
Elementary OS - rcarmo
http://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2016/10/29/2240
======
greggman
I am really intruigued when people say they do most of their computer usage on
an iPad. I get massively frustrated anytime I try to do almost anything other
than consome on an iPad. As just one example trying to copy snd paste almost
anything makes me want to tear my hair out it's so frustrsting. Moving the
cursor or trying to fight with the os about what I really want to select as it
keeps trying to expand my selection, or the fact tbat I can't copy the text of
a link, only the link itself.

That's just one of many frustrstions I run into anytime I try to use ios (or
Android) for anything other than consuming and so I'd really like to know am I
doing it wrong? Is there some magic to work around these issue? Do others just
never need to do the things I need do regularly?

It's so bad I recently bought a headmountable camera to document the
frustrations in the hopes of generating some awareness of the issues because
I'd love to be able to get by with just a tablet.

~~~
legulere
You can use two fingers over the keyboard for moving the cursor on an iPad
(force touch on the keyboard with iphones)

~~~
b15h0p
But you can not select text using that method, can you?

~~~
chrisked
On the iPhone with force touch you can. You have to press again then you can
freely select. That's the only time I use force touch :)

------
butterm
I am using elementary OS for the past one and a half years, and honestly
speaking, I am in love with it. I am a long time Linux user, and whenever I
get a chance, I tell people about all the great things about Linux and why
it's better than Windows and the MacOS. But there was always one aspect of
Linux that I always felt a bit uneasy about, and this was
design/UI/UX/accessibility of the many popular distributions. I liked ubuntu
the most in this regards, but after they moved to Unity, I had to ditch it.
But then I found Elementary, and have never looked back. Elementary combines
the freedom and transparency of open source with beautiful design. I have
never seen an OS that scores high on so many different factors.

There's a lot of discussion here about the stock apps in elementary. However,
since I am an experienced Linux user, I don't really care about stock apps.
The Linux app ecosystem is extremely diverse, and over the years, I have found
my best solution for each task. For example, Clementine for music, Atom for
text editing etc. So these apps get installed immediately after every
installation of elementary and then I never look back at the stock apps again.

~~~
eyko
> and whenever I get a chance, I tell people about all the great things about
> Linux and why it's better than Windows and the MacOS.

People like this bore me to death. Let's be frank - you're just biased and
you're probably wrong, despite all your good intentions. What OS you prefer is
a matter of taste and of choice, and there's no "better" or "worse" unless
you're so narrow minded as to only measure an operating system's worth by the
features that happen to put your chosen OS ahead. These days if I was a
dedicated gamer I'd probably say Windows. In fact, after the Surface Studio
presentation, it's tempting as a creative platform.

I used one form or another of Linux on my main desktops and laptops since
2002, until 2009. In 2009 I bought a Macbook and since then I've switched to
OS X (or macOS) as my main OS of choice. I still install GNU coreutils on
macOS, and still keep a separate desktop at home with Linux on it -
appropriately named `lab` in my home network.

So, in 2016 my main laptop is a Macbook Air with macOS on which I do most of
my work, my desktop is running various flavours of linux (arch which i keep
the most updated, but also alpine, ubuntu, fedora... etc easily accessible in
grub). Don't lecture us on what OS is better, we've made a decision and it
doesn't have to be the same as yours.

~~~
AsyncAwait
> What OS you prefer is a matter of taste and of choice, and there's no
> "better" or "worse" unless you're so narrow minded as to only measure an
> operating system's worth by the features that happen to put your chosen OS
> ahead.

> Don't lecture us on what OS is better, we've made a decision and it doesn't
> have to be the same as yours.con

I would agree with that but you don't have to be so harsh, he may actually
convince people with arguments as to why Linux is actually "better" (i.e.
privacy), rather than "lecturing" them.

------
izacus
I really like elementaryOS - not for myself (need to use macOS for dev), but
pretty much all of my family was migrated to it.

It has proven to be significantly more stable and simple to use than Windows
and the default applications really nicely hit the simplicity and usability
for a user that primarily needs web, email, photos and minor document editing.
I'd even argue it's better than macOS for that user profile (especially since
it's not localized to my local language, which eOS and most of major Linux
apps are).

The fact that it actually looks good by default is nice as well.

Known downsides:

\- It's based on Ubuntu LTS (which is great!), but the new versions tend to
lag after Ubuntu LTS releases by months at a time.

\- No upgrade path between versions.

\- Releases tend to be buggy on some hardware after release.

~~~
Scea91
Not sure about the stability. I am using Ubuntu for over a year and it's way
less stable than Windows was. Sometimes I encounter crashes when suspending or
waking up. I also encounter lots of minor problems. For me the Windows
experience was definitely more polished.

Is Elementary OS significantly different?

~~~
digi_owl
Likely the big reason there is that hardware manufacturers test for Windows
and write drivers for Windows.

Damn it, there is at least one documented case of a motherboard giving a junk
ACPI return if the OS identified itself as anything other than Windows.

~~~
aidenn0
While hardware manufacturers testing on windows does explain a lot, don't
discount the massive amount of work MS put into making windows work on flaky
hardware. They really do (or at least did) seem to have the mentality of "we
will be blamed if it doesn't work, so bend over backwards to make things work"

------
pmlnr
I've been an elementaryOS user for years and I ended up dropping the whole
thing in favour of xfwm4 + synapse + tint2.

eOS is a really nice looking thing, but it's buggy, release after release it's
losing features, like [1] - this specific one was never fixed in the previous
release.

The built-on music app collapses under a reasonable amount of music, same as
banshee or quod libet can easily handle. Geary, the mail app looks nice, but
lacks basic features and has a tendency to corrupt IMAP folders.

The window manager of eOS, Gala, is indeed impressive, but lack options to
tweak. In the previous release, it was impossible to disable the ALT+TAB
effect, even if all the other effects were set to none.

