You would be the perfect candidate to give Linux a go to be honest - works very similarly to MacOS (both Unix-based) and you can even customize, say Ubuntu to look pretty similar.
There are even Distros that come "Mac-Like"such as ElementaryOS
I believe the telemetry stuff was backported to 7, someone correct me if I'm wrong.
And Mac is closer to Linux than it is to Windows. I mean, for the most part you're not going to know that unless you're the type to open a terminal, but it is maybe something if you're in tech.
If you're looking for something a little easier to use with a clean UI out of the box, you could check out ElementaryOS.
Yeah, KDE is not perfect and there is a long road ahead. But compared to other projects, even Gnome, it's by far the most promising player. But please, focus on new developers more. T
he docs are written like a wiki. Consider creating something like this https://developer.elementary.io/ and especially this https://elementary.io/docs/code/getting-started#git something written in more "digestible" form.
Elementary is focusing on developers a lot recently and while it seems not important from the point of view of the "veteran" KDE devs, I think KDE would make a huge mistake if it ignores the new developers.
So, updated docs, more digestible and easy-written getting started guide and perhaps a few video tutorial of creating a simple text editor and perhaps simple widget would be great.
A well thought out and prepared 20 or 30 minute video would be great.
Maybe even showing how to use KDevelop instead of QtCreator.
And the most important thing is to use a simple language and not to advance and in depth explanations.
Example of what I mean: "Remember how when we compiled our code, we used the valac command and the argument --pkg gtk+-3.0? What we did there was make use of a "library". If you're not familiar with the idea of libraries, a library is a collection of methods that your program can use. So this argument tells valac to include the GTK+ library (version 3.0) when compiling our app."
Experienced programmers will jump to docs, you need to think just about the beginners. Just my 3 cents.
Maybe elemenary os^1 ? Currently the most eye candyish distribution I think. Gnome looks also pretty simple, but it is a bit different than windows or os x, so she has to get into new habbits there. Or the most common solution, ubuntu, easy as hell, nothing to say there
elementary employs 2 people full time, one person part time, runs a bounty program, and kicks money upstream as much as we can afford to. We also maintain over 90 Open Source projects several of which have their own downstreams including Xubuntu, Deepin, and Pop!_OS to name a few. I don’t know where you get the idea that we put out a product that is mostly others’ work, but this is entirely incorrect. We provide a desktop environment, a number of apps, libraries, services, etc.
The vast majority of people do not pay anything at all for elementary OS, and as of such we do not have the money to hire any more staff than we currently have. The employees that we do have make far below market rates
I have 2 hard drives. One is windows for nothing but gaming and a couple windows only programs. And one for linux. Modern linux is as easy to use as android. I like elementary os. It's free https://elementary.io/
I mean, it’s not a direct democracy but it is Open Source. You can file issue reports, make comments, make pull requests, get involved and lobby for your ideas. There’s no guarantee that people will want to do what you want them to, but anyone can participate. I would like to think we’re reasonable folks and we take our users’ feedback seriously and try to build things based on problems our users express having.
But I also wouldn’t call elementary OS common. We maintain like 90 Open Source projects right now including a complete DE, a suite of default apps, and a few libraries. We also contribute to upstream projects and libraries and have a number of downstreams of our own (including Xubuntu, Deepin, and more). And then on top of that we maintain Valadoc.org, our own developer documentation, and the whole of the AppCenter server infrastructure which now has 100 new Gtk+ third-party apps. There’s a lot going on here, it’s not like we throw GNOME on [insert distro here] with a different wallpaper.
No, absolutely not. /u/Tired8281 is likely referring to a blog post about paying for software from a few years ago that was extremely poorly worded, but they have since clarified their position and corrected the language.
elementary OS is a legit distribution, based on Ubuntu LTS (currently 16.04, with the next version based on 18.04). Check it out at elementary.io.
It's legal according to the GPL license.
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#DoesTheGPLAllowMoney
After all, you'll be selling the hardware, the software just happens to come with it. But you can sell the software if you desire.
You do need permission to use the elementary trademark though. There's some rules you have to follow, such as not modifying the OS before selling it.
https://elementary.io/brand
Shameless elementary OS plug!
We have a page on our website with lots of links for people who want to get involved. If you’re looking to do some programming I would definitely check out the “Bitesized” bugs.
Also feel free to join our community Slack. Several of us hang out there and quite a few of our third party developers do too. It’s becoming a fairly active place to get help with Vala.
Yeah, elementary OS (if you want to download it for free, put $0 as a price "you want to pay") might be great for him, if he likes Apple-like interface. If not, any Ubuntu-based distribution will be good as well.
I've been a Mac user my entire life (since the Macintosh 512KE).
If someone put a gun to my head and said I had to use something other than macOS, it'd be Linux, never Windows.
I'd go with this one: https://elementary.io
You're to be credited for thinking constructively about improving elementary.
