

The Road to Luna - macco
http://elementaryos.org/journal/the-road-to-luna

======
aroman
As much as it brightens my day to see a project I worked on (I'm actually the
guy who filmed that video in the article) make it to HN's front page, it also
makes me sad a bit.

It makes me sad because of the usual troupe of folks who complain that we
don't have the right to go around calling ourselves an "OS", we don't bring
anything original or innovative into the world, or that we are plainly just OS
X clones.

I was extremely active on the thread[0] posted to HN when Luna launched (which
was at #1 for the better part of that evening), but I don't think I'm going to
do that same level of in depth responding here.

Instead, I'm simply going to leave you a link to the below article[0]. Please
read my comment if you want to understand how we as elementary evaluate and
understand our design process and the criticism which seems to come with it.

Thanks for listening.

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6193148](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6193148)

~~~
SkyMarshal
I can't imagine that people making those silly comments have 1) RTFA, or 2)
done anything remotely like what you guys are doing. You guys are doing some
amazing things with the Linux desktop, don't let the peanut gallery get you
down.

PS - I fervently hate the word "exciting" and think it is by far the most
overused and diluted word in contemporary US English these days, at least in
the business and startup realm. Too many people seem to think that calling
something "exciting" actually makes it so, and call everything they want
investment or traction for "exciting". Almost none of it actually is.

eOS is one of the few exceptions. The first project I've seen where reading
your blog posts about it feels like reading folklore.org, and for a Linux fan
at least, truly is exciting. So please keep doing what you're doing, ignore
the negative nancies.

------
MisterWebz
A lot of people here fervently complaining about eOS again.

The most important thing is that there's finally a linux distro with a team
behind it that really cares about design. I think it's a huge step forward,
and when eOS gains in popularity, I hope other teams follow in their
footsteps.

No, distros like Linux Mint aren't the right way forward. Stripping off
everything until what you have left is a taskbar isn't exactly my idea of good
design.

~~~
hrvbr
They don't care about design. If they did they would have created something
original. Or at least they would have more than one source of inspiration to
pick from. If they wanted to take the whole shape of OSX applications, at
least they should have picked a different color theme. Here they stole the
functionalities, the shapes, the colors and the metal textures that Apple's
designers chose. eOS is designed by Apple, there's no one who care about
design in the eOS team, at least not for the apps shown in the video. They're
receiving bad critics because thieves receive bad critics. Hopefully they'll
learn and their next version will have its own identity.

~~~
SkyMarshal
Apple doesn't care about design. If they did they would have created something
original. Here they stole their entire windowing interface from Xerox and
their kernel from FreeBSD and Mach. OS X is designed by other people, Apple
only cares about metallic textures. They're receiving bad critics because ...
oh wait, they're not b/c Steve's said "great artists steal" and made it all
ok.

What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

------
lists
Why do you guys make a big deal of Contractor in the article when actual
development of the service is rather neglected looking at your milestones for
your next release's beta[0] and Contractor's revision history[1]?

On your mailing list you guys are already getting ready to update your Ubuntu
Precise base to a more recent release[2], but why? Precise is stable and will
be continue to be so long enough for you guys to spend time developing the
developer-facing treasures of your platform, and yet it seems you're a little
too focused on user-facing niceties. Or maybe the better question is when will
you guys sit down and start making the stuff that'll entice third-party
developers?

Let me know if I'm getting things confused, I'm actually a big fan of the
project.

[0]: [https://launchpad.net/elementaryos/+milestone/isis-
beta1](https://launchpad.net/elementaryos/+milestone/isis-beta1)

[1]: [http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~contractor-
dev/contractor/trunk...](http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~contractor-
dev/contractor/trunk/changes)

[2]: [https://lists.launchpad.net/elementary-dev-
community/msg0257...](https://lists.launchpad.net/elementary-dev-
community/msg02577.html)

~~~
munchor
Hi, I'm one of the devs.

Regarding Contractor, its big proponent is on vacations and we still need to
move some of the blueprints about it to the appropriated milestones. In fact,
we still have to report many bugs about it, but in time I'm sure it'll be
done.

Regarding the new release, we get a lot of criticism from all kinds of users
saying they want us to be based on a more modern version of Ubuntu and as so,
we plan to be based on 14.04 for next release. We aim to release shortly after
Ubuntu 14.04 comes out and that's the plan we're sticking to. I'm sure 14.04
will be just as stable, we can't be stuck in the past and moving is a lot of
work - we need to start working on it as soon as possible!

Besides, we also need many new GTK+, Vala and other libraries' features.

------
mixmastamyk
I like the idea of a new competitor in this space, however I was a bit
disappointed in their direction. Not sure of others but I don't need another
gnome3-like (dumbed-down, grandma-friendly, immature paradigm, rather be a
tablet) interface. These linux-based desktops will never be popular; that ship
sailed long ago.

However, I desperately need a professional, stable, feature-complete, mostly
bug-free workstation GUI with modern capabilities at least as good as
Win2000/XP, Irix, NeXT like I had 10+ years ago.

Something like Xfce polished to OSX-level quality.

