22 ms·

Elementary OS 7

150 points by Quot 4y ago

Superblazer 4y ago
I used to find elementary OS extremely good looking a few years ago, now it just looks bad to me. I guess I'm used to all the modern ui designs I see out there.
nsxwolf 4y ago
At this point in my life I'm just not willing to look at a desktop environment besides macOS and Windows unless it is completely different. Is there anything out there that is trying radical new concepts and not just trying to emulate macOS/Windows/Gnome/KDE et al?
- cody_coconuts 4y ago
  I haven't really ever needed much more than a customizable tiling window manager like i3. What kind of features are you looking for?
  - nsxwolf 4y ago
    I'm not necessarily looking for anything in particular, just new concepts and ideas. I know I can't go back to the 1960s and experience a completely different evolutionary path... There's certain things that have to exist now no matter what (like... windows)... but I'm very interested in novelty.
- sz4kerto 4y ago
  Depends on what you mean by completely different. For many, libre/FOSS is a fundamentally different paradigm as you can tweak it ad infinitum and also rely on it being stable (as in: not changing) for a long time. This is a niche, but it's important for some people. If you mean the UI, then tiling window managers like Sway are quite different. But I don't think UIs will ever be factor that draws people to Linux et al., it'll mostly be the feeling of freedom.
- bravetraveler 4y ago
  Do you have much experience with tiling window managers? While not flashy, I really appreciate the keyboard-driven/instant approach they offer. The killer thing for me: I never guess where something will open edit: hah, look at all these window manager posts - hi friends
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
  Gnome is very different than KDE, MacOS, or Windows.
  - RussianCow 4y ago
    In what way? I haven't used Gnome in a few years, but it seemed very similar to macOS and Windows last time I tried it.
    - kitsunesoba 4y ago
      Rather than macOS, as a long time Mac user I actually find GNOME most similar to iPadOS. It's almost exactly what one would get if they were asked to turn iPadOS into a desktop OS.
      - 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
        Which part is similar?
        smoldesu 4y ago
        Speaking for myself here: - No AppIndicators in default spec - All UI is scaled to work for touch interfaces - Default windowing support amounts to split-screen - App "icon" style launcher, even using the same sliding-widget model people loathe on iPad - Quick-settings menu pane in the top corner, almost identical to the iOS/iPad one in GNOME 40 I could go on, but I think it's safe to say that GNOME (especially GNOME 40) is derivative of iPad UI design. Other visual cues (dock, lockscreen, stylesheet, calendar, etc.) are pretty plainly inspired by the Mac UI.
        linuxlonewolf 4y ago
        The AppIndicator support is being worked on: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xdg/xdg-specs/-/issues/84 https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xdg/xdg-specs/-/issues/84
        4y ago
- pqb 4y ago
  I noticed in one of your comments in this thread that you are looking for new ideas for UI. As other commenters have said, you might be interested in tiling window managers like i3 [0] or sway [1]. They really are a gem for productivity and sometimes for the eye [2]. However, I love the concept of a scrollable window manager like PaperWM [3]. When I had a smaller screen (24" 16:9) I complained a lot about the unused space on my screen. With PaperWM I was finally happy with its dimensions, because I could have a huge IDE on the left and a small part of terminal on the right. This way I could see if something was being printed to the terminal, while my editor took up 80% of the screen. [0]: https://i3wm.org/ https://i3wm.org/ [1]: https://swaywm.org/ https://swaywm.org/ [2]: https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/ https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/ [3]: https://github.com/paperwm/PaperWM https://github.com/paperwm/PaperWM
  - nsxwolf 4y ago
    PaperWM is interesting. My only experience with scrolling desktops has been bad - because it was a remote desktop connection on a too-small monitor. You're fighting with windows-within-a-window quirkcs and guest/host issues. But when the entire local desktop experience is based around the idea that could change things. I may try it out. It sounds a bit like playing a real time strategy game with a large scrollable map, something I'm very used to.
- ploum 4y ago
  Regolith (which is Ubuntu + i3 + very sane default settings) https://regolith-desktop.com/ https://regolith-desktop.com/ (can’t live with a MacOS anymore)
- bitigchi 4y ago
  You are talking about "Tracker", the main GUI of Haiku. Read the user manual for all the niceties it has.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
brightball 4y ago
This looks like a very polished Gnome based experience. I might give it a try at some point.
- goosedragons 4y ago
  It's not Gnome, it's Pantheon, their custom desktop environment. Still based on GTK though.
  - capableweb 4y ago
    Also, it ships with bunch of Gnome applications, Archive Manager, Document Viewer, GNOME Web are the ones mentioned in this release, but there is more as well.
  - brightball 4y ago
