Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Elementary OS – Fast, open, privacy-respecting replacement for Windows and macOS

elementary.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 431 posts

Re: Elementary OS – Fast, open, privacy-respecting replacement for Windows and macOS

#11

Post by ademup »

sanimal wrote: post #2

I don't like the "Pay What You Want" system they have to download the OS. It feels misleading that you have to click on custom then enter 0 to download for free. I totally understand how important donations are to keep a project going but this one rubs me off the wrong way. I hope I'm not the only one.

I love it. I feel that having the downloader physically typing the number zero ensures that the downloader understands that there is 'A' number that belongs there. It respects the downloader (no ads or pushy verbiage) while sending this message of 'yeah, it is free to use, and it costs money/time/resources to create, so your financial contribution would be appreciated.

Re: Elementary OS – Fast, open, privacy-respecting replacement for Windows and macOS

#12

Post by LeoPanthera »

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.

Re: Elementary OS – Fast, open, privacy-respecting replacement for Windows and macOS

#13

Post by kitsunesoba »

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.

Re: Elementary OS – Fast, open, privacy-respecting replacement for Windows and macOS

#14

Post by saagarjha »

craftyguy wrote: post #10
saagarjha wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a relatively recent change. I remember that they used to be much clearer about this back in Loki.

They've had this since at least 2015, so not really all that recent.

Must have been Freya, then.

Re: Elementary OS – Fast, open, privacy-respecting replacement for Windows and macOS

#15

Post by grawprog »

matchbok wrote: post #7

70/30 split for apps is ridiculous and a non-starter. Apple and Google can demand that because of market share. This experiment cannot.

Seems like people agree with you. From what I can tell, the 117 apps on their 'store' seem to all be made by them or contributors to the project.

I may be wrong about this, but at a quick glance it looked like stuff that would be mostly included in other desktop environments.

This is just my impression from skimming through it.

Re: Elementary OS – Fast, open, privacy-respecting replacement for Windows and macOS

#17

Post by jniedrauer »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #12

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…

Fedora is my daily driver, and I think it really strikes a good balance between stability, security, and bleeding edge.

Having said that, I hesitate to recommend Fedora to newbies. Some things about it can be scary and unpredictable. SELinux is enabled by default, and gnome shows audit2allow notifications every time there is an AVC denial. Someone coming from windows will be scared by seeing dozens of errors the very first time they boot into a clean OS. Additionally, Fedora tends to adopt new technology very early. Gnome has defaulted to Wayland for over a year, and the experience was badly broken at first. These types of things require experience to work through.

I don't personally use gnome, so none of this bothers me. But the defaults aren't what I would call "sane" for a new user.

Re: Elementary OS – Fast, open, privacy-respecting replacement for Windows and macOS

#18

Post by coleifer »

kitsunesoba wrote: post #13

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 goi…

Its not too different from c#, and it's very popular for writing gtk applications.

Re: Elementary OS – Fast, open, privacy-respecting replacement for Windows and macOS

#19

Post by LeoPanthera »

jniedrauer wrote: post #17
LeoPanthera wrote: post #12

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…

Fedora is my daily driver, and I think it really strikes a good balance between stability, security, and bleeding edge. Having said that, I hesitate to recommend Fedora to newbies. Some things about it can be scary and unpredictable. SELinux is enabled by default, and gnome shows audit2allow notifications every time there is an AVC denial. Someone coming from windows will be scared by seeing dozens of errors the very…

> Someone coming from windows will be scared by seeing dozens of errors the very first time they boot into a clean OS.

I'm not sure what you're describing here. I've never seen one error after a new install, let alone dozens. The SELinux errors must be pretty rare because I've never had any complaints about them.

Re: Elementary OS – Fast, open, privacy-respecting replacement for Windows and macOS

#20

Post by weberc2 »

kitsunesoba wrote: post #13

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 goi…

I briefly flirted with contributing to the project, but the code was a horrendous mess and the build system was worse (CMake mess; most of the dependencies were implicit; etc). Vala aims to be intuitive for C# developers, which is a nice goal but everything is built on the trashfire that is GObject and the Vala abstraction leaks like a seive. Hopefully much of that was fixed with time, but I doubt GObject is any better these days.
Post reply on HN