
Elementary OS - rkwz
http://www.elementaryos.org/discover
======
tbassetto
For everyone wondering: it's based on Ubuntu, with a clean theme and some
"homemade" applications. It's minimalist and blazing fast. The music player
will come with the next release. It's opinionated. I like it.

~~~
andreasjansson
Thanks for that, I was missing the About page.

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scythe
One of the really cool things about this is the readily available links to
descriptions of the core applications. Easily the best-designed distro website
I've ever seen.

The bad news: branding collisions galore:

The 'e' looks way too much like enlightenment's 'e', and enlightenment already
has a project called elementary --
<http://trac.enlightenment.org/e/wiki/Elementary>

The design of the whole bloody thing looks exactly like OS X. The topbar, the
notification icons, the dock, the Midori icon (which is weird -- Midori
already has a standard claw icon that looks cooler than the compass
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midori_%28web_browser%29>). Hell, they even have
a set of "human interface guidelines"!
<http://www.elementaryos.org/docs/human-interface-guidelines>

~~~
eropple
That people don't think about human interface guidelines because it's open
source software is alarming as all hell.

~~~
gnoupi
To be fair, the portion of open source software which actually have that kind
of guidelines instead of being just a shot from the individual developer's
mind is very small.

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sirn
I believe the point here is how Elementary presents itself. If you compare
Elementary's discover page with Ubuntu's feature page, the difference is
clear. Elementary's page screams I'm clean and simple; their page don't took
you to figure out what the hell Me Menu is (and how I should care), they just
put enough stuff to get you comfortable with its application and featureset,
which I believe is a good thing for those who want to get their stuff done
without much fiddling around.

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knubie
This looks eerily similar to OS X. Everything from the desktop to the icons
(safari, dictionary, contacts) and even the design of the website.

~~~
smcl
Yep, the Safari logo in particular does it for me as they've attempted to make
it look ever so slightly different ("Nooo, see this one's green and the
compass dial is pointing at a TOTALLY different angle"). Just reminds me of
the rather awful OS X-like skins you see for Winamp or basically any skinnable
application. Bleh

~~~
blackguardx
Yeah, but didn't Apple just copy the Netscape Navigator theme for their Safari
icon?

~~~
smcl
Which part of the theme? The netscape navigator icon was just a circular logo
with a big "N" and the icon for the old Communicator browser was a Lighthouse
- which is only vaguely related in a nautical\navigatey sort of way

~~~
btilly
The old navigator icon had a steering wheel in it. See
<http://www.notebookreview.com/assets/7038.gif> for the image.

Over time they simplified it.

~~~
smcl
OK so a ship's wheel is again in the nautical ballpark, but not really the
same thing as a compass

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dgreensp
This website's bizarre mix of imitation and over-explaining reminds me of some
earnest but vacuous manual for a foreign knock-off product.

"Press the File menu," I expect it to say, "and a beautiful pull-down fades
quickly into view, with useful functions such as New Folder and Close."

Too bad Apple patented calling an address book "Address Book," I guess they'll
just have to do their best with nonsense names.

~~~
Popcorned23
> Too bad Apple patented calling an address book "Address Book,"

Are you joking? I didn't think that was possible, it's too generic and I
couldn't find anything on Google regarding the matter.

~~~
podperson
In the good old days, Microsoft would have called it "Microsoft Address Book",
waited a few years, then started suing people for using the term "Address
Book". More recently, they'd have called it "My Address Book" and then changed
it back to "Address Book" in Vista, breaking applications that expected to
find "My Address Book". And the 32-bit version would be in "Program Files x86"
because it's really important to segregate applications by their bitness.

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Jarred
The clean, simpleness is good, but it's looking over the wrong pond for
inspiration.

Windows 7 has a great desktop experience, and it's whats keeping me from
switching over to Linux. Gnome 3 is really close to it though, if not for the
font rendering[1], games[2], and comfortable software I would switch over to
Linux. I think Linux can do it if the people who develop software with a GUI
only work with their GUI to develop their software. This would force them to
be frustrated enough with their application to make it work, or just give up.
Either case, it's better than wasting other peoples time.

[1]: While the freetype2-infinality library tries to solve this problem, it's
not quite there yet. It's close though

[2]: Wine is a good effort, but it needs to look more like Windows 7, and less
like Windows 2000 (lots of the great UX was introduced in 7 in my opinion).

~~~
drivebyacct2
What? I'm on GNOME2 and my fonts are gorgeous. Far superior to Windows's
ClearType or my MBP's blurry rendering.

Also, not sure how the appearance of buttons plays into UX... it's not like
Wine comes with Windows 2000 or Windows 7 applications. I assume you're
referring to the visual style of the buttons. It's a very small issue that
affects people dependent on Windows applications... and besides, you can use
Windows themes in Wine... very, very easily. That feature's existed for years
and years.

