Elementary OS • Hacker News Board

Re: Elementary OS

#351

Post by AdmiralAsshat » Mon, Oct 31, 2016, 1:53 PM UTC

achikin wrote: post #223

butterm wrote: post #144

I am using elementary OS for the past one and a half years, and honestly speaking, I am in love with it. I am a long time Linux user, and whenever I get a chance, I tell people about all the great things about Linux and why it's better than Windows and the MacOS. But there was always one aspect of Linux that I always felt a bit uneasy about, and this was design/UI/UX/accessibility of the many popular distributions. I…

Glad that you have the list of best options for every task, but as you say - it took you several years to figure it out. That would be great to have some sane defaults for most of common everyday tasks without the need of long research and learning, so one can concentrate on what he really cares about(like IDE or image editor) rather than bein stuck choosing a media player that err..plays the media.

With all due respect, when have the stock apps ever been good enough on any OS? I spent 20 years using Windows, and the first thing I did upon getting any new desktop/laptop was immediately go and grab a bunch of apps that I needed. They weren't necessarily the "best" apps, either; my old Windows 7 laptop is still running Winamp as my music player because I've used it since 1998 and it still does what I need it to do.

One's preference for programs is really a matter of personal taste. You can try to make the stock programs "suck less", but I doubt you're ever going to really eliminate the need for third party programs. Distros like KaOS (KDE with all-QT apps) have tried, with limited success. The best thing any distro can do, IMO, is to have an extensive App Center and use a flexible packaging format such that it encourages more apps to support that format.

Re: Elementary OS

#352

Post by nanna » Mon, Oct 31, 2016, 1:55 PM UTC

AsyncAwait wrote: post #344

nanna wrote: post #316

For me a downside of Elementary OS is that, like all Ubuntu-based distros, I've found installing it on my apple hardware to be such a pain. Fedora-based distros on the other hand have worked wonderfully out of the box. If I were to advise a friend on which distro to install on their MacBook, I'd recommend the beautiful Fedora-based Korora over Elementary OS any day. https://kororaproject.org/

Arch (Antergos if you want nice out of the box setup[1]) works very well on my 2015 work MBP, perhaps give it a try. [1] https://antergos.com

Huh, never heard of Antergos but it looks great. Will consider it next time I swap distros...

Re: Elementary OS

#353

Post by nickspacek » Mon, Oct 31, 2016, 1:57 PM UTC

SwellJoe wrote: post #88

mavelikara wrote: post #9

My mini Ask HN: After over a decade of using Mac OS X, I am considering switching to Linux for my dev laptop. The tools I worry about are those that interact with audio and webcam - Go To Meeting, Google Hangout etc. My work involves me having to teleconf with others often. Does anyone here have experience using Linux well in such scenarios. If so, what hardware are you using? Also, does sleep-on-closing-lid work wel…

"Also, does sleep-on-closing-lid work well?" Funny story: My new-ish Dell laptop (Inspiron 15 7559 i7 with 4k touchscreen display; which I got at an absurdly low sales price from the Dell outlet store) does not reliably recover from sleep under Windows, but does under Linux (neither worked when I first got the laptop, but now only Windows fails and now only some of the time). That's a first, for me, as I have had a h…

Funnily enough, for a while I haven't been able to use Hangouts screen share in Chrome (https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=649487) but works in Firefox.

A couple of years back I was having persistent sleep/wake issues that seemed to stem from graphics driver issues. I switched between the open source and Nvidia binaries, trying to find a stable combination. What a nightmare. In the end, I decided that I didn't want to mess around and tried out a few Live CDs (think I tried Ubuntu, Mint, and Fedora). In the end, Fedora worked out of the box and completed my "stress test" of sleep, wake, sleep, wake. I had to give up stellar 3D performance, but have found things to be working quite well and consistent now through all the Fedora updates.

Might give Elementary OS a spin. This old Thinkpad T510 is getting dated, but still solid as ever (besides battery life).

