Elementary OS has picked a specific niche, and its arguably the best distribution in it.
It has a really well designed and consistent UI experience, and you can't break it.
I think most of you just don't realize how difficult linux is for people who barely understand how to use a Mac or Windows machine.
Furthermore, linux is a world where mainstream distributions still release with horrible UI experiences with numerous typography mistakes, icons of different sizes and grid alignment imbalances everywhere.
Mint is great, but seriously. Look at that logo render. Even worse, look at the start bar. Every single text and logo has a different height. I mean how do you even do something like that unintentionally?
I am using XFCE right now, and it's great because its much faster than KDE or Gnome on this old laptop. But it sure isn't a pretty UI.
I know a MSc. designer and she claims using my laptop makes her physically sick and dizzy. I don't care as much, but I can see the point. Everything is misaligned, in the start menu, the task bar, the apps. In the window bar the buttons and the minimize arrow aren't the same size. I mean seriously, whoever did this just did not care about Ui.
I don't think ElementaryOS is for everyone. If you have any interest in non-standard repos, recent kernels or doing stuff in commandline, you are just better off elsewhere. I understand their choices, but I don't use it because of how they do the app store, among other things.
But if you just want a computer that runs, looks good and doesn't break if you do X, then I think ElementaryOS is the #1 choice in the Linux world, and we should be thankful that it exists.
I agree. I would be using Linux full time if the experience was not so jarring all the time. Fonts and themes are off, stuff gets jumbled around, things are wildly inconsistent. You end up spending lots of time doing weird hacks to make everything look alright. Even Elementary will break if you move outside the core applications - it cannot be helped in this ecosystem.
When Linux works for you it's so damn great but I cannot fully enjoy a UI that is so inconsistent and ugly so often.
Why are you comparing Elementary OS with a version of Linux Mint that's at least 5 years old? Especially when they had such a big design shift in the last year or two.
As someone who has actually used elementaryOS for some time(both previous versions about 6 months each) I have to disagree with your "doesn't break if you do X" claim.
You can break elementaryOS' nice graphics just by putting it into sleep mode and waking it up again - say hi to at least 2 different kinds of graphics glitches and possibly a randomly appearing bug in the file manager.
And I'm not sure if it was a bug or a feature, but last time I used eOS I didn't enjoy the default video player's "fullscreen mode" in which it still didn't overlap the lower part of the desktop with the dock.
But keep in mind I haven't tried the most recent version which came out not long ago, I'd be surprised if some of the problems weren't fixed yet.
I think elementaryOS is on the right track, but it's definitely not more stable than the average distro, including the ones with rolling-release update models.
I've been using the Kde desktop (Kubuntu) for about 6 months now after switching from Windows 10 for Ruby development.
The UI is damn good. Way more polished and consistent than what passes for the three way mess that the Windows 10 UI is these days. Straight out of the box you get a polished, Windows 7 type layout, complete with a start menu better than Windows, consistent fonts and smooth animations. And unlike every other desktop, the dark theme actually works as advertised.
The only time I go back to windows is when is need Corel Draw for my graphics design work. And I immediately feel the difference in polish and consistency. If I could get without Corel Draw, I would definitely banish Windows from my laptop.
That being said, GNOME is a clusterfk. It's what we all accused Windows 8 of beign. A wannabe tablet desktop in a world without any actual tablets. What is possessing them to remove functionality available in ALL other desktops? When this is pointed out they point to extensions written in a leaky javascript implementation, which can be broken the next gnome update because why not?
If you want a modern desktop on Linux, Kde is what you want these days.
If you haven't noticed 90% of people are running windows which is quite frankly ugly by default. Further it was pretty hard to get people to give up fisher price windows xp. It's probably accurate to say that most people aren't terribly concerned with aesthetics as much as functionality.
That said steps to achieve a relatively consistent look.
Open your configuration app and configure your gtk theme to something that looks nice. If you don't have one you can install lxappearance which is from lxde and has minimal deps so you can easily install it in a minimal environment.
Install qt4-config if you have any old qt4 apps. Set it to use gtk+ style for qt4 aps.
If you use newer qt apps install qt5ct and select gtk style.
In 5 minutes you will have a relatively consistent look.
A few notes.
