ElementaryOS – Thoughtful, capable and ethical replacement for Windows/macOS | Hacker News Reader

ElementaryOS – Thoughtful, capable and ethical replacement for Windows/macOS

elementary.io

104 pointsdonutshop87 comments

I fell in love with elementaryOS when I first learned about it c. 2013, and followed it closely (used to read commits weekly) for perhaps a year. It was one of the first open source projects I really loved. But I eventually went back to Ubuntu because I was newish to Linux and I needed something that Just Worked™, without the funny business.

I eventually fell out of love with elementaryOS when the team seemed to double down hard on some unpopular design decisions wrt window control buttons/behaviour, for instance.

I always felt that they had taken on more than they could chew, and all the good will of their community wasn't going to change that fact. To this day I maintain that the project should have just been Pantheon, the Desktop Environment. The team seems to have strong opinions about UX, and that's where most of that matters.

I'm not the only one who thought of that, and the team's justifications for their decision to roll their own distro never came across as strong.

I've since moved on (to macOS and Ubuntu one the side), but once in a while I browse the official sub for the latest. I've never shaken off that feeling that the really talented founders could have spent their energy more wisely.

Elementary was one of the first Linux distros I installed back in 2020. Eventually I moved on to other distros and DE’s. I was hopeful for Elementary eventually becoming THE Linux distro I would recommend people but it hasn’t happened yet, and I don’t know if it ever will.

I remember Elementary being big on UX, design, creating a universal app store for Linux, and providing a sane default type of experience. Pretty much all of that fizzled out over the past 5 years. GNOME and Plasma both leapfrogged Pantheon as a DE. Ubuntu, Debian, Mint, and Fedora are all far easier recommends over Elementary.

My outside reading: there were about 2-3 key people driving the project at that time. My understanding is that right around that time or shortly thereafter there was a falling out of some sort between two of the key people, one left, and the momentum just tanked after that. Note that this is just an outsiders perspective gained from reading blog posts from the org and watching release cadences

Elementary has been around for a long time. From what I recall, it tries to ape the Mac style on Linux the same way that KDE has been accused of aping Windows.

The original founder (Cassidy James Blaede) is now a designer for GNOME: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJq8Cq9LixE

I wonder why this is on the front page today.

It’s on the front page because Apple dropped the ball so hard with Tahoe that people are willing to entertain the thought of switching to just about anything other than macOS

It's very tempting… but first our Logitech peripherals would have to work reliably after sleep. I can put up with the other nonsense. Not being able to use the keyboard and mouse is what's preventing the home computer from being a Linux machine.

I have experienced none of those specific issues myself, yet I still feel like you have described my overall Linux experience perfectly

It's baffling. If you move the dongle to another USB port things work again. But!, the dongle can never go back to that same port. So after 4 sleeps we run out of ports and have to hard shutdown with the power button.

OP probably had to update Windows today.

It's a weird world where KDE out of the box is more usable than Windows.

I gave the wrong laptop to my mother a few months back and she only told me when she finished banking that the windows menu looked funny (Like the hacker one you put on the family computer when you were 12.) it was KDE. Usually she asks for help at least once on windows for getting the wifi connected.

The year of desktop Linux was 5 years ago and we didn't even notice.

/r/thathappened

She had an account on the wrong laptop?

All my pcs have a locked down guest/guest account which gets nuked on logout.

Go back to reddit

That is such an awkward comment and not really worthy of hn. Have you never logged into a bank website?

One of the two founders. The other one is Danielle Foré, still running the project.

IIRC ElementaryOS had the distinction of using mostly Vala/Genie for development of distro specific software. Is that still the case?

They certainly still recommend it. Too bad the evolution & development of Vala itself has stagnated mostly.

IMHO they missed the boat - they should have pushed Objective C and later Swift. Lots of Mac / iOS developers were curious about Elementary when it was new.

They forked off from Gnome, and thus used Gobject/Gtk, which probably wouldn't fit so well with Objective C & its decendents…

Last time I tried it there was no way to upgrade between versions. One had to reinstall the os to upgrade.

