quick. Or just install Elementary Tweaks.
  - input_sh 5y ago
    FYI it's re-branded as Pantheon Tweaks for this release.
  - onli 5y ago
    > You get used to the dock real quick. What's the connection between the dock and minimizing windows? I use a WM with a dock and that supports minimized windows just fine.
    - input_sh 5y ago
      If the app is in focus and you click on it on the dock, it minimizes itself. You can also do Super+H. Personally I put it back to "Windows" layout (min/max/close on the right), even though I mostly use Super+H.

Flex247A 5y ago

2 years in the making. Been waiting for this since last year!

wlesieutre 5y ago

That trackpad gesture support where it actually tracks with your finger movement looks really nice. Is this typical in Linux distros now, or is elementary going above and beyond the rest with that?

mssdvd 5y ago
Gnome 40 can do the same.
- Flex247A 5y ago
  But overall, it's much smoother in Pantheon than in Gnome 40.
solarkraft 5y ago
It’s not typical at all. Only in the recently released version 40 Gnome has shipped what feels like a prototype of this. Before then only the obscure Wayfire had a similar gesture for desktop switching (actually good) and there were a few projects hacking it up with simulated keyboard shortcuts (obviously not the same at all).
amilios 5y ago
Honestly I think this is the most exciting thing, and I'm very glad to see support for it from the DE itself. Currently I think as someone else mentioned it's only GNOME that does it, otherwise you have to use hacky third party programs like touchegg which essentially just emulate certain keyboard shortcuts. So don't even think about finger movement tracking

gabereiser 5y ago

For cloud workloads, I prefer alpine on Amazon Linux 2 hosts. For desktop, I prefer Elementary. It's great to see an update on the best (imho) desktop distro.

RandallBrown 5y ago

I've never heard of Elementrary before. Is the goal to have the look and feel of macOS?

gogopuppygogo 5y ago
It’s like popos but with MacOS look and feel.
- FinalBriefing 5y ago
  I'd say more "macOS UX" than "look and feel".
  - xtracto 5y ago
    Does it allow you to drag a file into a terminal and get a path to that file in the prompt? That's a VERY neat user experience I like about OSX that I miss in my Linux Mint PC. Those sort of things would make it a "UX alike" instead of only "look and feel"
    - follower 5y ago
      > Does it allow you to drag a file into a terminal and get a path to that file in the prompt? I just tried this in the previous Elementary OS version and, yes, it works. (Tested using "Files" & "Terminal" applications.) It also shows a little green "+" circle hint (i.e. copy) when the file icon is dragged over the Terminal window.
      - xtracto 5y ago
        Thats so cool. Thanks for sharing.
- blacksmith_tb 5y ago
  Hmm, my impression of Pop!_OS is that it's a more opinionated Gnome desktop on a pretty standard Ubuntu base (I like their tiling options). elementary seems like a more ambitious project, but since they don't make and sell hardware too, (unlike System76 and Pop!) it seems like they have more of an uphill battle.

Flex247A 5y ago

Elementary is really great. I have to admit that no other OS (other than alpine/void/arch) can run smoothly on my Intel Atom N450 netbook.

input_sh 5y ago
That's precisely what got me into Linux desktop as well. After trying out dozens or so distros, my beaten up Asus laptop kept running absurdly hot (like 80 degrees celsius). elementary OS 0.2 (Luna) was lightweight enough that it was the first distro I've tried that I could actually use as a daily driver. I've been using elementary OS since. I've tried some other distros, but those experiences usually ended up with me trying to recreate elementary feeling, failing, and then returning back to elementary OS a couple of weeks later.

pmarreck 5y ago

Whoa. Congrats! Very nice OS.

wlesieutre 5y ago

Looking great, I've been a long time Mac user and I think I actually like elementary's evolution of the UI styling (from when it started as a pretty direct clone) better than I like Apple's in Big Sur. Tried elementary before (Luna and Freya IIRC) and while it hasn't replaced my Mac for development or my Windows desktop for gaming, I'm definitely keeping an eye on it. Can't help but notice that the Sound indicator's dropdown doesn't line up with the icon above it. But the fact that a single UI glitch is a notable item now says a lot about the overall quality. Very tidy, still customizable, and a suite of built-in software that ought to cover most users. Good stuff.