- Its increasingly likely you have zero qt4 apps and could probably skip that part and not care
- qt5ct actually lets you set a custom stylesheet and or colors if you want more manual control but this is hardly required.
- firefox is really stupid about drawing website elements with dark text on a dark background when run with a dark theme. You can run individual gtk apps with a different theme like so
env GTK_THEME=Adwaita:light firefox
you can copy your firefox desktop file to ~/.local/share/applications and edit the command to ensure that this works properly automatically.
Chrome somehow figures out that a dark theme doesn't mean you want to draw webpages differently so I consider this a firefox bug that mozilla wontfix.
In a perfect world someone would create a single useful gui to configure qt4 plasma gtk2 gtk3 apps which only had settings that would effect all of the above consistently and required no tweaking.
In reality land most people don't care including those shipping distros can probably ship with or arrange a reasonable look with minimal fuss.
I'm starting to think the whole is plotting this weird conspiracy against me... I think linux is very comfortable, I think it looks pretty, it gives me power to make it prettier. Windows comes with fucking ads in the UI how is that any prettier? OSX is supposed to be polished, but I constantly experience problems like my screen randomly flickers, it forces me to login twice every time, sometimes all windows suddenly lose focus and the only way to come to a good state is to go to a non full screen window... I don't know man, having used all three I'll take linux any day and it's because it's prettier, UI is more functional, and the system actually doesn't have handcuffs.
Weird argument. Because I have given Linux systems to the elderly before. People with little to no experience with computers. Guess what they were all fine.
My mother was a long time windows user. Kept getting viruses. She was converted to Ubuntu and has used it for over a decade now without issue.
Linux is far easier for people than you think. My mother is a senior citizen now and this is her second computer.
The UI concerns you bring up are just silly, They are about the same as you buying a new hammer and it having an inconsistent wood grain or a metal burr.
Desktop Linux isn't really that difficult. It could be easier. The thing is that the people who want "really easy" probably aren't going to bother installing any new OS. Microsoft and Apple work hard, not just to make their OS easy but update their OS to whatever random hardware or software thing has come out (games and printers, say). Not being able to do "this one thing" is the main complaint I hear from friends who randomly wind-up with desktop Linux from computer recyclers mostly (it's my complaint too at times).
Also, elementary OS looks a lot like the "gnome shell" and latest Ubuntu thing. Mint/Mate has become the main Linux shell by staying with Window 7-like-shell. The newer shells are easier but less powerful. So it would win for those who want easy. Except those who want easy will do nothing and stay with MS/Apple. After they are "free" too or seem like that to the average person.
Just curious if noticing or more so, even being bothered by them is the norm?
Example Mint, the font heights I wouldn't have noticed and definitely something I would not be consciously aware of if I used it. And I still don't know what's wrong with the render beyond it looking at bit outdated.
Am I the odd person here or is it a vocal minority that have issues with it?
So one thing I don't understand is why window managers in linux never seem to have ways to let the user tweak the UI? I mean it's something to add, but I find it odd that no one has thought to add it?
Or is it just a feature hidden somewhere?
I've thought on several occasions that I'd be pretty happy if I could just hijack how the UI layer was rendering some program, tweak text sizes, adjust colours and make that a user specific choice that can be done at the OS level. It would make linux far more accessible in my opinion and give the average user a way to fix issues that as you say may make some feel physically sick and dizzy.
Users could then start sharing fixes and tweaks and devs who are interested could pull in these settings into the main program, the work could be shared and these OS's could get better! =)...
It just seems such a prefect example of give power to your user and everything is editable, many people don't have time to dig into the internals of everything, but they'd be happy using a relatively straightforward tool (or at least one with tons of tutorials) to adjust the programs they use to their liking, and I'd wager they'd be pretty happy sharing the tweaks they made too.
Maybe this already exists? If it does please tell me! It's the one major thing that keeps me coming back to macs/windows machines. I find it pretty funny, most of my linux time is lived in servers and when I was a teen I ran ubuntu desktop for some time, but I just couldn't deal with it after a while. Which is a shame in my book, and I could certainly see something like this being in the community spirit of linux.
PS: If anyone is thinking of doing this and want's to talk to me for some reason, I'll be happy to discuss this further =)...
