Moving my parents' PC to Elementary cut down the support time to single-digit hours per annum.
That and making sure Firefox has uBlock Origin configured.
Elementary OS – Fast, open, privacy-respecting replacement for Windows and macOS
411–420 of 431 posts
Re: Elementary OS – Fast, open, privacy-respecting replacement for Windows and macOS
#412Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem with MacOS is that much of its refinements for power users are so different from Windows (and Linux desktops modeled after it), that people don't expect they can do things the easy way. Suppose you have a document open. You want to attach it to an email you started writing. In MacOS, you drag the icon from the window's title bar into the email. That's it. No need to browse to the same thing you already ha…
I don't understand how people can't tell the difference between the fake smooth scroll FF has by default and a proper pixel smooth scroll you get with MOZ_USE_XINPUT2=1. The fake one scrolls line by line and smooths the transition, but still won't react to minor finger movements, there is a threshold and it feels fake as f *. Don't know why it's default on linux, but hey linux folk probably don't have high expectatio…
This is news to me! It feels good when reading a page but stops inertia working, I can't do a quick flick to jump to the top/bottom of a page with it enabled. Toggling the Firefox option for smooth scrolling doesn't help.
Re: Elementary OS – Fast, open, privacy-respecting replacement for Windows and macOS
#413Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hadn't until you mentioned it. It's possible. But even then there are endless issues with drivers. Like research your chipset, find a repository on github, and then clone and build it yourself kind of issues. Trust me, I like the idea and would love getting past our two party system. But Linux will never be easy.
You are stretching now. There probably are some chipsets that have issues, but most drivers are built into the Linux kernel. There are always going to be issues with drivers, but this is not across the board. Your argument is that Linux cannot be easy, not that there isn't any issues. Anyway, I'm cool if you don't want to use it and if you want to maintain your worldview, but you haven't presented me any real argumen…
I'm stretching? So all printers, scanners, wifi cards, webcams, wireless headphones, fancy keyboards, etc. just work out of the box in your experience with Linux? I was literally installing a third party driver that had to be manually made while I was tapping my last measage to you.
For the I guess third or fourth time I use Linux regularly. I'm not telling you Linux is hard because I want it to be hard. God knows I wish it wasn't so hard. I'm simply stating my observations as a user of multiple distros over several years.
In Linux you always end up in the command line. The Linux community is hostile to newbies. CLI programs are inconsistent, constantly changing, and often obtuse which means if you want to use Linux you will need to learn it.
Ubuntu did a great job making Linux easy, relatively speaking. If they hadn't cancelled Ubuntu Touch I'd be tapping to you on that right now. But even in Ubuntu you will not get far without the command line. Say you want to setup a VPN in Ubuntu. There's a good chance you're going to be doing some non-easy work in the command line vs Windows or MacOS where it's just point and click.
I have to wonder why you insist on pretending that Linux is easy. Windows is easy. That's why its popular. Linux is difficult. That's why it doesn't appeal to people who want a computer that "just works".
In my opinion the way to make Linux easy is to do the hard work of documenting and integrating all of the open source software that makes Linux great. It's not glamarous but seriously, someoene needs to do it, lol.
Re: Elementary OS – Fast, open, privacy-respecting replacement for Windows and macOS
#414Earlier quoted context omitted.
Had less problems with Linux tyan with Windows for about 10 years now. Installation is quicker. No bloatware/scareware to uninstall (bundled McAfee etc). I've spent more time hunting for drivers on Windows than on Linux the 10 last years. Linux is also significantly faster for some of my workflows (git commits, anything with maven or node). For me (partially colorblind, never cared much about fonts, everything is an…
For old scanners, you can try VueScan (paid app under Linux) which is a real breeze for those scanners which you cannot find driver anymore.
I did. I like VueScan and had a paid license at that time IIRC. But that particular scanner just didn't work which was a shame since it was supposed to be a good with photos and negatives. And as mentioned above it was good on Windows either.
Edit: I actually looked it up now on the VueScan website and here is what is says: "VueScan is compatible with the on Windows x86, Windows x64 and Mac OS X."
Re: Elementary OS – Fast, open, privacy-respecting replacement for Windows and macOS
#415Some 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…
There is a plethora of Linux based distros out there. I recently bought a Lenovo L480 with DOS. I ended up trying out Elementary since I liked the UX. A day or two after using it, it already started hanging on me and wouldn't boot. There was this super weird bug as well because of which the first time I opened Google Chrome, the close button on top right would freeze and I'd have to close that and reopen Chrome. I hated being part of these "edge cases".