jonpurdy 5y ago
Long time Mac user (1992); I think the Mac UI peaked at Mavericks (some would argue Snow Leopard due to the dumb Save workflow in Lion). As soon as Yosemite started trying too hard to be minimal it started a descent into prioritizing style over UX. I haven't touched Big Sur yet and probably won't until I'm forced to with a new Mac. Looking at screenshots of Elementary, it's so much more obvious how things work and what widgets do than on modern Mac OS. I've been running it in various VMs for a few years but didn't seriously consider switching to it full time until Big Sur was announced. I have too many paid-for Mac apps like Alfred, Keyboard Maestro, Hazel, Photo Mechanic, and others that prevent me from moving to Linux full time.
- Normille 5y ago
  Another long-time Mac user, who is also increasingly frustrated with how dumbed down & bloated OSX is becoming [I'm sticking on Mavericks for the foreseeable future and only 'upgraded' from El Capitán because more and more of my apps were breaking after applying updates]. With all OSX Finder's faults and all the annoyances of the OS, I still think it's miles ahead of any Linux distro I've tried to get on with. Two words "Quicklook" --OK. that's one word made of two. I find it incredible that no Linux desktop environment has something like this. Pressing spacebar to preview the content of a file without needing to open it first is something I do literally every single day and often multiple times. Why, in 2021, does every single Linux desktop require me to open a file first to see what's inside it? That's my biggest bugbear with Linux desktops. Other annoyances are more vague. Mostly to do with the inconsistencies in the interface. Coming from something like OSX which, for all its faults, presents a completely consistent user interface, every Linux desktop I've tried [even the polished ones like Ubuntu & Mint] always have those annoying glitches & inconsistencies which just scream 'Designed by Committee' [which I suppose they are, to an extent]. As regards apps; a big part of what I do is graphic design and that pretty much rules Linux out for anything work-related. Whatever you think of Adobe, Photoshop and Illustrator just blow The Gimp [dire!] and Inkscape [tolerable but clunky] out of the water. I did have high hopes that new kids on the block Affinity might bring their Photo and Designer [which actually do give Photoshop and Illustrator a run for their money] to Linux. But it seems they've decided to follow Adobe's lead and make thei offerings OSX & Windows only. About the only quality graphic design app I've seen available for Linux is Krita. But it's more of a digital painting app than an image manipulation one. And, of course, no vector graphics.

drcongo 5y ago

Elementary is starting to actually look nicer than macOS. There's still some janky details here and there, but the overall design language is very nice.

unicornporn 5y ago
As long as you only use GTK apps that is... Half (?) Of the apps I need are Qt and they will look out of place.
- dubcanada 5y ago
  Qt look out of place no matter what OS you use them on though. So I don't feel that is a fault of Elementary OS.
  - unicornporn 5y ago
    I've been running KDE Neon and they don't look out of place.
    - babypuncher 5y ago
      KDE does a better job of naturalizing GTK apps than the other way around.
      - BearOso 5y ago
        I just use the Arc GTK theme and use the kvantum Qt theme’s Arc preset. Makes both look pretty much the same. Qogir is another one that’s kind of cross-desktop.
bobbylarrybobby 5y ago
It's a sign of how crappy mainstream UI design has gotten that the thing that is really drawing me to elementary OS are the gradients, shadows, and edges that give its UI sense of depth -- not the Linux underpinnings, multitouch, or "App Store". It makes the UI 1000x easier to grok at a glance than the flat crap Microsoft and Apple have been pushing out over the past few years, and just plain looks good! I'd love for it to kick off a move back to that kind of design, but sadly it doesn't look like that's the direction things are heading.

imwillofficial 5y ago

So happy to see them continue their work of a solid, unified desktop Linux. Perhaps this year is the year of desktop Linux!

temp8964 5y ago

I have tried Linux desktop. One of the couple things I can’t get over with is remote. It seems there’s no straight and reliable way to remote to the same session of the host desktop. In addition, Windows RDP can also reliably adjust to client screen setup.