Agree, and this is why I don't recommend Linux to anyone who isn't a techie. It's just plain ugly and that's the first thing people notice. There have been improvements and exceptions here and there, but the UI sector seems so volatile that just because current GNOME or KDE look consistent and usable, I can't expect the next iteration to be good as well.
Since starting to primarily use Linux in 2008, I've consecutively moved to simpler and simpler DEs, to the point where I'm currently running i3 everywhere for about 4 years. Less ui = fewer things to fuck up.
There is a plethora of Linux based distros out there. I recently bought a Lenovo L480 with DOS. I ended up trying out Elementary since I liked the UX. A day or two after using it, it already started hanging on me and wouldn't boot. There was this super weird bug as well because of which the first time I opened Google Chrome, the close button on top right would freeze and I'd have to close that and reopen Chrome. I hated being part of these "edge cases".
I then ended up using Ubuntu and that has been stable as rock. No surprises, rock solid. I used it back in college.
There are very few Linux based distros that are battle tested, Ubuntu is certainly one of them, on account of being backed by Canonical, which actually gets paid to develop the OS unlike most other linux based distros that have to work on "donations" or "foundation money".
Anyway, I'm happy with Ubuntu for my needs, I don't have super fancy needs and I don't want Arch level of customization. All I want something that works out of box and has a UNIX like CLI (I'm a programmer).
Another thing that sucks about Linux based OS's is that the power management is just repugnant. There are so many OS's out there and so many laptop models that I understand it is a herculean task to get maximum performance on every possible laptop.
Which is why, I decided that my next laptop is going to be an MBP, the Retina display is mind blowing, has a UNIX like interface, great battery life, a bit pricey but when it comes to being more productive as a programmer, I'm willing to pay more.
It seems your designer friend has occupational injury, eg she is trained to spot those issues, but it can give problems in real life, where not everything is perfectly aligned.
I recently installed kubuntu with the latest version of KDE Plasma and was blown away. This is by far the most polished linux experience I've ever had. My girlfriend who is definitely not a linux user forced me to install it on her laptop too after seeing it.
Everything "just works", even more than macOS IMO, and you can configure everything to your hearts content. Animations are smooth, UI is very polished and consistent. Definitely recommend checking it out.
I've been using Linux for 15 years, and I definitely agree with these points. I'm not particularly sensitive to the UI clunkiness, but I do try and use applications that use the same GUI toolkit to have some basic consistency. It definitely shows when you compare it to even mediocre macOS apps.
At this point though, most of my professional life is spent in a terminal emulator (alacritty), Firefox, Visual Studio Code, Android Studio, qpdfview, and pcmanfm-qt. I also switched to a tiling wm (i3) with window decorations shut off, so basically my consistency comes from being super simplistic (graphically atleast).
Been toying with the idea of picking up a few design books and taking a hack at writing a GUI toolkit using Rust with something like the react/redux ideology of GUI app development and seeing where that goes (would be for Wayland). Would try the flux model because unidirectional data flow maps very nicely to Rust as I don't want to deal with any refcell shenanigans.
I've gotten around this by minimizing my usage of graphical applications; I use Firefox, a PDF reader, (recently) Zotero to manage papers, and finally a tiling window manager to reduce graphical elements. Everything else happens in the terminal. Linux just isn't ready for GUI apps :(
Curious how you’re using xfce, xubuntu ui is very consistent, none of the issues you noted. I have used xfce as an apt-get install (chromebook with crouton) and that was very very bad.
I'm terrible person, but I couldn't resist to get example of very ugly and visually inconsistent linux distro. And that guy reviewing it, is saying the dream distro in video title. What?
Just watch the video and wait for settings app to get what I'm talking about. If it miss-aligned items don't bothers you, then you're weird (or maybe I'am) :)
Is that Mint screenshot the Mate or Cinnamon DE? Last time I used Mint was about 3 years ago and it looked nice than that. I'm not an expert on Linux DEs, but that looks like what I remember of Gnome.
But anyway, agree with your points in general. I'll probably end up installing ElementaryOS in a VM. I do VR development full-time so I will need Windows as my main computer, but I definitely like having a Linux system around for everything else I do.
As as person of average linux savviness, I applaude Elementary OS ambition and really wanted to like it, but the UX is really weird to me. It's really not file-centered (no file on the desktop IIRC, weird file selection in the explorer...) and there are oddities like maximise and close buttons being at opposite sides in a windows.
