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Comment by aroman | Hacker News Reader

So by that characterization, virtally no GNU/Linux distro is actually worthy of being called an OS.

That's fine if you want to say that, but you have to understand what that actually means.

As for differences beyond the "visual", we wrote our entire desktop environment and a number of our apps from scratch. We did't just skin things and make opinionated decisions about design. We actually write code (apps, libraries, our DE), as this article expresses.

Full disclosure: I am an elementary team member and I helped edit the linked article.

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Throwing around "OS" used to bug me too. Even Android runs on top of Linux. So, is Android really an OS? A distribution? It seems like something more than a distribution--Android contributes drivers and patches to the kernel. But it's still Linux under there.

I finally stopped caring and accepted that "OS" has evolved for most end users to mean a user experience, an ecosystem of applications, a hardware support list, and a technical support strategy. For many developers, it's now the set of tools, services, and paradigms available for development along with an understanding of the number and types of users that can be reached by supporting it. These definitions span the classical distinctions between Operating System, distribution, and even sometimes application. In my line of work, I can communicate clearly with the majority of my customers by referring to things like Android and eOS as "OSes". It's what they expect and I'm okay with that.

Congrats on the launch of Luna.

They use it like OSX and iOS which rightly have OS in their name: both are the new and original operating systems. Debian, Ubuntu rightly don't have OS in their own names. Elementary shouldn't too.

Poor choice of examples, mate. From the respective home pages:

1. "Ubuntu is the world’s favourite free operating system" - ubuntu.com

2. "Debian is a free operating system (OS) for your computer. An operating system is the set of basic programs and utilities that make your computer run." - debian.org

Then you have CentOS and their ilk. But that whole argument is irrelevant: take a step back and look at what you're arguing about. It is such a petty argument. I feel like I'm living in a crazy house where trivial things are important.

OS X is a distribution of Darwin. iOS is derived from it.

By that characterization, virtally no GNU/Linux distro is actually worthy of being called an OS.

Exactly, it isn't. Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu, they are all distros. The real OSes are Unix, VMS, Plan 9, BeOS, Minix, Windows, GNU/Linux, BSD, OSX and Android.

Making some user space applications or libraries don't make you OS authors. And I don't understand why you guys are hurt when I say that. And why you are not open about what you're actually doing.

Maintaining a distro is not a small thing though, so I'd like to see how serious you are in that aspects. What are your upstreams? What are your release policies and schedules? Update schedules? Verifications? Quality assurance? How many people do you have in charge of all that?

I see you've had one release which you call yourself "Ubuntu 10.10 remaster," and now you prepare for second based on... what? I see you make your own patches of Nautilus. Once you accept you're a distribution you can be realistically compared to others.

"Ubuntu: The world's most popular free OS" http://www.ubuntu.com/

"Debian is a free operating system (OS) for your computer." http://www.debian.com/

It's like calling the specific desktop computer "a CPU." Some people do this too. It's just wrong. If I plug the pieces together in a workable machine it doesn't mean I've made a CPU, even if I've painted the box myself.

Note the name is Ubuntu, not "Ubuntu OS." Debian and not "Debian OS."

I wouldn't have problem if the product is just named "Elementary" and described as a Linux based OS distribution, once they have a release policy (before it's just a Linux based release). Having OS in the name means a new OS, and it simply and plainly isn't.

Who the fuck gives a shit?

This sort of "elementary is not an OS but a desktop environment based on the Ubuntu distribution based on the GNU/Linux kernel..." nonsense that is so prevalent in the Linux community is probably part of the reason why elementary exists in the first place.

I'm not sure I agree.

I could be said that "Windows", "OSX", "GNU/Linux" are not really "Operating Systems", intended as software products that you can install on a machine.

Windows XP, OSX Mountain Lion, Ubuntu 13.04 and yes, Elementary, are.

You don't download a specific "GNU/Linux" OS, you download an OS (intended as a software product made up of kernel+file system+desktop environment) that is based on that technology. The word "distribution" is something that was created for Linux given its specific nature.

Yes, if we stick to the classic CS definition of OS maybe you are right, but I believe that Ubuntu, Debian and Elementary can rightfully call themselves "OS"s without issue.

Windows XP, OSX Mountain Lion, Ubuntu 13.04 are all specific releases, not the new operating systems.

Elementary isn't, too. It is not even a distro until it has clear release and update policies.