~~~
Jarred
I was more so talking about Gnome 3. The titlebar fonts are generally okay,
but the way fonts are rendered in web browsers on really any desktop
environment in Linux versus how they're rendered in OS X or Windows are
considerably worse.

I'm referring to the visual style in general, there's a huge difference
between having something work and enjoying using it, and Wine is most of the
time the former, but rarely, if ever, the latter.

~~~
drivebyacct2
I guess I don't understand what you want. Like I said, Ubuntu fonts out of the
box are rendered gorgeously and I've had similar or identical rendering in
GNOME 3. Maybe it's just me, but I think these all look decent:

<http://i.imgur.com/4dGbR.png>

<http://i.imgur.com/mfyjw.png>

<http://i.imgur.com/BqOdg.png>

In fact, I would venture to guess you couldn't differentiate between Linux and
Mac OS X (the Windows one is obvious), out of those three.

Again, the "visual style" of Wine is adaptable. winecfg allows you to use the
uxtheme files that are used by Windows. There is even a uxtheme file that
makes applications run in Wine look just like native Ubuntu applications.

Wine is great considering what it is. And anyone who understands what it does,
has reasonable expectations for what it can do. They've effectively written
their own implementation of Windows APIs to the point that Team Fortress 2 and
the (current_version - 1) version of Office runs with little to no problems at
all.

I love Wine. It lets me use self extracting ZIP files, small executables,
small tools, old programs I wrote but don't have the source code for. I don't
"enjoy" using it because I'd rather use a native app... but again, I'm really
just not sure what you're expecting. It's not an emulator...

Anyone trying to use Visual Studio or AutoCAD in Linux (wine that is, I use
Visual Studio in VirtualBox for my day job) is asking to be laughed at.
Fortunately, there are half a dozen excellent virtualization technologies for
Linux... and many competent replacements for Windows tools in the Linux world.

~~~
runjake
He just doesn't like them. Get over it. People have different tastes. You
don't really need to write essays about why he is "wrong".

I think the blurryfonts in the 3 imgur urls you've provided are way worse than
what I see in Windows 7 and Mac OS X every day. They're somewhat misshapen and
smudged-looking.

~~~
drivebyacct2
Hey dude buddy friend, maybe calm down a second. He has bad preconceptions
regarding linux fonts and is nearly completely wrong about how he's
considering Wine.

And by the way, those screenshots were, in order, Linux, OS X, Windows
(default settings, font, browser zoom level, etc in each). But nice to see
that confirmation bias is still alive and well. That's the whole reason I
provided as much context as I did. I _knew_ someone would reply with a comment
like yours. Sad that I was right.

------
corbet
Reviewed in LWN back in April: <https://lwn.net/Articles/438184/>

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jamespcole
Personally i like elementary OS quite a lot, i've been a long time Ubuntu user
but i am not really a fan of the new Unity UI and wanted something nice and
light for my dev box. It feels snappier than the default Ubuntu install but
has the Ubuntu app store so i can just install any apps that i need that
aren't present in the default install. The layout is very similar to how i
usually set up ubuntu anyway so it seemed like a good option. Also being
Ubuntu based setting up a LAMP dev environment takes about 15 minutes
including the package downloads.

There are only 2 things i dislike:

1\. It looks too much like OSX, i personally prefer dark themes, so I changed
it from elementary theme to elegant gnome

2\. Midori, it feels super alphaish, it has potential but there is no way i
would have included it as the default browser considering it seems to only be
about 80% finished.

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bobbywilson0
'OS' is a bit of a stretch, it is essentially a gnome skin and a handful of
apps.

~~~
klez
Well, given your description it's an OS as much as Ubuntu is.

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sylvinus
Is this linked to Enlightenment? The "e" sure looks familiar.

~~~
mcrittenden
Nope.

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austinbirch
Not trying to be negative, as I haven't used elementary for any real amount of
time yet, but: whenever I glance at the 'e' icon it reminds me of a negative
action sign. Like a 'No right turn' road sign, or something similar. Not a
problem once you're used to it, I suppose.

