I like the fact that you can download for free...or you can choose your price to download. It really helps us support you without you guys being too intrusive on donations.
ElementaryOs Luna released
81–90 of 307 posts
Re: ElementaryOs Luna released
#82I have been a developer for elementary for 3 years, and I am part of the elementary core team. I am also personally close friends with much of the design and development team, including the project's founder and lead designer, Daniel Foré. There seems to be a lot of feedback here which basically says "this trying to rip off OS X". I would like to offer you some insight into our internal assessment of these claims. Is…
FWIW I don't think it is a bad thing [1]. KDE's look was clearly inspired by Windows XP. But I'm a user.
Designers, people who make their living giving life to a "look" or a "user experience" feel pretty strongly about their work (this is typical of many artists, programmers, architects, musicians, Etc.) In part because they often see their own work as a reflection of them, and in part, and I speculate here, because the creative process is mysterious and it is easy to feel like a fraud when you don't really know how you come up with something, you just do.
So designers look at Elementary OS and they evaluate its look, its theme, its "presence." And what they see seems to remind them strongly of Apple's OS. I completely understand that because that was my first thought as well and I'm not a designer, I thought "Oh, this looks like they put an OS X shell on top of Linux."
I happen to think the other stuff you did, the performance tuning, the application integration, the "fit and finish" if you will is very impressive and it reminds me of how Ubuntu took something mashed up and made it more cohesive.
How ever the design elements always dominate product discussions, even if they shouldn't. Look at the discussion around the Honda Element (car) are they about its innovations in how it converts its internal spaces? Its motor design? No, people talk about how stupid it looks to them (which completely misses the point of the car).
What I'm saying is the Elementary team is going to get razzed a lot about the design elements. Try not to take it personally. The correct response is the one you've latched on to, "We built an OS we wanted to use based on technology we wanted to use, we built it this way." Own the vision.
[1] "rip off" sounds bad "homage" sounds good, both mean "it looks like."
Re: ElementaryOs Luna released
#83I think design is not the number one issue of desktop Linux. Windows is very ugly and it still dominates desktop computing, by the way KDE looks and feels amazing. The first problem desktop Linux has to overcome is the lack of support from computer manufacturers. Most people are not gonna go out of their way to find a computer with Linux. Another very important issue is that Windows compatibility is unavoidable. Even OS X which has an even bigger share of the desktop market than Linux can't fully replace Windows. Most people are gonna need Windows software sooner or later. Linux has to sell itself as a better alternative to Windows, not as an affordable alternative to Windows, people might end up having to spend more money by using Linux.
P.S. I still think self contained applications like in OS X & Windows are way better than the Linux model. Other than that and hardware support, UNIX-like systems are superior to Windows in all aspects. I can't live without a decent shell & decent support for dynamic languages.
Re: ElementaryOs Luna released
#84This is cool. Finally, a Linux distro that I could set my less-than-technical friends and family with. (Why not Ubuntu, you might ask? Simple: Ubuntu ships off their users' desktop search results to Amazon by default. I know it can be disabled and all that, but that's besides the point. I can't recommend software from people who don't respect their users' privacy.)
I see. And how do your holiness save your "less-than-technical friends and family" from Google, Gmail, iTunes, YouTube, Facebook....
Re: ElementaryOs Luna released
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hate it when websites do that, and I certainly wouldn't want an operating system doing it. At the very least it should require the user to click on something before playing anything.
I believe oakaz was referring to the ability to actually play movie and audio files which use non-free formats, such as MP3. This is a frequent/historical pain point for laypersons using Linux desktops. The answer is yes. In the installer, there is a checkbox that asks if the user wants to install these non-free codecs.
Oh, I've been using Linux for years and had no idea this was a problem on some distributions. I guess I've just accidentally skipped the ones dogmatic about non-free codecs.
Re: ElementaryOs Luna released
#86I just quickly installed this in a VM and it's literally just a poorly done OS X skin laying on top of Ubuntu, all the way down to dock icons bouncing when clicked. The installer is the standard Ubuntu-derivative fare without much modification whatsoever.