I totally agree. Linux pro users seems not care much about the detail. I'm the exception. Can live with Ubuntu, but most distros have terrible ui (you can see the misaligned items from miles away).
I don't think Linux will e... okay, probably ever, be a replacement for Windows or MacOS. Linux is Linux no matter how you dress it up. The first time a non-crazy person has to decompress and unpack a .tar.gz to install a program that usually comes in a .msi they're done. Forget about the fact that they'll be running down dependencies and the programs themselves don't usually work as good. What is the benefit they get for all that time and frustration? Then one day their keyboard will randomly stop working or they wont be able to get connected to the internet because of an update.
Smart people do dumb things sometimes. Trying to get the general public to use Linux is a perfect example. It's not even Linux under the hood. It is Linux.
The project is interesting and I have to give it props for being one of the few Linux distros that’s put the necessary level of thought into UI/UX and made consistency a priority.
That said, I question some of their technical choices, most namely the choice of Vala as the project’s official language. Not that Vala is bad, but it’s incredibly niche at best and I think it severely limits contributions. Not many are going to want to learn a new language that’s scarcely used elsewhere in order to be able to work on any kind of project.
Learning Vala is still far better than GObject-C. Rust GTK bindings are probably not yet there. So what's left? Python and JavaScript. If you care about native performance the way I believe they are these will also not cut it.
Vala seems then a logical choice, especially at the time they were deciding. The question I have is: will Vala be supported further by Gnome in foreseeable future? I heard some time ago that it's not so sure. I would be pleased to hear otherwise.
This kind of attitude towards less popular programming languages is very damaging to the field of software engineering. Domain-specific languages are our best tool to combat the excessive complexity of software. The difficulty of learning a new programming language is overblown.
I've recommended Fedora to several "I'm scared of computers" people recently and the experience has been very good. The new GNOME does require 5 minutes of tutorial, but after that they've been completely happy exploring on their own.
The new "Software" app is an excellent GUI for installing new apps and updating the system.
Personally I use Macs but if I didn't, Fedora would probably be my next choice. It has by far the best "out of the box" experience of any Linux distro I've seen.
Reading the comments here, it seems we don’t realise that ElementaryOS is run by a small team of mostly volunteers, who are doing this as a “free” service to the rest of us.
Lets take a moment to appreciate the immense perseverance, sacrifice, hard work put in by the team behind the project. The work done is pretty slick and complete. I hope there is a philanthropic minded HN member here who can help them with a generous funding, so they can keep building this awesome tool.
I don’t get the hate, really. It’s the only distro I’ve used in the past few years with a “nice enough” desktop where my Mac instincts translate across and where I can use anything packaged for Ubuntu with zero hassles.
I’ve been running it on a low-end Chromebook for a long while now, and upgraded from 0.4.1 to 5.0 via the CLI (not recommended, but feasible if you know what you’re doing), and other than the ultra-niche app ecosystem (which I don’t need, since I mostly run Firefox, Docker and VS Code on it, besides dev packages) it has zero weirdness.
Well, except for the mail client. It has improved, but every single time I try to use it to send out some notes while away from my regular machines it breaks somehow, and there is zero addressbook/calendar integration (I have Thunderbird installed, but keep trying the built-in mail client after each update because I like the UI).
I'd love to have a Linux distro with the frontend of Elementary OS and the backend of Nixos. And I say that as a Microsoft employee. Are there efforts to make Nixos grandma-worthy? Or are the only pretty distros all reskins of Ubuntu?
Question: This may pertain more to GTK, but does gtk/elementary os have an equivalent to macOS's core animation libraries? Particularly to support interactive / fluid interfaces (see https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2018/803/ )? I did a cursory look and couldn't find much.
I've been fairly familiar with macOS development particularly for trying to do more experimental UI (fluid animation) the past few years, but have been staring at linux/elementaryOS more.
Linux is not ready for mass market. I think, proprietary file formats, vendor lock-in, monopolistic and restrictive trade practices etc. are reasons why users dread switching OSs.
I my opinion, OS itself has very little value to the end user. The end user needs a fertile userland. The end user should be free to trivially switch platforms without disrupting the userland one bit. This is not some pipe dream. It is very much possible.