IMO version 5.0 is a good move. It represents a mind-shift that elementary IS ready for the big-time. The average MacOS or Windows user is going to baulk at switching wholesale to something versioned 0.4.1 - but they aren't going to have any issue with something versioned 5.0. Yes, the jump is big now, but it's warranted.
Minimise button: I struggled with this to begin with when I first moved across from Windows. But you will learn that there are better ways. Chief among them are workspaces. This is a really quick, but useful, overview: https://elementary.io/docs/learning-the-basics#workspaces
Desktop icons: I have to agree with you here. I still long for a desktop full of shortcuts and icons!
Adding a few extra apps: I think everyone in the elementary community is working toward this! The developer experience is really good though. The team have done a great job at building an ecosystem around making it easy for a developer to build, deploy, and maintain an app. I have been waiting for Juno, and I have 2 apps that I'm working on to be added to the AppCenter as soon as I can. I'm sure there are many others that have apps waiting in the wind.
> There are many people that would love to get an alternative to windows (That isn't linux)
> I actually consider switching to linux even though it has some bad stuff.
What bad stuff did you experience? Would be interesting to know, as there's plenty of variance and different experiences.
Well, define what you want in a good looking distro. As others have said the desktop environment is what makes a distro look good, but you haven't defined what looks good to you.
By default many desktop environments look pretty different from each other, but most can be customized to look very close to each other if you're willing to work on it. If you don't want to work on it and would prefer that it looks nice out of the box, that's a different story.
If you like the windows look/feel, I'm personally partial to LXDE and Budgie. You can find LXDE versions of many distributions, and Budgie comes with Solus. You can also get Budgie out of the box with Ubuntu Budgie.
If you prefer a MacOS look, many people are partial to Elementary OS, which uses their Pantheon desktop environment.
If you're not looking to compare to the other two major single desktop environment operating systems, these are generally still good out of the box options. Budgie and Pantheon in particular are technically built to be user friendly and clean by design, while LXDE is a little more basic but offers its own clean experience. Of course, this being popular opinion aside, it's still just opinion. You might have to shop around yourself.
Dude, passwords on Windows are totally worthless. The files are just sitting on the drive. You don't need to boot the OS on the same drive, just boot with a system you can log into. I'd use ElementaryOS - https://elementary.io
Elementary is free, user-friendly, and runs fast (for a modern OS) even on systems that are 10-15 years old.
You can just boot with a live USB and read every file on the disk. (it'll write, delete, or move files too, so just be careful not to change anything, just copy it.)
You can also open the laptop, remove the drive, and put it in a USB case. Laptop drives from the last 15 years have SATA connectors, so the part you need is a "2.5" sata enclosure" which is like $8 on Newegg. If the laptop is older, go to eBay because the part will be a vintage "2.5" IDE to usb" enclosure.
Beware of "cracking" programs; many are malware.
There's a highly legit free program called "ntpasswd" that everyone's been using for ages - https://pogostick.net/~pnh/ntpasswd/
That's also a Linux variant that boots into a live Linux environment, except instead of a full OS and optional installer, all it does is boot from CD/floppy, read the Windows password database on the hard drive, and change passwords. BEWARE if you use this! Don't "change" the password, just blank it out. Windows is such utter crap software that the database sometimes gets mysteriously munged up just because you tried to reset the admin password. Setting it to be blank/nonexistent is much safer.
edit: just saw downthread where you mention you don't have the charger. What's the make/model of the laptop? I'll look it up and see if buying a replacement charger or extracting the drive is the easier option!
Linux is definitely more secure than Windows in many ways.
As for which version of Linux you should use, I would personally recommend Ubuntu MATE, which is very Windows-like, and extremely user friendly.
If you'd prefer something that looks and acts more like Mac OSX, Elementary OS is a good choice as well.
Is this by the actual developers?
They already have contribution options set up right on their website when you buy/download the OS.
Why would they set up another crowdfunding page on a separate site?
Edit: looks like they have updates on this site from 2015. So it was likely from when they were first creating the OS before they had donations set up on their own site.
Elementary is great, and they've just launched their new app store. If anybody wants to try it, here's a link, and /r/elementaryos is our little corner.
p.s: I'm not associated with them by any means at all. I just love what they're doing and how slick the OS is.
There are a couple of ways, they vary based upon your target market and what type of software you make. These are in no particular order.
EDIT: added #10
EDIT2: Added #11
OP, Reddit is not a bug tracker. Please file an issue at http://bugs.launchpad.net/elementaryos
Be sure to read our guides on reporting issues and proposing design changes :) https://elementary.io/docs/code/reference#reporting-bugs
I think many have studied software engineering or programming or are working as a programmer. So by default they come with good knowledge and understanding how things work. Others, like me, learn from whats available for free, Google, youtube tutorials etc. Probably not the efficient way, but doable, depending of your self-learning skills.
In general you start little and slowly grow up.
I think elementaryOS is actually very good place to start, because they have good documentation and is relatively small project compared to giants like Gnome, KDE or Ubuntu. Plus, you contribute to a great platform.