But maybe this changed.

This too is the blocker for me using it on the regular.

> We review all AppCenter apps to ensure they’re properly using permissions

Who is "we?" How is that team selected? Are their decisions public? What is the review or appeal process like?

“We” is just our developer community. Folks that have write access to our git repos.

We manage AppCenter reviews as pull requests to a public git repository: https://github.com/elementary/appcenter-reviews

There’s some more documentation for developers here: https://docs.elementary.io/develop/appcenter/publishing-requ...

Isn't it a bit misleading to compare this to Windows or macOS, when it is actually Ubuntu with a preinstalled window manager, like Gnome or KDE, and it just looks a little like macOS out of the box? From the web-site I couldn't tell why I would consider it over established options like Linux Mint. To qualify as a replacement I would expect it to run native binaries. LibreOffice for example is a replacement for Office as it can handle xlsx and docx etc.

I'm not sure if anything about this has changed since I last tried ElementaryOS an unknown number of years ago, but one of the issues I remember encountering was that applications that weren't built-in had inconsistent styling. I think you get a better more consistent and featureful experience just by using KDE.

Even the list of applications on AppCenter is woefully limited, compared to using Flatpack and being able to access the full repertoire of Linux Desktop applications.

Isn't that just a Linux problem, where someone could be using GTK or Kirigami or Iced for widgets?

Most Mac developers use Cocoa/SwiftUI, so they get whatever widgets the UXEs at Apple have produced. Adobe famously did their post-2000 UIs in Java, so they have a nonstandard design system; you can tell they don't use Cocoa just by looking at their apps.

Since there's no Apple to make an official toolkit for Linux, each developer uses whatever he wants, which means this app might use the GTK Save button, whereas that one uses Kirigami.

You can tell the Adobe UI isn't native but it's actually pretty good. In fact, I believe they had the right call since Apple frameworks are too limiting for complexe software like that and they needed the cross-platform compatibility anyway. Serif does the same with their suite of Apps and it's fine as well. Blender is custom as well...

Apple aficionados tend to get worked up about it (and I used to be this type) but they need to understand that there is always a necessary power balance to maintain, and going all-in with Apple tools is not a very good decision for a large software. They have proven time and time again that they will just mess up stuff when it suits them and companies with such big software endeavors cannot submit totally to the Apple agenda.

And even as an end user I would argue that UI uniformity is not very relevant, how the software works / what it allows is much more important. Relying too much on Apple software is also a losing strategy, as they have shown with Aperture and their office suite, they have basically rewritten from scratch every time with a newer incompatible format creating a lot of headaches and somehow managing to take years to give back functionality that existed before.

Apple focuses way too much on looks at the expense of many other properties (as they have shown again recently with the Liquid Glass) and its basically fashion at this point. And since Apple cannot cater to every single use case, plenty of devs end up having to work up a custom UI on top of their framework, so if there is a complexe use case, you might as well cut the middle man from the get go...

Cannot recommend. The software center immediately broke itself into a loop of god-knows-what error that rendered itself unable to update the system. The system generally suffered from poor usability as well. Cannot comment much further because I didn't use it very long. I paid $20 for it and wish the project well, but it's a pass from me for the time being.

Similar issues here with software center. There are some updates that continue working fine, but I'll often have to drop to the command line and use apt to do the full system update... which is not very "elementaryOS-like", when you consider how much it focuses on usability and UI and making a system where users won't need the command line.

EDIT: Tried again today, and the specific error I get when trying to update via Software Center, which then prevents any further updating:

http:// archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jammy-updates/main amd64 libsmbclient amd64 2:4.15.13+dfsg-0ubuntu1.8 is not (yet) available (404 Not Found)

I've mostly stayed on elementaryOS 7.x, which is actually the best Linux I've ever tried for my use case. It's the closest Linux to what I would like my computer to feel like, and for a while I was running it almost as a daily driver for about 50% of my work (with Windows / mac for the rest). But the elementaryOS 8.x series was far too buggy on my system, even the dock was unusable for too long (though apparently now resolved). Having to reinstall the OS with each major version is awkward too, even when I run my Linux installs off a USB stick for easy switching.