So overally: it's looks nice, the window manager is fast, and if you're fine
with the defaults, you're probably going to be a happy user - until you find
something you miss, and there is no way to fix that.

[https://bugs.launchpad.net/switchboard-plug-
power/+bug/13590...](https://bugs.launchpad.net/switchboard-plug-
power/+bug/1359054)

~~~
Brakenshire
> Geary, the mail app looks nice, but lacks basic features and has a tendency
> to corrupt IMAP folders.

Geary was forked after Yorba wound down, and Elementary are moving it over to
the Evolution backend, incidentally.

~~~
ShinyCyril
Forgive my ignorance - what implications does this have? Would Evolution run
as some kind of daemon, and Geary just add the presentation layer on top?

~~~
Brakenshire
Yes, I think so. It means the Geary developers don't have to maintain IMAP etc
support, they can concentrate on the other parts of the app.

------
mavelikara
My mini Ask HN:

After over a decade of using Mac OS X, I am considering switching to Linux for
my dev laptop. The tools I worry about are those that interact with audio and
webcam - Go To Meeting, Google Hangout etc. My work involves me having to
teleconf with others often.

Does anyone here have experience using Linux well in such scenarios. If so,
what hardware are you using?

Also, does sleep-on-closing-lid work well?

~~~
metafunctor
This is why I still choose to go with Mac OS X, even if their most recent
hardware is very, very expensive.

I don't have time to tinker with compiling kernels, configuring X11, figuring
out which photo management software to use, setting up reliable backups,
getting my Bluetooth headset to work, and, yes, getting the machine to suspend
when I close the lid and wake up when I open it.

These are basics that will just work with OS X, very, very, reliably.

That said, if anyone can point me to a Linux distro (Debian/Ubuntu preferred)
and hardware that actually work reliably together, please do.

~~~
Frondo
Gosh, frankly speaking, I haven't had to do any of that stuff (except for the
Bluetooth headset, I never had one of those, no idea how it works) in _7
years_.

In 2009 I installed Mandriva on a laptop--everything just worked. In 2011, I
jumped ship to Mageia, the community-driven offshoot of Mandriva. Everything
still just worked. Fast forward several laptops later, including mine and
friends' and relations' laptops, and it all just works. Compiling a kernel?
Wouldn't know how anymore. Fiddling with X11? No idea. I don't even have
problems with Pulseaudio.

Compare that to dual booting this one with Windows 10. For several months,
Windows 10 had a bug where it wouldn't save the touchpad settings. Every time,
I'd have to disable tap-to-click. UGH. They finally fixed it, but what a pain.

(And when I had an OS X machine, received as part of payment for a job...
between the beach ball and the not-infrequent crashes, where the screen dims
and displays that fatal error message, it was a pain to get any work done.)

------
dkarapetyan
I really don't understand why developers use macs at all. They're not good dev
machines. All production systems I work with are some flavor of linux (mostly
ubuntu). There is actually a real impedance mismatch when I'm using my mac for
work purposes. All those cores and RAM become meaningless when I have to do
everything in a VM anyway. My personal dev machine is a project sputnik
running ubuntu 16.04. I can understand why designers would use them but
programmers never made any sense.

~~~
vbezhenar
1\. It's UNIX (more or less, but it's much more UNIX, than Windows), it's
familiar bash, grep, awk, etc. It also has proper and popular package manager
for command line programs (actually 2, macports and homebrew).

2\. It just works. You don't have to configure anything, every hardware part
functioning properly and it's guaranteed that this will work in the future
without any hassle. You don't have to think about drivers, kernel versions,
sleep/wake up scripts, swap. You just install OS and start to work. That's on
macs, of course, hackintoshes are more like Linux in that aspect.

3\. A lot of hardware designed for Macs. I have yet to see a device which will
claim that it support Linux. Yet almost anything will work in Mac. Windows is
better, of course, but Mac is good too. With Linux you better google it before
you buy it, and even then something might be not perfect.

4\. They are nice machines overall. Good enough quality, good casing, good
design, good internals, good service. Not best, but not much drawbacks.

5\. GUI is pretty nice and pleasant to use, there is a lot of GUI software for
macs and almost every useful Linux program will have mac port (but not the
other way). Linux doesn't have so polished user experience. Though it's not
that important for power users, but it's nice to have IMO.

~~~
stevenjohns
> I have yet to see a device which will claim that it support Linux.

I may have misunderstood this, but System76[0] specifically make 'designed for
nix' desktops and laptops.

[0] [https://system76.com/](https://system76.com/)

~~~
vbezhenar
I was referring to something like modem, audio card or gaming mouse.

System76 looks really interesting and if it works like Mac, it's awesome.

~~~
peatmoss
As others have mentioned, those System76 machines are rebranded Clevo laptops.
Thinkpad's dominance among the OpenBSD developers is a strong hardware
compatibility endorsement as far as I'm concerned.

------
bajsejohannes
> the Screenshot app knows how to obfuscate text

Wow, that's a pretty great idea. Enough people do this wrong manually that it
seems like something that could be better solved by the OS.

One example I've seen of doing it wrong is adding black opaque rectangles as
layers and then sending out all layers including the original. Another is
pixelating it in a way where it's possible to revert the pixelation since the
font is known (e.g. parts of a facebook post)

------
djhworld
I bought a 2015 MBP back in January, so I'm all set for a few years at least.
Whether OSX goes down the pan even more, I don't know.

Moving to Linux seems like a romantic idea, but I can forsee there being a
number of problems that would make it unfeasible for me

1\. I use 1Password, no Linux client

2\. Spotify client is no longer being developed for Linux

3\. YouNeedABudget software is not Linux compatible - I have 2+ years of
financial transactions in there...

4\. Google Drive, no (official) Linux client

5\. I have a number of Alfred workflows, and enjoy using Alfred in general.

Yes, there are a number of open source alternatives, but I've built up enough
inertia on OSX it's going to be very difficult for me to switch.

There are things about OSX that couldn't care less about like iTunes, Apple
Maps etc, but overall it's not so bad

~~~
jmiserez
1\. 1Password apparently works fine with WINE, but I haven't used it myself.

