
Elementary OS – Fast, open, privacy-respecting replacement for Windows and macOS - diggernet
https://elementary.io/
======
zwaps
Some 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
with horrible UI experiences with numerous typography mistakes, icons of
different sizes and grid alignment imbalances everywhere.

Like check out this Mint (grey theme) screenshot:
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/43/Li...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/43/Linux_Mint_17_MATE.png/1200px-
Linux_Mint_17_MATE.png) and compare it with elementary OS here [https://news-
cdn.softpedia.com/images/news2/elementary-os-0-...](https://news-
cdn.softpedia.com/images/news2/elementary-os-0-5-juno-gnu-linux-distro-could-
use-ubuntu-s-snappy-technologies-518038-2.jpg)

Mint is great, but seriously. Look at that logo render. Even worse, look at
the start bar. Every single text and logo has a different height. I mean how
do you even do something like that unintentionally?

I am using XFCE right now, and it's great because its much faster than KDE or
Gnome on this old laptop. But it sure isn't a pretty UI. I know a MSc.
designer and she claims using my laptop makes her physically sick and dizzy. I
don't care as much, but I can see the point. Everything is misaligned, in the
start menu, the task bar, the apps. In the window bar the buttons and the
minimize arrow aren't the same size. I mean seriously, whoever did this just
did not care about Ui.

I don't think ElementaryOS is for everyone. If you have any interest in non-
standard repos, recent kernels or doing stuff in commandline, you are just
better off elsewhere. I understand their choices, but I don't use it because
of how they do the app store, among other things.

But if you just want a computer that runs, looks good and doesn't break if you
do X, then I think ElementaryOS is the #1 choice in the Linux world, and we
should be thankful that it exists.

~~~
coned88
Weird argument. Because I have given Linux systems to the elderly before.
People with little to no experience with computers. Guess what they were all
fine.

My mother was a long time windows user. Kept getting viruses. She was
converted to Ubuntu and has used it for over a decade now without issue.

Linux is far easier for people than you think. My mother is a senior citizen
now and this is her second computer.

The UI concerns you bring up are just silly, They are about the same as you
buying a new hammer and it having an inconsistent wood grain or a metal burr.

~~~
tathougies
Yeah same experience here. Installed gentoo on our home computer for my mom
and dad and once i showed them how to open Firefox, they were happy as clams.
The only issue was when my dad wanted to install tax software

~~~
tdsamardzhiev
Basically, they'll be okay as long as they only use the browser.

When they need to edit a MS Excel file, or use their digital signature
(mandatory for companies in my country), or use some accounting software... or
anything like this, you understand that Linux isn't as ready for the
mainstream desktop as we think it is.

~~~
dorfsmay
Your country mandate digital signature that aren't cross platform?

~~~
solarmist
"Cross platform" is in the eye of the beholder.

How easy is it to use for someone that thinks their browser IS the internet to
install and use?

~~~
dorfsmay
Browser extensions?

------
kitsunesoba
The project is interesting and I have to give it props for being one of the
few Linux distros that’s put the necessary level of thought into UI/UX and
made consistency a priority.

That said, I question some of their technical choices, most namely the choice
of Vala as the project’s official language. Not that Vala is bad, but it’s
incredibly niche at best and I think it severely limits contributions. Not
many are going to want to learn a new language that’s scarcely used elsewhere
in order to be able to work on any kind of project.

~~~
mepian
This kind of attitude towards less popular programming languages is very
damaging to the field of software engineering. Domain-specific languages are
our best tool to combat the excessive complexity of software. The difficulty
of learning a new programming language is overblown.

~~~
ionforce
> The difficulty of learning a new programming language is overblown.

This is a value judgement, ripe for disagreement.

