Elementary OS 6 beta • Hacker News Board

Re: Elementary OS 6 beta

#11

Post by dvdkon » Sat, May 01, 2021, 8:03 AM UTC

nehalem wrote: post #7

Somewhat off topic: Whenever I see these user-friendly Linux distributions I think they would be great for mass deployments in schools or similar. Is there any technology that gives Elementary (or similar distributions) a deployment workflow like Chrome OS; ie zero-config (for the user) to log into a central service and configuration of the user account while being easy to administer?

I've got some thoughts on this. I've found that there are two approaches to centralised management of computers: Installing a pre-made all-in-one product with pre-programmed configuration options (Windows with mostly AD, GPOs) and having numerous automatable components that can be stitched together with scripts (UNIX, sometimes Windows with Powershell). I prefer the scripting approach, as it gives me much more flexibility beyond one vendor's products. The scripts can also be shared, just now I'm setting up a second "home" server and I can mostly copy-paste Ansible roles from the first. So a school admin who's somewhat familiar with Linux could start with a complete template. The problem is that familiarity with Linux, some people will run at first sight of scripting.

The other problem is that I don't think there's money in developing a shiny boxed solution with marketing. Schools mostly go to Linux for cost savings, you couldn't convince them to pay enough to cover all the expenses of a SW company. A "support group" of school admins that administer Linux desktops might, though, which is where the script-sharing could come in. Less shiny, less "just buy it and we're done", but more likely in my opinion.

Re: Elementary OS 6 beta

#12

Post by jacek » Sat, May 01, 2021, 8:06 AM UTC

RupertWiser wrote: post #9

I'm very excited for the multi gesture track pad support. It's such a small change but I just haven't been able to find good support for this outside of Mac OS. I'm tempted to install this version the second they hit their first release candidate for that feature alone.

Recently released Gnome 40 also improves gesture support. I have not had a chance to test it yet though.

[1] https://forty.gnome.org/

Re: Elementary OS 6 beta

#13

Post by aquir » Sat, May 01, 2021, 8:13 AM UTC

Tried elementary but the hidpi scaling is useless! Also it was unable to handle different dpi for each display. Had any of this changed in this version?

Re: Elementary OS 6 beta

#14

Post by nehalem » Sat, May 01, 2021, 8:20 AM UTC

dvdkon wrote: post #11

nehalem wrote: post #7

Somewhat off topic: Whenever I see these user-friendly Linux distributions I think they would be great for mass deployments in schools or similar. Is there any technology that gives Elementary (or similar distributions) a deployment workflow like Chrome OS; ie zero-config (for the user) to log into a central service and configuration of the user account while being easy to administer?

I've got some thoughts on this. I've found that there are two approaches to centralised management of computers: Installing a pre-made all-in-one product with pre-programmed configuration options (Windows with mostly AD, GPOs) and having numerous automatable components that can be stitched together with scripts (UNIX, sometimes Windows with Powershell). I prefer the scripting approach, as it gives me much more flexib…

I agree about the two paths and I share a preference for the non-vendor one. Yet at the very least I need an OS that out of the box accepts say an email user@org.tld as username and automatically contacts org‘s directory to check for authorisation and pull email credentials at the very least. This seems so basic to me that it should exist outside of commercial solutions.

Re: Elementary OS 6 beta

#15

Post by pabs3 » Sat, May 01, 2021, 8:23 AM UTC

dvdkon wrote: post #11

nehalem wrote: post #7

Somewhat off topic: Whenever I see these user-friendly Linux distributions I think they would be great for mass deployments in schools or similar. Is there any technology that gives Elementary (or similar distributions) a deployment workflow like Chrome OS; ie zero-config (for the user) to log into a central service and configuration of the user account while being easy to administer?

I've got some thoughts on this. I've found that there are two approaches to centralised management of computers: Installing a pre-made all-in-one product with pre-programmed configuration options (Windows with mostly AD, GPOs) and having numerous automatable components that can be stitched together with scripts (UNIX, sometimes Windows with Powershell). I prefer the scripting approach, as it gives me much more flexib…

The Skolelinux (and later DebianEdu) did do the support group thing IIRC.

