Their own apps similarly look ok at first, and then you go to use them and you realize it’s all very bare bones.
My system also froze/locked up a lot at random, and I don’t know why. Installing Ubuntu fixed that issue. Not sure what happened there.
Again I don’t blame them; not sure how many people are working for them, but creating a modern desktop and all the apps you’d expect from scratch is a huge undertaking. I hope they do well and provide Linux a real alternative experience. I’d love to see some way that they can extend into apps to make their look and feel more consistent somehow (gnome/kde skins? Something much more? Their own forks of popular apps?), and that the community ends up focusing around them so we get a distributed effort.
That's a weird criticism. How many competing UI frameworks with completely different look'n'feel are there in a default win10 install ? How many control panels and file dialogs ?
Interestingly, Microsoft Apps are the largest offenders, historically. They like to ship them with new versions of their common controls library, so it may take a while until you see changes in the OS itself (the ribbon being a large offender).
However, things work similarly. All the keyboard shortcuts work (unless they messed up on purpose), screen readers work, most settings work across the board (even if it makes the app look even worse). Change the color scheme, everything changes. In most cases, you can use the same API functions to interact with the controls, and WM messages tend to work consistently.
Not so with linux GUI toolkits. There has been a lot of effort in trying to make them look the same, but it's pretty obvious when an app is written in GTK vs QT or TK. Even the way they respond to sizing events change. Widgets work totally differently, keyboard shortcuts and conventions change.
It's less of a problem than it used to be, but it is still there, and it is sometimes very jarring. I don't know how to fix it, but it has to be fixed at some point.
I’m really comparing to macOS, which clearly is what eOS is trying to be.
If there are parallel realities and alternate timelines, then somewhere out there is the one where everyone settled on GNUStep/WindowMaker in the 90s and Linux took over the Desktop by 2005.
They do their own apps. It's actually one of their most frequent criticism - they recreate the wheel in building their own apps instead of focusing on the OS. And they do it for consistency, which is also goes against your other point.
On linux, there is no paradigm to stray from and there's no consistent design language or UX because of the fractured nature of its ecosystem. There are incredibly well made applications for KDE, GTK, and Electron, all with their own ideas of what UX should be and what UI it should look like.
Can't help but notice that the Sound indicator's dropdown doesn't line up with the icon above it. But the fact that a single UI glitch is a notable item now says a lot about the overall quality. Very tidy, still customizable, and a suite of built-in software that ought to cover most users. Good stuff.
Looking at screenshots of Elementary, it's so much more obvious how things work and what widgets do than on modern Mac OS. I've been running it in various VMs for a few years but didn't seriously consider switching to it full time until Big Sur was announced. I have too many paid-for Mac apps like Alfred, Keyboard Maestro, Hazel, Photo Mechanic, and others that prevent me from moving to Linux full time.
With all OSX Finder's faults and all the annoyances of the OS, I still think it's miles ahead of any Linux distro I've tried to get on with.
Two words "Quicklook" --OK. that's one word made of two. I find it incredible that no Linux desktop environment has something like this. Pressing spacebar to preview the content of a file without needing to open it first is something I do literally every single day and often multiple times. Why, in 2021, does every single Linux desktop require me to open a file first to see what's inside it?
That's my biggest bugbear with Linux desktops. Other annoyances are more vague. Mostly to do with the inconsistencies in the interface. Coming from something like OSX which, for all its faults, presents a completely consistent user interface, every Linux desktop I've tried [even the polished ones like Ubuntu & Mint] always have those annoying glitches & inconsistencies which just scream 'Designed by Committee' [which I suppose they are, to an extent].
As regards apps; a big part of what I do is graphic design and that pretty much rules Linux out for anything work-related. Whatever you think of Adobe, Photoshop and Illustrator just blow The Gimp [dire!] and Inkscape [tolerable but clunky] out of the water.
I did have high hopes that new kids on the block Affinity might bring their Photo and Designer [which actually do give Photoshop and Illustrator a run for their money] to Linux. But it seems they've decided to follow Adobe's lead and make thei offerings OSX & Windows only.
About the only quality graphic design app I've seen available for Linux is Krita. But it's more of a digital painting app than an image manipulation one. And, of course, no vector graphics.
Purely from a visual standpoint I like the Big Sur redesign way more than I expected. It looks like it was made for dark mode, unlike previous versions where dark mode was kind of an add on. The whole material/translucency thing is really coming together. Not so happy about the non-visual aspects though, like all the unlabeled, barely distinct line icons.