Why do you think learning a new programming language is not difficult, as
others perceive?

~~~
macintux
I think once you know 2 (or 3 if the 2 are as similar as, say, Java and C#),
picking up new ones is comparatively easy. New paradigms can be challenging
(looking at you, Prolog and Haskell) but quite doable.

However, if you resent being forced to learn a new language, or if you are
more of a copy/paste developer than someone who really understands what you're
doing[0], yeah, a new language can be a very challenging barrier.

[0] I want to be clear: most people start out with very little clue what
they're doing in programming. That isn't meant as a disparaging description. I
wrote (and copy/pasted) a hell of a lot of code before I started understanding
the underlying mechanics of it all, and I'm still baffled by a lot of the
development world (again, hi Prolog and Haskell).

------
LeoPanthera
I've recommended Fedora to several "I'm scared of computers" people recently
and the experience has been very good. The new GNOME does require 5 minutes of
tutorial, but after that they've been completely happy exploring on their own.

The new "Software" app is an excellent GUI for installing new apps and
updating the system.

Personally I use Macs but if I didn't, Fedora would probably be my next
choice. It has by far the best "out of the box" experience of any Linux distro
I've seen.

~~~
Investogician
For the "I'm scared of computers" crowd, isn't it still a bit hands-on to get
proprietary codecs so you won't run into to problems watching things like
YouTube?

~~~
coned88
Ubuntu even has an option to install these at install time

------
rushabh
Reading the comments here, it seems we don’t realise that ElementaryOS is run
by a small team of mostly volunteers, who are doing this as a “free” service
to the rest of us.

Lets take a moment to appreciate the immense perseverance, sacrifice, hard
work put in by the team behind the project. The work done is pretty slick and
complete. I hope there is a philanthropic minded HN member here who can help
them with a generous funding, so they can keep building this awesome tool.

------
rcarmo
I don’t get the hate, really. It’s the only distro I’ve used in the past few
years with a “nice enough” desktop where my Mac instincts translate across and
where I can use anything packaged for Ubuntu with zero hassles.

I’ve been running it on a low-end Chromebook for a long while now, and
upgraded from 0.4.1 to 5.0 via the CLI (not recommended, but feasible if you
know what you’re doing), and other than the ultra-niche app ecosystem (which I
don’t need, since I mostly run Firefox, Docker and VS Code on it, besides dev
packages) it has zero weirdness.

Well, except for the mail client. It has improved, but every single time I try
to use it to send out some notes while away from my regular machines it breaks
somehow, and there is zero addressbook/calendar integration (I have
Thunderbird installed, but keep trying the built-in mail client after each
update because I like the UI).

~~~
thawkins
mail on 5.0 is just plain broken when used with gmail. refuses to log in.

~~~
9712263
Just setup a google app password.

------
sterlind
I'd love to have a Linux distro with the frontend of Elementary OS and the
backend of Nixos. And I say that as a Microsoft employee. Are there efforts to
make Nixos grandma-worthy? Or are the only pretty distros all reskins of
Ubuntu?

~~~
colemickens
You might be interested in this PR: "[nixpkgs] elementary: init a 5.0 Juno"
[https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/48637](https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/48637)

I'm actively trying to build some cool things with Nix/NixOS and then write up
a series of blog posts. Several recent discussions on the Discourse and at
NixCon have been focused around Nix/NixOS user experience, at least.

I've recently been building a package set of tip builds of Wayland stuff
(sway, screenshot/screenrecord/notification utilities), including instructions
for using them on Ubuntu via Nix. I'm also building out a set of packages and
modules for Kube/Containerd/Kata-Containers for perfectly repeatable offline-
first clusters. I think these two projects can be leveraged to evangelize Nix
and NixOS nicely, and dovetails into UX efforts as I build my list of rough
spots and fix a number of issues in nixpkgs and random OSS projects along the
way.