    > we’re shipping the very latest GNOME Web 43 My mistake. When I read this line it had me thinking Gnome.
nkotov 4y ago
Elementary is pretty cool but why does it look so dated.
- carlosjobim 4y ago
  To me it looks productive and stable.
  - dlivingston 4y ago
    It reminds me very much of Aqua [0]. To be clear, I like that design style, but it is clearly true that it went "out of fashion" 10+ years ago. [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aqua_(user_interface) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aqua_(user_interface)
    - smoldesu 4y ago
      IMO, GNOME 3's version of Adwaita was evocative of the old "Platinum" UI for Mac. Very clean and professional, and aged much better than Aqua for my money.
      - kitsunesoba 4y ago
        GNOME 3 Adwaita had some commonalities with Platinum, but in comparison it's a bit too bright in light mode and has much worse information density with how hard it leans into margins and padding. In those ways I think Elementary's theme is a bit more similar to Platinum. It's not nearly as afraid of mid-grays and while it still has a lot of padding, it's less excessive than Adwaita's.
Kukumber 4y ago
Most beautiful and polished distro, the UI/UX is consistent across the entire ecosystem, that's great to see I still find it sad that they mimic the stupid gnome design philosophy WRT the top bar, the lack of proper global menu is a shame The way they do window maximize/minimize is also weird 2 points i find deal breaker unfortunately, but that's their vision and that's respectable
smoldesu 4y ago
Where is Wayland support standing for Elementary? I'm glad the project is still around, but the dream of a Mac-like HID experience won't be complete without gesture support and smooth windowing. Now that KDE and GNOME are both using Wayland sessions and implement 1:1 touchpad gestures, it's hard to recommend the Pantheon desktop (even if a lot of the apps are excellent!)
- jchw 4y ago
  I hate to add even more of a wishlist, but in addition to moving towards a Wayland environment, it would be nice to see an immutable root as well. SteamOS on deck has sold me on this concept; as long as there's plenty of escape hatches and the ability to disable it, I view it as a plus, and no doubt it makes updates excellent. These two features would make Elementary OS the very obvious recommendation for anyone curious about Linux but wanting an environment that actually works and looks nice. Today on Linux, it feels like you are more often than not stuck between choosing one or the other... Regarding Wayland, it looks like it has been hacked on here and there but doesn't seem to be a priority yet: https://github.com/elementary/gala/wiki/Experimenting-with-Wayland https://github.com/elementary/gala/wiki/Experimenting-with-W... Hopefully by the time it is, NVIDIA's driver will have better stability with Wayland compositors.
  - smoldesu 4y ago
    As a NixOS user I'll generally agree, as long as there are still options for people who want to use Pantheon on a more traditional OS. Immutable roots are cool, but feel like a novelty when so much software breaks under it. Great to have as an option for sure though. > Hopefully by the time it is, NVIDIA's driver will have better stability with Wayland compositors. I think Nvidia's support is pretty much complete. Plasma fixed almost all of it's Wayland/Nvidia bugs (as far as I can see on my desktop) and Mutter has an Nvidia rewrite on the roadmap IIRC. Still not perfect, but the new drivers have stopped 95% of the major glitching caused with the old ones.
    - kitsunesoba 4y ago
      Hoping that mutter rewrite comes sooner than later. Currently running GNOME on a Fedora/Nvidia box and it's frustrating to lose features like Night Light when running Wayland with proprietary drivers, as is the glitchiness of Electron apps under GNOME+Wayland+Nvidia (for instance, VS Code is a flickery mess with that setup).
kitsunesoba 4y ago
I don't agree with all of the design choices in Elementary OS, but I appreciate the sense of craft it has that largely vanished from mainstream software from 2012-2014 onward in favor of a dollar store version of IKEA minimalism. I hope it can continue to carry that torch until the industry finds its way back.
- gradExMachina 4y ago
  Perhaps you are thinking of Skewomorphism as opposed to Flat design?
  - kitsunesoba 4y ago
    That is maybe a facet of the change, but there's more to it. It's also a certain attention to detail with regard to things like use of whitespace, the layout and flow of widgets, the types of widgets used, and user experience in general. These things have become increasingly phoned-in, with little thought applied; just dump it all into a grid and apply copious padding and you're done. Things that don't fit get removed or buried in dialog tunnels and there is no effort to make anything clear to the user. There have been flat designs in the past that don't suffer these issues, like the earlier designs of Mac OS (System 1.0-7.5), which worked fine on 1-bit and grayscale displays but had a lot of thought and research put into their user experience. This all got thrown out in the transition to flat design. Not only was skeumorphism discarded, but so was care for UI/UX in general. The baby was thrown out with the bathwater.
- gjsman-1000 4y ago