Re: Elementary OS

#354

Post by DeltaWhy » Mon, Oct 31, 2016, 2:18 PM UTC

jmiserez wrote: post #188

djhworld wrote: post #150

I bought a 2015 MBP back in January, so I'm all set for a few years at least. Whether OSX goes down the pan even more, I don't know. Moving to Linux seems like a romantic idea, but I can forsee there being a number of problems that would make it unfeasible for me 1. I use 1Password, no Linux client 2. Spotify client is no longer being developed for Linux 3. YouNeedABudget software is not Linux compatible - I have 2+…

1. 1Password apparently works fine with WINE, but I haven't used it myself. 2. Spotify will still receive updates for Linux, they just don't have a dedicated Linux developer on it anymore. On my machine it still works fine. 3. I prefer GoodBudget, which IMHO is much better than YNAB, especially when it comes to their iOS/Android apps. The desktop client just runs in the browser. Also, I've heard YNAB will be disconti…

YNAB also works great in WINE. They've gone cloud with the new version, but the old desktop app still works.

Re: Elementary OS

#355

Post by HeavyStorm » Mon, Oct 31, 2016, 2:24 PM UTC

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #351

achikin wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Glad that you have the list of best options for every task, but as you say - it took you several years to figure it out. That would be great to have some sane defaults for most of common everyday tasks without the need of long research and learning, so one can concentrate on what he really cares about(like IDE or image editor) rather than bein stuck choosing a media player that err..plays the media.

With all due respect, when have the stock apps ever been good enough on any OS? I spent 20 years using Windows, and the first thing I did upon getting any new desktop/laptop was immediately go and grab a bunch of apps that I needed. They weren't necessarily the "best" apps, either; my old Windows 7 laptop is still running Winamp as my music player because I've used it since 1998 and it still does what I need it to do…

Still using Winamp as well.

At work, people get awed all the time - "wow, is that Winamp?" :D

And I keep thinking, what the hell are people using these days?

Re: Elementary OS

#356

Post by really_operator » Mon, Oct 31, 2016, 2:28 PM UTC

chipz wrote: post #295

fabianhjr wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could try Antergos, https://antergos.com/ . it is an Arch-based distro with minor changes and sane default install.

have anyone tried Apricity, https://apricityos.com ? I'm currently using Archlinux now, so far I enjoy using it, but the fact that we have to put much effort on installing it makes me don't want to recommend it. I try to find simple-to-install-with-Arch-linux-based-OS, still with rolling release and pacman -Syu to update the entire OS.

I haven't tried Apricity, but I have tried Antergos, and you just described Antergos.

Re: Elementary OS

#357

Post by OOPMan » Mon, Oct 31, 2016, 2:28 PM UTC

For a second I thought this was a new OS, then I realised it was Yet Another Ubuntu Derivative and I tuned out.

Also, that fact they're trying rather hard to get you to pay for it seems a little...icky. Yeah, I know, just click custom amount and enter 0 but still...

Re: Elementary OS

#358

Post by MadWombat » Mon, Oct 31, 2016, 2:43 PM UTC

pmlnr wrote: post #127

I've been an elementaryOS user for years and I ended up dropping the whole thing in favour of xfwm4 + synapse + tint2. eOS is a really nice looking thing, but it's buggy, release after release it's losing features, like [1] - this specific one was never fixed in the previous release. The built-on music app collapses under a reasonable amount of music, same as banshee or quod libet can easily handle. Geary, the mail a…

Looking at the bug you mentioned, the status is "Fix released", so yeah, it too them a while to make a GUI option for lid closing, but they did.

Re: Elementary OS

#359

Post by shoover » Mon, Oct 31, 2016, 2:56 PM UTC

I installed it in vmware and was surprised to see that both the installer and the OS seamlessly grabbed and released the mouse at the window border. The window also autosized when I changed the guest resolution. I don't recall those features working in Ubuntu or any other VM without manually installing vmware tools. Is that a vmware update or OS package convenience? Either, it's smooth.

Re: Elementary OS

#360

Post by rpazyaquian » Mon, Oct 31, 2016, 3:20 PM UTC

I'm seeing a whooole lot of posts about laptop hardware poorly supporting Linux distributions in this thread. I've been considering moving to a Linux-based laptop for basic computing once my old MBP inevitably dies a horrible death, but these reports about poor hardware interfacing, broken features, missing drivers, etc. is making me less interested in doing so. Is this really such a widespread problem?