Also, Gnome-Shell and KDE work perfectly in NixOS anyway, and can be easily
made to look just like they do on any other distro... I just recently switched
to Sway, coming from KDE (~1.5 years) after GNOME (6+ years?). Not any
significant visual differences than when I was using Arch Linux.

~~~
spindle
Great work! Thank you!

At the moment it seems that a lot of NixOS users (including me) prefer a
keyboard-centric window manager to a full desktop environment, but obviously
(well I think it's obvious, anyway) there's a place for Pantheon on NixOS too.
A big place, I should think.

------
y4mi
I'll be honest.. I tried elementary os when they first released it but never
got it's charm.

It always felt like an inferior version of macOS... Which I don't like.

I personally prefer to develop on a Linux install... But elementary OS is not
what I'd use if Linux is an option

~~~
wlesieutre
Inferior macOS is how most of my experiences with Linux distros have felt.
Maybe the desktop environments just aren’t my thing, the inconsistent UIs feel
sloppy, and I always ending up needing to drop down to a command line to fix
something or other is was annoying.

Elementary doesn’t fix needing to drop to a command line, and the UIs are only
unusually consistent and well thought when you stick with the built in
software. But the overall experience of it feels like someone actually thought
about it more than the alternatives I’ve tried.

~~~
automathematics
Check out Solus OS

------
seltzered_
Question: This may pertain more to GTK, but does gtk/elementary os have an
equivalent to macOS's core animation libraries? Particularly to support
interactive / fluid interfaces (see
[https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2018/803/](https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2018/803/)
)? I did a cursory look and couldn't find much.

I've been fairly familiar with macOS development particularly for trying to do
more experimental UI (fluid animation) the past few years, but have been
staring at linux/elementaryOS more.

~~~
floatboth
libdazzle (developed for GNOME Builder) has some fancy animated widgets and
whatnot

[https://valadoc.org/libdazzle-1.0/index.htm](https://valadoc.org/libdazzle-1.0/index.htm)

~~~
seltzered_
interesting. I think the better path (for myself at least) may be to see where
people have extended libcairo for uses of interactive animation, and see how
cleanly Pantheon approached problems like switching desktops (not even macOS
has always gotten it right - mission control's top desktop bar was sluggish in
either Yosemite or El Capitan then they decided to hide it upon initial
gesture later on).

~~~
floatboth
cairo is for custom drawing — if you're looking into that kind of animation,
sure. If you want to animate GTK's GUI widgets, cairo probably won't be super
helpful

------
msiyer
Linux is not ready for mass market. I think, proprietary file formats, vendor
lock-in, monopolistic and restrictive trade practices etc. are reasons why
users dread switching OSs.

I my opinion, OS itself has very little value to the end user. The end user
needs a fertile userland. The end user should be free to trivially switch
platforms without disrupting the userland one bit. This is not some pipe
dream. It is very much possible.

Open standards and strict adherence to them need to be enforced. Data formats
need to be portable not just across platforms, but across competing software.
This is our right. No one should deny this no matter how powerful.

~~~
sjellis
> proprietary file formats, vendor lock-in, monopolistic and restrictive trade
> practices etc. are reasons why users dread switching OSs.

That certainly used to be true, but I think most of those issues have fallen
away, and it's mostly just about applications and unpredictable hardware
support. Despite the efforts of proprietary OS vendors to invent new whiz-bang
features, most people use the OS as a launcher for their Web browser and the
collection of applications that they actually care about (office suite, games,
professional tools like Photoshop). Proton is a really big deal because it
unblocks migration for the people whose key applications are games from Steam.

------
matchbok
70/30 split for apps is ridiculous and a non-starter. Apple and Google can
demand that because of market share. This experiment cannot.

~~~
nkkollaw
> 70/30 split for apps is ridiculous and a non-starter. Apple and Google can
> demand that because of market share. This experiment cannot. reply

I wouldn't compare elementary OS's fee to that of Apple and Google.

Apple and Google take that 30% and keep it as profit, while elementary put it
back (some percentage of it, I assume) into the project in the form of
bounties a BountySource to fix bugs and improve the project. The more the
project improves, the more users it will have, the more your app will sell,
etc. etc.