Re: Elementary OS 6 beta

#16

Post by pjerem » Sat, May 01, 2021, 8:25 AM UTC

j-pb wrote: post #6

I'd love to use Elementary OS, but their use of Vala is just such a turn off. That language is dead except for a tiny gnome niche. If they wanted the mac devs for their sleek look and feel they could have switched to swift. And if they wanted to gain easy popularity they could have switched to rust. But vala... there is no developer pool to draw people from, and they're not apple where ObjC might have been an obscure…

I don’t see how the langage in which is developed a software is a reason to use it or not.

It’s not like you can’t install your good-old-C++Rust-javascript Firefox browser.

Re: Elementary OS 6 beta

#17

Post by prince781 » Sat, May 01, 2021, 8:34 AM UTC

j-pb wrote: post #6

I'd love to use Elementary OS, but their use of Vala is just such a turn off. That language is dead except for a tiny gnome niche. If they wanted the mac devs for their sleek look and feel they could have switched to swift. And if they wanted to gain easy popularity they could have switched to rust. But vala... there is no developer pool to draw people from, and they're not apple where ObjC might have been an obscure…

> I'd love to use Elementary OS, but their use of Vala is just such a turn off. That language is dead except for a tiny gnome niche.

I'll go out on a limb and say that while this might have been closer to the truth 3 years ago, there has been an uptick in activity on the language recently, especially with improvements in tooling. If you look here (https://github.com/topics/vala), while you'll see it used in smaller projects, you'll also see there's a fair amount of high-quality software written in Vala. Clearly the language is capable for serious use.

As far as the language itself is concerned, I think it has a number of good points that aren't very common (outside of Swift or Rust): that is high-level abstractions with little to no runtime cost, easy to learn, C compatible and binds easily to practically every language under the sun thanks to gobject-introspection.

Re: Elementary OS 6 beta

#18

Post by rcarmo » Sat, May 01, 2021, 8:41 AM UTC

Quite looking forward to this as my Linux laptops all run it. I’ve found it to be a great DE with a clean, no-fuss experience, and have often considered moving to it (plus a Windows VM with pass-through graphics) for a desktop.

Re: Elementary OS 6 beta

#19

Post by orta » Sat, May 01, 2021, 8:42 AM UTC

j-pb wrote: post #6

I'd love to use Elementary OS, but their use of Vala is just such a turn off. That language is dead except for a tiny gnome niche. If they wanted the mac devs for their sleek look and feel they could have switched to swift. And if they wanted to gain easy popularity they could have switched to rust. But vala... there is no developer pool to draw people from, and they're not apple where ObjC might have been an obscure…

I think there's quite a lot of potential for writing native elementary apps with gjs, https://gjs.guide

Re: Elementary OS 6 beta

#20

Post by input_sh » Sat, May 01, 2021, 8:46 AM UTC

pjerem wrote: post #16

j-pb wrote: post #6

I'd love to use Elementary OS, but their use of Vala is just such a turn off. That language is dead except for a tiny gnome niche. If they wanted the mac devs for their sleek look and feel they could have switched to swift. And if they wanted to gain easy popularity they could have switched to rust. But vala... there is no developer pool to draw people from, and they're not apple where ObjC might have been an obscure…

I don’t see how the langage in which is developed a software is a reason to use it or not. It’s not like you can’t install your good-old-C++Rust-javascript Firefox browser.

Yeah I don't get it. While it's certainly not the post popular language out there, it's not like you as a user are impacted by the choice of a programming language it's written in.

Default apps are mostly good. Music is the only one I don't like in general, and while Epiphany is not my preferred browser, it seems perfectly capable (hell, it even syncs with Firefox Sync). The rest of the apps feel very pleasant to use and I never had to bother with looking for an alternative.