See uLauncher, AutoHotKey and Darkroom, respectively. They're not 1:1 in terms of feature parity, but you can get pretty close for free.
I think it was meant to be perhaps not necessarily noticed but at least deliberately positioned like that, and not a UI glitch. Look how it's situated directly between the microphone and speaker indicators on the top bar, and the screenshot appears in a section that says, "the indicator now shows both input and output devices right in the popover".
> I think I actually like elementary's evolution of the UI styling (from when it started as a pretty direct clone) better than I like Apple's
I'm a lifelong freedesktop user who doesn't even own a Mac but will nonetheless defend OS X's UI, from around the time of Snow Leopard or Mountain Lion or so, as the best visual design ever with respect to graphics for a conventional desktop operating system and utterly timeless—with some notable exceptions. One of those exceptions was Apple's longterm insistence on its terrible tab look—with tabs shown detached from the content its associated with and attached to the window chrome above.
It's really irking that Elementary copied that tab look, because absent any admiration, it's basically indefensible. Elementary's copying it strikes me as an example of the kind of irrationality that originates from conservatism-for-the-sake-of-it mixed with how people come to take pleasure in idiosyncrasies and other incidentals. (Similar to how when Pluto was designated not to be a planet, it led to people sort of staking their identity on choosing to insist that it be treated as one and publicly aligning themselves with "Team Pluto" for the quirkiness.) It's one of the things that they should have deliberately opted to break with the influence in order to be "better than Apple's".
And none of the other screenshots show the microphone icon, it's only in that one. Only shows up with a mic connected I assume.
Or could the mic be there to give a "something is currently using your mic" indicator?
- Keyboard shortcuts.
- Drag-n-drop behavior.
- Menus and menu item organization.
- Application interoperability.
If I ever had the money to invest, I'd finance the making of a legitimate replacement for macOS out of KDE or something where the dulling the thousand paper cuts was the focus, not the landing page screenshots.
I knew that MacOS’ menu organization was a bit better on average and application interop more common (especially with things like Automater) but the keyboard shortcuts thing really surprised me.
Consistently at the system level and application levels, shortcuts seem so much more natural and easier to learn on MacOS. Use of the super key, a letter, and maybe a modifier is the norm, whereas Linux seems to have heavy use of control plus multiple modifiers and even function keys for just about everything.
Moreover, the super key feels so much better placed than control for common shortcuts.
I put Elementary onto an external SSD with about 20 other Linux versions, yet it's the one I choose to use most often. It's some combination of familiarity, discoverability, and compatibility that made me like it most.
In practice I still use macOS 10.13 for myself (I really like the AppleScript API into every process) and Windows 10 at work (because my boss tells me to), but Elementary would be my choice of Linux distro if/when the day comes when I need to move.
Elementary doesn't have that issue and so can iterate with small quality of life improvements, without having to throw the baby out with the bathwater
That said, I wish them all the best, because I use 'Files' (but not the distro) since it's the best I've found for the odd occasion where I think using a GUI file manager will be easier than the command line. I still wouldn't say it's good, just the best I've found. (Not opening everything on a single-click is a vast improvement!)
Linux distros used to love to do this (maybe some still do?). They'd put whatever the "native" browser was for a desktop in as the default, and do the same for a bunch of other stuff.
Early Ubuntu's success was partly due to ignoring that crap and just installing whatever the user'd almost certainly actually want. Its defaults were way better—actually somewhat helpful, rather than harmful—as a result. Browser, on Linux in 2006? 95+% chance you want Firefox, so here you go. And so on.
It's still something I'm leary about. I switched from a mac to ubuntu (gnome) recently, and wonder how much lack of facilitation/communication leads to so many separate or incomplete apps. For example, I may use the gnome calendar app but also still have thunderbird setup to handle calendar links. Or evince (akin to preview.app) doesn't support drag/drop editing of pages so I have to also install 'pdf arranger' to do this.
I think there's a chaos tolerance one has to have in approaching linux, which is fine! On the plus side I've really appreciated hearing quickly from developers when filing bugs.
For anyone curious, I keep track of cross-platform workflows here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/148zTJUwfVv9xfDcpSoH3...
Elementary is aimed in part at non-power-users, moreso than most other distros besides Ubuntu. Most of them don't care or even know what browser they're using.
To that end, why not just go with Firefox, which would appease the more technical users, would be closer to what most other distros out there are doing and would also have a higher chance of it being familiar software to all users?
I think that for the most part custom browsers are only good when you want to include something functional, yet minimal in your distro and want to save space or something like that.