  Elementary OS is the pinnacle of a nice-looking OS with questionable technical decisions under-the-hood. The biggest one? No upgrades. You literally can't go from 5 to 6, or 6 to 7, without a full reinstall. There's not a terminal command for the adventurous either. That, to me, is extremely nasty. You have to take everything out of your computer, and put it back, every year to get the latest features and make sure you are secure? That's so bad, it feels like false marketing to call it "Elementary OS." You might as well download a random customized Windows ISO from the internet and disable Windows Update forever. At least Microsoft Edge would still get updates for years but Elementary OS's browser won't for very long. Unless, of course, you enjoy taking personal responsibility for updating every PC of those non-technical folks you recommend it to or install it for. I'd happily install it for quite a few relatives who would otherwise use Chromebooks, but that's a big showstopper. I can read about how they've improved the Music app or made the App Center better for developers all day, but they have this massive hole in the ship that makes it fundamentally unsuitable for the intended purpose and they still haven't fixed it after 7 versions. Elementary users don't find pleasure in reinstalling their OS on weekends.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
vorpalhex 4y ago
I gave Elementary a try, unfortunately it's just too simplified. You can eventually get gnome-tweaks up and fix things like font-scaling on high dpi displays, but Pantheon is too basic.
Longhanks 4y ago
> Sideloading apps and using alt stores like Flathub is a major feature of elementary OS and a competitive edge over closed platforms that only let you install apps from a locked down store. Unless elementary suddenly competes with iOS, I don’t know which platform they’re actually referring to, all while actually regressing the experience with Vista-style "are you sure" dialogs. Their dark pattern compelling you to "buy" instead of simply download elementary (for which I doubt many $$$ go to for example the Linux kernel) is still present, too.
- smoldesu 4y ago
  It's also weird how they call it "Sideloading" rather than just... installing apps. This is how modern operating systems should work, it's baffling that they bend the rules to make room for the exception. That being said, I do think it's fine for them to charge for their software experience here. What they're really asking you to pay for is the development of the Pantheon UI, and the desktop/OS portion of it. There's not really any reason to pay that back to the Linux kernel besides good will.
- bravetraveler 4y ago
  I think they're taking a dig at Canonical with the Snap-fu. I'm not very well informed, but I've seen/heard some drama about it Slimy way to say 'we have Flatpak' [like every other distribution]... including the one they hope to take a shot at This project tears me. I want to say good work, but we don't need more fragmentation. Pantheon doesn't really need such a 'fork' That, with the longstanding dark pattern for donations... and I can't help but feel worse for having been reminded
- t0astbread 4y ago
  The sideloading dialogs are a bit extreme, I agree. But in general I don't see what's wrong with guiding users towards the "happy path" for package management. It's an opinionated system so it might not be everyone's thing but if it makes sense, sure, why not. Regarding pricing, even if we say they're basically charging money for it, why is that bad? You get the thing under a free license which is still better than commercial proprietary software that doesn't share any of its revenue. And because they allow you to choose how much you pay you can always pay them less and donate to the Linux Foundation yourself (or any of the other underlying software projects that are taking donations). Granted, folks who are new to the Linux universe won't know about this stuff, so a default split would help.
segaboy81 4y ago
I fully believe that Elementary survives only because 99% of those purported 400,000 downloads are really just YouTubers racing each other to apply some anime wallpaper and show it off on YouTube. I firmly believe that Elementary OS has no utility over Arch/Fedora/Ubuntu and that any income they receive from donors is money ill-spent.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- pacifika 4y ago
  If you find gnome too ugly and kde not opinionated enough then this is worth a try.
- phaedryx 4y ago
  My kids like it better than any other distro. I've donated a bit of money from time to time because that's what my kids use.
- giancarlostoro 4y ago
  I like some of the built-in apps they have. They're nicely done and they're fast, I just wish regular Ubuntu would of adopted them into their ecosystem officially. I have no sane way to pull them into POP OS which I prefer for the OOTB experience I have.
  - lproven 4y ago
    Yes, it's based on Ubuntu, but it's not a remix. It's too different to be one: - no Snap - Flatpak instead - Most standard Ubuntu apps missing - In-house replacements for many Ubuntu standard components: their own browser, their own email client, their own calendar, their own media player, etc. You can install the Pantheon desktop environment on standard Ubuntu. https://askubuntu.com/questions/66757/how-to-install-the-pantheon-desktop-environment https://askubuntu.com/questions/66757/how-to-install-the-pan... P.S. > would of adopted them * would _have_ adopted. "Would've" is short for "would have" not "would of" which never ever occurs in English. This is a common error but it drives me crazy.
