I've seen several reviewers saying the same thing. They love the OS, the design, the vision and idea of if but it just falls short compared to other OS and desktops these days.
@@softwarelivre2389 I hear you, but I'm not sure Wayland is something the Elementary target audience cares about. I'm not sure THAT many regular users care about it that might either. I rarely if ever have any issues where I have to even convern myself if I'm running X or Wayland. I'm know that my Mint installation uses X still, but no idea what either of my Arch distros are using. The "having to reinstall every update" - that can't still be a thing can it? Surely you don't really have to reinstall your entire OS just to update Elementary? If that is true, that is idiotic for Linux and doubly so for the users that Elementary targets.
@@softwarelivre2389 end users of just-works distros don't rly care about tech like wayland, as long as they don't encounter the common xorg issues (which elementary handles very well, it has to be said), the real issue is that it targets the just-works simple-aesthetic crowd, while not actually providing a complete experience for those users, forcing them to do stuff like add the flathub remote to get even the most basic apps which are otherwise not available, that is the real issue with elementary, "promising" sane defaults, while not providing them (the need to reinstall included, which i can't believe is an actual thing, that'd be the worst thing possible for their target demographic)
I can't believe how many years have passed since I have been watching your linux reviews. I know it isn't the most popular topic for people to watch but I love that you still do them.
These days I don't wanna spend too much setting up . And I don't wanna mess with not having things like status icons , etc. So I just don't feel like going for anything that makes it hard. I used to mess around a lot few years ago . But in the end I just want to get work done.
Get ansible Setup once and it will carry on. Gnome Extensions, packages, done. Add chezmoi for example and U are setup in 20 minutes, carrying on to kew release usually with minimal effort. Similar to debloat windows or Setup osx.
Found as I got deeper into my understanding of Linux, the less desirable EOS, PopOS, etc. got over just running on base Debian, Fedora, Arch, etc. This was mostly due to the cadence of updates and improvements differing from major releases, so if I wanted stable I’d just go Debian, if I wanted a mix I’d go Fedora, if I wanted full rolling I’d go Arch, etc. EOS and other derivative distros are interesting but feel limited in scope compared to the bases, and to me Linux is all about having the control over what you get out of your computer, which butts heads with how the derivatives usually function.
I've been using Linux for *cough cough* a long time, but I still keep a Linux Mint distro on one of my machines. There are times I want to fiddle around in Arch or battle with dependencies in Suse but there are also times I just want to work and get stuff done with minimal fuss on a desktop that looks "good enough" and that's where Mint, PopOS, EOS has a place in the Linux ecosystem.
@@iaina3251 I put Mint in a different category. Even though it’s on the Ubuntu base, it doesn’t try to ‘contain’ your use like other derivatives, while have a lengthy and stable history that you can count on. There’s a reason why a lot of newcomers who arrive on Mint eventually circle back to it or just stick with it: it’s timeless yet iterative, a Debian without some of the hassles.
@@iaina3251 but kde is objectively a Better Desktop at being Windows isnt IT? Best of all world would be manjaro but to me its fedora.reliable and things where they rhelong.
for just the basics and not caring about aesthetics would you say fedora is your favourite? Still being able to use it as a desktop with a mouse would be nice still
Elementary OS pisses off a lot of their users, and when your users are pissed, you don't get any funding. Simple as that. Don't mean to hate on it, but that's what I've noticed. Project is not enticing enough. Theme looks like it was made by a 12 years old. No system tray icons. No minimize button. Hard to theme...etc. yes, those are "silly" things that a lot of people care about. I feel bad for them, they do put a lot of work into it :/
I use Mint too. Of all DE's I'm using MATE. I love it. I'm just an old fashioned kind of person who likes the way things were (give me my GNOME 2 with some crazy back Compiz effects for FUN...). Isn't that the beauty of the Linux ecosystem though? Every user can do as they wish and use what works for them. Sure, things change, but we can use a system and make it the way we (the individual) want it. Just my two cents.
What i think elementary OS needs a major design change. The UI feels something from 2010 which may sound not an issue but an OS that's targeted for noobs it needs a nice and modern UI currently it's like Mac OS but 10,12 years old. Apart from this thir implimentation of app center sucks you can't use apt packages from that and you need to manually add 3rd party flatpaks which can easily be solved by a check mark .
As a mac user thats why I like elementary. Macos is less clear, flat and garish white or black theme. Plus lots of devolution in the ux so it feels more like ios.
their design language is as clear and consistent and clutter-free as it gets in linux-land. it’s timeless. you can clearly see what’s a window, border, text and buttons. you’re asking for a change for the sake of it. please no. last time apple tried that all personality of the system was gone and you couldn’t even make out buttons. yech.