2\. Spotify will still receive updates for Linux, they just don't have a
dedicated Linux developer on it anymore. On my machine it still works fine.

3\. I prefer GoodBudget, which IMHO is much better than YNAB, especially when
it comes to their iOS/Android apps. The desktop client just runs in the
browser. Also, I've heard YNAB will be discontinuing their desktop apps?

4\. There's [https://github.com/odeke-em/drive](https://github.com/odeke-
em/drive), a fork of the official drive client, and it's still being actively
developed.

5\. Haven't used Alfred, but you can get some of it's features using other
tools, e.g. indexed search using Tracker, clipboard history using Diodon, and
perhaps some other things. However you are right that you can't get the kind
of polished automation Alfred seems to provide. Rather, you'll have to write
shell scripts and use the commandline tools to get what you want. Absolutely
everything is possible, but it'll feel a bit like using lots of duct tape at
first.

Note: I'm not saying you should switch right away (1). But I used Linux
(Ubuntu) full-time for work and at home for the last 5 years and I was able to
do everything with very few exceptions (2). Most peripherals that I bought
just worked out of the box. Going Linux full-time is 100% doable.

Also, with so many apps running in the browser (or on Electron) the choice of
OS matters less every year.

(1) in fact, I'll probably get a Mac myself this year for developing iOS apps.

(2) Only exception: Windows VM for Microsoft Word/Excel/Powerpoint & iTunes
for iPhone syncing. All other software ran in WINE or had a reasonable Linux
alternatives.

~~~
paulannesley
> 1Password apparently works fine with WINE, but I haven't used it myself.

I run 1Password in Wine in Docker on my (secondary) linux ThinkPad with
Dropbox sync. It works, but it's clunky. Part of that is that I don't like the
Windows 1Password application compared to the macOS one, though.

------
xaduha
Not interested in Elementary OS at all, but I do keep an eye on Solus
[https://solus-project.com](https://solus-project.com)

(Well, there's also [http://papyros.io](http://papyros.io), but I'm not
confident that it will amount to anything)

BTW, that practice of making keywords (which often repeat throughout the text)
into links (often to your own damn blog) is abhorrent.

~~~
rcarmo
It's not a blog, it's a Wiki
([https://github.com/rcarmo/sushy](https://github.com/rcarmo/sushy)), and the
blog just hangs off it. I see no damning in that - you can always either not
visit or not click :)

~~~
cooper12
Then you gotta warn us in the title that you link everything :). Just kidding,
but on a more serious note I also found it very distracting. Sure, link the
first occurrence of the word, but I see no reason macOS needs to be linked
every time it's mentioned. Even the big daddy of wikis, Wikipedia, recommends
against linking things that have already been linked and very common terms
[0]:

> An overlinked article contains an excessive number of links, making it
> difficult to identify links likely to aid the reader's understanding
> significantly. A 2015 study of log data found that "in the English
> Wikipedia, of all the 800,000 links added ... in February 2015, the majority
> (66%) were not clicked even a single time in March 2015, and among the rest,
> most links were clicked only very rarely", and that "simply adding more
> links does not increase the overall number of clicks taken from a page.
> Instead, links compete with each other for user attention."

When I, an internet user see a link, it's visual distinctiveness cues to me
that it might lead me to more information that emphasizes something. It's fine
for websites to link to their own tags, but there's also overdoing it.

[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Link...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Linking#What_generally_should_not_be_linked)

~~~
rcarmo
I'm testing out a little JS to hide all but the first link of each kind (it
makes sense for the anchors to stick around to do internal reference
counting). Will be up soon.

------
bangonkeyboard
The Mac UI ripoff issue may not matter to you, but it does to me. It's gross
and slavish, like using a KIRF Chinese knockoff phone with stolen icons.

~~~
SwellJoe
I agree. Every time Elementary OS comes up, people are like, "Finally a nice
looking Linux desktop!", and I'm over here thinking, "meh...regular old Gnome
3, as shipped with recent Fedora versions, looks nicer and more cohesive, to
me."

~~~
kuschku
Regular old Gnome3 is horrible to use with multiple screens.

Good luck running a program in full screen on your main monitor, while also
doing stuff on a secondary monitor, where you have to switch windows, open new
ones, etc.

Gnome3 is only useful on non-touch laptops, not on any other usecase.

~~~
SwellJoe
Huh...I don't think I know what you're talking about. What specific problems
have you had with multiple screens? I don't currently have my system setup for
multiple displays (I live in an RV and don't have room for that kind of
setup), but did use Gnome 3 with a second display for quite a long time. I
don't remember any problems with switching windows and such. It seemed to work
pretty much the same as Windows or macOS.

The only multi-monitor complaint I had about Gnome 3 was that opening the
Activities bar or changing apps led to both displays dimming. This makes Gnome
3 _horrible_ for presentations, screening films, or pretty much anything you'd
want to use a projector for. I'm hopeful that problem has been fixed, as I've
rarely felt so annoyed at a piece of software. Notifications were also
problematic, in that they would pop up over full screen applications (which
is, IMHO, never the right behavior...full screen apps should really be treated
as sacred, by default). But, at least notifications can be disabled. The
misfeature of screen dimming and shrinking app windows across displays could
not be disabled last time I messed with it (admittedly, a year or two ago).

 _" Gnome3 is only useful on non-touch laptops"_

Which touch features do you think are missing? Mine seems to work fine, though
I so rarely use the touchscreen that I may be missing something important. I
find touchscreens hard to use for anything more than basic scrolling, so it's
not a feature I even wanted, but it came with my laptop, and I was surprised
to see it worked fine out-of-the-box with Linux. I didn't even tweak it.