blacksmith_tb 5y ago
Hmm, VNC would normally be the way to handle that on Linux? If you have a session going and fire up your VNC server of choice, you should be able to connect to it from another machine (I can't say I do that much personally, though I did set up a little fanless box as dashboard kiosk that way for my team a while back).
- n8cpdx 5y ago
  Last I checked, VNC wasn’t really comparable to RDP in terms of performance. I work in a remote session basically all day long and it’s suitable for graphics and video among everything else. Has that changed recently?
  - blacksmith_tb 5y ago
    No, it's not nearly as performant, that's for sure. I haven't used it personally, but there is Xrdp[1] which might be better for more serious usage. 1: https://linuxize.com/post/how-to-install-xrdp-on-ubuntu-20-04/ https://linuxize.com/post/how-to-install-xrdp-on-ubuntu-20-0...
    - temp8964 5y ago
      It will create a separated session different from the local session. Basically if I used my desktop in office, and when I remote in from home, it won't show me the same windows I opened before.
- temp8964 5y ago
  My experience is that VNC won’t remote to the same session. And it can’t adjust to client resolution, so not very useful to me.

Mikeb85 5y ago

Wow looks great. This fell off my radar for a bit, looking pretty nice now. Not gonna lie, having Gnome + Flatpak on Ubuntu LTS base already puts it near the top of my list, the styling and added usability features puts it over the top. Ubuntu LTS base is also great for developers, as it seems most cloud images these days are just that. I've tried installing/building tools on other distros that I like more than Ubuntu but they always seem to use wonky options, libraries that are too old/new or in strange places, and I end up back at Ubuntu.

b2ccb2 5y ago
FYI, it doesn't use Gnome. It uses it's own DE based on Vala/GTK+/libmutter.
- SkyMarshal 5y ago
  Aka, "Pantheon": https://www.fosslinux.com/4652/pantheon-everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-elementary-os-desktop.htm https://www.fosslinux.com/4652/pantheon-everything-you-need-... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elementary_OS#Pantheon_desktop_environment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elementary_OS#Pantheon_desktop...

DenverCode 5y ago

Question, best solution for running it on an M1 Mac?

babypuncher 5y ago
A virtual machine. Running Linux natively on Apple Silicon is not ready for daily driving.

brundolf 5y ago

The main things keeping me from using Linux as a daily driver are: 1) My personal desktop has Windows for games 2) My laptops (personal and work) are Macs because Apple simply makes the best laptops When I've dual-booted in the past it's been a huge pain, and I didn't end up bothering to switch to Linux very often in practice anyway. Linux laptops exist, but they tend to be spotty in terms of build-quality and power. Gaming on Linux can technically be done, but I don't want my expensive machine to be unable to play some things because of the OS. There are lots of little things, most of which could be overcome with effort, but these days I'd rather use my devices than tinker with them most of the time. I guess I just wish I had an excuse to use something like Elementary or PopOS. I would if I had an a) desktop that b) was mainly for projects. But alas, I don't.

tomc1985 5y ago
On the desktop front, I've been hearing about virtualizing windows on Linux with a framebuffer that maps directly to the GPU. Then you get to keep something like 95% performance. I forget what it's called, but I remember seeing a subreddit for it. FBIO?
- _sigma 5y ago
  https://www.reddit.com/r/VFIO/ https://www.reddit.com/r/VFIO/
- brundolf 5y ago
  I wasn't talking about performance, I was talking about compatibility with games. Sorry if that wasn't clear; I've edited. Valve has been doing amazing things in this space, but for now my understanding is that it's more of a "most games will work pretty well" scenario, which is not really what I want for my primary games machine.
  - tomc1985 5y ago
    Well thats the perk, you get games compatibility. Windows runs in a window with direct access to the GPU. I primary Windows because of games and music software, and I'm looking forward to trying it out. As another comment points out, its called VFIO. From that subreddit: "VFIO stands for Virtual Function I/O. VFIO is a device driver that is used to assign devices to virtual machines. One of the most common uses of vfio is setting up a virtual machine with full access to a dedicated GPU. This enables near-bare-metal gaming performance in a Windows VM, offering a great alternative to dual-booting"

gclawes 5y ago

Are there still Pinebook Pro builds available?

cassidyjames 5y ago
Yes, still experimental. We recently merged in the ability to cross-compile Flatpak apps across x86 and ARM, so hopefully that leads to a more official status soon.
- gclawes 5y ago
  Awesome, thanks!