I think Linux in general has a funding problem, there are successful distros and software but running off of donations is really hard and commercialized software is hated on by large portions of the community (with good reasons). I really want to see a good and customizable distro get some real market share though, I put some money on Linux mint as my horse to bet on. Didn't really know much about Elementary other than it existed, looks too much like Apple stuff for me unless it can switch the UI around.
The window close button is on the left hand corner and what I assume is the window maximizer is on the opposite right hand corner. Jeez that's bad ux imo.
What ultimately pushed me away from elementary OS was that when I wanted my windows to be the same as windows (minimize, maximize, close, top right) the answer I got was "don't use the OS". And felt rude and snobby.
Getting outlook to work on a FOSS client has been a pain point for me. It is definitely a bit on MS I think, tho I did find a paid plug in that solves the issue on Thunderbird.
Is there a distro that prioritizes stability, and ease of use over bells and whistles? Like as a person that hates windows and wants to quit, I just want to be able to check my email, use my coding software and use my browser. I dont want to google how to increase the size of a window or make the sound work which has been my experience with any desktop linux, I feel like a lot of these companies think they have to compete with microsoft or apple, but a lot of people want to love linux and their priority is privacy, stability, ease of use and of course performance. All these shiny things dont matter for many people
I think the perfect option for your case is Linux Mint. In any case, if your hardware is not compatible with Linux, for example your sound card, that is not the fault of the distros or Linux. It is the fault of the manufacturer of that hardware that decided not to be compatible with Linux.
Fedora silverblue, it's an inmutable system, you only need to search for the uses of Flatpaks, appimages, rpm-ostree, toolbox, podman, etc. I have been using for a long time and I like it so much! I My sister also uses it, even though she does not know very well the computer side. I'm thinking to switch my father too, but he needs some features that only comes in Windows due to his work.
For the mail, I had to use app passwords instead of my regular password. Maybe outlook has a setting where you can setup an app password like gmail and yahoo mail.
@@buriedunkind6188 Oh, ok. Thank you, I was certain it had to had such option. I’m currently in a challenge where I have to use a Linux distro for 6 months and chose elementary os because most have a hard time actually sticking and I like a challenge so chose elementary os.
@@MotownBatman let's just say "Danielle" used to be Daniel. So there's that. But yes, Cassidy left and joined a different project over some kind of drama.
The refusal of system tray icons is enough for me not to install and stick to Pop OS. I rely on cloud sync storage and there's no way to tell if it has synced in Elementary OS.
Elementary os desktop environment and UI is close to 10 out 10... The rest of it is just meh....and don't get me started when a major releases. you have to nuke and pave makes no freaking sense....
I agree. While its pretty some of the core functionality is so limiting that I can never recommend it...Its seems crazy in 2023 that every distro allows for in-place upgrades... the Mint team even built a GUI app to assist with a safe transition.
You’ve hit a home run in this video, Blaine! Kudos! Your explanation here is perfectly on point: the elementary team’s ideals, while deserving of merit, are holding them back. The Linux Mint team’s approach is what they need to overcome those limitations; there is no other way than regular funding for a project like this. Since 2020, I am using elementary as my primary OS, and I am happy with the current version. The quirks with the Nvidia drivers are gone now after a couple of updates. And the system is quite snappier this time than earlier versions. Let’s hope that the team implements other quality-of-life improvements and lay a path toward implementing Wayland.
@@tektauron Blaine explained that very well in this video. It is about generating enough money to support this project. Please rewatch the video if you've missed that section.
@@chahan691 Yes, opinionated silliness is there, no doubt. Once I was having problems with my Nvidia drivers and asked for a solution. One of the team members replied that she "personally does not like Nvidia graphics cards" and that it was not their job to solve such problems. Can you believe it??!! That is the stupidest reply I've ever received from any developer I've interacted with!
@@chahan691 You're right. Along with PopOs and Ubuntu, Mint is also another viable option. I solved the problem with my drivers though. Reddit forums came to help! And this is another lovely thing about Linux: you can get help from so many forums that you don't have to rely on the developers.
Visually it is absolutely stunning in its consistency etc, i prefer it even over kde in that regard. It feels like something that could have been sold by a company like Apple. I like how it looks both sort of old but new at the same time, a lot of linux distros have this. Icons arnt flat, there are subtle gradients, but they arnt so glossy or glass-like either. Its like a modern rendition of xp era UI design. Otherwise id rather go with other linux distros like mint or even ubuntu, it feels limited and unfinished in quite a few ways.