Also, your bitter downplaying of the project by calling it an "experiment" vs.
Apple and Google and the whole negative tone of your comment is pretty
annoying. You're the one comparing the project to the biggest tech companies
in the world, not them. Weird.

~~~
monochromatic
Oh come on. Google and Apple also reinvest money into improving their
offerings.

------
randomsearch
I used Elementary OS for a few months this year.

It’s quite nicely designed in places, but is based on Gnome 3 - which doesn’t
make sense for an OS that is all about UX, because Gnome 3 makes plenty of bad
decisions and Elementary inherits them. Still, they have done their best to
contain them and I think it’s better designed than any other modern Linux
desktop.

Couple of failure points:

\- the mail client is buggy to the point of being unusable. You could say that
about any Linux GUI mail client, but this one is particularly bad.

\- Alt-Tab behaviour is strange and awful.

If you want OS X but can’t afford it, this is as close as you’ll get, but it’s
a long way off.

------
tapoxi
What advantages does Elementary have over (its upstream) Ubuntu? It just looks
like a different GTK/GNOME Shell theme to me.

~~~
veddox
Well, for some people that is a pretty big advantage. I'm on Ubuntu 16.04 now,
running Unity. Despite all its bad press I love Unity - it perfectly fits my
workflow and just gets out of your way. (Not like Gnome Shell, where a third
of your screen real estate is gone just with various menubars, each of which
you could park a truck on.)

Gnome Shell on 18.04 pretty much killed Ubuntu for me. Next time I set up my
computer, I'm going back to Elementary. (I used it some years ago, but it was
still very buggy. I'm hoping they've fixed some of those since.)

~~~
smhg
Unity still works perfectly fine on 18.04 for me. There is still some
maintenance going on, so it can be an ok choice for the near future.

~~~
bubblethink
Yeah, I'm still using unity 7 on 18.04. I see that it is still working in
18.10 and quite likely on 19.04. Hopefully, it'll last another LTS cycle.
Technically, it should continue to work as long as xorg isn't dropped, which
probably won't happen anytime soon. The only downside is that unity7 is so
closely tied to ubuntu that you can't use it with any other distro. I
generally like Fedora/RHEL like setups for servers, but I can't use anything
other than unity (right now) for laptops.

------
nkkollaw
elementary is not for me because it limits configuration a little bit too much
to my taste, but it's a wonderful project.

One of the cons of Linux--which is the OS I use exclusively--is that most apps
are made by programmers, and programmers often don't care and don't have
design skills. elementary OS looks absolutely stunning, and it's perfect if
you stick to curated apps and you just want something that works.

Most importantly, they were able to finally find a way for devs to get paid,
so that they can continue working and debugging their apps. On this aspect, I
really don't understand the critics: people need money in life. If a project
brings a little bit of money, you can keep working on it. End-users win
because there are updates, less bugs, and new versions instead of abandoned
projects.

In addition, as for their 70/30 fee they redistribute the money (I don't know
in what percentage) on BountySource, so that the project gets developed
further.

Honestly, other distros have a lot to learn from elementary.

~~~
jammygit
"Most importantly, they were able to finally find a way for devs to get paid,
so that they can continue working and debugging their apps."

This is the most exciting part of elementary IMO: it is a model for free
software to bring in some cash and fund full time development.

~~~
nkkollaw
Definitely. They were the first to do that, so it wasn't easy.

------
ianwalter
I’ve been using Elementary for 2-3 weeks and it’s really good. Still far
behind MacOS, but it’s the best I’ve felt about a linux distro becoming a
mainstream alternative. I’ve used Pop_OS! as well and while it’s good, I wish
System76 would have just backed Elementary OS. Elementary is a good base but
needs a larger community and more resources to become legit.

------
type0
Elementary is a fine distro, but short off being pretty and not afraid to ask
for money what does it i really achieve that I can't get on other bigger
distros?

~~~
BonesJustice
At the moment, not a whole lot, but if you’re in the group of older MacBook
[Pro] users who are looking to upgrade, don’t like the options from Apple, but
love macOS, then it makes the transition less painful.

My hope is that it will further distinguish itself with time.

They’ve got the basics in place, which is no small task given they’ve
essentially created their own desktop environment. They have a long road ahead
of them before they catch up to distros like Mint in terms of features, but
with more of the underpinnings in place (like their new cloud providers API),
I’m hoping it starts to feel more complete during the next couple releases.

------
cordite
I am currently on this os, it’s pleasant most of the time, but it crashes 75%
of the time on unlocking the lock screen. It also starts having windows
flicker for a few seconds at random after a few days of uptime. I use Nvidia
GTX 1080, it seems to work well otherwise.

