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

Elementary OS 5.1 Hera

blog.elementary.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 193 posts

Re: Elementary OS 5.1 Hera

#141

Post by phaedryx »

jonny383 wrote: post #23

Serious question time. What benefit will I get from running something like Elementary over Ubuntu? Forgive my ignorance, but honestly the whole OS looks like it's just a fork of Ubuntu with a couple of swapped in applications, and a GTK3 theme on top of GNOME trying to make it look like a ten year old version of macOS. I hate to be so negative, but the "new greeter" they are showing looks like something from Windows…

I've found Elementary to be much snappier and use less system resources than Ubuntu. Their native apps are written in Vala, which seem pretty good.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vala_(programming_language)

Re: Elementary OS 5.1 Hera

#142

Post by Pmop »

jonny383 wrote: post #23

Serious question time. What benefit will I get from running something like Elementary over Ubuntu? Forgive my ignorance, but honestly the whole OS looks like it's just a fork of Ubuntu with a couple of swapped in applications, and a GTK3 theme on top of GNOME trying to make it look like a ten year old version of macOS. I hate to be so negative, but the "new greeter" they are showing looks like something from Windows…

I've used Elementary for a while, beginning in it's beta, Luna and ending in Juno. These days, I just use Windows, as recent changes introduced quite a bit of instability and uncertainty into Desktop Linux environments.

Elementary does one thing and does it well: do UX right. Before getting to know Elementary, I've tried many Linux distros, you name it. I'd always have to spend quite a bit of time tweaking my new install, so it would actually look good and be useful. Elementary has good defaults, you can install a web browser, your favorite productivity tools, and call it a day.

The efforts of team behind the project have resulted into a quite consistent and coherent UI, something all other Linux distros lack. Distros maintainers have less control as they use DEs developed by other people. You can install Pantheon (Elementary's DE) into another distro but it wont feel as good as it does in Elementary. Finally, the other famous DEs, namely KDE and GNOME3, have awful design principles: GNOME3 with it's everything-big-tablet-like, lack of intuitiveness and excess of antifeatures; KDE with it's awful looks.

Re: Elementary OS 5.1 Hera

#143

Post by anderber »

rehemiau wrote: post #131
anderber wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do development on my elementary OS machine.

Does elementary still return their release codename instead of the base ubuntu release for `lsb_release -cs` in shell?

That's correct. They do show the Ubuntu build on the "About" section.

Re: Elementary OS 5.1 Hera

#144

Post by sooheon »

diffeomorphism wrote: post #107
1Y3 wrote: post #100

I love the idea of having a Linux distro that emulates macOS, but I see no point in copying only the vague look, when it still differs in basic functionality, like using different keyboard shortcuts. I don’t understand why (based on semi-thorough googling in the past) it is not possible to change all shortcuts to be like macOS (cmd-c instead of ctrl-c etc.)

Linux has 3 keybinding schemes among which you can choose: emacs, vim and cua (what IBM introduced some years later, ctrl+c etc.). I don't see why introducing a fourth one would help? The main reason you can't simply flick a global switch between those three but have to do it per app seems to be the license of GNU readline.

The specific bindings vary by person and hardly matters, but having an extra modifier in the Command key is invaluable. It lets you properly "namespace" key binds (ctrl and meta for emacs commands, CMD for global) and prevents hacks like copying text in terminal being different from copying text anywhere else (ctrl-c vs ctrl-shift-c in windows and linux, always CMD-c in macos).

Re: Elementary OS 5.1 Hera

#145

Post by sooheon »

snazz wrote: post #115
dylan604 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My first guess would be that the majority of keyboards that exist in the world do not have a CMD key.

The command/⌘ key is just the logo/super/Windows key in a different spot.

The CMD key is much better utilized by MacOS than the windows/super key is by windows/linux. Most OS-level things are under command, and I'm free to use readline/emacs bindings in any text inputs across the whole OS and never have them conflict with global bindings.

Windows/linux still defaults to many OS commands being in the ctrl space (like ctrl-c for copy, not windows-c) which causes clobbering in the terminal, forcing people to use ctrl-shift-c, for instance.

Re: Elementary OS 5.1 Hera

#146

Post by appleiigs »

bketelsen wrote: post #138

I installed this on my XPS 13 this morning, and it's really nice. It has a lot of overall polish that most DE's are missing, it looks and feels cohesive. It installed without any issues, and I had no problem with my Ubuntu-leaning dotfiles. I will probably keep this for the near future, it's very pleasant.

I find "very pleasant" to be the best description of Elementary I can think. Every other distro I've used have these little annoyances which put I up with, but the folks at Elementary seem to iron them out. For example, weird font and menu issues in KDE, space hogging title bars and weird workflow in Pop, occasional screen flickering in Mint.

Re: Elementary OS 5.1 Hera

#147

Post by _bxg1 »

leppr wrote: post #22
_bxg1 wrote: post #12

Every workstation in my office runs Elementary. Around half of our employees came to the company with little or no prior technical experience, and it's worked out pretty well.

Would be interesting to know what kind of work is done on these machines.

Half the people do Lisp development, half stay mostly within Chromium

Re: Elementary OS 5.1 Hera

#148

Post by markosaric »

zozbot234 wrote: post #80
eptcyka wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the exact opposite experience - the microphone doesn't work, everything is incredibly slow, my SO is buying a Windows 10 licence this christmas. It's a shame, the user was just fine with Cinnamon on Debian 5 years ago, but that machine and software is no longer good enough.

"Linux" and "everything is incredibly slow" should not belong in the same sentence. Did you try installing an up-to-date Debian? Not sure if Debian packages Pantheon desktop already, but there are plenty of workable alternatives. For the microphone not working, you'd have to check what's going on in Pulseaudio and ALSA - both of these can be problematic at times.

I'm new to Linux (switched from macOS) and I ended up on Debian Gnome after testing many including Elementary. I don't know why but somehow the same DE works better on Debian (as long as I select non-free and testing) than on the other distros that I tested. At least in my case.

Re: Elementary OS 5.1 Hera

#149

Post by sooheon »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #116
bbmario wrote: post #113

One thing that makes me love Elementary: they're sticking to skeuomorphic design.

What elements are you referring to? It all looks pretty abstract and flat to me?

Toggles, buttons, sliders, look like they could be on a white plastic physical device. Flat for sure but more skeuomorphic than macOS in its current state imo.

Re: Elementary OS 5.1 Hera

#150

Post by bwat49 »

iad wrote: post #119
alexis_fr wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s worth developing: Pop! is the fork of Elementary by System76, which is known for high-quality open-source laptops/desktops. I have never tried either so I can’t assess the quality. From the screenshots I have seen, it remains Linux, so not as smooth as macOS.

When you say fork are you talking about the desktop environments or the whole distros? Pop's desktop environment looks like a barely customized Gnome3 session to me. I'm not sure I would even call it a fork. Looks more like just a theme. Pantheon (Elementary) is more of a fork of Gnome3, reusing some low level parts but presenting a much different experience to the user.

yeah pop is just using the gnome desktop (with custom theming, a few extensions, and an improved set of default keyboard shortcuts.

They have collaborated with elementary in a few areas though. Instead of gnome software, they have Pop Shop, which I believe is a fork of the elementary app center.

They also use their own installer, which I believe was a collaboration with elementary os.

Post reply on HN