Thoughts about Elementary OS

[Welly Wu]

Yesterday, I gave away my 2013 Lenovo IdeaPad Y510 notebook PC to my close friend Robert W. because I already gave him my 2012 System76 Lemur notebook PC a few years ago and it is slowly dying. I now own one PC and it is my 2015 ZaReason Zeto desktop PC system. I own VMWare Workstation 11.1.0 64 bit for GNU/Linux and I chose to download the Elementary OS "Freya" 64 bit ISO and I installed it. I am not trying to sound like a staunch critic, but it does not impress me. Let me elaborate my opinions.

It is too focused on design language and style and it lacks substance in terms of unique features or capabilities that represent true game changers within the FLOSS or GNU/Linux ecosystem
Major version upgrades are glacial and there is no published release cycle because it is still in its teething stage of development
Custom written from scratch software applications lack depth in terms of information density and they lack tight integration with established services from multiple software vendors
A lot of the core Ubuntu software packages, libraries, and dependencies have been stripped out or reduced thereby requiring Ubuntu users to hunt down each one to download and install on an as needed basis
It requires a fair bit of work to get it up to my own standards of usability especially with regard to third party, closed source, commercial, and proprietary software products that I paid for which are compatible with Ubuntu
It's too spartan and simple to be useful enough for daily usage
The notifications system is nothing new under the sun and this is a hindrance compared to Microsoft Windows 10 or Apple Macintosh OS X Yosemite and future versions
The applications menu hides important Ubuntu features and capabilities for the sake of simplicity
Customization options are limited and they are not finely granular
The new firewall system is very basic and it is difficult to create and control specific UFW firewall policies
LibreOffice is not installed by default
The files application is too rudimentary and it lacks advanced features to manage and sort folders and files especially on desktop PCs with multiple internal and external disk drives
Midori is not as popular as Mozilla Firefox or especially Google Chrome web browsers
There are too few add ons, extensions, widgets, etc. to extend features and functions beyond the desktop environment and window manager
"Freya" now uses an old mainline Linux kernel version
The X.Org stack is also an older version too
The documentation is too thin and it shows the brevity of its design user interface
The Elementary OS community is too small
There is too much hype surrounding Elementary OS to justify its popularity and position

These are just some of the things that I have to nitpick about Elementary OS "Freya" 64 bit at this time.

[kerry_s]

your a power user, your going to demand more no matter what your using.

elementary is simple, it's something you can use right off the back or use as a base to get what you want.
under it's all ubuntu 14 base, anything you would do in ubuntu you can do in freya.

add elementary tweak & you can swap out what ever you don't like, you can twist & tweak the hell out of it.

at 1 point i swapped the top panel for xfce4-panel, just to have a customizable top panel. it's not so locked down so you have options, like xfce4 all the parts that make the desktop are different apps.

ubuntu unity, you can't do anything, cause the whole desktop is a compiz extension, you can add to it, but not replace.

you like it or you don't, plenty of choices out there to choose from.

[Welly Wu]

I just installed Elementary Tweaks and it is still not enough for me. I guess I am an Ubuntu power user at heart. Elementary OS "Freya" 64 bit seems to be nice, but it doesn't get the job done for me. I will continue testing it this weekend, but I think that I am going to download OpenSuSE 13.2 64 bit GNU/Linux and give that a go this weekend. That seems to be the ideal GNU/Linux distribution for me.

[kerry_s]

I just installed Elementary Tweaks and it is still not enough for me. I guess I am an Ubuntu power user at heart. Elementary OS "Freya" 64 bit seems to be nice, but it doesn't get the job done for me. I will continue testing it this weekend, but I think that I am going to download OpenSuSE 13.2 64 bit GNU/Linux and give that a go this weekend. That seems to be the ideal GNU/Linux distribution for me.

i'm not sure i get you, why's it not enough ?
you can install anything that's in any other distro.


i'm adaptive & swap distro's all the time, i teach friends who are just starting with linux. i let them pick what they want to use, i install it on my netbook walking them through the install. i just helped a friend with a standard ubuntu install, so i'm on unity now.

before this unity install, i was on debian testing via there net installer, before that xubuntu, before that ubuntu mate, before that elementary freya, etc....

so i get around i'm not picky, i can make them all do what i want. i usually keep what ever is installed for a while in case they facetime with questions.

my main choice right now is xubuntu, it just works perfectly on this hp-mini 210-1010nr netbook,

[Welly Wu]

OpenSuSE 13.2 64 bit installed correctly, but converting it to Tumbleweed 64 bit was a failure. I deleted it.

Elemenatary OS "Freya" 64 bit is too simple for me. It's not interesting at all. I am not saying that I don't like it, but it does next to nothing for me. I thought that I would like a GNU/Linux distribution that closely resembles Apple's Macintosh OS X, but I have access to an Apple MacBook Pro 13" notebook PC and I think that it is a toy in direct comparison to GNU/Linux. Elementary OS "Freya" 64 bit is a clone that lacks the Apple technologies and it is hollow in direct comparison. That is all.