~~~
kuschku
> This makes Gnome 3 horrible for presentations, screening films, or pretty
> much anything you'd want to use a projector for. I'm hopeful that problem
> has been fixed, as I've rarely felt so annoyed at a piece of software.

That’s exactly what my issue with multiple screens is.

Still not fixed.

> Which touch features do you think are missing?

It’s not that I think touch features are missing, it’s that I think non-laptop
features are missing.

On a screen with 1440p or 2304p height, and 27" diagonal, I can afford to have
a lot of things directly in view – I don’t need to have them hidden behind
things like the dimmed activity menu.

Which, btw, isn’t very ideal for touch users either.

------
throwaway13337
A desktop linux could really grab an audience right now with the current state
of windows and the agnosticism that is common in today's applications. The
problem with desktop linux has always been that polish isn't quite there.

Things like handling gracefully video card/dual monitor, audio switching, and
sleep mode recovery end up being headaches that use up a lot of time googling
around and generally learning about stuff you shouldn't have to know.

It would be nice to see a company that specializes in a linux flavor sell a
machine that is specifically built for that OS and with high build quality.
Chromebooks are the closest thing to that but pushing a web-only interface is
a major drawback.

Are there any serious projects in this direction?

~~~
creshal
Dell comes closest with their Developer Edition, but even they aren't trying
too hard and just tell people to suck it up when e.g. the touchpad firmware is
broken.

~~~
lukeschlather
Dell is really not trying. Most laptops ship with touchpads that work fine on
Linux. Dell ships buggy, painful firmware with a premium laptop, and people
give them the benefit of the doubt because it's a "Linux problem," not their
mistake.

~~~
pritambaral
Have you seen the buggy behaviour you mention with the Developer Edition
laptops?

Their Developer Edition laptops get special treatment with regards to Linux
compatibility. At one point, the made the the company they sourced some new
touchpads from develop drivers for Linux and got it upstreamed.

~~~
lukeschlather
My company issued me one when I started a few months ago. I tried really hard
to make it work, but the thing was too buggy in too many different ways. I
finally gave up and grabbed a random old Lenovo out of storage, put an SSD,
16GB of RAM, and a new battery in it and it works great.

------
felipebueno
Interesting reading.

Since 2012, I've tried Elementary several times but I always come back to
whatever other (Debian based) distro with LXDE because there's one thing,
really JUST ONE THING, on Elementary I can't stand: the Application Switcher
(alt+tab) animation. It's slow and distracting and, even switching any and
every UI animation off, I couldn't speed it up.

I still like the project and I really want to use it as my main OS some day
(at least for 1 year or so. I'm always switching OSes)... I'll give it a try
again next month to see how things are going.

~~~
pmlnr
This, besides the no detailed window tiling, was one of my main issues as
well.

------
goodells
I've used elementary OS for a few months now as my primary development
environment. It's great to have set up in VirtualBox on 2/3 monitors, and the
fact that it's based on Ubuntu makes finding support online pretty easy for
someone not as experienced with Linux.

My biggest complaint is actually that the OS file selection interface (like
what I get opening things in Sublime Text) is not same as the fancy finder
application, but the default Ubuntu one that doesn't look consistent.

------
usaphp
Funny how everyone here in comments and author is saying "I really like
Elementary OS" but nobody really wants/is ready to use it.

~~~
Brakenshire
I've been using it for the last 2/3 years. Started using it because my
computer was old, and it was a lot faster than Ubuntu, and much more polished
(in my opinion) than XFCE or LFCE, and have used it ever since. Has worked
really well. Definitely has one or two persistent bugs, though. There was a
really annoying cursor one for a long time, and then one with window focus
which Ubuntu also suffered from. It's also annoying not to be able to do
updates in place. To be fair, I think they are often upstream issues, Ubuntu
also was waiting for that upstream focus fix for a long time. But it does mean
they're not yet fulfilling the promise of a completely seamless, polished,
Linux distribution.

For the moment, for my use case it's the best distribution, but it's not quite
at the stage where I'd want to put it on a relative's computer, and I think
given their stated aims that's the litmus test.

------
phs318u
As a slight aside. Can anyone point me to any recent work being done to get
working Linux drivers for the various Mac hardware bits that have been
problematic in the past? I'm only finding old howtos for Linux on Mac which
usually end up with some hardware or other not working. I'm specifically
interested in Linux on MacBook Air. Thanks.

~~~
cooper12
Maybe this:
[https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MacBookAir](https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MacBookAir)?

~~~
phs318u
Thank you. A great start.

------
nemo1618
I've been using elementaryOS for a few years now and just upgraded to Loki. On
the whole it has been great, but there are just a few buggy elements that
occasionally make me want to wipe the thing and start fresh with Ubuntu, which
at least I can trust to not break. Hoping that eOS continues to become more
polished.

~~~
Brakenshire
Agreed about the few buggy elements. The last version had a bug with the
cursor for about 6 months. Freya's still got the window focus bug that Ubuntu
has had for years (haven't tried Loki yet). They're waiting for upstream
fixes, but it does undermine the fundamental usability message of the
distribution. If they do manage to grow to a major distribution, they really
need to set aside a significant amount of money to sponsor upstream developers
to fix these problems in weeks rather than months.

------
gremlinsinc
Tried elementary awhile back, but I've recently gotten tired of ubuntu's
kernel, and just some errors/quirks with my hardware. So when I upgraded my
hdd to sdd/hybrid I said screw it and went with Antergos (arch linux) distro.
The gnome build is pretty beautiful, lightdm is styled very lovely, better
than ubuntu/xubuntu/lxde/kubuntu by far. My hardware performs way better with
less crashes, though I think I've narrowed that down to a bad memory chip that
I need to replace soon.

I did pull out gnome and swap it for i3wm. I recommend if you haven't tried
i3wm give it a try, there's less graphical flair, and panels -- but you gain
in performance, speed, and productivity, everything is just a shortcut away,
and the i3 config file makes adding more shortcuts even easier. Definitely
worth the time to learn.

------
ant6n
This may sound silly, but I'm mostly concerned about losing the three-finger
side-swipe to the other desktops. Is this possible with elementary OS?