I recently installed it on a 13 year old old MacBook, haven't had any issues.

I am still a sponsor or elementary and used it for years, and often the first few months are fine until you hit a wall or need to upgrade it. recently switched to Fedora and have been much happier.

> often the first few months are fine until you hit a wall or need to upgrade it.

This is a common theme with Ubuntu and every Ubuntu-based distro - they all eventually break when doing updates.

Eg: https://ounapuu.ee/posts/2025/02/05/done-with-ubuntu/

This seems like a great OS to install on a child's computer

Years ago I installed it on my sister's computer as Windows replacement. She was initially happy but soon started to complain that it was hard for her to use, apps would freeze and graphic artifacts would remain on the screen in similar way as on XP once. In the end we went with Xubuntu because we thought that reinstalling as "upgrade" is not worth it.

It's a stop-gap for those who were using OSX and not a permanent solution, or something for people who want to try Linux but want a really easy way. But then, there are better managed and newbie friendly distributions already.

What makes an OS great for children?

I guess the 'Screen Time & Limits' app featured prominently further down the page.

Elementary OS is stuck in 2011, offering limited customization options. I remember having hard time adding desktop icons. These days, much superior distributions are available. Examples include Mint, EndeavourOS and Fedora...

But are any of those "aggressively queer"? Didn't think so.

Checkmate, Linux users

Even as a happy Linux user and gay person, I have to admit that much of GNOME's design philosophy is queer to me.

Customization is great, but what's even better is when the defaults are just perfect to begin with...

Oh I remember using this years ago. It was pretty good. My memory always confuses it with enlightenment which had fancy compositing on a crappy computer in the early 2000s which I loved it for.

Did Elementary change designer?

This version seems to have flaws I didn’t see in the old announcements. Spacing and padding are a bit inconsistent and sometimes a bit strange. Font sizing can be weird and alignment is hit and miss especially when icons and text are involved.

Clearly these are details but I’m wondering if they lost man power on these points. I still greatly appreciate the project ambition and am impressed by what they have managed to achieve.

Serious question. What does the project mean by ethical replacement?

The main webpage makes no further declaration around it for deeper understanding. Nothing in support pages or in developer resources. Anyone else familiar with the project that could describe why that needed to be called out?

"I happen to own a little open source software company that is expressly anti-fascist, has a “No AI” policy, and has recently been called “aggressively queer” in case you’re interested in supporting tech companies like that:"

https://mastodon.social/@danirabbit@mastodon.online/11535606...

Probably a dig at DHH given the tremendous growth and popularity of Omarchy. He's being attacked for "being a nazi" by the usual suspects.

It's been there for at least 4 years so I would think not

https://web.archive.org/web/20210902014243/https://elementar...

I stand corrected!

What's a popular rolling release distro that's fairly stable, but also modern, for my dad's computer? He just wants a good balance of "things won't break" and "things will get updated".

Ubuntu is ok, but maybe pop!OS or something else is better for him?

Fedora Kinoite https://fedoraproject.org/atomic-desktops/kinoite/

I really do think that immutable distros are the future especially if you want something that don’t break. And imo KDE is arguably the best DE right now, that is if you believe DEs should follow the WinNT era UX principles.

But there is a version with GNOME too or Cosmic

https://fedoraproject.org/atomic-desktops/silverblue/

https://fedoraproject.org/atomic-desktops/cosmic/

Isn't the state (apps' data in this case) the biggest problem with updates of any kind? State can't be immutable and is the easiest to break.

I can certainly see how containerizing apps and using "layered" FS solves a class of problems, but I highly doubt this alone would be incentive enough for the major OSes to go that way. I do agree it would be neat to see such developments, though.

Been rocking Kinoite for 2 years now - several major Fedora release upgrades, and zero breakage. I do weird stuff in my "pet" containers (using distrobox), and I love how my base system remains indestructible no matter how much I goof around.