Edit: admittedly, an argument could also be made about having software look and feel consistent with the rest of the OS, where such a solution could be better than off the shelf browsers, at least without heavy modifications.
If I installed this, even for an elderly relative or whatever rather than myself, probably my next step would be to install Firefox. (And for others it might be Chrome of course.)
Having recently begun using a Mac for the first time, and after having had to suffer with Win10 for a few years, I have to say that I didn't appreciate that several out-of-box linux desktop experiences are now superior to commercial options.
Ubuntu for example is quite stable, has attractive defaults that aren't garish or trying to be too unfamiliar, and otherwise never does anything I don't expect. Especially when it comes to finder/explorer/nautilus.
All major desktops now have a dock, some tray icons, and a notification area.
To me the differentiator is just staying out of my way.
I installed it on one machine, and the missing "minimize" button drove me mad, otherwise it's a very nice environment (I generally use Ubuntu LTS).
You expect typing letters while having the file explorer window focused to launch a full recursive file search?
My workflow is based on two main hotkeys plus some extras:
1. Alt+Tab to change between applications. Set it up so it ONLY switches between applications (never between windows of the same application). If you keep alt pressed the icons for the open applications stay on screen, and you can click on them to go straight to that app.
2. Alt+` (the key below "esc"). This rotates between open windows of the same application. It is basically alt+tab but for windows of the same app (that you have focused).
Extras:
- Window-resizing keywords (make the current window occupy the left half of the screen, maximize it, etc.)
- Tabs on some applications (like the browser or vscode). I still use several windows though.
- Disable all animations. Just make things appear/disappear as fast as they can. It sounds silly but it really enables faster "ops, not that window, switch again" when you don't nail it the first time.
This workflow is ingrained in my brain already. I somehow seem to mentally (without noticing) keep track of the window and app switching stacks, so most of the times I know how many times I have to hit tab or ` to reach the window I want.
In cases of transient windows (reference materials, docs I'm reviewing, internal wiki pages, screenshots) I just let them pile up willy-nilly on my desktop. When I need to find a specific window that is no longer visible I either tab through the application switcher or select it from the multitasking view.
It may sound like a "messy" approach to window management, but finding an open window using an app switcher or multitasking view seems neither more nor less efficient than finding that same window minimized in a taskbar/dock.
I've never understood Gnome.
- Their 70/30 split is higher than what Apple currently offers (85/15) for revenue less than 1m (which is going to be everyone on eOS)
- While I like macOS, I think it's a shame they chose to (more or less) copy it, rather than try a new direction. But perhaps that would be too risky.
(I know that the dev environment is quite different)
I honestly don't think these are the best of Apple's stuff. When I think about these features I can't really see why they decided they were important enough to implement. Perhaps they're trying to generate some excitement about the desktop environment I don't know.
It's a bit insulting, really.
Has that changed recently?
On Linux, interaction is overwhelmingly through SSH. Or a client/server app.
Of course, the canonical answer to that is remote Xorg. It needs a high performance connection and X running on both sides, but it works. And the most Windows-like answer is VNC.
Also, I am not sure what you mean “jumpbox”, but it sounds like you don’t use the remote machine locally.
My favourite feature is that it's all flatpak, allowing smartphone-like permissions for each desktop app — both first-party and any third-party from Flathub.
I like it way more than snap and am glad there's an Ubuntu fork that works so wonderfully with it.
There's also Flatseal (https://flathub.org/apps/details/com.github.tchx84.Flatseal) as a user-friendly way of managing permissions for flatpak apps. This version of elementary OS comes with its own permission manager, but with my limited experience with both, it seems like it allows tweaking less permissions than Flatseal.
The end result being that you can't get everything in any one of them, and often can't get a particular application in any of them.
Before then only the obscure Wayfire had a similar gesture for desktop switching (actually good) and there were a few projects hacking it up with simulated keyboard shortcuts (obviously not the same at all).
1) My personal desktop has Windows for games
2) My laptops (personal and work) are Macs because Apple simply makes the best laptops
When I've dual-booted in the past it's been a huge pain, and I didn't end up bothering to switch to Linux very often in practice anyway. Linux laptops exist, but they tend to be spotty in terms of build-quality and power. Gaming on Linux can technically be done, but I don't want my expensive machine to be unable to play some things because of the OS.
There are lots of little things, most of which could be overcome with effort, but these days I'd rather use my devices than tinker with them most of the time.
