Elementary OS 7
blog.elementary.io
blog.elementary.io
It's also a certain attention to detail with regard to things like use of whitespace, the layout and flow of widgets, the types of widgets used, and user experience in general. These things have become increasingly phoned-in, with little thought applied; just dump it all into a grid and apply copious padding and you're done. Things that don't fit get removed or buried in dialog tunnels and there is no effort to make anything clear to the user.
There have been flat designs in the past that don't suffer these issues, like the earlier designs of Mac OS (System 1.0-7.5), which worked fine on 1-bit and grayscale displays but had a lot of thought and research put into their user experience.
This all got thrown out in the transition to flat design. Not only was skeumorphism discarded, but so was care for UI/UX in general. The baby was thrown out with the bathwater.
That, to me, is extremely nasty. You have to take everything out of your computer, and put it back, every year to get the latest features and make sure you are secure? That's so bad, it feels like false marketing to call it "Elementary OS." You might as well download a random customized Windows ISO from the internet and disable Windows Update forever. At least Microsoft Edge would still get updates for years but Elementary OS's browser won't for very long. Unless, of course, you enjoy taking personal responsibility for updating every PC of those non-technical folks you recommend it to or install it for. I'd happily install it for quite a few relatives who would otherwise use Chromebooks, but that's a big showstopper.
I can read about how they've improved the Music app or made the App Center better for developers all day, but they have this massive hole in the ship that makes it fundamentally unsuitable for the intended purpose and they still haven't fixed it after 7 versions. Elementary users don't find pleasure in reinstalling their OS on weekends.
@pacifika: The Ubuntu LTS core will not help the built-in apps that won't receive updates (i.e. Mail, Web, Music, the Parthenon desktop environment), and the LTS core for version 6 (which was current until yesterday) is 20.04 LTS, so it will be obsolete in about 2 years. If you installed Elementary OS for a friend a week ago, that's not what you expected. So, you got 3 1/2 years on the long end of support and 2 years on the short end between releases.
There doesn't seem to be a guideline that defines the number of times someone can comment about a specific topic relative to the total number of comments within a specific amount of time.
Two of the three comments are also replies to someone who replied to the first, so it's not like the person is spamming the same message over and over again. People are allowed to have discussions.
My comment doesn’t contradict that. On the contrary, I do think their particular experience adds value to the thread.
> it's not like the person is spamming the same message over and over again.
After reading the three comments multiple times, I disagree. The comments were (they’ve since been deleted) superficially different but none added to the conversation over the others. I would even say the repetition detracted from the point, since it made it seem like a personal gripe instead of a legitimate technical complaint.
Respectfully, you seem unreasonably angry about this matter and I do not wish to continue a conversation where the other party keeps assuming the worst of my replies. There is no malice or ill intent in my post. If you see any, that is on you.
Notice that I didn't tell you what to do, I simply asked you to consider if the way you were going about the matter was appropriate.
It's really not that hard, just a "Note: Elementary OS does not support in-place upgrades. You will need to reinstall Elementary OS every time a new major version comes out every 2 years. If you want to support our in-place upgrade development, please donate. < Donate > < I Understand >".
Also, what about apps? Non-standard drivers? Background services? System configuration?
This makes me wonder... is the policy itself problematic, or the support window the problem? If Elementary offered five- or seven-year support cycles, would the objection remain?
I like the freshness of a new install. Crispy!
[1]https://news.itsfoss.com/elementary-co-founder-joins-endless...
I firmly believe that Elementary OS has no utility over Arch/Fedora/Ubuntu and that any income they receive from donors is money ill-spent.
- no Snap
- Flatpak instead
- Most standard Ubuntu apps missing
- In-house replacements for many Ubuntu standard components: their own browser, their own email client, their own calendar, their own media player, etc.
You can install the Pantheon desktop environment on standard Ubuntu.
https://askubuntu.com/questions/66757/how-to-install-the-pan...
P.S. > would of adopted them
* would _have_ adopted. "Would've" is short for "would have" not "would of" which never ever occurs in English. This is a common error but it drives me crazy.
Also, I really just want their "Code" editor, but I don't want the headache of compiling it, I want it installed as a package, but its a pain to find it for me, not sure if I'm Googling incorrectly, but their editors name is not SEO friendly at all.
As for the editor, I guess you mean this?
https://archlinux.org/packages/community/x86_64/pantheon-cod...
I couldn't really use it like that and I didn't need to anymore either as GNOME had caught up and I'm now a happy Fedora + GNOME user. It also shares a "simple" and macOS like design language/goals, but with many advantages from technical, development backing, and community size standpoints.
Regarding Wayland, it looks like it has been hacked on here and there but doesn't seem to be a priority yet:
https://github.com/elementary/gala/wiki/Experimenting-with-W...
Hopefully by the time it is, NVIDIA's driver will have better stability with Wayland compositors.
> Hopefully by the time it is, NVIDIA's driver will have better stability with Wayland compositors.
I think Nvidia's support is pretty much complete. Plasma fixed almost all of it's Wayland/Nvidia bugs (as far as I can see on my desktop) and Mutter has an Nvidia rewrite on the roadmap IIRC. Still not perfect, but the new drivers have stopped 95% of the major glitching caused with the old ones.
I got Electron apps working nicely by forcing GPU acceleration, but even still I prefer to use the web versions of Discord and Spotify. Firefox has really nice Wayland support, replacing most of my Electron apps besides VS Code and Obsidian.
Context: https://www.collabora.com/news-and-blog/blog/2022/06/09/brid...
Edit: also a NixOS user, BUT: I am suggesting something more like SteamOS with ABRoot. It's not exactly a solved problem, but I think that future solutions should be focused on not needing to modify the root to deal with things like drivers and system configuration.