More info here https://elementary.io/get-involved
If you really like Mac OSX, I'd have to recommend Elementary. Most aspects of the OS have the same feel as OSX. You'd be missing out on the integration with all other Apple devices though. It would be worth looking into. I have it running on an admittedly terrible laptop (bought for price, not performance) and it's running fairly well overall.
​
Check it out: https://elementary.io/
I'd like to add here that you can learn the terminal at your own pace.
Most modern distros work pretty well without having to touch the terminal at all.
Some links I think people should check out:
-> LinuxJourney is a GREAT place to start learning the ways of Linux. IMHO it's one of the best resources we have for new users.
-> Fedora is a great Linux distribution to start out with. They have a good community for support and they get updates in a good timely manner.
-> ElementaryOS is actually another distro I recommend to new users just because of the UX. It's based on the latest Ubuntu LTS release and in my experience, I never had to touch the terminal here unless I absolutely needed to. (maybe twice in 5 months).
-> /r/unixporn is an amazing place for visual inspiration.
I know we Linux Users can sometimes shill hard, but that's only because we're really really excited about the tech we use. :D
I'd be personally happy to help anyone out with any Linux-ey questions they have, heck, even tech support if needed. Just shoot me a DM sometime. :D
This post is pretty counter productive, Elementary OS is free and open source, and most people that contribute are volunteers. Feel free to contribute if you don't think it is up to par. Support for your hardware may also be a huge factor.
Your complaining about a free operating system.
elementary OS is indeed built from Ubuntu LTS repositories, but it doesn't require forking software to do this. We use the same Live Build system as Debian and Ubuntu and the vast majority of the packages we pull in from upstream are not altered.
We have almost 800 branches on launchpad. That's a complete desktop environment, a few libraries, several applications, hundreds of icons, you get the picture. Upwards of 90% of software that the user sees is something we wrote. Most of the stuff that we use from upstreams is stuff that users don't see: the kernel, gnu stuff, libraries, daemons, etc. We recently put up a page on our website to show a bit more of what makes up elementary OS under the hood and who develops those components.
Edited for accuracy
We have an OEMs page here with quite a lot of info: https://elementary.io/oem
You can also always send an email to oem at elementary.io as well to start a conversation.
As others have pointed out, generally there’s a couple different legal mechanisms at play here. Code is typically copy left which allows redistribution, so what distros typically do is require an agreement to use their trademarks. Basically that just means you can distribute a completely unbranded fork all you’d like, but if you want to distribute “elementary OS” or “Fedora” or “Ubuntu”, you need to agree to the terms under which the trademarks can be applied (usually this means shipping it unmodified, and in some cases it can mean some kind of licensing agreement)
In our case specifically, our primary source of revenue is from sales on our website, so if someone is selling a computer with elementary OS pre-installed, it circumvents that revenue model and we need to come to some other agreement to make up for those lost sales. That could mean a percentage of profit or a flat license per unit or something else. Just gotta reach out and we’ll work with you :)
Use elementary OS. Its basically a mac-clone in terms of appearance. Its minimalist to start, which you say you don't like, but it lets you arbitrarily customize if you want to add features. Just google what you want it to do and follow the instructions.
There's nothing to be done about getting MS Office (or Adobe CC presumably) on linux though, if it doesn't already exist.
Folks trying to move from Windows/MacOS to Linux check out Elementary OS. It's beautiful, simple and easy to use. I tried a lot of Linux distros while I was in college and kept coming back to Elementary.
https://elementary.io (You can download it for free by entering 0$ as the amount. But if you can afford to make a donation please do it.)
Would love some help with making the font selection better. Best thing to do is file a blueprint and start making issues about the addition/removal of specific fonts. See Proposing Design Changes
To try and compete with the "beauty" of Mac OS, you could also try installing something like ZorinOS or Elementary OS to try and emulate it. Considering the use case is generally web browsing, you should get away with Linux under the hood. I'm sure it would also help you with any sort of development.
Not sure what wiki you're referring to?
Elementary's official website has some features and screenshots and links to prominent reviews, if that's the kind of thing you're after. https://elementary.io/
I don't think any Linux distro is ready for fully non-technical users yet, (mainly due to the lack of mainstream apps) but eOS comes closest out of the ones I'm familiar with. It's stable, easy to use, nice looking. The greater emphasis on design compared to other distros really makes a difference.
> The only Distro who focus on GUI rather than geeky tools.
That can't possibly be true. What about Solus? What about Antergos (based on Arch)? Am I the only one who remembers Libranet or MEPIS? Hell, what about Ubuntu? Do you have any idea how revolutionary Ubuntu was when they released Warty Warthog back in October 2004?
Canonical has always tried to provide in Ubuntu a clean, accessible interface for users who aren't programmers or sysadmins. They haven't always succeeded, they've made some mistakes and trampled users' privacy rights, and Unity might have proven to be a dead end, but at least they tried.