OJFord 5y ago

I'm surprised they spend so much (presumably) time and effort on applications, especially 'Web' and 'Terminal'. How many users are actually going to use 'Web' as their browser? That said, I wish them all the best, because I use 'Files' (but not the distro) since it's the best I've found for the odd occasion where I think using a GUI file manager will be easier than the command line. I still wouldn't say it's good, just the best I've found. (Not opening everything on a single-click is a vast improvement!)

seltzered_ 5y ago
I keep wondering about this too, perhaps the intent is that there's some known component that works well with the ux goals - so if someone builds a native application (with vala), they can reference the eos 'web' app when implementing a web view. It's still something I'm leary about. I switched from a mac to ubuntu (gnome) recently, and wonder how much lack of facilitation/communication leads to so many separate or incomplete apps. For example, I may use the gnome calendar app but also still have thunderbird setup to handle calendar links. Or evince (akin to preview.app) doesn't support drag/drop editing of pages so I have to also install 'pdf arranger' to do this. I think there's a chaos tolerance one has to have in approaching linux, which is fine! On the plus side I've really appreciated hearing quickly from developers when filing bugs. For anyone curious, I keep track of cross-platform workflows here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/148zTJUwfVv9xfDcpSoH3mF-c4vqV3CqyEWXuqaAiXoA/edit?usp=drive_web&ouid=115795755008503287756 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/148zTJUwfVv9xfDcpSoH3...
caslon 5y ago
Web is just GNOME Web.
- OJFord 5y ago
  ..ok. So they didn't have to put much/any effort in? Still though, how many users are actually going to use 'GNOME Web'? If I installed this, even for an elderly relative or whatever rather than myself, probably my next step would be to install Firefox. (And for others it might be Chrome of course.)

edsimpson 5y ago

I haven’t been following development closely, are there any comparisons of Elementary and Ubuntu Budgie?

AdmiralAsshat 5y ago

Can it do major version upgrades yet?

iamcreasy 5y ago
I don't think you can yet.

netcyrax 5y ago

Big fan of eOS. Congrats on the launch! I always wondered how an open-source project develops from scratch so many different apps (e.g. Web, Mail, Calendar, etc). Why not focusing more on the OS rather than wasting resources on apps that there are mature open-source alternatives (e.g. Thunderbird, Firefox, etc)?

_spduchamp 5y ago

Can't wait to give this version a whirl! As I've said before (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26661615 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26661615), we use Elementary OS as our point-of-sale terminals in a small chain of resale stores, and it's been super solid. It's been a good choice for us.

zonabey 5y ago
That sounds fantastic to see that sort of thing being used out in the open. Aside from using the Ember-electron POS app can customers access other parts of the UI or elementary OS applications? What made you choose elementary OS in particular? I'd imagine the advantage of using it over ubuntu gnome would be fairly minimised if the user would be locked to just a single application.
- _spduchamp 5y ago
  Customers don't interact with the POS but our staff do. I tried several distributions a couple years ago and found that Elementary had the least amount of clutter in the UI. Our staff are young and most are not technically savvy. For many, an iPhone is their most familiar computing device. This was the environment that seemed most comfortable. The dock bar at the bottom also made it easy to present the limited number of apps they would need.

