Elementary OS, worth my time?

Audigex

Audigex

Audigex

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I'm turning a couple of old machines into Linux boxes for family - but my desktop life is Windows and OSX, I tend to prefer my Linux sans-tete, and when I do have to run in a GUI, I tend to just use LXDE or something lightweight to get things done and then remove it again

My family, though, aren't quite as happy in a terminal window as I am, though, so I'm eyeing up Desktop Environments... the problem being that they all look/feel clunky to me.

Then Elementary OS caught my eye: based on Ubuntu, so presumably compatible with anything Ubuntu/Debian is, but with a nice OSX-lookalike theme, so hopefully fairly user friendly (particularly to family members who can work my MacBook already)

Has anyone used it? Does it live up to the promise? I'm currently downloading it to try in a VM and possibly on a laptop later, but the opinion of someone who's tried it in the wild would be great
 
I've used it in the past. And you can see from my user name, I've used OS X a brave bit too. It's a decent enough DE. But I still can't bring myself to use it as my daily driver. I actually use Ubuntu Gnome as my daily driver (LTS version) these days.

eOS development is slow. It's quite buggy at times. But it's refreshing to see people working on a DE that are interested in interface design and user experience, instead of programmers slapping something together and saying "that'll do". However for people who complain that GNOME devs are making their DE "too simple", they should probably stay away from eOS and Pantheon. It's even more simplistic than GNOME. Which, for non-*nix users might make adoption easier as it hides away the *nix, but for anyone with even a little competence in *nix it can get quite frustrating.
 
eOS has been my go-to Linux distro for quite some time now, although development is admittedly a bit slow.

I can see why some might feel the Pantheon environment is a bit *too* simplistic, but it's lovely to look at, fast, smooth, slick and does pretty much everything a basic user would want or need. And of course once you fire up a terminal, eOS is more or less the same as any other Debian/Ubuntu derivative.
 
Sounds good then, thanks - it's pretty much going to be for email, letter writing, web browsing and photos: the user isn't even slightly interested in anything under the hood or more complex: and as you say under the Terminal it's pretty much Ubuntu... I presume that I can add pretty much any Ubuntu applications, too?

And OhEsEcks I completely agree: while Linux is definitely more usable than 10 years ago, I still find the UI's to be horrible. Now that WiFi is much more widely supported, the only things that really stop me adopting it for Desktop use are the User Interfaces and lack of decent Disk Utilities (everything's way too complex or doesn't explain things)
 
eOS looks nice, but for other people I'd always recommend Mint. Mint has a good history of development behind it and that makes it more resilient for new linux (ex Windows) users. The default look on mint is pretty nice (cinnamon DE) and you can easily download some themes from the GUI to make it look even nicer if you want. Everything works well out of the box.

I found the photo app in eOS to be a bit buggy, it's nice enough - trying to be like iPhoto - but had some weird glitches at times.

I forced Mint under the missus' nose and she uses it fine.
 
I've been quite impressed with eOS, very simple and easy to use: I haven't noticed any bugs yet

Mint is fine, but it's still gnome at the end of the day... intuitive only to the nerdy. I'm sure others can pick it up and learn it, but it still "feels" clunky even to me, and I'm quite happy flicking between operating systems.

Frankly, I'm just glad SOMEONE is trying to "do" Linux while even considering the user interface as important: even the best of the rest of the community seems bolted on as an "Oh, I suppose we'd better have a GUI, then" afterthought.
 
I didn't like eOS and found a ton of problems with it, but then I'm a heavy user and needed some thing built for my needs, so I settled with Backbox4.
I'm pretty sure though, for web browsing and looking at photos, eOS will be perfectly fine.
 
I've just started using it.

Very nice so far, looks so much better than the alternatives out of the box. I can't stomach the awful icons and UI from most distros that look right out of the 90's.

I did have to compile the driver for my Asus sound card and ATI graphic card which is a minus compared to Windows. And the package manager has hilariously out of date versions of things (why is that, most non Linux OS's don't have this problem?).

On the plus side it's pretty quick compared to Windows, boots up almost immediately. Stock music player / photo app works well. I like the docking icon at the bottom.

I'm using git, node, docker and WebStorm mainly for development work. This is about the only OS I would consider using apart from Windows 8.1 so far.

Anyway I'm keeping an open mind as I've never stuck with Linux so far. elementary OS just might convince me.
 
Pants said:
Anyway I'm keeping an open mind as I've never stuck with Linux so far. elementary OS just might convince me.
Click to expand...
Nice one, we need more general users switching to Linux.
If you enjoy eOS, you should enjoy most Ubuntu distro's depending on your needs. :)
 
Tried ElementaryOS, PCLinuxOS and Mint in the last week or so.

After a couple of days with each, decided to go with Mint. Very easy to use coming from 15+ years of windows, but you can have a dabble with terminal too if you wish (although not necessary). ElementaryOS just seemed a little too basic for me.

Mainly use it for web browsing and watching tv.
 
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