What advantages does Elementary have over (its upstream) Ubuntu? It just looks like a different GTK/GNOME Shell theme to me.
Elementary OS – Fast, open, privacy-respecting replacement for Windows and macOS
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Re: Elementary OS – Fast, open, privacy-respecting replacement for Windows and macOS
#22I'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…
In the past I’ve had serious issues with drivers in Fedora — once in the past on a cheap laptop where getting sound working 100% was near impossible and I accidentally bricked the system installing RPMs in the process.
More recently I had a Fedora update eat my Broadcom wifi drivers which isn’t fun to fix when you don’t have an easy way to hardwire a connection and your cell connection is too weak to tether reliably.
Re: Elementary OS – Fast, open, privacy-respecting replacement for Windows and macOS
#23I 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.
That is like the first thing I saw too. I was not fooled. But maybe this system works better then a free + donate button. Only data can tell... Maybe people are donating more with this system?
I didn't see anything remotely like A/B/C testing. They might benefit from something like that.
Re: Elementary OS – Fast, open, privacy-respecting replacement for Windows and macOS
#24I 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.
It’s just forcing you to confront the fact that you’re using software that others put a lot of effort into, for free. A simple fix to quell the bad feelings would be donate a few bucks. Win/win.
Re: Elementary OS – Fast, open, privacy-respecting replacement for Windows and macOS
#25What kind of apps does Elementary OS support?
Can I install .deb packages or other Linux-compatible ones?
Otherwise it's going to be hard to adopt an OS if there are not enough of the apps I use, no?
Re: Elementary OS – Fast, open, privacy-respecting replacement for Windows and macOS
#26I'll be honest.. I tried elementary os when they first released it but never got it's charm. It always felt like an inferior version of macOS... Which I don't like. I personally prefer to develop on a Linux install... But elementary OS is not what I'd use if Linux is an option
It does feel like an inferior macOS, but macOS and increasingly proprietary hardware feel like an inferior alternative to open source and open computing too.
Re: Elementary OS – Fast, open, privacy-respecting replacement for Windows and macOS
#27elementary is not for me because it limits configuration a little bit too much to my taste, but it's a wonderful project.
One of the cons of Linux--which is the OS I use exclusively--is that most apps are made by programmers, and programmers often don't care and don't have design skills. elementary OS looks absolutely stunning, and it's perfect if you stick to curated apps and you just want something that works.
Most importantly, they were able to finally find a way for devs to get paid, so that they can continue working and debugging their apps. On this aspect, I really don't understand the critics: people need money in life. If a project brings a little bit of money, you can keep working on it. End-users win because there are updates, less bugs, and new versions instead of abandoned projects.
In addition, as for their 70/30 fee they redistribute the money (I don't know in what percentage) on BountySource, so that the project gets developed further.
Honestly, other distros have a lot to learn from elementary.
Re: Elementary OS – Fast, open, privacy-respecting replacement for Windows and macOS
#28I'll be honest.. I tried elementary os when they first released it but never got it's charm. It always felt like an inferior version of macOS... Which I don't like. I personally prefer to develop on a Linux install... But elementary OS is not what I'd use if Linux is an option
Inferior macOS is how most of my experiences with Linux distros have felt. Maybe the desktop environments just aren’t my thing, the inconsistent UIs feel sloppy, and I always ending up needing to drop down to a command line to fix something or other is was annoying.
Elementary doesn’t fix needing to drop to a command line, and the UIs are only unusually consistent and well thought when you stick with the built in software. But the overall experience of it feels like someone actually thought about it more than the alternatives I’ve tried.
Re: Elementary OS – Fast, open, privacy-respecting replacement for Windows and macOS
#29The 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…
Learning Vala is still far better than GObject-C. Rust GTK bindings are probably not yet there. So what's left? Python and JavaScript. If you care about native performance the way I believe they are these will also not cut it.
Vala seems then a logical choice, especially at the time they were deciding. The question I have is: will Vala be supported further by Gnome in foreseeable future? I heard some time ago that it's not so sure. I would be pleased to hear otherwise.
Re: Elementary OS – Fast, open, privacy-respecting replacement for Windows and macOS
#30The 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 bett…
Thanks I was staring at the code examples trying to figure out which language it was. Some of the examples looked like C# but then some I could have swore were C++. Took me a minute.