~~~
matzipan
It's certainly on the to-do list, but some features related to swipe were
implemented in the GTK version after than the one Ubuntu 16.04 LTS currently
ships, so it'll take a bit more time.

I personally want that feature too.

------
adamors
Last time I tried Elementary OS it _looked_ very nice but basic stuff like
adding an HTML signature in the email client was missing.

Did they improve on this front?

~~~
insertnickname
Why would you want an HTML signature?

~~~
ikurei
Some companies will require you to use a signature with an image and
particular formatting. Also, tackiness is in the eye of the beholder.

------
matzipan
The AppCenter is the hottest development area, so there are new features and
fixes landing every day. But in the not very distant future you're going to
see the result of a lot of work:
[https://houston.elementary.io/](https://houston.elementary.io/)

There is a problem with Epiphany, namely that the webkit version that ships
with Ubuntu is long outdated, hopefully that's going to get fixed:
[https://blogs.gnome.org/mcatanzaro/2016/02/01/on-webkit-
secu...](https://blogs.gnome.org/mcatanzaro/2016/02/01/on-webkit-security-
updates/)

------
insertnickname
Loading this page with JS disabled, all the images are blurred. Loading it
with JS, there's a fancy fade-in animation on the images. What is the point of
this? Why would you intentionally distort the images for people who browse
with JS disabled?

~~~
rcarmo
It's a simple approach to lazy loading, so that you only download the images
you actually want to view on a phone as you scroll to them.

(I also pick the right kind of image depending on your display DPI, and resize
them on the back-end, but that's beside the point here)

I get a _lot_ of mobile visitors, and mobile bandwidth is expensive, so I'm
considerate to them - folk with JavaScript disabled know how to re-enable it
to view the images, and are a very minute percentage of my page views.

Sorry! :)

~~~
abrowne
FYI I also get the blurry images in Firefox's reader mode. (I had to go back
to the original to see if that was intentional when I saw the first screenshot
;-)

~~~
rcarmo
Yeah, well, that's actually JavaScript that (go figure) strips away all the
event handlers :)

------
maratc
Now I need a decent terminal (iTerm2-like quality) and a sane set of shortcuts
(like a shortcut for "Copy" that doesn't stop processes in terminal) and I'd
be all set...

~~~
CGamesPlay
This is probably the #1 reason why I still want to use mac OS every day.
Emacs-style editing shortcuts and not having to press Ctrl-Shift-C to copy
when I'm in my terminal window (alternatively, not having to remember to press
Ctrl-Shift-C _to_ copy but only when I'm in my terminal window).

~~~
Gracana
Yep, I really like this about Mac OS X. The fact that I can c-w to kill a word
anywhere or c-u to kill a line is pretty nice. And OS-level copy/paste has the
same shortcut everywhere, like you say. I think it was a mistake for Windows
and linux to use control as the default meta-character for gui operations. I
always switch it to super if I can.

~~~
kps
It is unfortunate that the ‘desktop Linux’ groups all came from Windows
backgrounds and ignored all the previous Unix windowing systems, _most_ of
which knew better than to screw up terminal emulation.

Qt has a flag to use the GUI key for shortcuts, but it's hard-wired to the
platform. I keep hoping there will be enough OS X refugees to make it a user-
configurable setting.

------
gurkendoktor
> but neither would I use a plain Gnome, KDE or Unity desktop, because I find
> them tasteless and cluttered

I've been preparing a "plan B" for my iOS developer career, and I've installed
elementary and a Fedora 25 alpha to see what's going on in Linux land. To me,
Fedora's GNOME 3 seems just as pretty and minimal as elementaryOS. It's way
less cluttered than GNOME 2. I actually had to figure out how to clutter it up
again (I want files on my desktop!).

------
staticelf
I use linux on my laptop at work. It is running Red Hat. I have many issues
and as always with Linux one of them is bad graphics drivers.

Basically every time I've tried desktop Linux (which is many times) I have
always, always struggled with graphics drivers. Even if I get it to work fine,
they always suck compared with a Windows installation. Last year I ran desktop
Linux and first I had Linux installed and ran CS:Go, I had some issues with
frame rate and when I installed Windows on the machine I got about 10-20 more
fps which made a huge difference under heavy load.

I love the idea of desktop Linux but I've come to terms last year after about
8 years of trying that it will never be as polished, as good as Windows. At
least for me as a gamer. I think a big part of the problem is that there is
just too much choices and software out there. Either it's Gnome, Unity or KDE
or 20 other window managers. Writing GUIs for Linux is hard compared to
Windows/MacOS. Small issues in many appliations, errors that show up when you
really try to replace programs with open source ones etc.

I love open source and of course I understand why things are the way they are,
it's incredible hard for a smaller open source project to compete with a
company that has lots of resources to throw at the issues.

~~~
coldpie
Just curious, what graphics hardware were you using? Intel? Nvidia? ATI? I've
used Intel and Nvidia extensively and had very few, if any, issues. Intel's
drivers are open source, integrated with Linux, and fantastic. Nvidia
performance is indeed worse than on Windows, but not enough for me to care.
ATI is a mess and has been for more than a decade. Don't use ATI if you want
to use Linux.

~~~
staticelf
Mainly nvidia, I have used their linux drivers but they just aren't as good in
my opinion. Last time I tried was with a couple of years old graphics card.

It works with nvidia, but as soon as you have multiple monitors or do heavy
gaming the faults are there and it's obvious that they don't put in the same
effort as in their windows drivers.