~~~
thrownaway954
How can something that "crashes 75% of the time on unlocking the lock screen"
be "pleasant most of the time" to use??? If Windows, OSX or Linux did that,
would we even use them? Look I like to support open source projects, but junk
is junk and if this thing crashes like you say so... it's junk.

~~~
cordite
My solution was to disable the lock screen at home. But I still can’t disable
accidentally pressing the lock key combination. It doesn’t seem to be
configurable in the keyboard settings.

------
scandox
Whenever I see a skeuomorphic desktop it reminds me to make a donation to
Arch.

~~~
qazwse_
Can you explain what you mean? From what I'm seeing there isn't any
skeuomorphism in Elementary.

~~~
cnasc
In this case I think they meant "dimensional" rather than skeuomorphic.
Elementary isn't flat, but that's a selling point in my opinion.

------
chaostheory
Elementary is a good Chrome OS alternative. I just wish Chrome OS was
officially available for PCs.

------
xaduha
I'd recommend [https://getsol.us](https://getsol.us) if you asked me what
Desktop Linux distro to get.

~~~
ledgerdev
I too love solus, but I'm a bit concerned with the ongoing project stability
with it's creator and technical leader(ikey) leaving the project. It's been
such an amazing project.

What do other think, can it continue to be relatively stable and not break
things too much going forward?

~~~
xaduha
Have you read/listened to this? [https://getsol.us/2018/10/27/in-full-
sail](https://getsol.us/2018/10/27/in-full-sail)

I'm hopeful, it's great to have BDFL at the start, but community takeover
should and does happen at some point. Maybe this is it.

~~~
ledgerdev
Yes, been following it closely. Let's hope it survives because it's a great
distro.

------
testware
All comments here are either: A. "I'm so glad I'm on Linux distro A and not
Windows but the UX and UI is terrible", followed by "have you tried distro B,
it solves the problems of A" B. "I'm on distro B and not Windows, but package
management, upgrade and/or compatibility is terrible", followed by "have you
tried distro C, it solves the problems of B" C. "I'm on distro C and not
Windows, but it doesn't support my audio or video equipment and I need to
install and/or spend a few hours searching and compiling various solutions
online until my machine is a Frankensteinian monster and while it works for
me, it's not for everyone" followed by "have you tried distro A, it solves
problems of C" I love the flexibility of Linux in some respects, but I've had
stability issues on Ubuntu and Mint, UX issues on some Fedora based ones, and
Puppy Linux, compatibility issues in Elementary (and fixes that were available
in Ubuntu never made it to Elementary and I got tired of waiting). I've gone
through way too many distros finding the one that works for me and none have
been really as pleasant as described by people. For work I have to use a Mac,
and the inconsistencies in keyboard shortcuts annoys me each and every day.
Not to mention non - standard UI components stand out like a sore thumb -
especially window maximizing, rescaling, browser and IDE shortcuts, etc. I
wouldn't be using it if I didn't have to. Honestly, the OS that I have had the
least trouble with and the most enjoyment was Windows XP, closely followed by
7. 8 was a mess of UI and UX oddities, and 10 is only marginally better. If
there was a version of windows that was as streamlined as XP for the modern
world, I'd fork out $50-100 for it considering the time it would save me and
my time being worth more than the hassle, and that my contribution might help
subsidize the cheaper community or pirated editions of the OS.