Furthermore, both GNOME 3.x and KDE Plasma 5.x are rock solid desktops with decent default configurations and huge potential for customization -- and you can run them on just about any distribution.
Also, Elementary isn't dead yet, but even if they went out of business their code is on GitHub and can be cloned or forked so that the Pantheon desktop can live on if enough developers care about it.
Finally, young people all over the world are using Linux all the time. They're just using it on their phones instead of on desktops or laptops. Every Android phone sold is a win for Linux. Likewise for every Chromebook sold.
Stop living in the past and guilt-tripping us about making the Linux desktop better for Windows users. Stop fighting the last war.
elementary OS for the fit and finish. My current daily driver.
deepin - absolutely beautiful but completely written in broken English
Solus - interesting concept, beautiful design
Short answer? Yes.
Slightly longer but not really answer, almost certainly. Freya's base is Ubuntu 14.04 which has pretty incredible driver support, so you should have no hardware issues with a laptop probably even twice that age. Also, Elementary is surprisingly light, so it should run great.
The min system requirements can be found here:
https://elementary.io/docs/installation
As an aside, I've been single-booting Freya since release, and my machine is a moderately specced laptop from around 7 years ago.
After the initial shell shock, I have landed on a pixel 5 with CalyxOS and a framework laptop (remember when you could change RAM and Battery in a macbook?) with Elementary OS.
That combo will render my Apple watch useless, but I have a nice Breitling watch which I will start to use again.
It sucks balls and I don't look forward to getting back into Linux, but no way I will support this s**t Apple is pulling.
For maximum compatibility with your work-related stuff, staying on Debian/Ubuntu based distros is probably most hassle free.
Albeit there are plenty of good choices, Pop OS might be for you for the following reasons:
- Uses GNOME which has a similar UI to macOS with a top panel and a dock, although the dock is on the left sometimes by default.
- They backport newer kernels etc into their LTS (long term support) version.
- Ubuntu-based so it'll have plenty of software available.
- Has an auto-tiling extension similar to how tiling window managers behave by default that many people find useful.
It also has NVIDIA drivers baked into the .iso, albeit installing them is usually one or two clicks away anyway so don't personally consider that a key selling point.
Other ubuntu derivative that would probably work for macOS users would be elementary OS, however the latest stable version is still based on ubuntu 18.04 meaning it'll have old software.
Unfortunately, like OP mentioned, it has been discontinued. I think it died in 2016 or so.
But you can download a Linux distro that's really similar with the MacOS floating dock style called ElementaryOS. Their website says you have to purchase, but you can prolly just put a $0 amount into the field and they'll accept it.
> be great for some older person
I'd recommend these over Linux Mint:
A lot more user friendly for non-tech people in my opinion.
Personalmente ti consiglio Elementary OS, una distro molto carina. Graficamente ricorda MacOS e non necessita di troppo smanettamento per avere il sistema pronto. Le menate al terminale, come nella maggior parte delle distro, sono presenti ma non eccessive. Ha un suo App Center da cui è possibile scaricare le varie applicazioni: personalmente preferisco sempre farlo via terminale, ma mi pare che fosse uno store discretamente fornito.
> They take predominantly the work of another company (the Ubuntu package set)
And Ubuntu uses Debian's package set, who gives a fck? Mint uses Ubuntu package set too, Manjaro Arch package set etc.
>make some Gnome extensions bundle them with Gnome and call it the "Pantheon Desktop"
ArchWiki: "It is written from scratch using Vala and the GTK3 toolkit." There aren't any Gnome Extensions.
>No clear mention of the projects that they are redistributing
https://elementary.io/open-source
>the download link behind a "pay what you want" wall
It's called pay what you want so unless you're ~~stupid~~ ekhm not smart then you know that you can put a 0 there (= I want to pay 0 dollars).
>that their own desktop applications are cludgy, buggy
They weren't last time I've tried them some days ago.
All in all it just looks like someone is salty.
Are we looking at the same website for elementary? Because to me, there's no confusion. Clicking on the "Custom" box even says "Enter any dollar amount", which means $0 is perfectly valid. Also, if only 1% of users actually pay, then it seems like the other 99% aren't that confused, either.
Look, I don't want to come off as a shill here. I just think you may be holding on to something from years past instead of seeing how the project learned from that mistake.
We're always looking for contributors of all skill levels at elementary :) We have a Get Involved page set up to direct you to different ways to contribute.
Always of interest are issues tagged as "bitesize" on Launchpad and GitHub
Well instead of berating people for still using Windows, lets give them some options:
Best Linux distro for migrating Windows users: http://xubuntu.org/
Best Linux distro for migrating OS X users: https://elementary.io/
If none of these suit your fancy then find one that does: http://distrowatch.com/
I'm not Daniel Fore but I'm guessing he would say something like this... Here at elementary OS we don't actually have set release info about when or what will be included in our updates. But we have been working on that lately and it looks as though there is a very good possibility of having our own software center ready for our next release! You can help by going to our get involved page located at our website https://elementary.io/get-involved I'm just kidding:) my guess is that they will be able to have that ready for their next release in 1 and a half to 2 years from now. They work very diligently there but any support you give will speed things up. From what their launchpad says it looks like they will. It says Priority: essential and the progress: Good progress. Look at it here for more info. https://blueprints.launchpad.net/elementaryos/+spec/appcenter
If you're going with Vala, try the elementary OS tutorial. I recently have been trying to learn myself and this was the one that explained the most the best for me.
