I fell in love with elementaryOS when I first learned about it c. 2013, and followed it closely (used to read commits weekly) for perhaps a year. It was one of the first open source projects I really loved. But I eventually went back to Ubuntu because I was newish to Linux and I needed something that Just Worked™, without the funny business.
I eventually fell out of love with elementaryOS when the team seemed to double down hard on some unpopular design decisions wrt window control buttons/behaviour, for instance.
I always felt that they had taken on more than they could chew, and all the good will of their community wasn't going to change that fact. To this day I maintain that the project should have just been Pantheon, the Desktop Environment. The team seems to have strong opinions about UX, and that's where most of that matters.
I'm not the only one who thought of that, and the team's justifications for their decision to roll their own distro never came across as strong.
I've since moved on (to macOS and Ubuntu one the side), but once in a while I browse the official sub for the latest. I've never shaken off that feeling that the really talented founders could have spent their energy more wisely.
Isn't it a bit misleading to compare this to Windows or macOS, when it is actually Ubuntu with a preinstalled window manager, like Gnome or KDE, and it just looks a little like macOS out of the box? From the web-site I couldn't tell why I would consider it over established options like Linux Mint. To qualify as a replacement I would expect it to run native binaries. LibreOffice for example is a replacement for Office as it can handle xlsx and docx etc.
Elementary has been around for a long time. From what I recall, it tries to ape the Mac style on Linux the same way that KDE has been accused of aping Windows.
It’s on the front page because Apple dropped the ball so hard with Tahoe that people are willing to entertain the thought of switching to just about anything other than macOS
It's very tempting… but first our Logitech peripherals would have to work reliably after sleep. I can put up with the other nonsense. Not being able to use the keyboard and mouse is what's preventing the home computer from being a Linux machine.
It's a weird world where KDE out of the box is more usable than Windows.
I gave the wrong laptop to my mother a few months back and she only told me when she finished banking that the windows menu looked funny (Like the hacker one you put on the family computer when you were 12.) it was KDE. Usually she asks for help at least once on windows for getting the wifi connected.
The year of desktop Linux was 5 years ago and we didn't even notice.
IMHO they missed the boat - they should have pushed Objective C and later Swift. Lots of Mac / iOS developers were curious about Elementary when it was new.
I'm not sure if anything about this has changed since I last tried ElementaryOS an unknown number of years ago, but one of the issues I remember encountering was that applications that weren't built-in had inconsistent styling. I think you get a better more consistent and featureful experience just by using KDE.
Even the list of applications on AppCenter is woefully limited, compared to using Flatpack and being able to access the full repertoire of Linux Desktop applications.
Isn't that just a Linux problem, where someone could be using GTK or Kirigami or Iced for widgets?
Most Mac developers use Cocoa/SwiftUI, so they get whatever widgets the UXEs at Apple have produced. Adobe famously did their post-2000 UIs in Java, so they have a nonstandard design system; you can tell they don't use Cocoa just by looking at their apps.
Since there's no Apple to make an official toolkit for Linux, each developer uses whatever he wants, which means this app might use the GTK Save button, whereas that one uses Kirigami.
Cannot recommend. The software center immediately broke itself into a loop of god-knows-what error that rendered itself unable to update the system. The system generally suffered from poor usability as well. Cannot comment much further because I didn't use it very long. I paid $20 for it and wish the project well, but it's a pass from me for the time being.
I am still a sponsor or elementary and used it for years, and often the first few months are fine until you hit a wall or need to upgrade it. recently switched to Fedora and have been much happier.
Years ago I installed it on my sister's computer as Windows replacement. She was initially happy but soon started to complain that it was hard for her to use, apps would freeze and graphic artifacts would remain on the screen in similar way as on XP once. In the end we went with Xubuntu because we thought that reinstalling as "upgrade" is not worth it.
It's a stop-gap for those who were using OSX and not a permanent solution, or something for people who want to try Linux but want a really easy way. But then, there are better managed and newbie friendly distributions already.