------
achikin
What about power management? I've heard that elementary is not as good as
MacOSX at that.

~~~
izacus
That depends on hardware (and amount of proprietary firmwares) really. On
newer Macs where a lot of things are non-standard and controlled via EFI, it's
going to be tough - same as BootCamp where Apple doesn't provide drivers for
powersaving.

On things like ThinkPads, XPS Developer Editions, etc. the battery is rather
comparable to their Windows counterparts for most cases.

~~~
achikin
Surprised to hear that Apple does not provide power management for other
operating systems. Are there any recent benchmarks for macOS versus Windows in
terms of power saving?

------
rpazyaquian
I'm seeing a whooole lot of posts about laptop hardware poorly supporting
Linux distributions in this thread. I've been considering moving to a Linux-
based laptop for basic computing once my old MBP inevitably dies a horrible
death, but these reports about poor hardware interfacing, broken features,
missing drivers, etc. is making me less interested in doing so. Is this really
such a widespread problem?

~~~
htns
If you go for an obscure distro it is. Ubuntu has good hardware support.

~~~
rpazyaquian
I'll likely go for Ubuntu just because it's the most accessible choice right
now, and the distro I'm most used to. In my case, is there a reason why I
should go to other distros? I'm mostly used to distros like Arch, CoreOS, etc.
being used for production servers and other specialized hardware over personal
computing.

~~~
htns
IMHO Qubes ([https://www.qubes-os.org/](https://www.qubes-os.org/)) is the
only desktop distro with worthwhile differentiation. Most of the other
distros' gimmicks fall under "who cares" if you just want to browse the web
and program.

------
shoover
I installed it in vmware and was surprised to see that both the installer and
the OS seamlessly grabbed and released the mouse at the window border. The
window also autosized when I changed the guest resolution. I don't recall
those features working in Ubuntu or any other VM without manually installing
vmware tools. Is that a vmware update or OS package convenience? Either, it's
smooth.

------
hackerkid
I am computer science student who have been using elementary as the primary os
for almost three years now. It's beautiful and you would never think of
switching to another linux desktop environment once you start using it. The
only major problem you would be facing would be release upgrades. You have to
do a fresh install for upgrading to a newer elementary version.

------
pippy
The quality of MacOS releases have been dropping since Snow Leopard. With
Sierra, they dropped the accessibility setting for disabling scroll inertia.
This is serious for someone who's getting RSI.

I use Elementary OS as a secondary OS, and I have to say I'm loving it more
and more while the quality of MacOS continues to drop.

~~~
jawngee
That setting is still there.

System Preferences > Accessibility > Mouse & Trackpad > Trackpad Options >
Scrolling > Without Inertia

System Preferences > Accessibility > Mouse & Trackpad > Mouse Options >
Scrolling > Without Inertia

------
t0mislav
For me, only showstopper to migrate from Mac to Linux is alternative for
iMovie and Lightroom. Any progress on this alternatives for Linux in last year
or two? What programs do I need to check?

Elementary is nice, it is also my backup OS, and I also donated some money to
them 1 year ago.

~~~
edcastro
Plenty of options there.

iMovie: Pitivi, OpenShot, KDEnlive and even Lightworks for something more
advanced.

Lightroom: Darktable, Rawtherapee and Corel Aftershot Pro.

~~~
PuffinBlue
The truth is though - there is no replacement for Lightroom. Digikam has the
file management capabilities but the editor experience is clunky (pop out
editor, edit modules require opening, no apparent easy sync of settings across
images, poor noise control) and it's not the fastest app I've used. Digikam 5
is a big improvement is some ways but the editor is still very clunky to use.

ASP is just buggy. I tried it on Debian Jessie and Ubuntu 16.04 and on both it
lasted a few days before simply refusing to open, even after install. It's
also slow, even though they claim it's faster. And it does annoying stuff like
paint its own window borders to look like a Windows app.

Darktable is the best RAW editor I've used, but it's got essentially zero file
management. Batch output requires a new mental abstraction with the 'queue'.
For volume work (hundreds of images at a time) it seems ill equipped as you
have to create a style or copy the history stack (which doesn't seem to have
an easy keyboard shortcut). I'm still working on this one as it has so much
power and control it could be fantastic, but more work needs to be done on the
_process_ of the edit or you can get stuck in the editors rabbit hole of fine
detail.

RAWtherapee - that's the next one to test for me. My initial feature check
showed it suffers some of the complaints of Darktable like no file management
(as far as I can see) and an involved edit process.

If you pair any of the above applications with gThumb you can get some of the
file management back in the most LR style I have found, but (infuriatingly)
gThumb doesn't seem to display images in subfolders for whatever reason.

My conclusions so far (as a former pro photographer) is that there is
potential in the linux world to equal and even do better that LR but it's
definitely not there yet and definitely not in one programme.

And let's not start talking about Photoshop/GIMP - which of course ISN'T
photoshop, as they keep telling us.

------
davidcollantes
Could you post the steps to get Elementary OS working on a Chromebook?
Interesting post, thanks!

~~~
rcarmo
Erm. I just installed from an SD card, because I had already removed ChromeOS
previously (in case you haven't read that bit). Unlocking your Chromebook is
highly dependent on the specific hardware, so I suggest you Google around.

------
deecewan
Does Elementary handle mutli-resolution displays better than stock GNOME? That
was a major reason for me leaving Linux. I love gnome, but I couldn't deal
with not being able to use (in a stable way) a 1080p external monitor with a
4K laptop screen.

------
Mathnerd314
> the terminal emits a desktop notification whenever it detects that a long-
> running process has finished.

Does anyone know how this is implemented?

Edit: pretty simple: [http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~elementary-apps/pantheon-
termin...](http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~elementary-apps/pantheon-
terminal/trunk/view/head:/src/PantheonTerminal.vala#L106)
[http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~elementary-apps/pantheon-
termin...](http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~elementary-apps/pantheon-
terminal/trunk/view/head:/src/TerminalWidget.vala#L259)

~~~
pritambaral
That can be achieved in any terminal emulator that visually shows the
occurrence of an ASCII bell.