------
ChefboyOG
I ran various distros as a kid growing up, then went years as a professional
running Mac. Elementary is the only distro I've not felt stupid friction
running on my Chromebook. I know there are other considerations, but as a
daily driver, this is easily one of the best distros I've seen

------
lamb_duh
Digital products illicit emotional responses just like physical ones.
Aesthetic clouds our judgement when it comes to usability—it's a well
documented universal design principle and affects people's sense of usability
regardless of culture, location, or education.

There's a relevant XKCD for this discussion:
[https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/kerning.png](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/kerning.png)

Some folks value privacy and control over appearance. Their sense of value
from both outweigh any cons of a bad UI. Others can't move past how a UI
feels. Both positions are completely valid.

OSS needs more UI design talent—if you've lodged complaints here, pick a
project/distro, dig through the contribution guidelines, and improve the UI.

------
kevingrahl
I’ve been using elementary OS since a few years on my main machine and really
like it but there are a few quirks that bother me.

For example I can’t use the WiFi drop down to change networks but instead have
to open the network manager to scan for new networks. Also when right clicking
on external disks in the file manager to mount disks the dialogue appears not
where I’ve clicked but a few centimeters above. Stuff like that. I’ve come to
live with all those flaws and very rarely have to boot up Windows to use
software like Photoshop/Illustrator.

Overall I can recommend elementary OS and have convinced some friends and
family to switch from Windows to it.

------
NuSkooler
I've been using Elementary OS for a few major versions now. It's become my
main desktop OS.

I'm a bit worried about putting too much into the "store" and their own
browser, but so far it hasn't impacted me any. Anything that applies to Ubuntu
proper applies in eOS for the most part, but the UX is just much more
polished.

When I first saw it I was worried of too much "MacOS" like (which I'm not a
fan of), but that has't been the case for me at all.

~~~
cassidyjames
For what it's worth, elementary does not create Epiphany; that's the GNOME
browser and is largely a GUI wrapper around WebKit, the exact same engine as
in Safari.

AppCenter is a way to serve the app developers who were already attempting to
target the OS while also enabling both them and elementary to cover (some)
costs.

------
saganus
What kind of apps does Elementary OS support?

Can I install .deb packages or other Linux-compatible ones?

Otherwise it's going to be hard to adopt an OS if there are not enough of the
apps I use, no?

~~~
kevingrahl
I’ve been using elementary OS for the past two years or so; you can use
everything that runs on Ubuntu which of course includes .deb packages.

~~~
jammygit
Does it support snaps as easily as Ubuntu does?

~~~
BonesJustice
I’ve never used a snap, but I believe they have a snap manager in the curated
section of their App Store, and it looked pretty straightforward.

------
marcus_holmes
Anyone tried installing this on a MacBook? I've got an older Pro that keeps
running Kernel at 60%+ of CPU - apparently just one of those bugs that MacOS
has that "just work" like that.

I really want to install another OS, but both Ubuntu and Fedora can't see the
available partition space, and can't find a wireless driver.

Given that Elementary OS is advertising itself as a replacement for MacOS, has
anyone tried it and got anywhere with it?

~~~
metasyn
I installed it a year or so ago on an old 2014 MBP. It's battery was bulging
and bending the casing so I knew it was on its way out... I used elementary os
for a few months, mostly just using it for spotify, occasional programing,
surfing the web.

Worked fine, and in this case, added some life to some older hardware.

~~~
marcus_holmes
cool, thanks for the info. I'll give it a try... :)

------
SonnyWortzik
I used El.OS for 3 straight years and had to drop it for business reasons. The
OS is excellent. Highly recommend it if you are not bound by your business
needs.

------
gurtgurt
Seems pretty interesting, I might try it out later. Does anybody have
experience using this to revive an old computer (ie make it faster and more
useable)?

------
debt
All I want is an OS with a lightning fast UI and ‘08 thumb drive sized
footprint, idc about privacy. Gimme ultra lightning fast Casino-electronic-
craps-game-level fast UI and shouldn’t weigh too much like I said

Who cares about privacy? If they’re based in the US/EMEIA you can sue the
pants off anyone that disrespects your privacy and win in court

~~~
lytedev
Build your own! Arch Linux is a great base to start with. Check out
/r/unixporn for examples!

------
llIIllIIllIIl
I tried to use the OS multiple times through the recent years, but every time
there's a missing feature that breaks all bi+lingual user experience: You
cannot switch the keyboard layout for each window separately. Seems like they
do not care about anyone except exclusively English speaking audience.