Been a fan since Juno... Tried it but the "nuke and pave to upgrade" is just a deal breaker for me. That should be in huge bold letters at the beginning of the install - "YOU WILL HAVE TO WIPE YOUR INSTALL WHEN YOU UPGRADE TO THE NEXT RELEASE!" Great, honest review as always, Blaine! Kudos!
Elementary OS sounds ideal for my old Macbook Pro that Apple no longer supports. I've tried several linux distros over the years but this one seems the most polished, and since I don't use the old Macbook anymore - why not? I'm going to save any files and photos I still want and go for it.
I'm a longtime elementary OS user. But when idealism is above everything, even the user's first sight experience, this tends not to work out very well.
It makes me very sad that the developers still haven't included a basic office suite or at the very least provided a welcome app such as EndeavourOS or MX Linux provide to make such installation easy even for new users. My significant other, who hates computers but uses them to browse the web and to write documents, would never be able to figure Elementary OS out well enough to install a word processor or his preferred web browser. Yes, Elementary OS is breathtakingly lovely. However, so is KDE Plasma, yet it typically comes configured on a system containing at least a basic office suite and browser. On my machine, I use dwm tiling window manager. That's because I love to tinker. I suspect that their target audience probably won't want to do all that. It's a shame, again, because I love the consistent interface. I guess here the [idea of the] perfect has become the enemy of the good. It really makes me sad too when I think about the wonderful video you did a few years back on using a Elementary OS5 as a basis for an open source Mac alternative.
As I see it, they've nailed the OS visuals, the look and feel of it, to attract new users who might be tired of the MacOS or Windows ways (the former more than the latter, comparing the visuals between the three). But, although some of the decisions they've made might be very well worked out for more than basic users like you and me, they end up throwing off the basic users (like you significant other you mentioned) away from it, just for the sake of visual consistency and philosophy of use.
I heavily disagree and think Elementary is one of the few distros that strikes a nice balance OOTB. Nothing is tailored to a specific user, and the software store is accessible if you need something else
I remember downloading an Elementary Skin for Firefox back when the OS was still in development. I thought it was the most beautiful UI design I had seen.
I'm giving this another test run on one of my machines and so far so good and I hear what you're saying if this was to move forward an add more features this would be possibly the best Linux distro available
zorin is better when it comes to system update/upgrade. no need for reinstallation. and much more user friendly for new user of linux due to ui similarity to windows and much more customizable.
For me personally nothing will compete or come close to KDE. I love to tinker and change everything. If Pantheon or Gnome did that out the box like KDE I’d seriously take a look at it.
@@iaina3251 I don't think KDE looks that dated, to be honest. It has a lot of nice modern design queues, animations and transitions, blurry and glassy effects, along with being able to enable other slick options in settings.
An excellent and thoughtful review. I considered using Elementary, but instead opted for Linux Mint some months back. My concern was that though Elementary hangs together beautifully, it had the feeling that it would not be around in the long term. Your comments on the funding model (or lack of a strong one) are spot on. Thanks for the work you do.
Nice analysis of what should be by now a perfect alternative to the 'walled garden'! :/ i guess it's hard when they lost their founder and main Dev. :o I'm leaning to Mint now after trying Pop but as a Linux newbie I really need a good migration tutorial & list of alternate Apps and Utils etc. As well as a GUI backup utility ala Time Machine which seems for some reason to be a Unicorn in Linux Land!? :(
I know I'm a little late here, but in case you hadn't found your answer yet: as far as the GUI backup goes, both Deja Dup (GNOME's integrated solution) and Timeshift (Linux Mint's own offering) are similar to Time Machine. They are both flexible and do what you want. If you already found these and weren't happy with them, then darn. For alternatives, the best thing you have is a search engine. As someone who also switched only a few years ago, finding FOSS alternatives to apps you need can be hard to find without comparisons. For example, I would search "Sony Vegas alternative linux" if I needed to find a replacement for that. Hope it helps.
It just smells ancient. Smooth animations play with empty content. Rounded corners panels are around ugly square buttons with shades... Distractive. The settings applet - especially. And a funny fact is that all of this they object and pretend to be the nicest distro for all these years
Quality review there "Joe" (because I don't know your name, sorry bro) ... I'm trying to weigh up whether to upgrade to a new laptop or crossgrade to a Linux based system from a now abandoned MacOS Catalina, as my laptop is 10 years old this year (MBP 13" Retina thingy). I also just enjoy the journey Linux has taken in my lifetime, I'm 51 and have used Unix and Linux systems for as long as they've been around. Cheers mate. $0.02 from Hobart.