For instance, all I had to do was include `\a` in my `$PS1` and now whenever a
command finishes running and bash is ready for a new command, my terminal
emulator gets a bell.

Konsole (and any Konsole based terminal emulators, like Yakuake) shows a
notification if a bell happens in a non-foreground session.

Konsole also has explicit tab-specific settings for "Monitor for Silence" and
"Monitor for Activity".

~~~
Mathnerd314
Wouldn't that beep every time you run a command? And/or interfere with any
programs that use the beep for their own purposes?

~~~
pritambaral
> Wouldn't that beep every time you run a command?

It's up to the terminal emulator to do what it wants with the beep character.
Technically, it's up to whoever has to display the character; if you're
running bash at a tty — an actual terminal — then the kernel gets to decide
what to do, so it beeps, since there is little else it could choose to do.

Terminal _emulators_ , on the other hand, know they aren't actually in a
limited environment and can do a lot more than playing a sound. That's why
there's such a thing as "visual bell" among terminal emulators. Some highlight
the tab title upon visual bell, Konsole merely sends a notification if a bell
occurs.

\----

> And/or interfere with any programs that use the beep for their own purposes?

I don't quite understand what you mean here. There isn't any way for arbitrary
programs to listen for / wait for / register callbacks for the beep.

If you're thinking about the `\a` in `$PS1` ... well, PS1 is shown only when
bash runs as an interactive process.

Also, the beep control in ALSA is muted by default.

------
antouank
I actually did the same after the Macbook pro presentation. Got Elementary OS
on my desktop to try it. Works fine so far, better UI/UX than Ubuntu for sure.

But I have some problems with the Nvidia support.
[https://elementaryos.stackexchange.com/questions/8952/artifa...](https://elementaryos.stackexchange.com/questions/8952/artifacts-
in-background) Also v-sync doesn't really work, I get lots of tearing.

The terminal is nice and the window manager is good as well. ( elementarty-
tweaks should be in there by default )

------
nanna
For me a downside of Elementary OS is that, like all Ubuntu-based distros,
I've found installing it on my apple hardware to be such a pain. Fedora-based
distros on the other hand have worked wonderfully out of the box. If I were to
advise a friend on which distro to install on their MacBook, I'd recommend the
beautiful Fedora-based Korora over Elementary OS any day.
[https://kororaproject.org/](https://kororaproject.org/)

~~~
AsyncAwait
Arch (Antergos if you want nice out of the box setup[1]) works very well on my
2015 work MBP, perhaps give it a try.

[1] [https://antergos.com](https://antergos.com)

~~~
nanna
Huh, never heard of Antergos but it looks great. Will consider it next time I
swap distros...

------
mrmondo
Just gave it a shot, great UX experience! But: for some reason it formats
/boot to ext2 which is a bad idea as it has no journaling and you're likely to
end up with a corrupt boot partition that won't boot. It's also a shame to see
it's based on ubuntu and not Debian or Fedora which both test their packages a
lot better than the ubuntu team has proven over the years.

------
partycoder
Well, many decisions behind macOS UX are certainly based on usability testing
and research, which is costly. By incorporating these features Elementary OS
is profiting for all that, so it seems to be crossing a line.

GNOME in a sense also takes a lot of inspiration on macOS but it is different.
I personally use GNOME.

Elementary OS seems great, though, don't get me wrong. I hope it helps
bringing more people into Linux.

------
bootload
_" in what I can only call a tremendously good example of how not to copy
Apple‘s mistakes, the built-in Music app looks a lot like iTunes, but without
any of the bloat._"

Not a bad writeup. For me music is via XTools->mplayer

------
fiatjaf
How do I install this thing? Will it work well on relatively old computers?

~~~
Brakenshire
It works really well on old computers in my experience. I first ran it because
Ubuntu was so slow to be unusuable on an old Core2Duo, and on that hardware
Elementary was very fast.

------
hashhar
All of the stuff he praises about Elementary is just vanilla GNOME. I mean, he
can't even recognize that Rhythmbox has looked the same for over 3 years now.

------
lingben
there is a linux OS built specifically for chromebooks called gallium OS

[https://galliumos.org/](https://galliumos.org/)

~~~
rcarmo
OP here. It does not add anything that I wanted, and I had already ditched
XFCE in favor of LXDE in the past. The point of the post was not to get
Elementary running on a Chromebook, it was to see if I, coming from a Mac,
could use it on a future desktop without issues and the usual ugly UIs Linux
DEs have.

~~~
mercurysmessage
Go to Reddit.com/r/unixporn, with some minor tweaking it's very easy to make
Linux look nice.

~~~
r3bl
Minor tweaking?

/r/unixporn crowd is always interested in posts that customize their Linux
setups to the max: use Window Managers almost exclusively, have a unified
color scheme all over the system etc. That's not minor tweaking.

~~~
mercurysmessage
I did one that took me probably 30 minutes and it looked nice in Manjaro.
Those are just nice Environments, don't have to go all the way.

------
mrmondo
No intel wireless 8000 series support = show stopper for me, why they wouldn't
include that in the kernel config I have no idea

------
ceilingscorpion
I thought it was a good OS but it does not play well with the newer HP
laptops. Sadly had to revert back to Windows 10 :(

------
ThomPete
Can this be run on the mac just like windows parallels? Would love to try it
out for some design experiments I am doing.

------
cpfohl
I really wanted to use Elementary, but couldn't get my Lenovo laptop to
connect to WiFi... Someday maybe

~~~
mr337
Lenovo and Dell sometimes have broadcom wifi which are utter crap. If you do
go down that route just order an intel wifi and replace it, normally a 5
minutes job and save hours worth of headaches.