Otherwise you'd consider any skinned ISO of any existing OS a new OS, and that's just wrong. "Hello all, I'm making one new OS in my basement every week!"

From Wikipedia[1]:

> a distribution is most simply described as a particular assortment of applications installed on top of a set of libraries married with a version of the kernel, such that its "out-of-the-box" capabilities meet most of the needs of its particular end-user base.

It seems you're just making up random criteria that elementary OS doesn't meet so you can dismiss it for what it is: an operating system.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_distribution

It's just wrong.

This is the wrong thread to kick up a fuss about this. If these guys are using "OS" the same way that Ubuntu and Debian do, that's just fine for a new project. It also means that your complaint has nothing to do with this new project in particular and is thus off topic. This matters because threads about new projects are the heart of HN and deserve special care.

They aren't using it "the same way Debian and Ubuntu do." Debian is named Debian not "Debian OS." Ubuntu is named Ubuntu not "Ubuntu OS." The releases have own names.

Elementary "OS" guys use it like OSX and iOS which both conform to the real view: Note "OSX Lion" or just Lion and definitely not "Lion OS."

Clarity is important.

I suppose that you had better go down and sort out those blatant liars CentOS, ClearOS, OS/4 OpenLinux, SolusOS, PureOS, Chrome OS, Joli OS, Peppermint OS, ZevenOS and PCLinuxOS.

How dare they try to advertise themselves as operating systems.

They should keep 'OS' in the name if for no other reason than to piss off annoying pedants on the internet.

"Maintaining a distro is not a small thing though, so I'd like to see how serious you are in that aspects. What are your upstreams? What are your release policies and schedules? Update schedules?"

And will we find a note on the Web site one day saying 'Luna is closed now, we are working on Selene (or whatever)'?

Jupiter worked well on my Netbook. Luna works OKish (bit heavy). The UI is refreshing, and I appreciate the work going into this. But as acqq says, a roadmap might be important for wider adoption.

What was the motivation behind forking the distro rather than building packages and an apt repo for Debian or Ubuntu? This is certainly a neat desktop environment, but it always makes me sad to see things done in a manner that makes it difficult to use with other distros.

Money, time, and experience.

All of these things have changed since over the past year or so, and there's been a lot of internal discussion about moving to Debian. In fact, it's almost sure to happen for Isis+1 (Isis is the name of our next release).

Basically, setting up our own repo took really good packagers (we have them now, and you can also get pretty much all of our software from Gentoo and Arch), running our own repo required a solid and cost-effective server (we have this now), and forking let us inherit a LOT of stuff we didn't have the resources to customize back then.

As we grow, it seems only natural that we base less on Ubuntu. But a lot of us used to be Ubuntu developers/enthusiasts, and a bunch of us have good ties to the Ubuntu ecosystem (a number of us met up at UDS-O), etc.

So, tl;dr, it will happen soon enough :)

I must give you a heads up about moving over to Debian: currently, Debian installers do not have the option to format or install onto a BTRFS partition. (Nor does Fedora's installer, without difficulty. Ubuntu's does though.)

This matters to me because I was recently checking out an interesting installation method that allowed me to do away with Linux partitions by solely using BTRFS subvolumes. (If you look at the IRC chat logs of #btrfs, #archlinux-newbie, and #elementary, I was btrfs-newbie trying it a few days back.)

As of now, I am nearly done with my laptop set up, and I am happily running Arch Linux and elementaryOS with a shared /home subvolume all under the same BTRFS partition. This is a really neat feature that I could take advantage of in the Ubuntu installer (Ubiquity, was it?). I did not have this issue on Arch because Arch's installation method was practically a chroot and create the filesystem and package structure in the proper places.

Please keep this in mind when moving forward. It would be interesting if you can maintain that aspect in your next release, Isis. Thanks so much for your time, and keep up the amazing work!

Feature request - one of the few things I'd hate to give up by leaving Ubuntu is the PPA system, however the one thing I don't like about it is that it puts potentially untrusted (or at least not systematically vetted) PPA packages into the system folders.

An interesting improvement of that would be a PPA system that uses Debian's awesome Update Alternatives tool to install PPA's to, say, /opt, soft link them into the system folders, and then manage side-by-versions, rollbacks, etc. with update-alternatives.

By way of example, the Rbenv in Ubuntu repositories was rewritten to use Update Alternatives to manage Ruby version shims. It would be really interesting to have an entire PPA system similarly based on that.

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