Elementary was one of the first Linux distros I installed back in 2020. Eventually I moved on to other distros and DE’s. I was hopeful for Elementary eventually becoming THE Linux distro I would recommend people but it hasn’t happened yet, and I don’t know if it ever will.
I remember Elementary being big on UX, design, creating a universal app store for Linux, and providing a sane default type of experience. Pretty much all of that fizzled out over the past 5 years. GNOME and Plasma both leapfrogged Pantheon as a DE. Ubuntu, Debian, Mint, and Fedora are all far easier recommends over Elementary.
My outside reading: there were about 2-3 key people driving the project at that time. My understanding is that right around that time or shortly thereafter there was a falling out of some sort between two of the key people, one left, and the momentum just tanked after that. Note that this is just an outsiders perspective gained from reading blog posts from the org and watching release cadences
This version seems to have flaws I didn’t see in the old announcements. Spacing and padding are a bit inconsistent and sometimes a bit strange. Font sizing can be weird and alignment is hit and miss especially when icons and text are involved.
Clearly these are details but I’m wondering if they lost man power on these points. I still greatly appreciate the project ambition and am impressed by what they have managed to achieve.
Serious question. What does the project mean by ethical replacement?
The main webpage makes no further declaration around it for deeper understanding. Nothing in support pages or in developer resources. Anyone else familiar with the project that could describe why that needed to be called out?
"I happen to own a little open source software company that is expressly anti-fascist, has a “No AI” policy, and has recently been called “aggressively queer” in case you’re interested in supporting tech companies like that:"
What's a popular rolling release distro that's fairly stable, but also modern, for my dad's computer? He just wants a good balance of "things won't break" and "things will get updated".
Ubuntu is ok, but maybe pop!OS or something else is better for him?
I really do think that immutable distros are the future especially if you want something that don’t break. And imo KDE is arguably the best DE right now, that is if you believe DEs should follow the WinNT era UX principles.
Been rocking Kinoite for 2 years now - several major Fedora release upgrades, and zero breakage. I do weird stuff in my "pet" containers (using distrobox), and I love how my base system remains indestructible no matter how much I goof around.
Immutable is indeed the future. The moment a user installs something on a traditional mutable OS, it's configuration/environment drifts from the "base", making any system update or application install a potential conflict. After you install something on a traditional mutable OS, there's often no way to get back to the base without a OS reinstall (programs don't clean up after themselves, they change system settings, environment, more/worse).
Immutable operating systems solve this by having an immutable base image. Everyone running, for instance, Kinoite 42.20251011.0 all have exactly the same base. Users then can "layer" applications on top of the base image, sort of like a dockerfile. If something breaks, you just remove that application (layer) and it's like it never happened. Everyone having the same exact base image also means updates can be much more thoroughly tested, and confidently rolled-out to users.
Note, "Immutable" doesn't mean you can't save files or install things - it just means you cannot mutate the base OS image. There's always a "known good configuration" to go back to.
You're also encouraged to use "pet" containers for things like development - where you will install all sorts of weird system packages, libraries, tools, etc. without fear of polluting or breaking your system.
An immutable system + pet containers means your system will always be stable. Really neat.
That sounds great. How well does the base OS + "pet" containers work with all the crazy dependencies you need to do modern ML work, e.g. some exact combination of nvidia drivers + CUDA + torch + other random stuff? That's the pain point I'd be motivated enough to solve that I'd switch distros.
Your "pet" containers basically become your traditional OS, in a way. They use filesystem overlays, so your container can see all of the files on your system, plus it's own layered files, ie. each container has it's own "view" of the filesystem.
You can install anything inside your "pet" containers that you would normally install on your actual system. The container keeps everything tidy and self-contained. I have a container for development, another for music/DAW, another for certain games that needed weird deps.
Fedora Kinoite/Silverblue come with `Toolbx`[1] preinstalled, but I found `distrobox`[2] to be more flexible for my needs. I layered distrobox onto my base image, and it just works.