Elementry OS ( https://elementary.io ) might be a better distro for you if you're used to and comming from mac osx. Its still ubuntu (like mint) the only real different is the desktop environment elementry uses is pantheon (designed to be similar to mac or for transition to linux for mac users) while mint uses cinnamon desktop which more closely resembles a windows environment.
But yeah, linux in general is very secure. don't know a lot about mac, but can say with high certainty that linux is as secure if not more secure than mac.
But Linux is not a brand. Android does not emphasize that it uses Linux, and neither does Ubuntu. Go to the Ubuntu website and look for a mention of Linux, it's not there. Same thing with Elementary, where it's just a side note.
> If the community desires to compete with Windows
Distributions compete with Windows, the Linux community does not. Most of us couldn't care less what OS you use, we've simply found the one that works best for our own needs and we stand behind it.
Their interfaces are polished and simple, and they're on a stable base which should keep your tech support requests to a minimum.
The developers are also aiming to improve accessibility features over time, taking an "accessibility is for everyone" approach. That's an aspect that gets neglected in many distros, quite honestly.
This guy is getting downvoted, but he is right
Apple has some of the worst build quality in the industry, seriously watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUaJ8pDlxi8
As far as Mac OS, just use GNU/Linux lol
https://elementary.io/ is rolling not only an entire DE with top-notch UX but also a distro on... I don't know the exact numbers, but the order of magnitude is $1000 a month.
They have no corporate sponsorships either, unlike Blue Systems for KDE or paid developers for X.org from Red Hat, AMD, etc.
Their Pantheon DE has also influenced other DEs - a lot of things that were later adopted by GNOME and some others have originated in elementary. Intelligent notifications for terminal, for one (early demo); there is a zillion other examples.
TL;DR: if you care about free software being easy and convenient to use, consider supporting elementary.
Hey sorry to hear you had a bad time, but I wanted to clear up a couple things:
Pantheon does not use GNOME Shell and we make nearly every app we ship by default. Here’s all our code on GitHub (there’s a lot of it).
Here’s the page on our website where we list important projects we’ve built on. It’s literally linked from the home page.
There's absolutely no reason to throw away the laptop. Do look into finding the installation media. If it was Windows 10, it won't have come with the machine but you can download and make your own, with a spare USB stick.
Of course, I'd personally recommend installing Linux instead. Nowadays it's super easy. For your mother I'd recommend one of the following:
Elementary OS: Sleek and polished, kind of Mac OS look and feel. Link
Linux Mint KDE: Windows-y look and feel, and with LOTS of productivity/media/games/etc. applications installed from the get-go. Link
Xubuntu: Go with this one if the laptop specs are near the low end - it requires very little computing power to run smoothly. The other ones will of course run no slower than Windows used to, Xubuntu in that case will just be noticeably snappier. Link
This is actually the right answer. I have no idea about Mac ecosystems but if they have stopped updates, and I am assuming security updates too, updating to Linux is a really clever thing to do, for anyone who doesn't know Mac is based off of Unix, and Linux OSs are based off of Unix as well, very similar.
With Linux you'll get the latest security updates and you can even have it look very similar, if you like the Mac OS look check out ElementaryOS. https://elementary.io/
we write a lot of code and that's what you're paying for if you buy a copy of elementary OS. It's payroll, hosting, hardware, and other overhead. We try to make a point to send money to upstream projects if we have room in the budget, and we send code upstream as well.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned ElementaryOS yet! It's essentially Ubuntu with a pretty design and some extra things added. Very easy to install and use, though I'd recommend swapping out some of the default applications.
ubuntu or mint
TBH the main issue is what @skitch920 mentioned i.e. which desktop env you want to use with your linux distro. Pick your distro based on release cycle / what tools it comes with and then choose your desktop env. There'll be different criteria for choosing which one you want to use.
If you wanna show off, KDE is probably your best bet with the most eyecandy (plasma 5).
Personally im a fan of minimalism so i stick with the more performance oriented ones such as :
Unity is most likely the one you've seen if you've watched any tutorials with ubuntu in it.
Cinnamon is a nice balance between performance / eyecandy.
If you're coming from a mac background pantheon might be a good transition for you (via elementaryOS, just enter 0 in the custom box).
This article will give you more info :
Elementary OS (you can choose $0 in the box). It does need some additional stuff to get back to your usual linux pace (install elementary tweaks, chromium, libreoffice etc etc) but the basic offering is very utilitarian and good enough.