If one of the design-goals is that "menus are too difficult" there is no
market available for that product. The people that would benefit use Windows,
OSX, iOS, and Android already.

~~~
tikhonj
It seems like KDE already handles your needs: it's well-integrated, stable and
has all the modern capabilities you could want. Certainly far better than XP!
I've used KDE a fair bit, and the recent versions have been superb. Sure, it's
heavyweight compared to some of its bare-bones competitors, but that's the
only way to fulfill all your conditions.

Of course, the truly "professional" choice would be XMonad layered over
something minimal. But that's a different discussion for a different time :P.

~~~
mixmastamyk
It would seem so. Unfortunately, I've given it a try every other year and have
been disgusted every time. The technology is nice, but it feels like it was
designed by 90's IT guy. Clutter and programmer-art is not what I am looking
for either.

------
phpnode
sickening to see the negativity here, I just bought a copy because this thing
looks great and because I want to support the team.

------
sremani
Even though the comparisions to OS X seem inevitable due to the launch bar, I
like the snappiness of the OS, and one of the few distros I felt playing
around. I am a primary windows user, who tinkers and plays around with Linux
and OS X, I definitely like the OS. My wireless drivers being proprietary
could not work with Luna, so as much as I want to have Luna - I could not use
on the old laptop, but I will definitely consider installing it on my VM.

Crunchbang and Luna are the distros I am liking.

------
joleX
It's a really cool OS. The only thing I don't like is that they force their
own applications. I always install Firefox and Thunderbird, and then it's a
real thing.

~~~
quarterto
So installing something by default is forcing it on people now? It's still
Linux.

~~~
Myrth
> So installing something by default is forcing it on people now?

Only for Microsoft.

------
cransa
Elementary OS looks like a OS X knock off. Which is a shame, in my opinion.
They say they reached the same conclusion as Apple's designers, but I think
they just have a bias. They should be taking inspiration from apps like
Fantastical, Soulver, etc. and building in those concepts to the O.S. They
should try and set themselves apart from OS X. It just looks too similar.
Remember what Picasa said: "Good artist copy. Great artist steal." Elementary
OS is just copying. They should be stealing. I'd love to see something along
the lines of this Dribbble shot, honestly.

[http://dribbble.com/shots/576250-Windows-UI-
Concept/attachme...](http://dribbble.com/shots/576250-Windows-UI-
Concept/attachments/44311)

~~~
foolrush
While I agree with your premise that Elementary is nothing more than a
repetitive clone of a well trodden trope, I could not disagree more with the
"steal" aspect.

Instead, I would suggest that any further designs should drop the privileged
terms of "intuitive" and other such rubbish[1] and instead focus on designing
a system that specifically meets the needs of a very particular demographic /
audience.

Finally, there is little to no evidence to suggest that Picasso said that
infamous line. It was likely misattributed by Mr. Jobs from a biography.

It is instead a mangling of the words of T.S. Eliot[2] that seriously detracts
from Eliot's original (and relevant to this discourse) intention.

[1] [http://www.uigarden.net/english/easy-intuitive-and-
metaphor](http://www.uigarden.net/english/easy-intuitive-and-metaphor) [2]
[http://nancyprager.wordpress.com/2007/05/08/good-poets-
borro...](http://nancyprager.wordpress.com/2007/05/08/good-poets-borrow-great-
poets-steal/)

------
tuananh
For those saying Elementary OS isn't a blatant copy of OS X. Just look at
those icons in the dock.

~~~
SkyMarshal
"Good artists copy, great artists steal." So by Steve Jobs (and Picasso's) own
definition, the eOS guys are merely good, not yet great. They've still got
some catching up to do.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU)

~~~
kunai
That quote isn't actually Picasso's. It's T.S. Eliot's, and it goes, "Good
poets borrow, great poets steal."

~~~
graue
That's not quite what Eliot said either. From elsewhere in this thread,
'foolrush points to this:

[http://nancyprager.wordpress.com/2007/05/08/good-poets-
borro...](http://nancyprager.wordpress.com/2007/05/08/good-poets-borrow-great-
poets-steal/)

------
MWil
I emailed support a question and never received a reply back. Using Geary,
once deleted/archived, emails almost always come back. Sometimes, they come
back after several attempts.

~~~
aroman
Hi, I'm on the elementary team.

I'm not sure how exactly you "emailed support" because we don't have a support
email address, but I would encourage you to check out our support landing page
here: [http://elementaryos.org/support](http://elementaryos.org/support) and
specifically search/ask a question here:
[http://elementaryos.org/answers/+/all/solved/highest](http://elementaryos.org/answers/+/all/solved/highest)

If nobody seems to have a conclusive answer for you (mind you, Geary is not an
app we wrote in house, so there's liable to be less Geary developers hanging
around our support channels), I'd ask you (on behalf of the community) to
report a bug here:
[https://bugs.launchpad.net/geary](https://bugs.launchpad.net/geary)

Thanks :)

------
acqq
How can they name their mostly visual customizations of the existing projects
"OS" and be accepted as serious? Such things were called skins and themes.

What is really original there apart from the visual design elements and the UI
customizations to allow them calling their contribution an "OS"? Just that
they actually write some code? Where are their own kernel and their own
drivers? Aren't they just one more derivative GNU/Linux distro?

~~~
aroman
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.

~~~
acqq
_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.

~~~
Kurtz79
"Ubuntu: The world's most popular free OS"
[http://www.ubuntu.com/](http://www.ubuntu.com/)

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

~~~
acqq
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.

~~~
Kurtz79
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.

~~~
acqq
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!"

~~~
okwa
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](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_distribution)

