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Elementary OS – Fast, open, privacy-respecting replacement for Windows and macOS

elementary.io

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Re: Elementary OS – Fast, open, privacy-respecting replacement for Windows and macOS

#211
post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weird argument. Because I have given Linux systems to the elderly before. People with little to no experience with computers. Guess what they were all fine. My mother was a long time windows user. Kept getting viruses. She was converted to Ubuntu and has used it for over a decade now without issue. Linux is far easier for people than you think. My mother is a senior citizen now and this is her second computer. The UI…

> People with little to no experience with computers. Guess what they were all fine. I think the original comment was talking about ugly UI rather than "Linux works just fine". The key point I believe was, if Linux came with better UX design like what Elementary OS did, then it will be "Good" instead of "Just fine". It's about an upgrade, bring Linux to a better level, not "Linux UI looks ugly, it's bad and unusable"…

I find Ubuntus and for that matter most DE font system superior to OSX's. Apple touts accessibility but on OSX you can't even change the font size system wide. You literally have to go into each and every app and change it specifically. Let's hope that the app supports it. Many don't.

On Ubuntu you can just change the font size and it changes everywhere without having to decrease your resolution so you take advantage of what your hardware provides.

Re: Elementary OS – Fast, open, privacy-respecting replacement for Windows and macOS

#212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You haven't tried running it on a laptop then.

I have run exclusively Linux and mostly on laptops for 15 years and it's been about 10 years since I have had problems with packages clashing, except for python pip. (I don't use python though)

Does it sleep nicely on closing the lid?

Re: Elementary OS – Fast, open, privacy-respecting replacement for Windows and macOS

#213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm starting to think the whole is plotting this weird conspiracy against me... I think linux is very comfortable, I think it looks pretty, it gives me power to make it prettier. Windows comes with fucking ads in the UI how is that any prettier? OSX is supposed to be polished, but I constantly experience problems like my screen randomly flickers, it forces me to login twice every time, sometimes all windows suddenly…

If you think Linux is prettier you need your eyes checked. You're confusing functionality and reliability with prettyness.

What?

Some GTK themes are really good nowadays. See Materia.

And if you mean some (many) non-DE applications have really bad UI, then that's true on Windows too.

Re: Elementary OS – Fast, open, privacy-respecting replacement for Windows and macOS

#215
post #81

Some of the comments here feel weird. Elementary OS has picked a specific niche, and its arguably the best distribution in it. It has a really well designed and consistent UI experience, and you can't break it. I think most of you just don't realize how difficult linux is for people who barely understand how to use a Mac or Windows machine. Furthermore, linux is a world where mainstream distributions still release wi…

As someone who has actually used elementaryOS for some time(both previous versions about 6 months each) I have to disagree with your "doesn't break if you do X" claim.

You can break elementaryOS' nice graphics just by putting it into sleep mode and waking it up again - say hi to at least 2 different kinds of graphics glitches and possibly a randomly appearing bug in the file manager. And I'm not sure if it was a bug or a feature, but last time I used eOS I didn't enjoy the default video player's "fullscreen mode" in which it still didn't overlap the lower part of the desktop with the dock.

But keep in mind I haven't tried the most recent version which came out not long ago, I'd be surprised if some of the problems weren't fixed yet.

I think elementaryOS is on the right track, but it's definitely not more stable than the average distro, including the ones with rolling-release update models.

Re: Elementary OS – Fast, open, privacy-respecting replacement for Windows and macOS

#216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You haven't tried running it on a laptop then.

I don't understand. I run linux on an IBM Thinkpad T40 for the better part of a decade.Then I moved to a Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon which also runs Ubuntu fine. IN fact installing linux takes at most 20 min and I am done. Drivers and everything are all automatic. Windows on the other hand can take hours to install from scratch. God forbid you need a service pack or to find a driver that's not easily found anymore. Peo…

>> Yes if you need to get into the underneath of things then maybe it becomes more difficult.

IMO Windows is even more difficult when you want to get into underneath of things. Fiddle with registry settings, services and at times deleting AppData\App folder to get something fixed. At least in case of Linux you get good set of answers to your Google queries, but that is not as good in case of Windows. Also, Windows and the ecosystem of software around it has a huge reliability and performance problem still unsolved. Freezing, crashing are still rampant with Windows 10. If I boot my laptop after a week Windows Update holds me up for at least half an hour. Every update restarts the OS several times.

Re: Elementary OS – Fast, open, privacy-respecting replacement for Windows and macOS

#217
post #81

Some of the comments here feel weird. Elementary OS has picked a specific niche, and its arguably the best distribution in it. It has a really well designed and consistent UI experience, and you can't break it. I think most of you just don't realize how difficult linux is for people who barely understand how to use a Mac or Windows machine. Furthermore, linux is a world where mainstream distributions still release wi…

I've gotten around this by minimizing my usage of graphical applications; I use Firefox, a PDF reader, (recently) Zotero to manage papers, and finally a tiling window manager to reduce graphical elements. Everything else happens in the terminal. Linux just isn't ready for GUI apps :(

I try every year I try a few different Linux distros and each time I notice a tonne of UI and UX issues, and leave again (I mean, even the basic things like being able to resize windows is 95% of the time a pain on most distros I try. I'm sure there is a fix for it, but the point is, you shouldn't need to fix it, it should "just work"). In my mind Ubuntu is the closest, but still far far away.

I love Linux, and I use it almost every day (Debian), but only ever as GUIless servers, which it's amazing at. Just hope one day a team with design and ease of use will make a distro that "normal" people can enjoy to use. (but you would need other apps that look and work great in it too, which I fear will be the harder issue to tackle)

Re: Elementary OS – Fast, open, privacy-respecting replacement for Windows and macOS

#218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, the screenshot above was Linux Mint 17, there has been a lot of improvement with Cinnamon since then. Current version is 19. https://www.linuxmint.com/pictures/screenshots/tara/cinnamon...

I’m not a UI snob by any stretch, but I’d use Windows 10 before I’d stare all day at that hodge-podge of misalignment in the bottom bar.

I think you're exaggerating

Re: Elementary OS – Fast, open, privacy-respecting replacement for Windows and macOS

#219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have run exclusively Linux and mostly on laptops for 15 years and it's been about 10 years since I have had problems with packages clashing, except for python pip. (I don't use python though)

Does it sleep nicely on closing the lid?

It does everytime on my XPS 13

Re: Elementary OS – Fast, open, privacy-respecting replacement for Windows and macOS

#220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm starting to think the whole is plotting this weird conspiracy against me... I think linux is very comfortable, I think it looks pretty, it gives me power to make it prettier. Windows comes with fucking ads in the UI how is that any prettier? OSX is supposed to be polished, but I constantly experience problems like my screen randomly flickers, it forces me to login twice every time, sometimes all windows suddenly…

If you think Linux is prettier you need your eyes checked. You're confusing functionality and reliability with prettyness.

I don't have a Mac, but I've used one for non-trivial amounts of time. I don't think it's significantly prettier than my Ubuntu + Gnome setup, but I'd agree there's a more consistent feel in the UI.
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