"Is it stable and fast to use?" From what I've read in this subreddit, it really depends on hardware. I've had nothing but good experiences with Freya and I've used it as my daily driver since it was released. Some folks have constant lock ups though, so I'm not entirely able to guarantee it to be 100% bug free, based on that info. Try it and see.
"Should I use Luna or Freya?" Luna is pretty old and Loki is right around the corner. If you go the Luna route and Loki comes out, you'll be pretty far behind and the upgrade path is not very friendly. Your milage may vary.
With regards to skinning, I'd highly advise against any theming. The official stance from the developers is pretty anti-theming and with good reason. The team has spent an absolutely extraordinary amount of time on literally every pixel of that operating system so using third party skins kinda defeats the purpose. They've even developed their own HIG. It'd be like getting an 18 year old scotch and mixing it with Diet Coke.
elementary cofounder and UX designer here!
The settings pane you mention is all local. There is no data sent online or to elementary. We don't collect usage stats through the OS or anything. The settings there relate to Zeitgeist, which is an open source library that powers local things like the "recent documents" in the Files app or the order of search results in the app launcher.
We've talked about collecting anonymized install stats from within the OS (for more accurate stats, which helps us and others judge how popular elementary OS really is), but we haven't developed a bulletproof way to do so securely and while respecting privacy.
There's no opt-in because there's nothing to opt into. ;) The only sort of data collection we do is when visitors are on the website itself (Google Analytics and a simple download counter), and the analytics respects Do-Not-Track. You can see our website's privacy policy for more details.
Those features exist in stock Ubuntu for a reason. Besides, I can't imagine removing them would make an incredible amount of difference.
ubuntu-restricted-extras doesn't exist in stock Ubuntu, again, for a reason. VLC and libdvdcss2 should be all you need to play DVDs. Flash is horrible software and shouldn't be used at all. LibreOffice and GIMP are two pretty heavyweight programs that would bog down the stock installation a lot.
elementary OS isn't a privacy or security distribution. It's built on GNU/Linux and Ubuntu -- already rock-solid. Use Alpine or Tails if you want the extra stuff.
The elementary theme takes inspiration from OS X, but doesn't try to be OS X. Let's keep it that way. You have the ability to change your theme if you're so inclined. The UI of individual applications follow elementary's HIG, take it up with them if you have an issue.
That's why I went with Linux. Yeah you can game but it's way harder. Also no Microsoft telemetry.
If people want to have a look at a MacOS lookalike distribution which you can try from usb, download Elementary OS. Just put $0 in the payment field and use Rufus to put the iso on a usb stick.
Better link to the docs instead of speculating. That way your interpretation won't pass on as fact.
Here are the elementary OS's Human Interface Guidelines. Reading this doesn't give me the impression that this is about "average" vs "power" user. And while they do write about not confusing the user, it's not because the user is "average", but because the described behavior would be confusing. For example, controls that do nothing are confusing.
The minimize button isn't removed because it's confusing. Here is the relevant part of the docs.
Thing is, development by volunteers also comes with huge downsides.
I have seen with my own eyes that all-volunteer work can bear fruit. For example, elementary OS is developed almost entirely by volunteers to this day. And they made an entire custom DE plus a distro to ship it on. I have worked on elementary OS for over two years without asking for a penny in return, simply because I believed in the project. And it worked out. I'm proud of what we have achieved.
And yet, if elementary had the money to actually employ its developers, the project would be capable of so much more. The reality of volunteer work is that every developer, and the associated knowledge and experience, is only available half the time at best. People are forced to take long breaks. This means you cannot make any long-term plans; you don't even know whether a specific developer will be coming back at all, let alone when.
TL;DR: Achievements of all-volunteer projects are impressive, but with proper funding they could have achieved so much more. Support the software you care about.
Go buy yourself one of these. Nice and sleek like a Macbook, magnesium alloy and carbon fiber body, excellent build quality (it's a business laptop, so designed to last a while) backlit keyboard, SSD (not soldered down), plenty of RAM (not soldered either), really nice 1080p IPS display (optionally with touch), under $350. Install Elementary OS (free) for a Mac-like experience.
Well we now run https://valadoc.org/, which should count as some half-decent developer documentation, and there's the getting started with coding guide at https://elementary.io/docs/code/getting-started
I recommend https://elementary.io/ for your first foray into Linux. It has Ubuntu underneath (which itself is Debian underneath) so it has high compatibility and you can install all the packages you need. It has a decent set of default apps though. Best of luck, welcome to a new world!
Elementary OS. I've tried all the popular ones and it's the easiest and prettiest distro out there. It's Pantheon desktop environment is the only one that looks professionally made (Budgie comes close). The apps it comes with (and even some third party ones out there) look just as good as the desktop. Only issue that can be a problem at times is new versions come out once every two years, currently based on Ubuntu 14.04 for now. It comes with a live CD/USB so you can try it out before installing it. If you don't want to pay, just type $0 under custom purchase amount.