dualboot 4y ago
Information that wasn't quickly groked from their website but some digging(thanks Wikipedia) revealed. It's based on Ubuntu LTS, so a Debian-descendant. I appreciate they're trying to provide a specific type of experience, and it's not really a criticism but as a 30+ year Linux user -- with any new distro that's my first question.
pacifika 4y ago
Elementary reimagines the desktop experience which can take a few days getting used to, however once you do it does a lot of things consistently and intuitively. So much more responsive than macOS and with nice apps, on top of Ubuntu LTS HWE kernel.
- sprkwd 4y ago
  Is it still impossible to save files onto the desktop?
  - pacifika 4y ago
    You can save files in the desktop folder but you can’t see files on the desktop area.
    - bitigchi 4y ago
      You can't make this up.
    - matejn 4y ago
      I do the same on Windows. There's an option to hide icons on the desktop.
snowpid 4y ago
I was once a elementary os user but once I realised the elementary model is stuck and there is no big changes since version 5. If you look to active DE you see some commercial contributers e.g. GNOME from Red Hat and Cosmic from System76 (which started a way later) But as the founder see itself as a communist, I dont think, something will change (not to mention the moral ignorance of communist anyway). I liked the whole experience approach, "apple like", but now I use Gnome.
schmorptron 4y ago
I liked elementary, but progress has slowed to a crawl since the two co-founders had a falling out [1]. Of course as outsiders we probably don't know everything but the other founder's (the one who left) offer to keep working on the project for free without payment sounded pretty good, and it's disappointing that Danielle Foré seemingly didn't accept it (Although I might be missing some things here, this is just what it sounded like to me). A shame, they really had something good going with the overall design and attention to detail! That being said, the changes in this release look cool and promising, hoping they can get back on track! [1]https://news.itsfoss.com/elementary-co-founder-joins-endless-os/ https://news.itsfoss.com/elementary-co-founder-joins-endless...
sccxy 4y ago
Well written blog post and most important that there are a lot of screenshots. So many good OSS projects fail this simple task. Show some images!
marginalia_nu 4y ago
It's come to the point where the single deciding factor when I decide on which Linux distribution I select is whether it has decent support for fractional scaling. AFAIK, Pop! is the only one that almost gets it right. Sad state for Linux on the desktop.
jug 4y ago
It seems to me it never took off which I partly blame on the direction. It's beautiful but a bit too simple and I had a locked in feeling I haven't felt before while using Linux (to the contrary in fact). As long as I remained within the ecosystem it was fine, but otherwise it was like jumping off a cliff. That strains the ecosystem and emphasizes available software a lot. How fun the OS is to use becomes a factor of everything besides the OS. I couldn't really use it like that and I didn't need to anymore either as GNOME had caught up and I'm now a happy Fedora + GNOME user. It also shares a "simple" and macOS like design language/goals, but with many advantages from technical, development backing, and community size standpoints.
6451937099 4y ago
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bradwood 4y ago
I toyed with it for a bit found Zorin OS to be a nicer choice in this segment of the Linux market.
ClapperHeid 4y ago
Sigh! --I've said it before and I'll say it again: I know choice is great and all that but, fer feck's sake, why can't the "Linux world" [for want of a better phrase] get their heads round the fact that the problem with Linux is not a lack of alternate file managers, preference panels, installer screen animations or window dressing for the software store.... but the fact that the software store itself is glaringly empty. I'm not a Linux hater. I use it on all my servers, my media centre and one of my desktops. I'd love to use it as my daily driver,as I loathe Apple and Microsoft. But, when I need to get work done, I use OSX because the applications I need don't exist on Linux and their Linux equivalents are piss-poor. I imagine many people who use Windows are in the same boat. As regards the operating system [in my case OSX], I very occasionally open System Preferences to adjust a system setting. And I use the Finder to move the odd file around. But for my actual day to day work, I hardly rub up against the OS at all. It's just the utility that runs in the background and lets me access other "stuff" I need to work with in the applications I actually use. Given the number of Linux variants that exist, there must be hundreds of talented Linux programmers out there. Why [seemingly] do none of them turn these talents to coming up with something that actually serves a purpose and fills an application gap --rather than endlessly re-inventing the same basic utility applications as already exist in the eleventy billion other Linux distros already out there?
6451937099 4y ago
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150 points by Quot 4y ago