It has always been a designer distribution. Lacking technical knowledge for it to become better on other fronts. Or just stubborn in its idealism. I mean, they still have the connecting accounts not working properly. You still can't enter your Google info. That's just a small example. That said, great video!
I used to love elementary OS back when I started with Linux and mistakenly saw it as a Mac clone. Now that I daily drive a MacBook Pro my desktop runs Arch and I see the actual point of Linux.
I love Elementary, even though I'm not just ready to leave Arch for it, at least not just yet. But yeah, this Os seems to be in this weird dance between being one the most invocations in the Linux scenery, and being kind lacking or even slow on adding some mordem functionalities. That's obviously because of the money factor, unfortunately that is bound to happen in the Linux world and maybe this is keeping Elementary (or even other distro, really.) to reach it's true potential. As you said, what's the cost of idealism?
About what you said in your TL;DR, imho ideals, virtues and values are paramount and stand above and beyond the desires of "the userbase". The userbase is no single entity, we are talking about single individuals here, and therefore what is left is to "please the majority" and that strategy is a hit or miss and leads to projects losing clear direction and purpose and get off track and become totally generic. You made the assumption that IF elementary OS was having the funding of OS 5 times THEN all would be good but how do you know? Did you look into a crystal ball? Overall I cannot agree with your TL;DR at all, it is all speculation. I would say that what matters is to set goals and to reach them. Maybe the elementary OS goal is not merely pleasing the majority? Consider that for example Apple does not do that at all, heck, Apple even runs a vicious Anti-consumerism strategy and has proven to never listen to consumers at all but do its own thing.
More locked up than a Mac(and Gnome), bugs, No wayland, Cash grab Business model. Why arent them all coding me a forklift Client instead or contribute to gnome3.
More and more people are moving away from ubuntu and Ubuntu based distros to others such as Arch. I think a project like that is a good noob friendly system but as soon as they “mature” as a Linux user they will go elsewhere. Specially with the direction ubuntu is going.
I have never liked elementary. I have never felt it is polished or beautiful as many says it is. There is so many other DE that are way more polished and modern then eOS.
Hi Blaine. What distribution would you recommend for your parents if they were older people who use Macos but their (still good) hardware has stopped receiving updates?
I desperately want to push this project because I've loved their ideals for a long time, but I can't support the people who run the project anymore. Not long ago, they began attacking/blocking people with particular political views on their official social media accounts, and I find this to be completely unacceptable from a FOSS project. You don't get to be pro freedom only as long as it fits the narrative you support. They've been pretty unreceptive to criticism about their distro for a long time, and the blatant political bigotry really sealed the deal for me. They make a beautiful product, but I can't hope they succeed anymore. That being said, I think a shakeup in the admin structure at Elementary would go a long way to fix a lot of the issues people have had with the project. It's just a shame that hasn't happened yet.
I had been a elementary user in the past, I always wished for them to use Debian instead of Ubuntu as their base distro. The release cycle is too wide for me too. Also, didn't enjoy de internal drama between Daniel and Casidy
Making an open source os is expensive yet the gnu linux community attacks canonical each time they try to find new ways to make money to keep giving us ubuntu
I don’t know why Google didn’t buy them. ChromeOS looks like a kludge when you enable Linux and here web applications can be installed and run right next to flatpak and traditional deb. applications. You get the best of both worlds and that’s a balance Google should have sought to attain. Its everything ChromeOS should have been and wasn’t. A blend of desktop and cloud computing in the same os.
Probably the question will sound strange, however, I don't understand what exactly the development team of a Linux distribution needs money for? I think a lot of people don't understand and that's why they don't actually pay distros to download. Many Linux users attack Microsoft and Apple for making money off their operating systems, and now the creators of some Linux distributions are looking for money with the intention of turning this hobby into a business. And that's fine if Linux is as functional as Windows and Mac, but... It's not. I would appreciate the details. It is a hobby whose product they willingly give to others for use. If it was a business, it would have a regular price. Linux is not a professional operating system. I've been using it for fun for years, but not really for work. As we all know, Linux is flawed and not ready for the desktop no matter how enthusiastically it claims otherwise. Linus Torvalds himself repeated it on several occasions. This is a Google translation, so if there are any mistakes, sorry, but English is not my native language.
Do you know Red Hat Enterprise Linux? It's commercial Linux distribution made from Red Hat for more than 20 years, It's a very successful and far from a hobby project. Linux does work. That's why Google, Microsoft, Facebook and a lot of companies fund It, because they use it. From Android to Chromebooks, from Microsoft Azure's solution to Facebook own servers, Linux is present in a lot of the web and people's lives, it's just that it is "invisible" to most of them.