Yes actually, along with a collection of many other great ones!
It comes from a Linux Distribution called "Elementary OS".
I liked elementary OS when I first switched because of how amazing Pantheon (its Desktop Environment) is but it has a lot of bugs that frequently annoy me so yeah I think Pop_OS! is a better choice but I haven't actually used it yet. Let me know what you think if you can.
You're going to start street brawls asking that Q ;)
But in reality, the "best" is up to what the user needs and expects. With ubuntu, you started with a solid distro; just make sure you customize it to not send data back to Canonical (search etc).
If privacy is a critical factor, Elementary.io is another solid start and very easy to learn. As a huge bonus, it is on the lighter side and does not come with all the bloat so many distros come with. It is one of my fav distros and is rock solid. It also runs oracle's vbox flawlessly if you need to run winders7 VMs like I do.
For another alternative, check out Mint with Cinnamon interface. It is highly customizable and the most gorgeous distro. But, like winders, it is very fat & resource hungry.
Just burn the iso to a usb on another computer using this guide: https://elementary.io/docs/installation#installation
Plug the usb into your new PC, and turn it on. As you have no OS installed it should automatically boot of the USB, and then you can follow through the installation from there
Since you are coming from a mac, have you checked out Elementary Os. It is based off of ubuntu so you get everything that ubuntu has.
The Linux distribution you installed on your Raspberry Pi isn't an especially user-friendly one. Ubuntu, Solus, Fedora, OpenSuse, elementary OS, and others don't show you a terminal unless you ask for one, and they all look pretty nice, some more than others.
You'd probably get serious responses with a less rambly post. Also, natural-language processing for voice controls for the OS isn't really well developed anywhere, yet. Windows 10 probably does it best so far and it sucks.
Glancing over every point in your post (but no way am I watching hour-long design videos to grasp your idea of ideal UX), I'd guess elementaryOS would be a good fit. However, a lot of things you talk about in here, design-wise, just aren't perfect across the entire Linux ecosystem, and likely never will be. You get families of applications sharing a common toolkit, never a perfect "unified Linux app experience" unless you limit yourself. This applies to every platform, but somehow people are fine with Steam and Chrome ignoring Microsoft's window-controls but freak out when that stuff happens on Linux (maybe because Linux is more consistent, but clunkier, so you're more aware of it).
You absolutely can set the update prompts in most-any distro, including elementaryOS, to only bother you once every three months. That's generally a bad idea, though.
I don't like saying this on this sub, but I help people purchase desktop computers from all walks of life, so this is my recommendation based on what you've described: MacOS is probably your ideal OS.
As the homepage states: > No Ads. No Spying. > We don't make advertising deals and we don't collect sensitive personal data. Our only income is directly from our users.
We have no way to tell how many daily active users there are, or how much time they are spending in ours or any other OS. Nor would we know if the hardware is physical or virtual.
ElementaryOS might work for that kind of use case https://elementary.io/ I've tried it before and the aesthetics were great, but since it didn't run latest packages it wasn't for me. But once you go unix, you don't want to go back. It puts the user in charge, it doesn't do stupid stuff like boot on its own.
Until/Unless we add an alpha2 milestone, this is probably the next development target: Beta1. Anything from that list is something we're aiming to get done before the Loki Beta.
If you've never programmed in Vala or on elementary OS before, I would recommend starting with the GNOME Vala tutorial and our Getting Started Developer Guide. That should give you a pretty solid foundation in Vala as well as get your started with Gtk+ and Launchpad.
May I recommend Elementary OS. It's based on Ubuntu and uses a beautiful custom desktop Pantheon.
You can also not go wrong with Ubuntu & Mint. Just try one, you can always change later.
You can see an overview of your open windows by pressing super + W. Or to show an overview of your workspaces, use super + S. Here are some more tips:
Why don't they just let people pay as much as they want? Many people would probably be fine with paying $5 or $10 but not $100 .
Might I suggest Linux Mint, Kubuntu, or Ubuntu Mate if you want to keep the most Windows-like OS but still have security updates.
https://itsfoss.com/windows-like-linux-distributions/
There's also Elementary OS if you want something that looks like Mac, but it's Linux.
This has exactly zero to do with privacy. In fact, this post is the exact opposite of what should be recommended.
If someone wants to move from Windows 7 to something more secure, you'll be hard pressed to find a better time to switch to a Linux distribution. ElementaryOS,^1 Solus,^2 and Debian^3 are excellent choices and can all be tested with a live usb before committing
Sources
I would recommend either Ubuntu, Mint, or Elementary as they have a bigger userbase and are the distros that are typically recommended to beginners.
Elementary OS (your URL is wrong) isn't "built around" it. It's just a programming language, not a framework. Yes, most of their tools are written using it, but the underlying tech is GLib, GTK, and Gnome.