I used to find elementary OS extremely good looking a few years ago, now it just looks bad to me. I guess I'm used to all the modern ui designs I see out there.

nsxwolf 4y ago

At this point in my life I'm just not willing to look at a desktop environment besides macOS and Windows unless it is completely different. Is there anything out there that is trying radical new concepts and not just trying to emulate macOS/Windows/Gnome/KDE et al?

cody_coconuts 4y ago
I haven't really ever needed much more than a customizable tiling window manager like i3. What kind of features are you looking for?
- nsxwolf 4y ago
  I'm not necessarily looking for anything in particular, just new concepts and ideas. I know I can't go back to the 1960s and experience a completely different evolutionary path... There's certain things that have to exist now no matter what (like... windows)... but I'm very interested in novelty.
sz4kerto 4y ago
Depends on what you mean by completely different. For many, libre/FOSS is a fundamentally different paradigm as you can tweak it ad infinitum and also rely on it being stable (as in: not changing) for a long time. This is a niche, but it's important for some people. If you mean the UI, then tiling window managers like Sway are quite different. But I don't think UIs will ever be factor that draws people to Linux et al., it'll mostly be the feeling of freedom.
bravetraveler 4y ago
Do you have much experience with tiling window managers? While not flashy, I really appreciate the keyboard-driven/instant approach they offer. The killer thing for me: I never guess where something will open edit: hah, look at all these window manager posts - hi friends
2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
Gnome is very different than KDE, MacOS, or Windows.
- RussianCow 4y ago
  In what way? I haven't used Gnome in a few years, but it seemed very similar to macOS and Windows last time I tried it.
  - kitsunesoba 4y ago
    Rather than macOS, as a long time Mac user I actually find GNOME most similar to iPadOS. It's almost exactly what one would get if they were asked to turn iPadOS into a desktop OS.
    - 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
      Which part is similar?
      - smoldesu 4y ago
        Speaking for myself here: - No AppIndicators in default spec - All UI is scaled to work for touch interfaces - Default windowing support amounts to split-screen - App "icon" style launcher, even using the same sliding-widget model people loathe on iPad - Quick-settings menu pane in the top corner, almost identical to the iOS/iPad one in GNOME 40 I could go on, but I think it's safe to say that GNOME (especially GNOME 40) is derivative of iPad UI design. Other visual cues (dock, lockscreen, stylesheet, calendar, etc.) are pretty plainly inspired by the Mac UI.
        linuxlonewolf 4y ago
        The AppIndicator support is being worked on: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xdg/xdg-specs/-/issues/84 https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xdg/xdg-specs/-/issues/84
      - 4y ago
pqb 4y ago
I noticed in one of your comments in this thread that you are looking for new ideas for UI. As other commenters have said, you might be interested in tiling window managers like i3 [0] or sway [1]. They really are a gem for productivity and sometimes for the eye [2]. However, I love the concept of a scrollable window manager like PaperWM [3]. When I had a smaller screen (24" 16:9) I complained a lot about the unused space on my screen. With PaperWM I was finally happy with its dimensions, because I could have a huge IDE on the left and a small part of terminal on the right. This way I could see if something was being printed to the terminal, while my editor took up 80% of the screen. [0]: https://i3wm.org/ https://i3wm.org/ [1]: https://swaywm.org/ https://swaywm.org/ [2]: https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/ https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/ [3]: https://github.com/paperwm/PaperWM https://github.com/paperwm/PaperWM
- nsxwolf 4y ago
  PaperWM is interesting. My only experience with scrolling desktops has been bad - because it was a remote desktop connection on a too-small monitor. You're fighting with windows-within-a-window quirkcs and guest/host issues. But when the entire local desktop experience is based around the idea that could change things. I may try it out. It sounds a bit like playing a real time strategy game with a large scrollable map, something I'm very used to.
ploum 4y ago
Regolith (which is Ubuntu + i3 + very sane default settings) https://regolith-desktop.com/ https://regolith-desktop.com/ (can’t live with a MacOS anymore)
bitigchi 4y ago
You are talking about "Tracker", the main GUI of Haiku. Read the user manual for all the niceties it has.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

brightball 4y ago

This looks like a very polished Gnome based experience. I might give it a try at some point.