I then ended up using Ubuntu and that has been stable as rock. No surprises, rock solid. I used it back in college. There are very few Linux based distros that are battle tested, Ubuntu is certainly one of them, on account of being backed by Canonical, which actually gets paid to develop the OS unlike most other linux based distros that have to work on "donations" or "foundation money".
Anyway, I'm happy with Ubuntu for my needs, I don't have super fancy needs and I don't want Arch level of customization. All I want something that works out of box and has a UNIX like CLI (I'm a programmer).
Another thing that sucks about Linux based OS's is that the power management is just repugnant. There are so many OS's out there and so many laptop models that I understand it is a herculean task to get maximum performance on every possible laptop.
Which is why, I decided that my next laptop is going to be an MBP, the Retina display is mind blowing, has a UNIX like interface, great battery life, a bit pricey but when it comes to being more productive as a programmer, I'm willing to pay more.
Re: Elementary OS – Fast, open, privacy-respecting replacement for Windows and macOS
#416Some 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 as person of average linux savviness, I applaude Elementary OS ambition and really wanted to like it, but the UX is really weird to me. It's really not file-centered (no file on the desktop IIRC, weird file selection in the explorer...) and there are oddities like maximise and close buttons being at opposite sides in a windows.
Disclaimer: I only used it for a few hours.
Re: Elementary OS – Fast, open, privacy-respecting replacement for Windows and macOS
#417Earlier quoted context omitted.
I had a similar perspective as you. I couldn't get past a lot of default design decisions made in many distributions and I didn't want to spend the time tweaking my machine. I installed Pop_OS after seeing the Theano release a couple of weeks ago and basically haven't booted into windows since. As a casual user I would recommend it to anyone who is looking for a similar linux experience as I was.
Dude... I was reading all these comments mega confused. I installed Pop_OS a few months back and it's a million times easier to use than Windows. From installing applications to changing my background. One terrible experience I had was when Windows did something to the Linux bootloader and I had to try work out how to fix that, but I can't really blame Linux for that. Honestly I am so much more productive on Pop than…
> I can spend more time actually doing my job and less time manually creating PATH variables for every package I install.
I don't see how this is a Windows issue. Windows, just like Linux, provides the capability to update the PATH both per-user and per-computer; many tools use it and work. NodeJS is a popular such tool that adds its bin folder to the PATH. If a tool isn't updating its path, then it's on the tool's installer.
Re: Elementary OS – Fast, open, privacy-respecting replacement for Windows and macOS
#418Some 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 been using Linux for 15 years, and I definitely agree with these points. I'm not particularly sensitive to the UI clunkiness, but I do try and use applications that use the same GUI toolkit to have some basic consistency. It definitely shows when you compare it to even mediocre macOS apps.
At this point though, most of my professional life is spent in a terminal emulator (alacritty), Firefox, Visual Studio Code, Android Studio, qpdfview, and pcmanfm-qt. I also switched to a tiling wm (i3) with window decorations shut off, so basically my consistency comes from being super simplistic (graphically atleast).
Been toying with the idea of picking up a few design books and taking a hack at writing a GUI toolkit using Rust with something like the react/redux ideology of GUI app development and seeing where that goes (would be for Wayland). Would try the flux model because unidirectional data flow maps very nicely to Rust as I don't want to deal with any refcell shenanigans.
Re: Elementary OS – Fast, open, privacy-respecting replacement for Windows and macOS
#419Some 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 been using Linux for 15 years, and I definitely agree with these points. I'm not particularly sensitive to the UI clunkiness, but I do try and use applications that use the same GUI toolkit to have some basic consistency. It definitely shows when you compare it to even mediocre macOS apps. At this point though, most of my professional life is spent in a terminal emulator (alacritty), Firefox, Visual Studio Code,…
That’d be very cool! There’s a psuedo-stealth project to build a GUI toolkit using vaguely ECS principles in Rust for similar reasons. I’d love to see how a flux approach works too!
Re: Elementary OS – Fast, open, privacy-respecting replacement for Windows and macOS
#420Earlier quoted context omitted.
wtf
It's a valid comment. Most of the 'replacement for macOS' comments here essentially pre-suppose that people only use macOS because it looks pretty and...? What? That people just play with Finder and TextEdit all day? If I can't run Lightroom or Affinity Photo on ElementaryOS (hint: I can't) then it isn't a replacement for macOS. I know I can use DarkTable or GIMP, but I don't want to because they are lacking in vario…
Of course, you just know that the answer from most of the hardcore Linux people will be that you should "get involved" with the projects you named and contribute code - whether or not you actually know how to program is inconsequential. Linux, after who knows how long, is still not ready to be a primary desktop OS, and for one major reason - it's not ready for 100% ignorant end-users.