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ElementaryOs Luna released

elementaryos.org

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Re: ElementaryOs Luna released

#101

Post by aroman »

minor_nitwit wrote: post #98
wickedchap wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you know anything of design, Elementary is not a clone nor is mimicking OSX. Or, put differently; everybody is copying everybody. If you have good enough eye sight, then you can see that the difference between OSX and Elementary is huge. Dock was used before OSX, so you can't say that's copying from OSX. The light-gray colors and clinically clean interface was also used before OSX.

They use the genie animation to minimize apps, and the full screen button is identical to the one in OSX. If they're not mimicking OSX then why are things like that in there?

We absolutely do not use the genie to minimize apps (nor is such functionality even available in the program we use for our dock, Plank), and in fact we came up with our full screen button months before Apple made that design change public. For proof (or at least evidence coupled with my personal assurance) of the latter claim, see this mockup[1] which was submitted July 10, 2010. That's 1 year and 10 days before OS X Lion (the first release to feature similar maximize buttons) was released -- even before the betas.

Also, it should be noted: that window control control does not behave the way OS X's similar one does. Fills the screen but does not take the application full screen.

[1]: http://danrabbit.deviantart.com/art/Postler-170793979

Re: ElementaryOs Luna released

#102

Post by aroman »

joel_perl_prog wrote: post #99
aroman wrote: post #62

I 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…

Hello. I'm super late to this party, it looks like. I only have one question: will my retina display (on a MacBook Pro) do all the right things, just as it does under MacOS and MacOS programs?

I honestly don't know! I don't know of anyone who has tried Luna on an rMBP. I would encourage you to burn a copy of luna to a USB disk and boot into the live environment. You can play around with it and see how it looks, with no changes to your hard drive.

I'm sure other people with rMBPs will be trying Luna in the coming days, so hopefully we can assess what the current state of affairs is and make any necessary changes.

Speaking on behalf of the whole elementary team, it would be greatly appreciated if you gave it a shot and reported your findings to us via Google+, Twitter, or via direct bug report here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/elementaryos

You can use this guide to prepare the USB drive with Luna: http://www.maketecheasier.com/install-dual-boot-ubuntu-in-ma... The relevant steps are the first few. Obviously replace the filename of the Ubuntu ISO with the Luna one :)

I personally used that guide this morning to create a bootable USB Luna liveCD with the final ISO to install it on my Macbook Air, so I can vouch for its credibility and compatibility.

Re: ElementaryOs Luna released

#103

Post by aroman »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #90

I look forward to an ARM version of this, one for Pandaboard and one for Raspberry Pi.

We've got them coming! Some of the guys who work on the build process and the ISOs have cranked out some ARM builds of Luna. I don't think they're perfect quite yet, but I fully expect them to be available for download from the website as soon as they are :)

Re: ElementaryOs Luna released

#104

Post by nsmartt »

aroman wrote: post #74
unknownian wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, thanks for being cool about it. I'm not sure a good alternative would be, but I do have this advice. Google often takes ideas from competitors and remixes them to the point of making them original (a good example is the gesture password on the Android lockscreen). You can remix ideas from competitors. So in this case, instead of a bounce, a spin could work. I'm nowhere near an expert but I thought this could hel…

Thanks for the advice, and I definitely see where you're coming from. I tend to be an advocate of the "take good ideas but make them seem different" approach, but I think a core philosophy in elementary (perhaps to its detriment at times) is: "don't change for change's sake". I wrote more about that philosophy, and the general perception of elementary copying OS X in my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item…

There is a key difference between making a feature seem different and actually re-engineering it. I assume you meant the latter, so I just thought I'd offer some advice on word choice.

Re: ElementaryOs Luna released

#105

Post by jorgecastillo »

jared314 wrote: post #91
jorgecastillo wrote: post #83

I 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…

> I still think self contained applications like in OS X & Windows are way better The single-folder application is a focus of Canonical's new package format project[0]. I would actually prefer a more LXC-style container format (similar to Docker.io) than another deb/rpm zip file, but that is personal preference. [0] https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2013-May/0370...