Many GUI apps are available via Flatpaks, and can be installed directly or via the Software Center. You can enable Flathub[3] as a source, so there's a ton of available software, including Steam, Chrome, Firefox, Discord, Spotify and more. Flatpaks are also sandboxed and self-contained, so they can't pollute/break your system either.
Isn't the state (apps' data in this case) the biggest problem with updates of any kind? State can't be immutable and is the easiest to break.
I can certainly see how containerizing apps and using "layered" FS solves a class of problems, but I highly doubt this alone would be incentive enough for the major OSes to go that way. I do agree it would be neat to see such developments, though.
FWIW, Kinoite will auto-update itself (the base image gets an update nearly every day).
While Fedora technically isn't a rolling release distro, it is very "bleeding edge" and it's major release cycle is quite frequent. With the Atomic (Immutable) flavors, major releases are an easy upgrade - just click the "Upgrade" button then reboot without fear of anything breaking.
I put Zorin OS on my dads old laptop 5 years ago and I think the only time I got a question was when someone setting up his new internet was digging through network settings but hadnt used any Linux distro before. Even then it was a 5 min call. Its a very Windows-like experience and I've noticed most parents really just write an email, browse the web and maybe consume media. All of those can occur in a browser.
I’ve been daily driving Linux Mint for about 4 years. It’s usable and stable with standard software packages and can also be tweaked in the Linux way if you so need it.
Another person mentioned Ubuntu if coming from Mac. I haven’t considered it before but they’re probably right.
I was using Mac at home, but Windows at work. So moving to Mint was easy.
Ubuntu was OK on high performance hardware but when they introduced snaps nothing worked so I moved to Mint.
Basically he doesn't bother updating his computer, so I want something that will auto-update to fairly modern versions, that's why I mentioned stability as a requirement.
Basically my dad never upgrades his computer, I have automatic updates on but OS upgrades aren't done automatically, so I wanted rolling release to get past that. What's the issue with rolling release?
Sure and sounds reasonable. Then you will have to force reboots Windows style - having the same old kernel running for months or years on an online desktop can be hazardous if he never shuts it down.
If he comes with such requirements then I'd stick with LTS releases as system base and flatpak programs to keep stuff updated frequently. And if he wants a familiar to Windows environment then Zorin would do the trick out of the box.
openSUSE Tumbleweed sounds like it would fit the bill. It's both rolling and has the benefit of having btrfs/snapper support baked in by default, so it's super easy to roll back anything if it breaks.
I find the description of the project to be patronizing. "Just the apps you need"? How do you know what I need? What about the battery life I need, or the excellent touchpad support that I need? Most distros drop the ball on those fundamental things.
Elementary OS is stuck in 2011, offering limited customization options. I remember having hard time adding desktop icons. These days, much superior distributions are available. Examples include Mint, EndeavourOS and Fedora...
Oh I remember using this years ago. It was pretty good. My memory always confuses it with enlightenment which had fancy compositing on a crappy computer in the early 2000s which I loved it for.
I remember people on mastodon saying that project leader went too much political by focusing on gender and identity while actual system development was pushed away. But since my journey with elementary was over years ago I didn't care that much. Maybe check other search engines and go with "elementaryos controversial" or similar words
I am wondering why no one is using the wonderful LLM coding tools to cut branches of open source apps rewriting them for consistent UI. From my experience with them so far this is a task that they would be really good at especially if the underlying codebase has decent test coverage.
I eventually fell out of love with elementaryOS when the team seemed to double down hard on some unpopular design decisions wrt window control buttons/behaviour, for instance.
I always felt that they had taken on more than they could chew, and all the good will of their community wasn't going to change that fact. To this day I maintain that the project should have just been Pantheon, the Desktop Environment. The team seems to have strong opinions about UX, and that's where most of that matters.
I'm not the only one who thought of that, and the team's justifications for their decision to roll their own distro never came across as strong.
I've since moved on (to macOS and Ubuntu one the side), but once in a while I browse the official sub for the latest. I've never shaken off that feeling that the really talented founders could have spent their energy more wisely.
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