Open standards and strict adherence to them need to be enforced. Data formats need to be portable not just across platforms, but across competing software. This is our right. No one should deny this no matter how powerful.
It’s quite nicely designed in places, but is based on Gnome 3 - which doesn’t make sense for an OS that is all about UX, because Gnome 3 makes plenty of bad decisions and Elementary inherits them. Still, they have done their best to contain them and I think it’s better designed than any other modern Linux desktop.
Couple of failure points:
- the mail client is buggy to the point of being unusable. You could say that about any Linux GUI mail client, but this one is particularly bad.
- Alt-Tab behaviour is strange and awful.
If you want OS X but can’t afford it, this is as close as you’ll get, but it’s a long way off.
I’ve been using Elementary for 2-3 weeks and it’s really good. Still far behind MacOS, but it’s the best I’ve felt about a linux distro becoming a mainstream alternative. I’ve used Pop_OS! as well and while it’s good, I wish System76 would have just backed Elementary OS. Elementary is a good base but needs a larger community and more resources to become legit.
Elementary is a fine distro, but short off being pretty and not afraid to ask for money what does it i really achieve that I can't get on other bigger distros?
I am currently on this os, it’s pleasant most of the time, but it crashes 75% of the time on unlocking the lock screen. It also starts having windows flicker for a few seconds at random after a few days of uptime. I use Nvidia GTX 1080, it seems to work well otherwise.
All comments here are either:
A. "I'm so glad I'm on Linux distro A and not Windows but the UX and UI is terrible", followed by "have you tried distro B, it solves the problems of A"
B. "I'm on distro B and not Windows, but package management, upgrade and/or compatibility is terrible", followed by "have you tried distro C, it solves the problems of B"
C. "I'm on distro C and not Windows, but it doesn't support my audio or video equipment and I need to install and/or spend a few hours searching and compiling various solutions online until my machine is a Frankensteinian monster and while it works for me, it's not for everyone" followed by "have you tried distro A, it solves problems of C"
I love the flexibility of Linux in some respects, but I've had stability issues on Ubuntu and Mint, UX issues on some Fedora based ones, and Puppy Linux, compatibility issues in Elementary (and fixes that were available in Ubuntu never made it to Elementary and I got tired of waiting). I've gone through way too many distros finding the one that works for me and none have been really as pleasant as described by people.
For work I have to use a Mac, and the inconsistencies in keyboard shortcuts annoys me each and every day. Not to mention non - standard UI components stand out like a sore thumb - especially window maximizing, rescaling, browser and IDE shortcuts, etc. I wouldn't be using it if I didn't have to.
Honestly, the OS that I have had the least trouble with and the most enjoyment was Windows XP, closely followed by 7. 8 was a mess of UI and UX oddities, and 10 is only marginally better. If there was a version of windows that was as streamlined as XP for the modern world, I'd fork out $50-100 for it considering the time it would save me and my time being worth more than the hassle, and that my contribution might help subsidize the cheaper community or pirated editions of the OS.
I ran various distros as a kid growing up, then went years as a professional running Mac. Elementary is the only distro I've not felt stupid friction running on my Chromebook. I know there are other considerations, but as a daily driver, this is easily one of the best distros I've seen
[+] [-] zwaps|7 years ago|reply
Elementary OS has picked a specific niche, and its arguably the best distribution in it. It has a really well designed and consistent UI experience, and you can't break it. I think most of you just don't realize how difficult linux is for people who barely understand how to use a Mac or Windows machine.
Furthermore, linux is a world where mainstream distributions still release with horrible UI experiences with numerous typography mistakes, icons of different sizes and grid alignment imbalances everywhere.
Like check out this Mint (grey theme) screenshot: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/43/Li... and compare it with elementary OS here https://news-cdn.softpedia.com/images/news2/elementary-os-0-...
Mint is great, but seriously. Look at that logo render. Even worse, look at the start bar. Every single text and logo has a different height. I mean how do you even do something like that unintentionally?
I am using XFCE right now, and it's great because its much faster than KDE or Gnome on this old laptop. But it sure isn't a pretty UI. I know a MSc. designer and she claims using my laptop makes her physically sick and dizzy. I don't care as much, but I can see the point. Everything is misaligned, in the start menu, the task bar, the apps. In the window bar the buttons and the minimize arrow aren't the same size. I mean seriously, whoever did this just did not care about Ui.
