Elementary OS, a rather interesting Linux distribution with a very heavy focus on usability, has released its latest release.
elementary OS is made up of two main parts: the “desktop” which includes the core user experience, look and feel, and system pieces; and the apps that come with the OS out of the box. elementary OS 5 Juno includes major updates across several of these core apps.
Elementary OS is sometimes regarded as the macOS of the Linux world, as it aims to pretty much streamline and hide all the less user friendly aspects of using Linux to higher degree than even systems like Ubuntu or Linux Mint. They also consider design a central aspect, which does seem to bear fruit – Elementary looks incredibly attractive.
Although beautiful, I would not be able to like this or get others to like it.
People new to Linux and coming from Windows will not like the gtk3/gnome way of windows decorations. They will search for the close button in the right top corner of a window. For these people, XFCE is perfect: easy to learn and reliable.
Peoble coming from Mac OS will probably stay with Apple.
Guys (mostly guys…) already familiar with Linux will choose a desktop with either more “power” features or an even more minimalistic desktop. Or they too will choose XFCE.
So yes, there is a lot to like… but for which target audience?
People on Windows or Linux who like the MacOS design language and care about details but can’t or won’t pay the stupidly high prices of Apple hardware, for example.
Edited 2018-10-17 08:21 UTC
Maybe. Or maybe not. Those people like the Apple way.
One word: hackintosh.
https://hackintosh.com/
That’s not a viable option when you have a laptop. Only carefully assembled computers can run MacOS without many issues.
MacOS is not missing features to make it easier, its easier because its GUI is consistent between apps. Case in point goes back to macOS6 days when you could copy any pastes between any app. (the rare exceptions were stupid apps ported from windows like KAIs Photo Goo.)
Linux as a whole will never be ‘consistent’. But this might be nice for the linux fan that wants their parents to use linux, but wants something that won’t confuse them with as many features up front.
Before you empty the trash, please support the developer by paying for it. Choose your price. The thought there, is that most of the ‘simple’ use cases a simple gui is targeted for is for tasks you don’t expect to pay for. Actually I would hate to think how much my Grandma might pay, or worse, tell her its ok to pay for things when here computer asks here for money.
Anyway, I do love the idea of a system to support linux developers, just not the idea of yet another simpler by being different than you are use to linux.
Edited 2018-10-17 15:55 UTC
Like the other commenter said, it’s really quite polished – for me it’s the only distro/desktop that I don’t have to fuss around with settings before it feels right. (Unlike KDE, Xfce, etc., which are all good in their own ways, but not in out-of-the-box experience.)
That’s a big plus for any new Linux user, far more than which side the close button is on…
(Some reasons to switch from MacOS: older computers not being able to upgrade to the latest versions (and therefore can’t install newest versions of apps), or wanting to support open source.)
(Downsides: libinput is too insensitive on my track pad, where synaptics was great.)
Just tried it in a VM and I can’t get it to change resolutions so I am stuck with an 800×600 resolution.
Grew up on Mac.
Fell in love with Be.
Tolerated Windows through 2k.
Went full-hog BeOS R5.
Sad when Be, Inc. died.
Transitioned to Linux for work, Mac OS X at home.
Lived with crappy desktops at work, lovely desktop at home.
2013 get new work laptop. MBP. Ditch Linux for work.
Have awesome desktop experience all the time.
Apple starts producing shit for laptops, lets hardware languish.
2017. Want new hardware (that doesn’t suck).
Get a PC laptop. Go back to Linux.
OMGWTF. This desktop experience sucks (hard) now.
Things just don’t work or don’t feel right.
Realize I’ve become a bigot for stuff that just works.
Have to customize the tar out of the desktop to get it work in a manner that doesn’t suck, and lets me do my work in a decent manner.
Had to custom compile kernels (for hw bugs).
Gnome-3 is butt. X still blows. Wayland at least doesn’t do all sort of wonky lag, but…
HiDPI? I can only set the GUI scale globally across all monitors. *puke* Linux desktops in 2017 suck.
6 weeks of _forcing_ myself to use it, and I finally don’t get angry every time I boot up or log in.
I’ve made peace with the fact that it sucks.
I just booted ElementaryOS in a VM.
10 minutes of fiddling around, and I’m planning on stuffing this onto my root partition pronto.
This actually feels like someone (else) gives a care.
There’s been some solid effort here.
I’ve been playing with elementary OS 5.0 for a few hours and I agree with the “someone else gives a care” comment.
A lot of Linux distros offer good tools, but little in the way of visual polish or integration. elementary fills that niche. Most of the underlying OS is made by Ubuntu (and I suppose, in turn, Debian). But the user facing elements (app menu, icons, settings controls, window manager) are refined a lot. (Almost) everything makes sense, fits well together and is oddly intuitive.
From a UI viewpoint, I’d say elementary OS is a big leap ahead of anything Microsoft or Apple are putting out these days. Some video styles are borrowed from macOS, but this is simplified and made one level better than anything I’ve experienced with Apple.
I’ve been linux admining since I left BeOS. I’ve been a Fedora guy, but my current employer uses Ubuntu based stuff. So I’ve been using elementaryOS on my equipment for the past 2 releases and love it. Seems to keep getting better.
I’ve had oddball configs I’ve had to change todo some things to run things from other distros, but it’s usually pretty simple, much like other linuxes. Each distro has had it’s quirkks, and this is no different.
What I do appreciate is this one as UI guidelines and is TRYING to make some sense of the desktop mess. They’ve purchased languishing projects and contributed back up the pipeline. They keep simplicity in mind, one app to do one thing right, and I like that. Seems very BeOS in that regard.
The new way they’ve implemented donating to projects is also nice. Keeps reminders of helping out without nagging.
Oh, and I’m running this on Lenovo ThinkPads. I have run it on my desktop, but I use that more for some Windows specific gaming, and use my laptop more for productivity. So instead of dual booting my Shuttle desktop, I just leave it Win10 and my laptop is all Linux (with a Haiku VM!)
Edited 2018-10-17 17:52 UTC
A bit late, but there’s one other significant point: elementary is trying to get app developers paid, which is nice!
Some of the apps that have been developed are great too – far more polished than one has come to expect from Linux apps. (Quilter, a very simple word processor is one. There’s also a nice dictionary app.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZK4YoyJqUWE
There’s a bunch of reviews on Youtube now too.
Well…trying to work out what the big deal is after installing it on a Core2D laptop. The first Jarring was single click file manager. Have to run this at the terminal to change to double click (gsettings set io.elementary.files.preferences single-click false). What is the go here? Seems like I might be asking too much and wanting to customise the OS beyond what the OS wants already. Really?