~~~
ThePinion
Takes about 4 seconds to change it to whatever icon you want..

~~~
austinbirch
I'm talking more about the branding, you shouldn't really have to debrand your
OS to make it user friendly.

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dimitar
It seems to be focused on creating a few applications on its own, which are
different somehow. The GNOME project seems to have the goal of usability
(easiness etc.) but also has pretty clear criteria (etc. the dictionary
doesn't have bookmarks as in Elementary OS) I really like Gnome 3 on Fedora 15
which as always stays close to the upstream. But still more choice of
applications running on Linux to choose from is always a good thing :-).

------
mushy
Links for the uninitiated

Jupiter (stable build based on Ubuntu Maverick)

<http://elementaryos.org/>

Luna (unstable build based on Ubuntu Oneiric)

<http://sourceforge.net/projects/eosbuilds/files/>

If you get an error with nvidia graphics card with the nouveau driver like I
did, just append "nomodeset" to the boot up options. ie. click e in grub and
replace "quiet splash" with "nomodeset"

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rglover
Love the UI on this. I did a light dig through the docs but does it offer
networking support? Would love to use this on my currently Windows box to host
files.

~~~
keithpeter
I'm posting from Elementary OS using the live CD. As others have said, its
Ubuntu with a simpler GUI. So you get networking, hardware detection,
restricted drivers (i.e. it installs the nvidia binary drivers for the
graphics card on this old Pundit desktop) same as Ubuntu. But it isn't 'light'
on memory!

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p3rs3us
I have not tested the OS so i will not comment about how snappier it is, but
it just looks to me like one trying too hard to get OSx on Ubuntu. I applaud
their efforts to build apps for it but still it would have been much better if
they could have put their efforts in building something new, beyond already
existing native desktop, may be an enhanced and better tiling wm to add to
their os or something out of the box.

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arturadib
For many years I was looking for something like this, something that would be
as simple and elegant as OS X, while having a solid Unix foundation. I tried
everything, from all types of distros to my favorite distro with a hand-made
theme (Acqua-like).

Then about six years ago it suddenly hit me. I bought a Mac, and (who'd have
thought) it was exactly what I was looking for. Never went back.

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mahrain
I would like to know what Ubuntu this is based on because of driver issues I
have experienced with 11.04 and 10.10. Also, do the software repositories work
and is the shell Gnome2 or 3?

~~~
fingerprinter
10.04 LTS

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tejaswiy
Hmm, it looks beautiful and I really don't want to be a detractor, but with
the iPad, I don't really see anyone needing a minimalist desktop OS anymore.

~~~
drivingmenuts
My thought is that it makes a good jumping-off point to build a personal
programming-focused system, as long as it doesn't include Open Office or any
of the other junk that comes on a standard Ubuntu desktop install.

~~~
keithpeter
Have a look at AntiX base - essentially command line Debian 6 with the MEPIS
kernel and non-free drivers.

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ddfreyne
The address book and dictionary icons have a different perspective yet sit in
the same dock. Ack!

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JeffTheHack
check out #elementary @ freenode

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cdcarter
What is the target market for this OS? I can't figure out from their website.

~~~
eperoumal
Can't figure out the internals of the project either (how is it powered ? web
based ? etc.) Plus it keeps on giving HTTP 500 errors :(

~~~
wccrawford
About the browser:

"But unlike many of its peers, Midori is also fully native to elementary,
using the same GTK toolkit that ensures the perfect desktop compatibility and
integration found in our other apps."

So apparently it's GTK-based.

~~~
eperoumal
Wow GTK. People are still using that ?

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waffenklang
i dont understand why every new distro has to be praised by the owners as the
ultimate [lightweight|powerfull|blaaa] distro every user should use. and why
every publisher needs to praise a new philosophie in its work. Especially
those who just copy ideas from others or invent a new wheel or just make
another linux distro.

and its really the wrong direction if every developer who starts with some
more or less usefull linux applications seems to have to create a new distro
instead of making just a project to add to an existing distro.

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matmann2001
Looks like Ubuntu, with Apple's marketing scheme.

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buckwild
the download page seems to be down at the moment.

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Apocryphon
After years of Lindows and so on, finally a LinOSX.

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mkramlich
So... OS X?

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overgard
I don't really see the point of this. OSX is already a perfectly suitable OSX,
what does this add?

~~~
overgard
To expand a bit: this is obviously heavily inspired by Mac OS X (that's being
generous). Imitation is fine, but it's much better when it expands upon the
ideas that it's borrowed. This doesn't do that. So outside of giving linux a
nicer aesthetic, what does this offer?