I don't think ElementaryOS is for everyone. If you have any interest in non-standard repos, recent kernels or doing stuff in commandline, you are just better off elsewhere. I understand their choices, but I don't use it because of how they do the app store, among other things.
But if you just want a computer that runs, looks good and doesn't break if you do X, then I think ElementaryOS is the #1 choice in the Linux world, and we should be thankful that it exists.
[+] [-] DCKing|7 years ago|reply
When Linux works for you it's so damn great but I cannot fully enjoy a UI that is so inconsistent and ugly so often.
[+] [-] andrepd|7 years ago|reply
Up-to-date screenshot (still with the "old" theme Mint-X, but actually Mint-Y (based on arc) is the default as of the latest version): https://linuxmint.com/pictures/screenshots/serena/gallery/5....
The choice isn't between ugly and Elementary. It's a false dillema. E.g. Cinnamon, which is pretty and functional.
[+] [-] alpaca128|7 years ago|reply
You can break elementaryOS' nice graphics just by putting it into sleep mode and waking it up again - say hi to at least 2 different kinds of graphics glitches and possibly a randomly appearing bug in the file manager. And I'm not sure if it was a bug or a feature, but last time I used eOS I didn't enjoy the default video player's "fullscreen mode" in which it still didn't overlap the lower part of the desktop with the dock.
But keep in mind I haven't tried the most recent version which came out not long ago, I'd be surprised if some of the problems weren't fixed yet.
I think elementaryOS is on the right track, but it's definitely not more stable than the average distro, including the ones with rolling-release update models.
[+] [-] quantummkv|7 years ago|reply
The UI is damn good. Way more polished and consistent than what passes for the three way mess that the Windows 10 UI is these days. Straight out of the box you get a polished, Windows 7 type layout, complete with a start menu better than Windows, consistent fonts and smooth animations. And unlike every other desktop, the dark theme actually works as advertised.
The only time I go back to windows is when is need Corel Draw for my graphics design work. And I immediately feel the difference in polish and consistency. If I could get without Corel Draw, I would definitely banish Windows from my laptop.
That being said, GNOME is a clusterfk. It's what we all accused Windows 8 of beign. A wannabe tablet desktop in a world without any actual tablets. What is possessing them to remove functionality available in ALL other desktops? When this is pointed out they point to extensions written in a leaky javascript implementation, which can be broken the next gnome update because why not?
If you want a modern desktop on Linux, Kde is what you want these days.
[+] [-] michaelmrose|7 years ago|reply
That said steps to achieve a relatively consistent look.
Open your configuration app and configure your gtk theme to something that looks nice. If you don't have one you can install lxappearance which is from lxde and has minimal deps so you can easily install it in a minimal environment.
Install qt4-config if you have any old qt4 apps. Set it to use gtk+ style for qt4 aps.
If you use newer qt apps install qt5ct and select gtk style.
In 5 minutes you will have a relatively consistent look.
A few notes.
- Its increasingly likely you have zero qt4 apps and could probably skip that part and not care
- qt5ct actually lets you set a custom stylesheet and or colors if you want more manual control but this is hardly required.
- firefox is really stupid about drawing website elements with dark text on a dark background when run with a dark theme. You can run individual gtk apps with a different theme like so
env GTK_THEME=Adwaita:light firefox
you can copy your firefox desktop file to ~/.local/share/applications and edit the command to ensure that this works properly automatically.
Chrome somehow figures out that a dark theme doesn't mean you want to draw webpages differently so I consider this a firefox bug that mozilla wontfix.
In a perfect world someone would create a single useful gui to configure qt4 plasma gtk2 gtk3 apps which only had settings that would effect all of the above consistently and required no tweaking.
In reality land most people don't care including those shipping distros can probably ship with or arrange a reasonable look with minimal fuss.
[+] [-] gnulinux|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coned88|7 years ago|reply
My mother was a long time windows user. Kept getting viruses. She was converted to Ubuntu and has used it for over a decade now without issue.
Linux is far easier for people than you think. My mother is a senior citizen now and this is her second computer.
The UI concerns you bring up are just silly, They are about the same as you buying a new hammer and it having an inconsistent wood grain or a metal burr.
