Elementary OS

[tbassetto]

For everyone wondering: it's based on Ubuntu, with a clean theme and some "homemade" applications. It's minimalist and blazing fast. The music player will come with the next release. It's opinionated. I like it.

[andreasjansson]

Thanks for that, I was missing the About page.

[ThePinion]

The next release should also include their own shell called Pantheon/Pantheon-Shell. It features their top bar, Wingpanel, their Unity/Gnome3 style dash called Slingshot, and their own fork of Docky called Plank.

https://launchpad.net/~elementaryart/+archive/elementary-dev

[d0m]

This. Thank you.. They should at least specify it on the home page..?

[scythe]

One of the really cool things about this is the readily available links to descriptions of the core applications. Easily the best-designed distro website I've ever seen.

The bad news: branding collisions galore:

The 'e' looks way too much like enlightenment's 'e', and enlightenment already has a project called elementary -- http://trac.enlightenment.org/e/wiki/Elementary

The design of the whole bloody thing looks exactly like OS X. The topbar, the notification icons, the dock, the Midori icon (which is weird -- Midori already has a standard claw icon that looks cooler than the compass http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midori_%28web_browser%29). Hell, they even have a set of "human interface guidelines"! http://www.elementaryos.org/docs/human-interface-guidelines

[natesm]

That isn't really that strange: http://developer.gnome.org/hig-book/

[eropple]

That people don't think about human interface guidelines because it's open source software is alarming as all hell.

[sirn]

I believe the point here is how Elementary presents itself. If you compare Elementary's discover page with Ubuntu's feature page, the difference is clear. Elementary's page screams I'm clean and simple; their page don't took you to figure out what the hell Me Menu is (and how I should care), they just put enough stuff to get you comfortable with its application and featureset, which I believe is a good thing for those who want to get their stuff done without much fiddling around.

[knubie]

This looks eerily similar to OS X. Everything from the desktop to the icons (safari, dictionary, contacts) and even the design of the website.

[smcl]

Yep, the Safari logo in particular does it for me as they've attempted to make it look ever so slightly different ("Nooo, see this one's green and the compass dial is pointing at a TOTALLY different angle"). Just reminds me of the rather awful OS X-like skins you see for Winamp or basically any skinnable application. Bleh

[dgreensp]

This website's bizarre mix of imitation and over-explaining reminds me of some earnest but vacuous manual for a foreign knock-off product.

"Press the File menu," I expect it to say, "and a beautiful pull-down fades quickly into view, with useful functions such as New Folder and Close."

Too bad Apple patented calling an address book "Address Book," I guess they'll just have to do their best with nonsense names.

[Popcorned23]

> Too bad Apple patented calling an address book "Address Book,"

Are you joking? I didn't think that was possible, it's too generic and I couldn't find anything on Google regarding the matter.

[Jarred]

The clean, simpleness is good, but it's looking over the wrong pond for inspiration.

Windows 7 has a great desktop experience, and it's whats keeping me from switching over to Linux. Gnome 3 is really close to it though, if not for the font rendering[1], games[2], and comfortable software I would switch over to Linux. I think Linux can do it if the people who develop software with a GUI only work with their GUI to develop their software. This would force them to be frustrated enough with their application to make it work, or just give up. Either case, it's better than wasting other peoples time.

[1]: While the freetype2-infinality library tries to solve this problem, it's not quite there yet. It's close though

[2]: Wine is a good effort, but it needs to look more like Windows 7, and less like Windows 2000 (lots of the great UX was introduced in 7 in my opinion).

[drivebyacct2]

What? I'm on GNOME2 and my fonts are gorgeous. Far superior to Windows's ClearType or my MBP's blurry rendering.

Also, not sure how the appearance of buttons plays into UX... it's not like Wine comes with Windows 2000 or Windows 7 applications. I assume you're referring to the visual style of the buttons. It's a very small issue that affects people dependent on Windows applications... and besides, you can use Windows themes in Wine... very, very easily. That feature's existed for years and years.

[corbet]

Reviewed in LWN back in April: https://lwn.net/Articles/438184/

[jamespcole]

Personally i like elementary OS quite a lot, i've been a long time Ubuntu user but i am not really a fan of the new Unity UI and wanted something nice and light for my dev box. It feels snappier than the default Ubuntu install but has the Ubuntu app store so i can just install any apps that i need that aren't present in the default install. The layout is very similar to how i usually set up ubuntu anyway so it seemed like a good option. Also being Ubuntu based setting up a LAMP dev environment takes about 15 minutes including the package downloads.