It's not really much of an upgrade from just running Xubuntu or one of the more minimalist window managers out there.
Re: ElementaryOs Luna released
#87I have been a developer for elementary for 3 years, and I am part of the elementary core team. I am also personally close friends with much of the design and development team, including the project's founder and lead designer, Daniel Foré. There seems to be a lot of feedback here which basically says "this trying to rip off OS X". I would like to offer you some insight into our internal assessment of these claims. Is…
I am a bit confused. A lot of it looks like Ubuntu, but with slightly different GUI. At first I thought it was just a variant of Ubuntu(like Kubuntu, Xubuntu, etc)...is it? How does it differ from it? Sorry if this seems like a naive question. I am really interested in trying it out...will do so shortly after I am done my exams :P
Hi, thanks for the interest!
Our desktop interface and apps are actually quite different from Ubuntu, though we are an Ubuntu-based distribution.
To give some concrete examples:
- We use our own desktop environment and window manager, Pantheon and Gala, respectively.[1]
- We write many of our own apps in-house or work closely with the third-party apps we ship with. For example, our music player, settings application, and calendaring program (to name a few) are all written completely by us. Our mail program, web browser, and photo management app are developed by third-parties who we have strong developer and personal connections to.
- Similar to the above point, we have our own human interface guidelines[2]. You might find you like it more than Ubuntu's.
- elementary OS is extremely fast and lightweight. Our ISO is ~200 MB less than Ubuntu's, and our OS boots faster and is more responsive. A simple youtube or google search should back me up here.
I hope this was helpful to you and perhaps others. Again, we really appreciate your interest and curiosity. I'd definitely encourage you to give it a whirl once you've aced your exams :)
[1]: http://elementaryos.org/journal/meet-gala-window-manager [2]: http://elementaryos.org/docs/human-interface-guidelines
Re: ElementaryOs Luna released
#88I have been a developer for elementary for 3 years, and I am part of the elementary core team. I am also personally close friends with much of the design and development team, including the project's founder and lead designer, Daniel Foré. There seems to be a lot of feedback here which basically says "this trying to rip off OS X". I would like to offer you some insight into our internal assessment of these claims. Is…
I'd like to nudge in one thing: option flexibility. I'm still downloading and about to try it out; but I hope that the setting does allow the user to tweak everything they can tweak and not hide options away for the sake of hiding things. My personal thing, but it's shared with many, is that flexibility can lead to a personally complete design.
Flexibility is definitely something we try to be opinionated about. We don't offer a lot of easy GUI customization out of the box, but you'll find that there's quite a bit hidden beneath the surface or is easy to code up yourself.
If you're really interested in a completely customizable and hand-tailored OS, I'd honestly suggest you look into something like ArchLinux or Gentoo[2]. Both platforms have made available most of our applications and components, so you can pick and choose to build the desktop you personally want :)
[1]: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/?O=0&C=0&SeB=nd&K=element... [2]: http://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Pantheon
Re: ElementaryOs Luna released
#89I have been a developer for elementary for 3 years, and I am part of the elementary core team. I am also personally close friends with much of the design and development team, including the project's founder and lead designer, Daniel Foré. There seems to be a lot of feedback here which basically says "this trying to rip off OS X". I would like to offer you some insight into our internal assessment of these claims. Is…
FWIW I don't think it is a bad thing [1]. KDE's look was clearly inspired by Windows XP. But I'm a user. Designers, people who make their living giving life to a "look" or a "user experience" feel pretty strongly about their work (this is typical of many artists, programmers, architects, musicians, Etc.) In part because they often see their own work as a reflection of them, and in part, and I speculate here, because…
To you it might be clear that KDE was inspired by Windows XP, I differ. KDE independently developed a Windows-like feeling because it has always aimed at being very configurable. Since I first used KDE (when using XP) I felt that it was better than Windows, that feeling has never left me.
Re: ElementaryOs Luna released
#90I look forward to an ARM version of this, one for Pandaboard and one for Raspberry Pi.