[+] [-] dingdingdang|7 years ago|reply
Personally by far prefer the Mint paradigm: it is clear what is running and what is a launch icon without studying icon shading/overlays/dots..etc.
[+] [-] joe_the_user|7 years ago|reply
Also, elementary OS looks a lot like the "gnome shell" and latest Ubuntu thing. Mint/Mate has become the main Linux shell by staying with Window 7-like-shell. The newer shells are easier but less powerful. So it would win for those who want easy. Except those who want easy will do nothing and stay with MS/Apple. After they are "free" too or seem like that to the average person.
[+] [-] AndrewDavis|7 years ago|reply
Just curious if noticing or more so, even being bothered by them is the norm?
Example Mint, the font heights I wouldn't have noticed and definitely something I would not be consciously aware of if I used it. And I still don't know what's wrong with the render beyond it looking at bit outdated.
Am I the odd person here or is it a vocal minority that have issues with it?
[+] [-] Folcon|7 years ago|reply
Or is it just a feature hidden somewhere?
I've thought on several occasions that I'd be pretty happy if I could just hijack how the UI layer was rendering some program, tweak text sizes, adjust colours and make that a user specific choice that can be done at the OS level. It would make linux far more accessible in my opinion and give the average user a way to fix issues that as you say may make some feel physically sick and dizzy.
Users could then start sharing fixes and tweaks and devs who are interested could pull in these settings into the main program, the work could be shared and these OS's could get better! =)...
It just seems such a prefect example of give power to your user and everything is editable, many people don't have time to dig into the internals of everything, but they'd be happy using a relatively straightforward tool (or at least one with tons of tutorials) to adjust the programs they use to their liking, and I'd wager they'd be pretty happy sharing the tweaks they made too.
Maybe this already exists? If it does please tell me! It's the one major thing that keeps me coming back to macs/windows machines. I find it pretty funny, most of my linux time is lived in servers and when I was a teen I ran ubuntu desktop for some time, but I just couldn't deal with it after a while. Which is a shame in my book, and I could certainly see something like this being in the community spirit of linux.
PS: If anyone is thinking of doing this and want's to talk to me for some reason, I'll be happy to discuss this further =)...
[+] [-] iforgotpassword|7 years ago|reply
Since starting to primarily use Linux in 2008, I've consecutively moved to simpler and simpler DEs, to the point where I'm currently running i3 everywhere for about 4 years. Less ui = fewer things to fuck up.
[+] [-] dmix|7 years ago|reply
I disagree, recent Gnome versions from the last few years have been amazing. Nearly on par with Elementary.
[+] [-] raylangivens|7 years ago|reply
I then ended up using Ubuntu and that has been stable as rock. No surprises, rock solid. I used it back in college. There are very few Linux based distros that are battle tested, Ubuntu is certainly one of them, on account of being backed by Canonical, which actually gets paid to develop the OS unlike most other linux based distros that have to work on "donations" or "foundation money".
Anyway, I'm happy with Ubuntu for my needs, I don't have super fancy needs and I don't want Arch level of customization. All I want something that works out of box and has a UNIX like CLI (I'm a programmer).
Another thing that sucks about Linux based OS's is that the power management is just repugnant. There are so many OS's out there and so many laptop models that I understand it is a herculean task to get maximum performance on every possible laptop.
Which is why, I decided that my next laptop is going to be an MBP, the Retina display is mind blowing, has a UNIX like interface, great battery life, a bit pricey but when it comes to being more productive as a programmer, I'm willing to pay more.
[+] [-] z3t4|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mcjiggerlog|7 years ago|reply
Everything "just works", even more than macOS IMO, and you can configure everything to your hearts content. Animations are smooth, UI is very polished and consistent. Definitely recommend checking it out.
[+] [-] Teknoman117|7 years ago|reply
At this point though, most of my professional life is spent in a terminal emulator (alacritty), Firefox, Visual Studio Code, Android Studio, qpdfview, and pcmanfm-qt. I also switched to a tiling wm (i3) with window decorations shut off, so basically my consistency comes from being super simplistic (graphically atleast).
Been toying with the idea of picking up a few design books and taking a hack at writing a GUI toolkit using Rust with something like the react/redux ideology of GUI app development and seeing where that goes (would be for Wayland). Would try the flux model because unidirectional data flow maps very nicely to Rust as I don't want to deal with any refcell shenanigans.
