No intel wireless 8000 series support = show stopper for me, why they wouldn't include that in the kernel config I have no idea
Elementary OS
311–320 of 399 posts
Re: Elementary OS
#312Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a scam project. They claim 100% open hardware but it's just an off the shelf Intel laptop with closed firmware and ME intact. You'd do better with something from System76 or a similar Linux-first vendor.
They did make over-ambitious claims when they were initially crowdfunding/scoping, but I don't think it's their fault that Intel run the processor market for laptops. I think it's good (if naive) that they were shooting for the FSF hardware badge. I've spent a few minutes on a Librem 13, and it seems like an extremely high quality piece of hardware. It's cool that they're assembled in South San Francisco, too. I real…
They didn't just make the claims during crowdfunding, they doubled down after release. They are charging a premium for a claim of fully open hardware that they can't back up. You can get the same hardware at the same quality level for hundreds less and install your own Free OS. No, you're still not going to get a fully open BIOS, but at least you're not paying hundreds more to be lied to about it. They made promises that Intel would allow them source access to ME and other low level BIOS components, when Intel obviously would never do such a thing for one small startup. The whole project stinks of bait-and-switch.
Your best bet for a Librem-quality machine that is actually designed to run Linux is a Google Chromebook Pixel. If you want a truly 100% open from the chips up laptop, right now your only option is Bunnie's Novena, but it's not for the faint of heart; it's a true hacker's machine and not a ripoff of a MacBook.
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Purism-Li...
https://blogs.coreboot.org/blog/2015/02/23/the-truth-about-p...
Re: Elementary OS
#313Earlier quoted context omitted.
Firstly, I see a lot of people complaining about the design, but the matter of fact is a lot more programmers are willing to work for free and make their contributions open source than designers are. This was more true a decade ago than it is now, so there is a lot of "if it works, do not break it" attitude. Secondly, "good design" is subjective as opposed to a program that achieves its goals. No matter what you do,…
It doesn't happen that projects like GNOME and KDE get bashed by trying to improve the whole stack experience, by developers which only care to scatter xterms across their screens. This is why many of us that enjoy UI design ended up going to platforms where it is praised.
GNOME development has been mostly design driven since maybe 2008, the whole 3 era had professional designers on board since the beginning.
Re: Elementary OS
#314Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Geary, the mail app looks nice, but lacks basic features and has a tendency to corrupt IMAP folders. Geary was forked after Yorba wound down, and Elementary are moving it over to the Evolution backend, incidentally.
Forgive my ignorance - what implications does this have? Would Evolution run as some kind of daemon, and Geary just add the presentation layer on top?
Yes, I think so. It means the Geary developers don't have to maintain IMAP etc support, they can concentrate on the other parts of the app.
Re: Elementary OS
#315Earlier quoted context omitted.
It doesn't happen that projects like GNOME and KDE get bashed by trying to improve the whole stack experience, by developers which only care to scatter xterms across their screens. This is why many of us that enjoy UI design ended up going to platforms where it is praised.
GNOME development has been mostly design driven since maybe 2008, the whole 3 era had professional designers on board since the beginning.
I know, and how much FOSS bashing have they received for their ideas?
Re: Elementary OS
#316For me a downside of Elementary OS is that, like all Ubuntu-based distros, I've found installing it on my apple hardware to be such a pain. Fedora-based distros on the other hand have worked wonderfully out of the box. If I were to advise a friend on which distro to install on their MacBook, I'd recommend the beautiful Fedora-based Korora over Elementary OS any day.
https://kororaproject.org/
Re: Elementary OS
#317> but neither would I use a plain Gnome, KDE or Unity desktop, because I find them tasteless and cluttered
I've been preparing a "plan B" for my iOS developer career, and I've installed elementary and a Fedora 25 alpha to see what's going on in Linux land. To me, Fedora's GNOME 3 seems just as pretty and minimal as elementaryOS. It's way less cluttered than GNOME 2. I actually had to figure out how to clutter it up again (I want files on my desktop!).
Re: Elementary OS
#318Earlier quoted context omitted.
Having an interest in design, I often feel a vibe of aggression towards the whole endeavor coming from some elements of OSS scene that I can see being equally infuriating or hurtful as "neckbeards". Among them are: - dismissal of design as a sort of thin veneer, somewhat fake, lipstick-on-good-bacon - design as a kludge aimed at amateurs, to the point of preferring the worse UI (all else being equal) so as to prove s…
I think the problem is that Linux and its ecosystem follow a bazaar model. In this setting coordination is harder, which is critical for a nicely designed UI. That said, my favorite UI design was mid-to-late 2000s GNOME, as implemented by Ubuntu 6.09 Edgy Eft. It was simple, and everything just worked. Sadly, Ubuntu has become a bit more complex and buggy these days. I think that, if I want to get the best of Linux a…
For what it's worth Ubuntu-Mate is keeping that particular fire burning: https://ubuntu-mate.org/
Re: Elementary OS
#319Kind of interesting overview, but it doesn't support XCode nor the Objective-C and Swift frameworks I care about.
Of course not. I never meant to suggest this would be a macOS replacement - and as a former dabbler in GNUStep, let me tell you that that way wouldn't work either.
Could GNUStep at least help in porting macOS apps to Linux? (In the very, very long term.)
Re: Elementary OS
#320Earlier quoted context omitted.
GNOME development has been mostly design driven since maybe 2008, the whole 3 era had professional designers on board since the beginning.
I know, and how much FOSS bashing have they received for their ideas?
Definitely too much, mostly by a vocal minority of the userbase. I guess design is not enough, you need good charismatic leaders to be able to sell it to the community, and you need to be strong enough to not care about the criticism.
That said, not all design is made equal, sometimes a little dose of reality check from the community can be helpful.