goosedragons 4y ago
It's not Gnome, it's Pantheon, their custom desktop environment. Still based on GTK though.
- capableweb 4y ago
  Also, it ships with bunch of Gnome applications, Archive Manager, Document Viewer, GNOME Web are the ones mentioned in this release, but there is more as well.
- brightball 4y ago
  > we’re shipping the very latest GNOME Web 43 My mistake. When I read this line it had me thinking Gnome.

nkotov 4y ago

Elementary is pretty cool but why does it look so dated.

carlosjobim 4y ago
To me it looks productive and stable.
- dlivingston 4y ago
  It reminds me very much of Aqua [0]. To be clear, I like that design style, but it is clearly true that it went "out of fashion" 10+ years ago. [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aqua_(user_interface) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aqua_(user_interface)
  - smoldesu 4y ago
    IMO, GNOME 3's version of Adwaita was evocative of the old "Platinum" UI for Mac. Very clean and professional, and aged much better than Aqua for my money.
    - kitsunesoba 4y ago
      GNOME 3 Adwaita had some commonalities with Platinum, but in comparison it's a bit too bright in light mode and has much worse information density with how hard it leans into margins and padding. In those ways I think Elementary's theme is a bit more similar to Platinum. It's not nearly as afraid of mid-grays and while it still has a lot of padding, it's less excessive than Adwaita's.

Kukumber 4y ago

Most beautiful and polished distro, the UI/UX is consistent across the entire ecosystem, that's great to see I still find it sad that they mimic the stupid gnome design philosophy WRT the top bar, the lack of proper global menu is a shame The way they do window maximize/minimize is also weird 2 points i find deal breaker unfortunately, but that's their vision and that's respectable

smoldesu 4y ago

Where is Wayland support standing for Elementary? I'm glad the project is still around, but the dream of a Mac-like HID experience won't be complete without gesture support and smooth windowing. Now that KDE and GNOME are both using Wayland sessions and implement 1:1 touchpad gestures, it's hard to recommend the Pantheon desktop (even if a lot of the apps are excellent!)

jchw 4y ago
I hate to add even more of a wishlist, but in addition to moving towards a Wayland environment, it would be nice to see an immutable root as well. SteamOS on deck has sold me on this concept; as long as there's plenty of escape hatches and the ability to disable it, I view it as a plus, and no doubt it makes updates excellent. These two features would make Elementary OS the very obvious recommendation for anyone curious about Linux but wanting an environment that actually works and looks nice. Today on Linux, it feels like you are more often than not stuck between choosing one or the other... Regarding Wayland, it looks like it has been hacked on here and there but doesn't seem to be a priority yet: https://github.com/elementary/gala/wiki/Experimenting-with-Wayland https://github.com/elementary/gala/wiki/Experimenting-with-W... Hopefully by the time it is, NVIDIA's driver will have better stability with Wayland compositors.
- smoldesu 4y ago
  As a NixOS user I'll generally agree, as long as there are still options for people who want to use Pantheon on a more traditional OS. Immutable roots are cool, but feel like a novelty when so much software breaks under it. Great to have as an option for sure though. > Hopefully by the time it is, NVIDIA's driver will have better stability with Wayland compositors. I think Nvidia's support is pretty much complete. Plasma fixed almost all of it's Wayland/Nvidia bugs (as far as I can see on my desktop) and Mutter has an Nvidia rewrite on the roadmap IIRC. Still not perfect, but the new drivers have stopped 95% of the major glitching caused with the old ones.
  - kitsunesoba 4y ago
    Hoping that mutter rewrite comes sooner than later. Currently running GNOME on a Fedora/Nvidia box and it's frustrating to lose features like Night Light when running Wayland with proprietary drivers, as is the glitchiness of Electron apps under GNOME+Wayland+Nvidia (for instance, VS Code is a flickery mess with that setup).

kitsunesoba 4y ago

I don't agree with all of the design choices in Elementary OS, but I appreciate the sense of craft it has that largely vanished from mainstream software from 2012-2014 onward in favor of a dollar store version of IKEA minimalism. I hope it can continue to carry that torch until the industry finds its way back.

