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It really saddens me how much people underestimate the effort it takes to create a good UI by saying eOS is just a "pretty Ubuntu clone". I don't think their b

• mksaunders 12y ago
  It's not offensive now because they've changed the text (a while ago). Originally it said that people who didn't pay for eOS were "cheating the system". Some people could find that offensive, especially when eOS gets the vast majority of its codebase for free from Debian, Ubuntu and the rest of the FOSS world. What the eOS guys said was offensive to some people, and downright idiotic to everyone else!
• Brakenshire 12y ago
  Yes, elementary have put in a huge amount of work to produce an excellent product, and a major step towards where Linux needs to be to attract non technical users, and it is disappointing that so many people seem to be willing to throw them and their years of work under the bus for what amounts to poorly chosen wording. On the substance rather than the wording, surely Hacker News does not agree, as a group, that open source software should never be monetized, especially on a voluntary basis. They have rewritten the Linux desktop environment from scratch, which is an enormous amount of work, and in my experience it works very well. Why not expect that you could find 10,000 users, many of whom people spending their professional life on computers, willing to pay $20 (which in the UK is about 4 cups of coffee), and actually be able to support some developers working on the project full time? That is not at all an unreasonable goal. I know about 20 people over the age of 70 who I periodically help with computer problems, I would say about half of them still using XP on computers that cannot be upgraded to Windows 8. They principally use their computers for checking webmail and browsing the internet. I have tried Ubuntu, but unfortunately it has all sorts of minor UI ruffles which make it difficult for many non-technical people to use. Some examples are: people really struggle to use its pop-up scroll bars, partly because the concept is apparently non obvious, and needs to be explained, and partly because they're fiddly. Then, programs often open in the background, and don't come to the front, so the only sign they're ready is an illuminated icon to the left. And, you get regular pop-up which say 'serious system error detected' which never seem to amount to anything. And in general, I would say my experience is that it is not beautiful, polished or consistent enough to justify to non technical users the change in user interface which it asks them to make. Linux is effectively a developer market, it is written by and for developers, to stratch and itch or for infrastructure. But there has been a consistent failure to produce an operating system that ordinary people want to use. In my opinion, Linux also needs a consumer market, which is willing to pay to bring in other professionals, principally designers, and support them in polishing the user interface, in the way that users want, to a heavy sheen. Elementary OS was a step in that direction, and it's very disappointing to see it apparently shot down for a lack of ideological purity and/or just being abrasive. Hopefully, despite the level of outrage which many people feel, they will be able to find their 10,000 users out of the general Linux community, and carry on regardless.
  • dmix 12y ago
    I went through this entire HN thread and the only complaint is that the website has no information and something like this: > They have rewritten the Linux desktop environment from scratch is entirely not communicated on their homepage. People here are not familiar with the work that they've done. And I don't blame them. In the software world being able to market/communicate your work to the public is as important as actually doing the work. I've been in plenty of threads on HN recently where people have praised the work on Gnome for improving Linux desktop usability/design (after some initial hiccups). Gnome releases videos like this that clearly demonstrate what they are adding: 3.16 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxRLa5hTGkg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxRLa5hTGkg 3.14 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7p8Prlu3owc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7p8Prlu3owc Elementary OS should have similar information for their release.
• wanda 12y ago
  I think it's very cheeky to pseudo-paywall an operating system that has reached version 0.3 and is still very temperamental. Granted, the install process was a breeze--I'd expect this from a Ubuntu clone--but once the system is installed it's far from stable. Pantheon is a great step forward for Linux UI design but it can be very buggy compared to the tried and true alternatives. Even Unity, as much as I detest it, runs very smoothly. Maybe it's just me, maybe eOS runs perfectly on everybody else's computers, but the standard install has proven a little buggy and I've had to make adjustments from the command line to make it usable. I think if Windows or OS X didn't work out-of-the-box, I'd want a refund and I'd consider a free alternative. eOS is great for free, but for money? Not so sure.