------
jasoncchild
I've used elementary before, never encountered any major issues and quite
enjoyed the UX clone factor ;)

------
mrmondo
It is indeed quite pretty and build with UX in mind, does it have SELinux
enforcing by default now?

------
drcross
Has anyone found an alternative to OSX that can still compete to it's battery
life?

~~~
72deluxe
No, not for me. Running Windows 10 on the exact same macbook (just a reboot to
bootcamp) and I get an hour less battery. Probably something to do with
Apple's aggressive app nap?

------
OOPMan
For a second I thought this was a new OS, then I realised it was Yet Another
Ubuntu Derivative and I tuned out.

Also, that fact they're trying rather hard to get you to pay for it seems a
little...icky. Yeah, I know, just click custom amount and enter 0 but still...

------
rkv
Are there any differences between this and Debian + Pantheon?

~~~
AdmiralAsshat
A couple:

\- eOS is built on top of Ubuntu rather than Debian

\- The team doesn't officially support Pantheon outside of eOS, so you've
probably got it from an unofficial PPA that could break with the next version.

\- I don't think the Pantheon DE would get you eOS's included apps like Geary.

------
rkv
Is there any difference between this and Debian+Pantheon?

------
endgame
> It has polish and care that the stereotypical raging neckbeards who espouse
> the mantra of Linux on the desktop are unable to appreciate (or, apparently,
> build), and it has to exist, even if merely as a counterpoint to all the
> ugliness.

Please be nice :(. Some of those so-called "neckbeards" probably helped build
the stack upon which things like elementaryOS rest.

~~~
matt4077
Having an interest in design, I often feel a vibe of aggression towards the
whole endeavor coming from some elements of OSS scene that I can see being
equally infuriating or hurtful as "neckbeards". Among them are:

\- dismissal of design as a sort of thin veneer, somewhat fake, lipstick-on-
good-bacon

\- design as a kludge aimed at amateurs, to the point of preferring the worse
UI (all else being equal) so as to prove something

\- design = prettiness, and, by extensions, design being entirely a matter of
taste and therefore impossible to criticize

\- the complete rejection of any argument or evidence that cannot be derived
from any of the laws of thermodynamics, Shannon, or at least an RFC

That being said, having browsed the elementary OS website, I'm not sure if
isn't the victim of some of these errors itself. It sure seems to be a ripoff
of macOS ca. 5 years ago applied as thin veneer to Linux. Their "brand" page
may also be the first implementation of cargo-cult design.

~~~
pavanky
Firstly, I see a lot of people complaining about the design, but the matter of
fact is a lot more programmers are willing to work for free and make their
contributions open source than designers are. This was more true a decade ago
than it is now, so there is a lot of "if it works, do not break it" attitude.

Secondly, "good design" is subjective as opposed to a program that achieves
its goals. No matter what you do, you will have a substantial amount of people
hate your designs. So when people come in and tell them that the design sucks,
there are a lot of people also telling them that it is good and it works.

What needs to happen is people come up with objective shortfalls in existing
designs and let them know how that can be fixed.

~~~
pjmlp
It doesn't happen that projects like GNOME and KDE get bashed by trying to
improve the whole stack experience, by developers which only care to scatter
xterms across their screens.

This is why many of us that enjoy UI design ended up going to platforms where
it is praised.

~~~
phee
GNOME development has been mostly design driven since maybe 2008, the whole 3
era had professional designers on board since the beginning.

~~~
pjmlp
I know, and how much FOSS bashing have they received for their ideas?

~~~
phee
Definitely too much, mostly by a vocal minority of the userbase. I guess
design is not enough, you need good charismatic leaders to be able to sell it
to the community, and you need to be strong enough to not care about the
criticism.

That said, not all design is made equal, sometimes a little dose of reality
check from the community can be helpful.

------
shard972
I moved from windows 10 to ElementryOS 3 weeks ago and I haven't had the urge
to go back at all.

------
Kenji
I love how it's called Elementary OS but it's just a Ubuntu Linux with some
sugars. I already got excited about another operating system but it's same
old, same old.

------
pjmlp
Kind of interesting overview, but it doesn't support XCode nor the Objective-C
and Swift frameworks I care about.

~~~
rcarmo
Of course not. I never meant to suggest this would be a macOS replacement -
and as a former dabbler in GNUStep, let me tell you that that way wouldn't
work either.

~~~
pjmlp
I am ok with the Mac as it is, I don't see an issue with it, and actually am
looking forward to eventually being able to play with the magic toolbar from
Swift in a future acquisition.

~~~
rcarmo
Well, I've been waiting for a suitable desktop Mac for the latter part of six
years. I'm certainly not OK with the disrepair their product line is in, nor
with the value for money of the "Pro" (or, as I prefer to call them, the "Air
SE") range.

~~~
pjmlp
I don't use desktops since 2006, only laptops with docking stations.

Many of our customers follow similar patterns, I hardly see new desktops being
deployed, so I have some sympathy for Apple thinking that it might not be
worthwhile to keep doing them.

------
jroseattle
I've been looking for a replacement OS to try over macOS for a while, so I
just tried this on for size.

2-year old MBP. Created a boot disk with the Elementary ISO and started up.
Fairly snappy, connected over a USB 3 connection to a 500GB SSD.

First thing I tried to install was Google Chrome. DEBian package. Fail. Google
search for others who have tried. Found recent article, followed step-by-step.
Failed. :-(

~~~
rcarmo
I just downloaded the official Chrome .deb and did a sudo dpkg -i foo.deb.

Can't understand how that would fail, really. One thing you might try is doing
an apt-get install -f, since there might be implicit dependencies depending on
the build, and this forces apt to figure them out.

~~~
izacus
He tried to install an app on a live system running off of a read-only medium.
:)