gradExMachina 4y ago
Perhaps you are thinking of Skewomorphism as opposed to Flat design?
- kitsunesoba 4y ago
  That is maybe a facet of the change, but there's more to it. It's also a certain attention to detail with regard to things like use of whitespace, the layout and flow of widgets, the types of widgets used, and user experience in general. These things have become increasingly phoned-in, with little thought applied; just dump it all into a grid and apply copious padding and you're done. Things that don't fit get removed or buried in dialog tunnels and there is no effort to make anything clear to the user. There have been flat designs in the past that don't suffer these issues, like the earlier designs of Mac OS (System 1.0-7.5), which worked fine on 1-bit and grayscale displays but had a lot of thought and research put into their user experience. This all got thrown out in the transition to flat design. Not only was skeumorphism discarded, but so was care for UI/UX in general. The baby was thrown out with the bathwater.
gjsman-1000 4y ago
Elementary OS is the pinnacle of a nice-looking OS with questionable technical decisions under-the-hood. The biggest one? No upgrades. You literally can't go from 5 to 6, or 6 to 7, without a full reinstall. There's not a terminal command for the adventurous either. That, to me, is extremely nasty. You have to take everything out of your computer, and put it back, every year to get the latest features and make sure you are secure? That's so bad, it feels like false marketing to call it "Elementary OS." You might as well download a random customized Windows ISO from the internet and disable Windows Update forever. At least Microsoft Edge would still get updates for years but Elementary OS's browser won't for very long. Unless, of course, you enjoy taking personal responsibility for updating every PC of those non-technical folks you recommend it to or install it for. I'd happily install it for quite a few relatives who would otherwise use Chromebooks, but that's a big showstopper. I can read about how they've improved the Music app or made the App Center better for developers all day, but they have this massive hole in the ship that makes it fundamentally unsuitable for the intended purpose and they still haven't fixed it after 7 versions. Elementary users don't find pleasure in reinstalling their OS on weekends.

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vorpalhex 4y ago

I gave Elementary a try, unfortunately it's just too simplified. You can eventually get gnome-tweaks up and fix things like font-scaling on high dpi displays, but Pantheon is too basic.

Longhanks 4y ago

> Sideloading apps and using alt stores like Flathub is a major feature of elementary OS and a competitive edge over closed platforms that only let you install apps from a locked down store. Unless elementary suddenly competes with iOS, I don’t know which platform they’re actually referring to, all while actually regressing the experience with Vista-style "are you sure" dialogs. Their dark pattern compelling you to "buy" instead of simply download elementary (for which I doubt many $$$ go to for example the Linux kernel) is still present, too.

smoldesu 4y ago
It's also weird how they call it "Sideloading" rather than just... installing apps. This is how modern operating systems should work, it's baffling that they bend the rules to make room for the exception. That being said, I do think it's fine for them to charge for their software experience here. What they're really asking you to pay for is the development of the Pantheon UI, and the desktop/OS portion of it. There's not really any reason to pay that back to the Linux kernel besides good will.
bravetraveler 4y ago
I think they're taking a dig at Canonical with the Snap-fu. I'm not very well informed, but I've seen/heard some drama about it Slimy way to say 'we have Flatpak' [like every other distribution]... including the one they hope to take a shot at This project tears me. I want to say good work, but we don't need more fragmentation. Pantheon doesn't really need such a 'fork' That, with the longstanding dark pattern for donations... and I can't help but feel worse for having been reminded
t0astbread 4y ago
The sideloading dialogs are a bit extreme, I agree. But in general I don't see what's wrong with guiding users towards the "happy path" for package management. It's an opinionated system so it might not be everyone's thing but if it makes sense, sure, why not. Regarding pricing, even if we say they're basically charging money for it, why is that bad? You get the thing under a free license which is still better than commercial proprietary software that doesn't share any of its revenue. And because they allow you to choose how much you pay you can always pay them less and donate to the Linux Foundation yourself (or any of the other underlying software projects that are taking donations). Granted, folks who are new to the Linux universe won't know about this stuff, so a default split would help.

segaboy81 4y ago

I fully believe that Elementary survives only because 99% of those purported 400,000 downloads are really just YouTubers racing each other to apply some anime wallpaper and show it off on YouTube. I firmly believe that Elementary OS has no utility over Arch/Fedora/Ubuntu and that any income they receive from donors is money ill-spent.

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pacifika 4y ago
If you find gnome too ugly and kde not opinionated enough then this is worth a try.
phaedryx 4y ago
My kids like it better than any other distro. I've donated a bit of money from time to time because that's what my kids use.
giancarlostoro 4y ago
I like some of the built-in apps they have. They're nicely done and they're fast, I just wish regular Ubuntu would of adopted them into their ecosystem officially. I have no sane way to pull them into POP OS which I prefer for the OOTB experience I have.
- lproven 4y ago
  Yes, it's based on Ubuntu, but it's not a remix. It's too different to be one: - no Snap - Flatpak instead - Most standard Ubuntu apps missing - In-house replacements for many Ubuntu standard components: their own browser, their own email client, their own calendar, their own media player, etc. You can install the Pantheon desktop environment on standard Ubuntu. https://askubuntu.com/questions/66757/how-to-install-the-pantheon-desktop-environment https://askubuntu.com/questions/66757/how-to-install-the-pan... P.S. > would of adopted them * would _have_ adopted. "Would've" is short for "would have" not "would of" which never ever occurs in English. This is a common error but it drives me crazy.