~~~
andrewflnr
That's unfair. If you're not bilingual yourself, wanting to switch keyboard
layout per window is extremely non-obvious. It would never have occurred to
me.

~~~
llIIllIIllIIl
That's why almost all OS have this as an option. You either change the layout
globally or per window (or application, doesn't make that much difference).

~~~
andrewflnr
Welp, TIL.

------
sanimal
I don't like the "Pay What You Want" system they have to download the OS. It
feels misleading that you have to click on custom then enter 0 to download for
free.

I totally understand how important donations are to keep a project going but
this one rubs me off the wrong way. I hope I'm not the only one.

~~~
saagarjha
This is a relatively recent change. I remember that they used to be much
clearer about this back in Loki.

~~~
craftyguy
They've had this since at least 2015, so not really all that recent.

~~~
saagarjha
Must have been Freya, then.

------
truth_seeker
I find Ubuntu 18 LTS version quite promising both as a developer and normal
non-dev user of desktop.

------
exabrial
All I can say is wow, this has been missing for a long time! If there was ever
a time for an Acer, Asus, Dell, etc to sponsor a new product and pitch to
corp/gov, this would be it.

------
bprasanna
Looks promising. It would be great if they can offer a scaled down version
(something like Lubuntu) which we can install in single board computers (like
RaspberryPi).

~~~
rcarmo
The Raspbian distribution has recently been improved to the point where it has
a decent (if less polished) experience. I have a Pi desktop for developing in
Arduino, and it’s great with the newest 3B+.

------
sneak
To be a macOS replacement, an OS needs to work well on Apple hardware. Does
Elementary OS now work well on Apple hardware? The last time I tried it, it
did not.

~~~
timbit42
With the T2 chip only macOS can run on Apple hardware now.

~~~
radicaldreamer
That's not true at all: [https://support.apple.com/en-
us/HT208330](https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208330)

~~~
dullin
The lastest news about that seems that the feature is actually not working or
bugged out :
[https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/471124](https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/471124)

------
JetSpiegel
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.

------
EastSmith
Someone knows if this is a good fit for a dev machine: Rails, React,
PostgreSQL & Elastisearch? VS Code?

~~~
manch23
Its based on Ubuntu, so whatever you can install on Ubuntu should work on
Elementary. Only issue I've run into is while adding an apt repo(for docker I
think) I needed to point it to bionic instead of juno.

~~~
rehemiau
That's a common problem I had too, I often have to modify install scripts
because of it

------
zzo38computer
I use Linux without a desktop environment. Works excellent; much better than
Windows.

------
gigatexal
If it didn’t use gnome and somehow skinned KDE to be that pretty I’d be all
about it.

~~~
TheRealPomax
What a weird thing to say when the whole point of this OS is a focus on
consistent user experience, with a negative focus on "does it tickle a power
user's tech stack fancy".

~~~
gigatexal
There’s something inherently gross about running my desktop in some sort of
Frankenstein-javascript-single-threaded-modify-with-css mess that I’d rather
avoid. And KDE has been faster for me. KWin is amazingly quick. What KDE lacks
is the polish that the Gnome based desktops enjoy — if it has that I’d doubt a
reason for Gnome to exist.

------
rubenhak
Wow, looks cool. The background makes it feel like Mac OS X...

------
vermaden
I wonder when they will introduce icons in the desktop :)

------
throwawaywhynot
the linux desktop landscape has really changed. Ubuntu is no longer the cool
os for the newbies with the rise of manjaro,mint,solus,elementary

------
mattycakes01
It's basically just Pantheon with a custom skin. You can get similarly good
results using the "arc" theme and any decent ubuntu-based distro.