azinman2 5y ago

I tried eOS 5. The screenshots made it look the most user friendly of Linux distros (read: Apple knock off), and at first it feels that way. But it quickly starts to show how shallow that knock off is… and it’s a huge undertaking so I don’t blame them. First is what happens once you run anything that isn’t made by them — all of the sudden totally different UIs. Linux has this problem in spades because there is no standard (gnome, kde, whatever ppl want, etc), and there’s no one setting the bar (which Apple does on its own platform). Thus there’s no consistency to anything. Their own apps similarly look ok at first, and then you go to use them and you realize it’s all very bare bones. My system also froze/locked up a lot at random, and I don’t know why. Installing Ubuntu fixed that issue. Not sure what happened there. Again I don’t blame them; not sure how many people are working for them, but creating a modern desktop and all the apps you’d expect from scratch is a huge undertaking. I hope they do well and provide Linux a real alternative experience. I’d love to see some way that they can extend into apps to make their look and feel more consistent somehow (gnome/kde skins? Something much more? Their own forks of popular apps?), and that the community ends up focusing around them so we get a distributed effort.

jcelerier 5y ago
> First is what happens once you run anything that isn’t made by them — all of the sudden totally different UIs That's a weird criticism. How many competing UI frameworks with completely different look'n'feel are there in a default win10 install ? How many control panels and file dialogs ?
- handrous 5y ago
  Sure, and everyone complains about that on Win10 because it sucks there, too. Windows the OS has improved greatly over the years, in many ways, but the UI has mostly not improved, or has even regressed, since, oh, I dunno, win98/2k. Maybe WinXP.
  - fsiefken 5y ago
    XP with the classic themes was the best. A while ago I did my best to get a decent browser that could display modern webpages running so perhaps I could use XP as a desktop. Nothing really works. Modern Java apps same thing, the JRE is frozen in time somewhere, .NET same thing. SSL isn't compatible. Perhaps one could compile a recent Wine, Mono/.NET or Java to XP and run some things. Or perhaps better, use a windows theme for a linux desktop - and stick to gtk apps. https://github.com/grassmunk/Chicago95 https://github.com/grassmunk/Chicago95

jjice 5y ago

I love the look and feel of elementary, but I'm always skeptical of trying new Linux DEs. I want them to work well, and they often do, but 4K and scaling support is very hit or miss with the ones I've used. I'm currently using Gnome and not impressed at all, just settling on it. Does anyone have experience with other DEs recently with this? Either KDE or Pantheon, or something else? I just want good 4K support and scaling that doesn't causes awful tearing or window bugs.

12ian34 5y ago
Do you need a DE? Linux is my daily driver for work and home. I've tried DEs and found them bloated and slow. I have been using i3-wm for years and loving it. You can always use picom compositor on top to mitigate visual glitches.

tayistay 5y ago

- Can't publish closed-source apps on their AppCenter. "To ensure reproducible builds, transparency, and auditability, binaries cannot be uploaded or included alongside the source code to be installed on users' devices." So that precludes my apps, and probably most other devs I know. I'd guess because of this restriction, their app store is going nowhere as a business. - Their 70/30 split is higher than what Apple currently offers (85/15) for revenue less than 1m (which is going to be everyone on eOS) - While I like macOS, I think it's a shame they chose to (more or less) copy it, rather than try a new direction. But perhaps that would be too risky.

badsectoracula 5y ago
I have used eOS at the past and while from a superficial quick look it looks like a copy of macOS, also having used macOS for a long time i can easily say that it is far from a copy. For all intents and purposes it is doing its own thing.
- tayistay 5y ago
  I installed it at one point. There were so many things they just happened to do the same way as macOS for UX (not the windows way), it just didn't seem very original. I see in V6 they've copied the light/dark mode of macOS and put the setting in roughly the same place, with the same sort of icon. Oh, and it's right above the same set of accent colors on macOS, which also are shown as circles (not squares, or rounded rectangles, or a menu). There's a dock, not a task bar. And the finder windows are laid out roughly the same as some older version of macOS. The left sidebar looks like practically the same icons. App Center is laid out the same way as the Mac App Store. I could go on. (I know that the dev environment is quite different)
  - RichEO 5y ago
    I see a lot of criticism for eOS “copying” the Mac, and yet never see any criticism of Cinnamon for copying Windows. If anything, the Linux community seems to cite it as a strength.

deleted 5y ago

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pjmlp 5y ago

Nice to see some Vala love.

skrtskrt 5y ago

I am sorry but those tray icons are horrific. I don't think they would have looked modern or clean or nice at any time. Just bad design for any era.

christophilus 5y ago
I like them. To each his own.

yosito 5y ago

Is it possible to install Elementary's DE on Ubuntu?