dualboot 4y ago

Information that wasn't quickly groked from their website but some digging(thanks Wikipedia) revealed. It's based on Ubuntu LTS, so a Debian-descendant. I appreciate they're trying to provide a specific type of experience, and it's not really a criticism but as a 30+ year Linux user -- with any new distro that's my first question.

pacifika 4y ago

Elementary reimagines the desktop experience which can take a few days getting used to, however once you do it does a lot of things consistently and intuitively. So much more responsive than macOS and with nice apps, on top of Ubuntu LTS HWE kernel.

sprkwd 4y ago
Is it still impossible to save files onto the desktop?
- pacifika 4y ago
  You can save files in the desktop folder but you can’t see files on the desktop area.
  - bitigchi 4y ago
    You can't make this up.
  - matejn 4y ago
    I do the same on Windows. There's an option to hide icons on the desktop.

snowpid 4y ago

I was once a elementary os user but once I realised the elementary model is stuck and there is no big changes since version 5. If you look to active DE you see some commercial contributers e.g. GNOME from Red Hat and Cosmic from System76 (which started a way later) But as the founder see itself as a communist, I dont think, something will change (not to mention the moral ignorance of communist anyway). I liked the whole experience approach, "apple like", but now I use Gnome.

schmorptron 4y ago

I liked elementary, but progress has slowed to a crawl since the two co-founders had a falling out [1]. Of course as outsiders we probably don't know everything but the other founder's (the one who left) offer to keep working on the project for free without payment sounded pretty good, and it's disappointing that Danielle Foré seemingly didn't accept it (Although I might be missing some things here, this is just what it sounded like to me). A shame, they really had something good going with the overall design and attention to detail! That being said, the changes in this release look cool and promising, hoping they can get back on track! [1]https://news.itsfoss.com/elementary-co-founder-joins-endless-os/ https://news.itsfoss.com/elementary-co-founder-joins-endless...

sccxy 4y ago

Well written blog post and most important that there are a lot of screenshots. So many good OSS projects fail this simple task. Show some images!

marginalia_nu 4y ago

It's come to the point where the single deciding factor when I decide on which Linux distribution I select is whether it has decent support for fractional scaling. AFAIK, Pop! is the only one that almost gets it right. Sad state for Linux on the desktop.

jug 4y ago

It seems to me it never took off which I partly blame on the direction. It's beautiful but a bit too simple and I had a locked in feeling I haven't felt before while using Linux (to the contrary in fact). As long as I remained within the ecosystem it was fine, but otherwise it was like jumping off a cliff. That strains the ecosystem and emphasizes available software a lot. How fun the OS is to use becomes a factor of everything besides the OS. I couldn't really use it like that and I didn't need to anymore either as GNOME had caught up and I'm now a happy Fedora + GNOME user. It also shares a "simple" and macOS like design language/goals, but with many advantages from technical, development backing, and community size standpoints.

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bradwood 4y ago

I toyed with it for a bit found Zorin OS to be a nicer choice in this segment of the Linux market.

ClapperHeid 4y ago

Sigh! --I've said it before and I'll say it again: I know choice is great and all that but, fer feck's sake, why can't the "Linux world" [for want of a better phrase] get their heads round the fact that the problem with Linux is not a lack of alternate file managers, preference panels, installer screen animations or window dressing for the software store.... but the fact that the software store itself is glaringly empty. I'm not a Linux hater. I use it on all my servers, my media centre and one of my desktops. I'd love to use it as my daily driver,as I loathe Apple and Microsoft. But, when I need to get work done, I use OSX because the applications I need don't exist on Linux and their Linux equivalents are piss-poor. I imagine many people who use Windows are in the same boat. As regards the operating system [in my case OSX], I very occasionally open System Preferences to adjust a system setting. And I use the Finder to move the odd file around. But for my actual day to day work, I hardly rub up against the OS at all. It's just the utility that runs in the background and lets me access other "stuff" I need to work with in the applications I actually use. Given the number of Linux variants that exist, there must be hundreds of talented Linux programmers out there. Why [seemingly] do none of them turn these talents to coming up with something that actually serves a purpose and fills an application gap --rather than endlessly re-inventing the same basic utility applications as already exist in the eleventy billion other Linux distros already out there?

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