I've written some Vala, and it's okay, but it's only syntatically similar to C#. It's built on top of the GLib object system and uses its class library, compiles to native executables via an intermediate translation to C, and (at the time I used it, at least) doesn't support things like automatic boxing and unboxing. Ultimately, it's only useful for writing software in the GLib/GTK ecosystem.
elementary only includes native apps in the base system:
> Our desktop environment and all its apps are built using Vala, GTK+, Granite, and a number of other open libraries.
From: https://elementary.io/get-involved#desktop-development
The official SHA-256 checksum is available on the installation page here: https://elementary.io/docs/installation#installation and it is a8c7b8c54aeb0889bb3245356ffcd95b77e9835ffb5ac56376a3b627c3e1950f
This is what they say on the topic of low-end/old hardware
'While we don't have a strict set of minimum system requirements, we recommend at least the following specifications for the best experience:
Source: https://elementary.io/docs/installation#installation
A lot of people are saying Linux Mint and that definitely gets a +1 from me, but if she's ever used something similar to Mac OS then I would say elementaryOS. Easy to use and follow, and if she has used a mac before it has a similar and familiar design. https://elementary.io/
Hope these suggestions help!
True. I just appreciate that they're trying ~~instead~~ to build something using the Nano logo instead of just using it.
Something more obviously linked like Elementary OS's community logo could be better.
It's not necessary to have a Torrent file to download the torrent as well. All you need is a magnet URI which is a hex-encoded SHA-1 hash sums of the "info" sections.
magnet:?xt=urn:btih:54dca0477d74d88ed051a9cd62fe5359151e7823
For example, opening the above magnetURI in your torrent client will start downloading Elementary OS.
Interesting requirement:
> Your app must be hosted in a GitHub repository.
I hope they change that to include others such as GitLab as well.
Pantheon. It looks awesome. It's not really customizable but it works fine. You can change the icons and the theme of the dock pretty easily if you want to.
If you want to change the theme you can do it, but the devs don't support any kind of theming so it may not look as good as the default one. And it's probably going to continue this way... Maybe we see a night theme in the future, but I highly doubt it.
Pantheon is written in Vala and it's based on GTK3. It's made for elementaryOS. You should try this OS if you like how Pantheon looks.
Well in Pantheon apps aren't really supposed to use it. Apps can appear in indicators, like missed notifications showing in the notifications indicator or media controls in the sound indicator (which is done with MPRIS). But to paraphrase our HIG (Which needs to be updated haha):
Basically the panel is for system indicators. Apps don't belong here. No apps designed for Pantheon provide indicators.
Choose Elementary. Its more stable than than Pear and more polished than Ubuntu and Mint. https://elementary.io/ its free, enter 0 at $ custom, or you can donate few dollars. Mint can be solid but it will be bored to her very easily.
Elementary : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYrobaenFCc Mint : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUrgsngJMVo
Yeah, I installed Elementary these days and i was looking into making some simple apps under it and in their docs they use Vala so i decided to do the same and take a look at it. It seems like a nice language to write stuff in and it creates native programs with no more requirements than the equivalent C program would have (AFAIK valac
translates the code to C).
I suspect that its biggest problem would be that it is tied too much on GLib and under Windows that would make even a simple command-line program to require distribution a bunch of DLLs with it.
>I don't know why I'm like this. At work it's no problem but with the open source community it's different.
Don't worry, It's not just you. It's a completely different dynamic. Workplaces have a set hierarchy often with set processes. The open source world is a bit of a wild west in that regard, Projects can vary very differently and the entry-point can be quite different.
My first PR on GitHub was a contribution to an ecommerce system. It went untouched until eventually closed without any reason or feedback, Was a bit of a downer. The second time I wanted to contribute to ElementaryOS. I spent a bit more time looking into how they handled their projects, Looked at some other PRs made to get an idea of the process, then looked through their issue list to find something I could tackle with my web skills. Made a PR and they were kindly receptive and merged it. More recently I have contributed to the PHP docs. It feels really good when you see changes you made visible on a project you admire and/or care about.
If the project your care about has a discord (Or similar chat) that may be a good place to jump into as those places are usually a bit less formal. Just be honest, say that you love the project and want to contribute your skills and hopefully they'll point you to a suitable issue to tackle or keep you in mind if something pops up.
Just became a github sponsor ($2/month) Thanks for the hard work. Glad to see the people move closer to an open-source MacOS alternative.
All, Here is the weblink that contains multiple ways to donate to eOS.
For just 7 cents a day, you too can help an open source developer in need find their second monitor.
No fee donation: https://github.com/sponsors/elementary
Other ways to donate: https://elementary.io/get-involved#funding
I’m sponsoring on GitHub. It’s super easy to set up. I hope more people will join to get issues like this worked out!
A lot of Linux talk here so I won't add to the great posts except to say;
Download and install onto a USB the following 3 Linux OSes and run them live without changing your Windows install to see what you like;
I've tried do many Linux distros and these three, in this order, gave me the least, virtually no issues and honestly, SolusOS, my one and only OS is just incredible.