Royi 5y ago

I don't get how an OS is released and performance isn't mentioned. I think each OS release must include data about the performance (Speed and resources at steady state). We want performant and lean OS's.

e3bc54b2 5y ago
While I agree with you, this project originslly began (IIRC) to showcase a new theme for Ubuntu/Gnome. The main developers are designers first, and the target is to make Linux desktop more user friendly. You and I survived the trials amd now wamt performance. I personally will lilely never use elementary, but you and I are not the target audience.

princevegeta89 5y ago

Never had any problem with them however there were some serious usability issues like the AltTab behavior, absence of mouse focus options etc etc. I also remember the animations were laggy. Switched to KDE and it feels like the full package

tediousdemise 5y ago

FYI - there is no minimize button in elementary OS, and judging by the screenshots, this hasn't been fixed yet.

xtracto 5y ago
Interesting design choice. I use OSX (work laptop) and Linux Mint (home PC) and your comment got me thinking about their "minimize" button: I hate OSX behaviour of the minimize button: It hides the window and adds an additional icon in the task bar... before getting used to it for me it seemed as if OSX was "hiding" windows from me. Linux Mint has the expected (i.e. Windows 95) behaviour. Nevertheless I don't think I use a minimize button as long as I did before.
moojacob 5y ago
You can click an app's icon in the dock to toggle minimize.

Shadonototro 5y ago

very nice, this is what gnome should have been, they took the best of macOS however, i'm still gonna stick to XFCE4

dancemethis 5y ago

How dare them call us old geezers? It's the Isis drama they invented all over again.

SkyMarshal 5y ago

This is a big update for a relatively small community distro. Kudos to the team. A summary of some of the cooler features: Performance: General performance improvements on all hardware resulting from optimizing for Pinebook Pro and Raspberry Pi - namely, reducing and asynchronizing inter-process communication between desktop components, removing unused code, and reducing disk I/O. Firmware: Linux Vendor Firmware Service now built-in, enabling firmware updates from within the OS. Flatpak: all-in on flatpak, all AppCenter apps are flatpaks, as well as some Elementary apps like Web. Portals: apps must explicitly request permission to get access to files or interact with other apps. Can tweak these permissions in System Settings. Mail: The Mail app now sandboxes html emails. Multi-Touch: Extended from supporting just desktop to various apps now too. Multi-Tasking: Better hot corners + new window and workspace controls. CalDav: Tasks and Calendar now designed around the CalDav format, making importing and sharing of tasks and calendar items with other CalDav apps easier. Dark Theme: system-wide, applies to GTK apps too. Terminal: smart-paste protection extended from sudo pastes to multi-line pastes. More OEM/Vendor friendly: - Installer is simplified and streamlined - network connectivity, user account creation, and updates moved out of the installer and into the installed OS. Better for vendors & OEMs. - Startup is intentionally non-Elementary-branded, better enabling OEM/Vendor branded startup splash screen — "we don’t need to constantly advertise your operating system to you". There's a separate blog post on hardware-specific improvements here: https://blog.elementary.io/hardware-improvements-coming-to-elementary-os/ https://blog.elementary.io/hardware-improvements-coming-to-e...

wlesieutre 5y ago
>- Installer is simplified and streamlined - network connectivity, user account creation, and updates moved out of the installer and into the installed OS. Better for vendors & OEMs. Maybe the awkward stretched out time zone map is gone too? https://github.com/elementary/os/issues/164 https://github.com/elementary/os/issues/164
schmorptron 5y ago
"- Startup is intentionally non-Elementary-branded, better enabling OEM/Vendor branded startup splash screen — "we don’t need to constantly advertise your operating system to you"." Dang, I really like their logo and it sorta feels nice to see it on bootup. I'm sure there is some way to bring it back though, and it's a tiny thing that, like they said, will probably be far outweighed by the benefit it brings to OEMs.