If Canonical is successful in this new project I will certainly reconsider using Ubuntu. I can't comment on containers, I sort of know what they are and that's about it.

Re: ElementaryOs Luna released

#107

Post by aroman »

silverlight wrote: post #100
aroman wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, absolutely we are doing different things. Examples include our launcher (from the top left hand corner), slingshot[1], our deprecation of the desktop as a place for folders, and our human interface guidelines. As another concrete example, we are very much trying to eliminate menu bars entirely. Instead, our apps use the "AppMenu"[2] -- a cog wheel that works similarly to Google Chrome. [1] Here's a video I found…

If I can make a suggestion, then, since I have your attention. The video on the page that the OP linked to basically shows a very OSX-like interface, especially by showing off the dock, a very (for the six seconds it's on-screen) iTunes-seeming music app, the expose-style window manager, and the multi-desktop. Maybe try highlighting some of these other concepts if possible in the video that most people who are coming…

I appreciate the suggestion. We (as the elementary team) did not actually create the video -- rather, a (very talented) fan created it of his own accord and sent it to us.

I agree that we would be well served by highlighting the features of elementary OS which are visually dissimilar to OS X, but frankly, Apple doesn't own light color schemes and multi-desktops. The latter has been on Linux long before Apple implemented them in OS X with Leopard in ~2005. Furthermore the "dock" wasn't invented by Apple (RISC OS had it first, iirc).

I hope I'm not coming across as overly defensive. I definitely appreciate the comments and I understand that you are expressing your opinions about what you got out of the video. But, as I've said elsewhere in this thread, we're not embarrassed by our dock and multi-desktop implementation (which, by the way, actually works rather differently than any other implementation we know of, particularly with regard to dragging apps around). We're proud of them, and we want to show them off -- aesthetic parallels to OS X or not.

Re: ElementaryOs Luna released

#108

Post by codebeard »

Can anyone provide some specific examples of how this is a "copy" of OSX? I am someone who sparsely used Os X and is admittedly anti-Apple.

I'm trying hard not to assume the people in the thread saying it's a copy are more than just Apple zealots but it's difficult when no one provides any evidence.

Re: ElementaryOs Luna released

#109

Post by zeckalpha »

frozenport wrote: post #46
nosefrog wrote: post #16

Mark my words: elementary OS is going to be big. I was on a beta version of elementary OS a couple months ago, and it was like a breath of fresh air. elementary OS sets out to settle the number one complaint casual users have of other Linux distributions: design. Other Linux distributions look like a mish-mash of a bunch of different designs by many different people. elementary OS has a beautiful, striking, and (most…

I have never heard anybody say Linux doesn't look sexy. Remember when we were comparing Compiz to Windows XP, or Enlightenment to Windows 2000? Ubuntu is one of the few OSs that can pull a black theme. Linux problems include: 1. Hardware compatibility 2. Office compatibility (also Adobe + games) 3. Easy to mess up your system with no hope of fixing it I don't see how any of these address the problems with Linux. I ru…

> 3. Easy to mess up your system with no hope of fixing it

That's the main point of them making decisions for you. The more opinionated the software, the less decisions the user has to make, the harder it is to mess up the system.

Re: ElementaryOs Luna released

#110

Post by e12e »

It looks like this might be an interesting competitor/test ground wrt Gnome 3 (and beyond). They're using Vala heavily, and they don't have any strong committed user base yet -- and therefore no need for backwards comparability.

Also nice to see a project that goes beyond simply building on top of Linux -- rethinking how apps are open/closed/minimized is a great example of this.

I doubt I'll ever use it for anything other than fun, though. I need my legacy apps, I can't work with a mouse (due to RSI and efficiency -- I've become addicted to xmonad like tiling wms, and vim/vimperator keybindings).

But if they can provide a solid alternative desktop experience, that's great!

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