[kerry_s]

so your looking for something flashy or just new ?

http://distrowatch.com/ is my place to look for distros.

i was going to try "deepin (#20)' & 'ultamate (#52)" when i get a chance.

[Welly Wu]

I successfully installed Linux Mint 17.2 "Rafaela" 64 bit GNU/Linux using VMWare Workstation 11.1.0 64 bit GNU/Linux. It just works. While I do like some parts of Cinnamon, it is not my preferred desktop environment and window manager. I have had reliability and stability issues with previous versions in the past. However, I am willing to give the latest version of Linux Mint another try to test it. I am going to play with Elementary OS and Linux Mint in depth this weekend. No more guest virtual machines for a bit of time. Linux Mint is more like the GNU/Linux distribution after my own heart.

[mystics]

I thought about trying out elementary a few months ago when Freya released. The thing is, the website confused me. All I saw were payment options without a clear "I don't want to donate right now" option similar to Ubuntu. Having thought that it would be free to use, I decided to search around and eventually came across an article that was reporting on a blog post by one of the people working on elementary explaining the website design. So while I found out it was possible to just put 0 into the "Custom" option (for some reason, that didn't cross my mind at the time), I also found out that the website had been designed rather deliberately to hide that option and that the creator had complained about people cheating because a vast majority of them downloaded elementary OS for free.

In the end, I decided I didn't want to upset the developer by being among those people downloading it for free. But I'm not really in a position to just throw money at stuff I want to try out without knowing if I'll stick with it, so I ended up not giving it a good try. I guess if I ever really am in the mood to try out those aesthetics, I'll just work at emulating them as closely as possible in Xubuntu, which already has the icon pack, or install the pantheon desktop environment.

[montag dp]

I thought about trying out elementary a few months ago when Freya released. The thing is, the website confused me. All I saw were payment options without a clear "I don't want to donate right now" option similar to Ubuntu. Having thought that it would be free to use, I decided to search around and eventually came across an article that was reporting on a blog post by one of the people working on elementary explaining the website design. So while I found out it was possible to just put 0 into the "Custom" option (for some reason, that didn't cross my mind at the time), I also found out that the website had been designed rather deliberately to hide that option and that the creator had complained about people cheating because a vast majority of them downloaded elementary OS for free.

In the end, I decided I didn't want to upset the developer by being among those people downloading it for free. But I'm not really in a position to just throw money at stuff I want to try out without knowing if I'll stick with it, so I ended up not giving it a good try. I guess if I ever really am in the mood to try out those aesthetics, I'll just work at emulating them as closely as possible in Xubuntu, which already has the icon pack, or install the pantheon desktop environment.It seems a little unrealistic to expect people to donate before even trying it, especially since it's still a 0.x release.

I did try it once, and it seemed nice. It definitely looked nice, but there wasn't anything there that I couldn't already do with a number of different distros, so I didn't really see the point.

[Welly Wu]

I do not think it is even possible to enter $0.00 USD and download the Elementary OS "Freya" ISO file from their website any longer. I tried it a few days ago and they require payment to download the file. So, I visited a website to download the torrent and I got it installed. The Elementary OS team was interviewed on Jupiter Broadcasting's The Linux Action Show a few months ago and the interviewers specifically questioned and addressed the controversy surrounding fair compensation for Freya and the choice of language used on the blog describing the freeloaders as "cheating" the small team of developers. I think that the Elementary OS team is misguided. They put out a FLOSS technology that is fairly popular, but it is quite limited in terms of its functionality and they expect payment from their users which is reasonable, but they designed their website and payment system to be the antithesis of the FLOSS philosophy and spirit. I think that they are a bunch of young men that are technically competent, but they lack communication etiquette and strong business acumen. That said, I will continue to use Elementary OS "Freya," but I hold my own reservations based upon what I see.

Linux Mint 17.2 "Rafaela" 64 bit is much better and closer to my expectations of a modern GNU/Linux distribution that caters to both new and power users alike. Cinnamon 2.6 has improved and there have been important bug fixes, but my concern is that Linux Mint locks the Linux kernel in place which presents security challenges in the long term future. This is the inherent security flaw of Linux Mint which is why I do not use it as my primary desktop operating system on my ZaReason Zeto desktop PC system.

I will give OpenSuSE 13.2 64 bit GNU/Linux a third try to install and use it again later today. This is truly the kind of distribution that is after my own heart. It is designed for system administrators and power users alike. The YaST2, Open Build Service, One Click Install, etc. features along with Tumbleweed project make it truly unique. I had problems with the conversion to Tumbleweed so I have to stick with the vanilla OpenSuSE 13.2 64 bit version by using the default software repositories. I'll work on this project later after I eat lunch with my friends in a few minutes at their apartment.

[Bucky Ball]

Note: Elementary OS can be downloaded from their site free of charge by using the 'Custom' option for payment and entering $0.00. There is no need to torrent from a third-party, as suggested.