It seems like it was scheduled to be released by version 7, but priorities have changed. Let's hope they can polish it for 8.
[1] https://github.com/orgs/elementary/projects/12
[2] https://github.com/elementary/gala/wiki/Experimenting-with-W...
I still find it sad that they mimic the stupid gnome design philosophy WRT the top bar, the lack of proper global menu is a shame
The way they do window maximize/minimize is also weird
2 points i find deal breaker unfortunately, but that's their vision and that's respectable
It's based on Ubuntu LTS, so a Debian-descendant.
I appreciate they're trying to provide a specific type of experience, and it's not really a criticism but as a 30+ year Linux user -- with any new distro that's my first question.
Unless elementary suddenly competes with iOS, I don’t know which platform they’re actually referring to, all while actually regressing the experience with Vista-style "are you sure" dialogs.
Their dark pattern compelling you to "buy" instead of simply download elementary (for which I doubt many $$$ go to for example the Linux kernel) is still present, too.
That being said, I do think it's fine for them to charge for their software experience here. What they're really asking you to pay for is the development of the Pantheon UI, and the desktop/OS portion of it. There's not really any reason to pay that back to the Linux kernel besides good will.
Slimy way to say 'we have Flatpak' [like every other distribution]... including the one they hope to take a shot at
This project tears me. I want to say good work, but we don't need more fragmentation. Pantheon doesn't really need such a 'fork'
That, with the longstanding dark pattern for donations... and I can't help but feel worse for having been reminded
Regarding pricing, even if we say they're basically charging money for it, why is that bad? You get the thing under a free license which is still better than commercial proprietary software that doesn't share any of its revenue. And because they allow you to choose how much you pay you can always pay them less and donate to the Linux Foundation yourself (or any of the other underlying software projects that are taking donations). Granted, folks who are new to the Linux universe won't know about this stuff, so a default split would help.
Give them a break! They put their hard work into something that could be useful for a lot of people and on top of that let the user name their price. There's nothing "dark" about that.
If you mean the UI, then tiling window managers like Sway are quite different.
But I don't think UIs will ever be factor that draws people to Linux et al., it'll mostly be the feeling of freedom.
While not flashy, I really appreciate the keyboard-driven/instant approach they offer. The killer thing for me: I never guess where something will open
edit: hah, look at all these window manager posts - hi friends
- No AppIndicators in default spec
- All UI is scaled to work for touch interfaces
- Default windowing support amounts to split-screen
- App "icon" style launcher, even using the same sliding-widget model people loathe on iPad
- Quick-settings menu pane in the top corner, almost identical to the iOS/iPad one in GNOME 40
I could go on, but I think it's safe to say that GNOME (especially GNOME 40) is derivative of iPad UI design. Other visual cues (dock, lockscreen, stylesheet, calendar, etc.) are pretty plainly inspired by the Mac UI.
- Top bar which acts as a status bar rather than a global menubar
- Somewhat modal UX that works best with keeping 1-3 windows on screen at all times
- No way to minimize windows
- Inclination towards gestures over keystrokes
- Simplified mobile-esque app UIs that eschew menubars entirely in favor of hamburger menus
- Greatly reduced levels of configurability relative to other DEs
- Heavily padded widgets that seem better suited to touch than KB+M
- Use of touch-inspired designs like switches over checkboxes
- No traditional desktop
…among others.
Don't get me wrong, it's very polished which is what leads me to use it, but it's not really a traditional desktop environment.
However, I love the concept of a scrollable window manager like PaperWM [3]. When I had a smaller screen (24" 16:9) I complained a lot about the unused space on my screen. With PaperWM I was finally happy with its dimensions, because I could have a huge IDE on the left and a small part of terminal on the right. This way I could see if something was being printed to the terminal, while my editor took up 80% of the screen.
[0]: https://i3wm.org/
[1]: https://swaywm.org/
I may try it out. It sounds a bit like playing a real time strategy game with a large scrollable map, something I'm very used to.
(can’t live with a MacOS anymore)
I'm not a Linux hater. I use it on all my servers, my media centre and one of my desktops. I'd love to use it as my daily driver,as I loathe Apple and Microsoft. But, when I need to get work done, I use OSX because the applications I need don't exist on Linux and their Linux equivalents are piss-poor.
I imagine many people who use Windows are in the same boat.
As regards the operating system [in my case OSX], I very occasionally open System Preferences to adjust a system setting. And I use the Finder to move the odd file around. But for my actual day to day work, I hardly rub up against the OS at all. It's just the utility that runs in the background and lets me access other "stuff" I need to work with in the applications I actually use.
Given the number of Linux variants that exist, there must be hundreds of talented Linux programmers out there. Why [seemingly] do none of them turn these talents to coming up with something that actually serves a purpose and fills an application gap --rather than endlessly re-inventing the same basic utility applications as already exist in the eleventy billion other Linux distros already out there?
My mistake. When I read this line it had me thinking Gnome.
Sad state for Linux on the desktop.
So many good OSS projects fail this simple task. Show some images!
If you look to active DE you see some commercial contributers e.g. GNOME from Red Hat and Cosmic from System76 (which started a way later) But as the founder see itself as a communist, I dont think, something will change (not to mention the moral ignorance of communist anyway). I liked the whole experience approach, "apple like", but now I use Gnome.
To be clear, I like that design style, but it is clearly true that it went "out of fashion" 10+ years ago.
In those ways I think Elementary's theme is a bit more similar to Platinum. It's not nearly as afraid of mid-grays and while it still has a lot of padding, it's less excessive than Adwaita's.