Immutable is indeed the future. The moment a user installs something on a traditional mutable OS, it's configuration/environment drifts from the "base", making any system update or application install a potential conflict. After you install something on a traditional mutable OS, there's often no way to get back to the base without a OS reinstall (programs don't clean up after themselves, they change system settings, environment, more/worse).

Immutable operating systems solve this by having an immutable base image. Everyone running, for instance, Kinoite 42.20251011.0 all have exactly the same base. Users then can "layer" applications on top of the base image, sort of like a dockerfile. If something breaks, you just remove that application (layer) and it's like it never happened. Everyone having the same exact base image also means updates can be much more thoroughly tested, and confidently rolled-out to users.

Note, "Immutable" doesn't mean you can't save files or install things - it just means you cannot mutate the base OS image. There's always a "known good configuration" to go back to.

You're also encouraged to use "pet" containers for things like development - where you will install all sorts of weird system packages, libraries, tools, etc. without fear of polluting or breaking your system.

An immutable system + pet containers means your system will always be stable. Really neat.

That sounds great. How well does the base OS + "pet" containers work with all the crazy dependencies you need to do modern ML work, e.g. some exact combination of nvidia drivers + CUDA + torch + other random stuff? That's the pain point I'd be motivated enough to solve that I'd switch distros.

Your "pet" containers basically become your traditional OS, in a way. They use filesystem overlays, so your container can see all of the files on your system, plus it's own layered files, ie. each container has it's own "view" of the filesystem.

You can install anything inside your "pet" containers that you would normally install on your actual system. The container keeps everything tidy and self-contained. I have a container for development, another for music/DAW, another for certain games that needed weird deps.

Fedora Kinoite/Silverblue come with `Toolbx`[1] preinstalled, but I found `distrobox`[2] to be more flexible for my needs. I layered distrobox onto my base image, and it just works.

Many GUI apps are available via Flatpaks, and can be installed directly or via the Software Center. You can enable Flathub[3] as a source, so there's a ton of available software, including Steam, Chrome, Firefox, Discord, Spotify and more. Flatpaks are also sandboxed and self-contained, so they can't pollute/break your system either.

[1] https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora-silverblue/toolb...

[2] https://distrobox.it/

[3] https://flathub.org/en

nvidia drivers are annoying since Fedora doesn’t distribute them. But once installed it works well enough.

Thanks! I do love KDE, it's my daily driver.

Exit: OK immutable looks really interesting, thank you.

Immutable is promising and Kinoite great but just heads up that since it's Fedora based you still have their major-release-upgrade cycle to follow.

There are rolling immutable/atomic distros but Kinoute is not one.

FWIW, Kinoite will auto-update itself (the base image gets an update nearly every day).

While Fedora technically isn't a rolling release distro, it is very "bleeding edge" and it's major release cycle is quite frequent. With the Atomic (Immutable) flavors, major releases are an easy upgrade - just click the "Upgrade" button then reboot without fear of anything breaking.

I put Zorin OS on my dads old laptop 5 years ago and I think the only time I got a question was when someone setting up his new internet was digging through network settings but hadnt used any Linux distro before. Even then it was a 5 min call. Its a very Windows-like experience and I've noticed most parents really just write an email, browse the web and maybe consume media. All of those can occur in a browser.

I’ve been daily driving Linux Mint for about 4 years. It’s usable and stable with standard software packages and can also be tweaked in the Linux way if you so need it.

Another person mentioned Ubuntu if coming from Mac. I haven’t considered it before but they’re probably right.

I was using Mac at home, but Windows at work. So moving to Mint was easy.

Ubuntu was OK on high performance hardware but when they introduced snaps nothing worked so I moved to Mint.

HTH

Also recommend Mint, but it's not a rolling release like OP asked.

Hm that's interesting as an alternative to Ubuntu, thanks!

Are you sure he wants a rolling release?

If so, then Manjaro.

If not, I always say:

From Windows? > Mint.

From MacOS? > Ubuntu.

The answer is almost always one of those two for non-technical people.