There are only 2 things i dislike:

1. It looks too much like OSX, i personally prefer dark themes, so I changed it from elementary theme to elegant gnome

2. Midori, it feels super alphaish, it has potential but there is no way i would have included it as the default browser considering it seems to only be about 80% finished.

[bobbywilson0]

'OS' is a bit of a stretch, it is essentially a gnome skin and a handful of apps.

[klez]

Well, given your description it's an OS as much as Ubuntu is.

[inportb]

That's exactly what an OS is.

[sylvinus]

Is this linked to Enlightenment? The "e" sure looks familiar.

[mcrittenden]

Nope.

[austinbirch]

Not trying to be negative, as I haven't used elementary for any real amount of time yet, but: whenever I glance at the 'e' icon it reminds me of a negative action sign. Like a 'No right turn' road sign, or something similar. Not a problem once you're used to it, I suppose.

[ThePinion]

Takes about 4 seconds to change it to whatever icon you want..

[dimitar]

It seems to be focused on creating a few applications on its own, which are different somehow. The GNOME project seems to have the goal of usability (easiness etc.) but also has pretty clear criteria (etc. the dictionary doesn't have bookmarks as in Elementary OS) I really like Gnome 3 on Fedora 15 which as always stays close to the upstream. But still more choice of applications running on Linux to choose from is always a good thing :-).

[mushy]

Links for the uninitiated

Jupiter (stable build based on Ubuntu Maverick)

http://elementaryos.org/

Luna (unstable build based on Ubuntu Oneiric)

http://sourceforge.net/projects/eosbuilds/files/

If you get an error with nvidia graphics card with the nouveau driver like I did, just append "nomodeset" to the boot up options. ie. click e in grub and replace "quiet splash" with "nomodeset"

[rglover]

Love the UI on this. I did a light dig through the docs but does it offer networking support? Would love to use this on my currently Windows box to host files.

[keithpeter]

I'm posting from Elementary OS using the live CD. As others have said, its Ubuntu with a simpler GUI. So you get networking, hardware detection, restricted drivers (i.e. it installs the nvidia binary drivers for the graphics card on this old Pundit desktop) same as Ubuntu. But it isn't 'light' on memory!

[gue5t]

As it's a linux distro, it supports most everything except Windows- or Mac OS-specific programs. And even those have a chance with various compatibility projects.

[p3rs3us]

I have not tested the OS so i will not comment about how snappier it is, but it just looks to me like one trying too hard to get OSx on Ubuntu. I applaud their efforts to build apps for it but still it would have been much better if they could have put their efforts in building something new, beyond already existing native desktop, may be an enhanced and better tiling wm to add to their os or something out of the box.

[arturadib]

For many years I was looking for something like this, something that would be as simple and elegant as OS X, while having a solid Unix foundation. I tried everything, from all types of distros to my favorite distro with a hand-made theme (Acqua-like).

Then about six years ago it suddenly hit me. I bought a Mac, and (who'd have thought) it was exactly what I was looking for. Never went back.

[mahrain]

I would like to know what Ubuntu this is based on because of driver issues I have experienced with 11.04 and 10.10. Also, do the software repositories work and is the shell Gnome2 or 3?

[fingerprinter]

10.04 LTS

[tejaswiy]

Hmm, it looks beautiful and I really don't want to be a detractor, but with the iPad, I don't really see anyone needing a minimalist desktop OS anymore.

[drivingmenuts]

My thought is that it makes a good jumping-off point to build a personal programming-focused system, as long as it doesn't include Open Office or any of the other junk that comes on a standard Ubuntu desktop install.

[keithpeter]

There are quite a few light linuxes around: AntiX, SliTaz, Crunchbang. Good for older hardware (like what you can get for £50 or $50 down the local charity shop) and cheap no name ARM based laptops (ARM Ubuntu is in development).

[klez]

Well, then I can't use my computer anymore... Do you REALLY think desktop OSes are dead? Well, think again :)

[ddfreyne]

The address book and dictionary icons have a different perspective yet sit in the same dock. Ack!

[JeffTheHack]

check out #elementary @ freenode