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Comment by izacus | Hacker News Reader

I really like elementaryOS - not for myself (need to use macOS for dev), but pretty much all of my family was migrated to it.

It has proven to be significantly more stable and simple to use than Windows and the default applications really nicely hit the simplicity and usability for a user that primarily needs web, email, photos and minor document editing. I'd even argue it's better than macOS for that user profile (especially since it's not localized to my local language, which eOS and most of major Linux apps are).

The fact that it actually looks good by default is nice as well.

Known downsides:

- It's based on Ubuntu LTS (which is great!), but the new versions tend to lag after Ubuntu LTS releases by months at a time.

- No upgrade path between versions.

- Releases tend to be buggy on some hardware after release.

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Not sure about the stability. I am using Ubuntu for over a year and it's way less stable than Windows was. Sometimes I encounter crashes when suspending or waking up. I also encounter lots of minor problems. For me the Windows experience was definitely more polished.

Is Elementary OS significantly different?

eOS uses Ubuntus core, so if your hardware isn't compatible with Linux, it's not going to be better in that regard.

Likely the big reason there is that hardware manufacturers test for Windows and write drivers for Windows.

Damn it, there is at least one documented case of a motherboard giving a junk ACPI return if the OS identified itself as anything other than Windows.

While hardware manufacturers testing on windows does explain a lot, don't discount the massive amount of work MS put into making windows work on flaky hardware. They really do (or at least did) seem to have the mentality of "we will be blamed if it doesn't work, so bend over backwards to make things work"

If you ever feel like giving it a try again do it with a computer that is known to work well. While Linux will run on lots of random PC hardware, its support is not consistent across all hardware. The easiest way to do this is to buy from a company who sells Linux based systems.

One of the biggest problems in the Linux ecosystem is the lack of any good source on hardware compatibility tracking.

Generally the less like a server your computer is, the less nice the driver support. I have a Xeon workstation with a nvidia quatro graphics card at work and it has been rock solid for years. The same cannot be said of my laptop.

Stability largely depends on your hardware. I would not expect one linux distribution to run better than other in most cases. Especially not here given Elementary is based on Ubuntu.

I would move to an Elementary OS if it's UI/UX was moved over an Arch based distribution. I mean Elementary OS simply looks beautiful and is stable(-ish). On top of Manjaro or something that holds back updates I wouldn't be able to figure out a more perfect development/daily driver system.

There were people trying to get Pantheon onto AUR. No idea how that's going.

Just like everything in the AUR I presume. It probably works, but when it stops doing that you're never going to get it working again.

Have you got an example of something on the AUR "never working again"? I'm assuming you mean some kind of dependency problem?

Apart from AUR build as others have pointed out, there is a repo for that https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pantheon

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

Antegros has been my daily driver on my desktop (MBP laptop for work) for about....six months. I wholeheartedly and without thinking twice endorse this.

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.

That's nice information! Thanks, gonna try that!

You might want to try Solus. It has a beautiful UI, works great out of the box and is rolling release. Also the devs are really fucking fast if any issues should arise.

That's if you can successfully install it (http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/solus-1-2-review.html)

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