HerbMcM 5y ago

Been using Elementary for a couple months and it's pretty comfortable. Every new version, however, I look to see if they've added support to increase mouse scroll wheel speed with no success. Sadly, it's still in the limbo circle of blame between GNOME,libinput,x,wayland,etc.

kaba0 5y ago

Are they planning on converting to Wayland?

commoner 5y ago
Yes, elementary OS is preparing for an eventual switch to Wayland. > The primary motivation for this change is the eventual move to Wayland (a protocol that will make your device faster and safer), but this also gives us more creative control over these features. https://blog.elementary.io/platform-changes-in-elementary-os-6/ https://blog.elementary.io/platform-changes-in-elementary-os...

qwerty456127 5y ago

I would migrate an office of dozens computers to this if only it used classic packages and dndn't depend on Flatpaks. I already tried to migrate to Pop_OS! but it failed to install. So I had to keep with Ubuntu.

greyivy 5y ago

Congrats Elementary team! The focus on accessibility and inclusivity (gender neutral iconography too!) is awesome! Not a fan of Debian-based distros, but still tempted to take it for a spin.

schmorptron 5y ago

I really like elementary and the ecosystem-like, but open approach they're taking to desktop linux. One aspect of it I feel often goes underappreciated is how lightweight it is. Provided you have a reasonable amount of RAM for the tasks you're trying to do, e.g. 4GB+ for normal desktop usage and an SSD, you can run it on fairly old CPUs and it will be blazing fast still. Congrats to the team!

spindle 5y ago

I love elementary OS and would use it on all my computers if I didn't love NixOS even more (and sometimes I use NixOS with Pantheon, elementary's window manager). > all AppCenter apps are now packaged and distributed as Flatpaks, a modern container format that keeps apps siloed away from each other—and your sensitive data All apps are siloed from your sensitive data? That is a little um simplified or misleading or something. They may have done a great job with security now that they have Portals, but it is surely a much more complicated story than the above quote suggests.

stonogo 5y ago

The Mail app now sandboxes html emails ... but it still loads remote resources by default. Seems like a strange combination of defaults.

neilalexander 5y ago

This is a great looking release and I really don’t think enough attention is being drawn to just how lovely the elementaryOS desktop looks and feels on a hi-DPI display, which is not something I can say for most Linux desktops. Also the font hinting/text rendering looks excellent too.

andrekandre 5y ago

wow, the icons, window borders, shading, everything is crisp and just pops maybe just me but i felt a lower cognitive load compared to big sur, and especially monterey where everything is super low contrast, large margins between items, and all the icons are hard to differentiate same-color outlines... looks nice!

Sammi 5y ago

The wallpaper is of this view if you're interested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drangarnir https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drangarnir https://visitvagar.fo/welcome-to-vagar/activities/hiking/drangarnir/ https://visitvagar.fo/welcome-to-vagar/activities/hiking/dra...

thewrinklyninja 5y ago

My main issue is still app notifications in the panel. IF I'm running a syning app like Insync. I want to have the app notifier in the system tray so I can see the status without having to check the service manually to see if its running.

pull_my_finger 5y ago

Would I be correct to say that AppCenter releases are tied to GitHub exclusively[1] or can you use other version control hosts? [1]: https://github.com/elementary/houston/wiki/Submission-Process https://github.com/elementary/houston/wiki/Submission-Proces...

gytdev 5y ago

The biggest hurdle Linux has to overcome is somehow convincing major players to release Linux version of their apps. Making a beautiful skin is not going to solve the main Linux catch-22: not enough market share to have main apps, not enough main apps to increase market share. Excel, Power point (essential for business and school) creativity apps like Photoshop, Premiere, etc. Their are essential to most people work-flows and the biggest hurdle to adoption. VM's partly solves the problem, but You need to have a decent computer and small technical chops.

wraptile 5y ago

I have a rather weird question: can Elementary be tiled and keyboard driven (at least for windows)? I like the general app visuals and their GUI philosophy but floating windows are so passé.

fattybob 5y ago

hmm, not so impressed, ran it up and its a bit of an all or nothing ultimatum on boot - i won't be running that instead of my osx for a while yet...

fattybob 5y ago
ASnd I just received an update from AirSend / another quiet mover, can’t say I interact with it much, bu they have an app now!