I guess I just wish I had an excuse to use something like Elementary or PopOS. I would if I had an a) desktop that b) was mainly for projects. But alas, I don't.
Valve has been doing amazing things in this space, but for now my understanding is that it's more of a "most games will work pretty well" scenario, which is not really what I want for my primary games machine.
There's far fewer flat icon in its design, the shortcut hints are styled in a completely different manner, there's no global menu bar (not that they have a choice with GTK+), and the top bar widget actions are more complex than the ones you see in macOS
A summary of some of the cooler features:
Performance: General performance improvements on all hardware resulting from optimizing for Pinebook Pro and Raspberry Pi - namely, reducing and asynchronizing inter-process communication between desktop components, removing unused code, and reducing disk I/O.
Firmware: Linux Vendor Firmware Service now built-in, enabling firmware updates from within the OS.
Flatpak: all-in on flatpak, all AppCenter apps are flatpaks, as well as some Elementary apps like Web.
Portals: apps must explicitly request permission to get access to files or interact with other apps. Can tweak these permissions in System Settings.
Mail: The Mail app now sandboxes html emails.
Multi-Touch: Extended from supporting just desktop to various apps now too.
Multi-Tasking: Better hot corners + new window and workspace controls.
CalDav: Tasks and Calendar now designed around the CalDav format, making importing and sharing of tasks and calendar items with other CalDav apps easier.
Dark Theme: system-wide, applies to GTK apps too.
Terminal: smart-paste protection extended from sudo pastes to multi-line pastes.
More OEM/Vendor friendly:
- Installer is simplified and streamlined - network connectivity, user account creation, and updates moved out of the installer and into the installed OS. Better for vendors & OEMs.
- Startup is intentionally non-Elementary-branded, better enabling OEM/Vendor branded startup splash screen — "we don’t need to constantly advertise your operating system to you".
There's a separate blog post on hardware-specific improvements here: https://blog.elementary.io/hardware-improvements-coming-to-e...
Dang, I really like their logo and it sorta feels nice to see it on bootup. I'm sure there is some way to bring it back though, and it's a tiny thing that, like they said, will probably be far outweighed by the benefit it brings to OEMs.
Maybe the awkward stretched out time zone map is gone too?
Ubuntu LTS base is also great for developers, as it seems most cloud images these days are just that. I've tried installing/building tools on other distros that I like more than Ubuntu but they always seem to use wonky options, libraries that are too old/new or in strange places, and I end up back at Ubuntu.
I've been using elementary OS since. I've tried some other distros, but those experiences usually ended up with me trying to recreate elementary feeling, failing, and then returning back to elementary OS a couple of weeks later.
I think each OS release must include data about the performance (Speed and resources at steady state).
We want performant and lean OS's.
You and I survived the trials amd now wamt performance. I personally will lilely never use elementary, but you and I are not the target audience.
> The primary motivation for this change is the eventual move to Wayland (a protocol that will make your device faster and safer), but this also gives us more creative control over these features.
https://blog.elementary.io/platform-changes-in-elementary-os...
Running Linux natively on Apple Silicon is not ready for daily driving.
> all AppCenter apps are now packaged and distributed as Flatpaks, a modern container format that keeps apps siloed away from each other—and your sensitive data
All apps are siloed from your sensitive data? That is a little um simplified or misleading or something. They may have done a great job with security now that they have Portals, but it is surely a much more complicated story than the above quote suggests.
I always wondered how an open-source project develops from scratch so many different apps (e.g. Web, Mail, Calendar, etc). Why not focusing more on the OS rather than wasting resources on apps that there are mature open-source alternatives (e.g. Thunderbird, Firefox, etc)?
One aspect of it I feel often goes underappreciated is how lightweight it is. Provided you have a reasonable amount of RAM for the tasks you're trying to do, e.g. 4GB+ for normal desktop usage and an SSD, you can run it on fairly old CPUs and it will be blazing fast still.
Congrats to the team!
VM's partly solves the problem, but You need to have a decent computer and small technical chops.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drangarnir
https://visitvagar.fo/welcome-to-vagar/activities/hiking/dra...
[1]: https://github.com/elementary/houston/wiki/Submission-Proces...
I already tried to migrate to Pop_OS! but it failed to install.
So I had to keep with Ubuntu.
maybe just me but i felt a lower cognitive load compared to big sur, and especially monterey where everything is super low contrast, large margins between items, and all the icons are hard to differentiate same-color outlines...
looks nice!
It's the Isis drama they invented all over again.
however, i'm still gonna stick to XFCE4