[+] [-] Ar-Curunir|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marktangotango|7 years ago|reply
For chromebooks galliumos is very nice as well.
[+] [-] finchisko|7 years ago|reply
Just watch the video and wait for settings app to get what I'm talking about. If it miss-aligned items don't bothers you, then you're weird (or maybe I'am) :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCsRMLhVL8Y&t=418s
[+] [-] moron4hire|7 years ago|reply
But anyway, agree with your points in general. I'll probably end up installing ElementaryOS in a VM. I do VR development full-time so I will need Windows as my main computer, but I definitely like having a Linux system around for everything else I do.
[+] [-] saint-loup|7 years ago|reply
Disclaimer: I only used it for a few hours.
[+] [-] finchisko|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JetSetWilly|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] agumonkey|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tEMporality7|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] omnimus|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nobody271|7 years ago|reply
Smart people do dumb things sometimes. Trying to get the general public to use Linux is a perfect example. It's not even Linux under the hood. It is Linux.
[+] [-] kitsunesoba|7 years ago|reply
That said, I question some of their technical choices, most namely the choice of Vala as the project’s official language. Not that Vala is bad, but it’s incredibly niche at best and I think it severely limits contributions. Not many are going to want to learn a new language that’s scarcely used elsewhere in order to be able to work on any kind of project.
[+] [-] hawski|7 years ago|reply
Vala seems then a logical choice, especially at the time they were deciding. The question I have is: will Vala be supported further by Gnome in foreseeable future? I heard some time ago that it's not so sure. I would be pleased to hear otherwise.
[+] [-] mepian|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LeoPanthera|7 years ago|reply
The new "Software" app is an excellent GUI for installing new apps and updating the system.
Personally I use Macs but if I didn't, Fedora would probably be my next choice. It has by far the best "out of the box" experience of any Linux distro I've seen.
[+] [-] rushabh|7 years ago|reply
Lets take a moment to appreciate the immense perseverance, sacrifice, hard work put in by the team behind the project. The work done is pretty slick and complete. I hope there is a philanthropic minded HN member here who can help them with a generous funding, so they can keep building this awesome tool.
[+] [-] rcarmo|7 years ago|reply
I’ve been running it on a low-end Chromebook for a long while now, and upgraded from 0.4.1 to 5.0 via the CLI (not recommended, but feasible if you know what you’re doing), and other than the ultra-niche app ecosystem (which I don’t need, since I mostly run Firefox, Docker and VS Code on it, besides dev packages) it has zero weirdness.
Well, except for the mail client. It has improved, but every single time I try to use it to send out some notes while away from my regular machines it breaks somehow, and there is zero addressbook/calendar integration (I have Thunderbird installed, but keep trying the built-in mail client after each update because I like the UI).
[+] [-] sterlind|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] y4mi|7 years ago|reply
It always felt like an inferior version of macOS... Which I don't like.
I personally prefer to develop on a Linux install... But elementary OS is not what I'd use if Linux is an option
[+] [-] seltzered_|7 years ago|reply
I've been fairly familiar with macOS development particularly for trying to do more experimental UI (fluid animation) the past few years, but have been staring at linux/elementaryOS more.
[+] [-] msiyer|7 years ago|reply
I my opinion, OS itself has very little value to the end user. The end user needs a fertile userland. The end user should be free to trivially switch platforms without disrupting the userland one bit. This is not some pipe dream. It is very much possible.
Open standards and strict adherence to them need to be enforced. Data formats need to be portable not just across platforms, but across competing software. This is our right. No one should deny this no matter how powerful.
[+] [-] matchbok|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] randomsearch|7 years ago|reply
It’s quite nicely designed in places, but is based on Gnome 3 - which doesn’t make sense for an OS that is all about UX, because Gnome 3 makes plenty of bad decisions and Elementary inherits them. Still, they have done their best to contain them and I think it’s better designed than any other modern Linux desktop.
Couple of failure points:
- the mail client is buggy to the point of being unusable. You could say that about any Linux GUI mail client, but this one is particularly bad.
- Alt-Tab behaviour is strange and awful.
If you want OS X but can’t afford it, this is as close as you’ll get, but it’s a long way off.
[+] [-] tapoxi|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] ChefboyOG|7 years ago|reply