~~~
cassidyjames
You realize elementary has created the entire Pantheon desktop environment,
right? So, "It's just their desktop environment with their stylesheet, their
apps, and the AppCenter ecosystem," is basically what you are saying. In which
case, yeah, that's exactly what elementary OS is.

------
JoshuaAshton
Shame their app store is a great meme.

------
avodonosov
But not for Linux?

------
lupinglade
So it’s a replacement for macOS that looks just like macOS? Hmm...

~~~
TheRealPomax
Only if you squint and ignore the rest of the sentence? It's an alternative to
both macos and windows for people who not just not care about what their OS
is, but have better things to do with their life than even bother to know what
OS they run. As long as it's a pleasant, stable, consistent UI, and lets them
do "the things they want to do" rather than "install the apps they need to do
the things they want to do".

And yeah, that means if at any point you might go "but it doesn't have X and
that's okay, you can download the source and run make" then you're already way
beyond who this OS is for. It's supposed to be "as dumb" as MacOS with the app
store, or Windows with the windows store.

~~~
lupinglade
But macOS is exactly that already?

~~~
TheRealPomax
It's also prohibitively expensive due to the hardware you need to legally own
before you can even use it, and is _only_ supported for that hardware instead
of allowing you to use whatever you can afford?

------
car111
I think there are 2 fundamental problems with Desktop Linux:

1\. Linux doesn't even have a rock-solid gui toolkit on which different
environments can be based:

    
    
        a. The one which runs on Ubuntu by default and which is probably used on 90%+ installations of desktop Linux is GTK which is utterly a major nightmare to develop GUIs with.
    
        b. The Qt library which powers KDE is simply not used all that widely. The flagship desktop environment using Qt is KDE which is downright ugly in its default installation.
    

2\. Once problem 1 is solved, people should realize that a usable desktop is
not just the Window manager and 3 apps which are blessed by the desktop
environment team. It is 100s of thousands of hours of using by many users. It
needs stability for other apps to develop around this ecosystem, both Mac and
Windows have had a rocksolid GUI library powering their ecosystems for decade+
period and apps develop around them. Without stability and a new shitty GUI
library every 2 years, Elementary OS or not, the desktop environment situation
on Linux will continue to be shit.

~~~
dharma1
Qt was used on unity8. But it didn't (at that time, and probably not now
either) have a comparable UI component library to MacOS (or iOS). I know,
because we made one from scratch - which wasn't a great idea either.

Flutter would look interesting if it picks up steam for desktop apps.

~~~
car111
It's very disappointing to learn that after more than 25 years of Linux being
launched, there is not a single decent GUI SDK available.

Much more damning is that RedHat whose entire business model was around making
an enterprise ready Linux (server and Desktop) could not build a decent GUI
toolkit.

------
rustcharm
It looks nice, and it may be a replacement for ChromeOS or some other limited
system, but it's not a replacement for Windows and MacOS.

------
ohiovr
It’s just a window manager and not even a very good one.

------
Endy
Is it binary-compatible with Windows & Mac OS? If it's not, then it's not a
replacement and the title should be changed to reflect that. I respect the
idea of speed and privacy (though I'm still a minimalist - I believe in using
16/32-bit and less than 1GB RAM). But before I can "replace" Windows, I need
an OS that actually works like Windows.

~~~
throwawaywhynot
wtf

~~~
deadlocked
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 various ways that make them less useful, to me, than the apps I
named above.

(I've been using Linux as a daily driver for two years now, have been
administrating Linux servers for nearly two decades - I _know_ Linux).

~~~
throwawaywhynot
well your's is a valid use case. I just didn't understand why OP was expecting
it to be binary compatible. It's just a distro

~~~
Endy
Because it's being called a "replacement for Windows and MacOS". I take issue
with that, because it's provably not. All use cases are valid. It doesn't
matter if you're using it for work or play, there is no invalid use case as
long as it works for that user. And if you're touting an OS as a replacement,
you have to take that into account.