Basically he doesn't bother updating his computer, so I want something that will auto-update to fairly modern versions, that's why I mentioned stability as a requirement.

What's wrong with rolling release?

I would say rather "are regular updates really necessary"? Personally, I'm not sure they are (for most users). To paraphrase Debian, there's a lot of value in stability.

Manjaro is a mess. EndeavourOS is similar (both are Arch derivatives) but less breaky and something I'd recommend more.

My two recommendations would be openSUSE Tumbleweed or EndeavourOS. In particular Tumbleweed is underappreciated around here I think.

BTW, what makes you look for rolling-release distro specifically?

Ubuntu and pop are not rolling release. Neither is Fedora.

Basically my dad never upgrades his computer, I have automatic updates on but OS upgrades aren't done automatically, so I wanted rolling release to get past that. What's the issue with rolling release?

Makes sense since there won't be any release-upgrade process every 6/12/24/whatever months. You'll still have obviously have updates though.

Asking since none of the examples you were considering are actually rolling, it wasn't clear what you're after.

Yes but those updates can be automated, right? I'm just trying to avoid the release update.

Sure and sounds reasonable. Then you will have to force reboots Windows style - having the same old kernel running for months or years on an online desktop can be hazardous if he never shuts it down.

If he comes with such requirements then I'd stick with LTS releases as system base and flatpak programs to keep stuff updated frequently. And if he wants a familiar to Windows environment then Zorin would do the trick out of the box.

Fedora isn't a rolling release but updates pretty often.

Rolling release & stable are mutually exclusive…

GP probably means stable in the sense of "not buggy" as opposed to "won't change".

But more change always leads to more bugs, because more new bugs are introduced, and there is less time to fix them.

Yes, exactly. A lag of a few months is fine if it means the software doesn't have huge bugs.

openSUSE Tumbleweed sounds like it would fit the bill. It's both rolling and has the benefit of having btrfs/snapper support baked in by default, so it's super easy to roll back anything if it breaks.

Interesting, thank you, though I'm a bit wary of btrfs.

I was going to make the same recommendation.

I find the description of the project to be patronizing. "Just the apps you need"? How do you know what I need? What about the battery life I need, or the excellent touchpad support that I need? Most distros drop the ball on those fundamental things.

These seem to be the major related threads. Others?

Elementary OS 7 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34598987 - Jan 2023 (92 comments)

Elementary OS 6.1 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29627193 - Dec 2021 (142 comments)

Elementary OS 6 Odin - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28130560 - Aug 2021 (319 comments)

Elementary OS 6 beta - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27001736 - May 2021 (69 comments)

Cheers to 10 Years - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26658317 - April 2021 (77 comments)

Elementary OS 5.1 Hera - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21719028 - Dec 2019 (190 comments)

Elementary OS – Fast, open, privacy-respecting replacement for Windows and macOS - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18472018 - Nov 2018 (421 comments)

Elementary OS 5 Juno Is Here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18236240 - Oct 2018 (15 comments)

Switching from macOS: Developer Environment - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12877045 - Nov 2016 (172 comments)

Switching from macOS: The Basics - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12853531 - Nov 2016 (593 comments)

Elementary OS - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12830761 - Oct 2016 (386 comments)

Elementary OS Loki 0.4 Stable Release - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12465763 - Sept 2016 (63 comments)

Elementary OS Freya Released - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9361477 - April 2015 (87 comments)

Elementary OS 0.3 “Freya” is released - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9359722 - April 2015 (62 comments)

Elementary OS Freya Beta 2 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9049592 - Feb 2015 (43 comments)

Myths about ElementaryOS - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7864397 - June 2014 (53 comments)

ElementaryOs Luna released - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6193148 - Aug 2013 (296 comments)

Elementary OS - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2781891 - July 2011 (79 comments)

Elementary OS - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2091736 - Jan 2011 (15 comments)

I am wondering why no one is using the wonderful LLM coding tools to cut branches of open source apps rewriting them for consistent UI. From my experience with them so far this is a task that they would be really good at especially if the underlying codebase has decent test coverage.

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