from Hacker News

Elementary OS 6 Odin

by jdhawk on 8/10/21, 4:07 PM with 319 comments

  • by wlesieutre on 8/10/21, 4:42 PM

    Looking great, I've been a long time Mac user and I think I actually like elementary's evolution of the UI styling (from when it started as a pretty direct clone) better than I like Apple's in Big Sur. Tried elementary before (Luna and Freya IIRC) and while it hasn't replaced my Mac for development or my Windows desktop for gaming, I'm definitely keeping an eye on it.

    Can't help but notice that the Sound indicator's dropdown doesn't line up with the icon above it. But the fact that a single UI glitch is a notable item now says a lot about the overall quality. Very tidy, still customizable, and a suite of built-in software that ought to cover most users. Good stuff.

  • by OJFord on 8/10/21, 5:11 PM

    I'm surprised they spend so much (presumably) time and effort on applications, especially 'Web' and 'Terminal'. How many users are actually going to use 'Web' as their browser?

    That said, I wish them all the best, because I use 'Files' (but not the distro) since it's the best I've found for the odd occasion where I think using a GUI file manager will be easier than the command line. I still wouldn't say it's good, just the best I've found. (Not opening everything on a single-click is a vast improvement!)

  • by SkyMarshal on 8/10/21, 7:32 PM

    This is a big update for a relatively small community distro. Kudos to the team.

    A summary of some of the cooler features:

    Performance: General performance improvements on all hardware resulting from optimizing for Pinebook Pro and Raspberry Pi - namely, reducing and asynchronizing inter-process communication between desktop components, removing unused code, and reducing disk I/O.

    Firmware: Linux Vendor Firmware Service now built-in, enabling firmware updates from within the OS.

    Flatpak: all-in on flatpak, all AppCenter apps are flatpaks, as well as some Elementary apps like Web.

    Portals: apps must explicitly request permission to get access to files or interact with other apps. Can tweak these permissions in System Settings.

    Mail: The Mail app now sandboxes html emails.

    Multi-Touch: Extended from supporting just desktop to various apps now too.

    Multi-Tasking: Better hot corners + new window and workspace controls.

    CalDav: Tasks and Calendar now designed around the CalDav format, making importing and sharing of tasks and calendar items with other CalDav apps easier.

    Dark Theme: system-wide, applies to GTK apps too.

    Terminal: smart-paste protection extended from sudo pastes to multi-line pastes.

    More OEM/Vendor friendly:

    - Installer is simplified and streamlined - network connectivity, user account creation, and updates moved out of the installer and into the installed OS. Better for vendors & OEMs.

    - Startup is intentionally non-Elementary-branded, better enabling OEM/Vendor branded startup splash screen — "we don’t need to constantly advertise your operating system to you".

    There's a separate blog post on hardware-specific improvements here: https://blog.elementary.io/hardware-improvements-coming-to-e...

  • by trts on 8/10/21, 4:25 PM

    Elementary is great, the couple times I've tried it, I wasn't into the desktop paradigm it was encouraging me to use (e.g., no minimize button, native apps that are pretty and consistent but less functional). Will look forward to giving it another spin.

    Having recently begun using a Mac for the first time, and after having had to suffer with Win10 for a few years, I have to say that I didn't appreciate that several out-of-box linux desktop experiences are now superior to commercial options.

    Ubuntu for example is quite stable, has attractive defaults that aren't garish or trying to be too unfamiliar, and otherwise never does anything I don't expect. Especially when it comes to finder/explorer/nautilus.

    All major desktops now have a dock, some tray icons, and a notification area.

    To me the differentiator is just staying out of my way.

  • by tayistay on 8/10/21, 5:30 PM

    - Can't publish closed-source apps on their AppCenter. "To ensure reproducible builds, transparency, and auditability, binaries cannot be uploaded or included alongside the source code to be installed on users' devices." So that precludes my apps, and probably most other devs I know. I'd guess because of this restriction, their app store is going nowhere as a business.

    - Their 70/30 split is higher than what Apple currently offers (85/15) for revenue less than 1m (which is going to be everyone on eOS)

    - While I like macOS, I think it's a shame they chose to (more or less) copy it, rather than try a new direction. But perhaps that would be too risky.

  • by input_sh on 8/10/21, 4:12 PM

    I've been using it since the weekend and it's so great!

    My favourite feature is that it's all flatpak, allowing smartphone-like permissions for each desktop app — both first-party and any third-party from Flathub.

    I like it way more than snap and am glad there's an Ubuntu fork that works so wonderfully with it.

  • by drcongo on 8/10/21, 4:43 PM

    Elementary is starting to actually look nicer than macOS. There's still some janky details here and there, but the overall design language is very nice.

  • by Mikeb85 on 8/10/21, 5:03 PM

    Wow looks great. This fell off my radar for a bit, looking pretty nice now. Not gonna lie, having Gnome + Flatpak on Ubuntu LTS base already puts it near the top of my list, the styling and added usability features puts it over the top.

    Ubuntu LTS base is also great for developers, as it seems most cloud images these days are just that. I've tried installing/building tools on other distros that I like more than Ubuntu but they always seem to use wonky options, libraries that are too old/new or in strange places, and I end up back at Ubuntu.

  • by azinman2 on 8/10/21, 5:28 PM

    I tried eOS 5. The screenshots made it look the most user friendly of Linux distros (read: Apple knock off), and at first it feels that way. But it quickly starts to show how shallow that knock off is… and it’s a huge undertaking so I don’t blame them. First is what happens once you run anything that isn’t made by them — all of the sudden totally different UIs. Linux has this problem in spades because there is no standard (gnome, kde, whatever ppl want, etc), and there’s no one setting the bar (which Apple does on its own platform). Thus there’s no consistency to anything.

    Their own apps similarly look ok at first, and then you go to use them and you realize it’s all very bare bones.

    My system also froze/locked up a lot at random, and I don’t know why. Installing Ubuntu fixed that issue. Not sure what happened there.

    Again I don’t blame them; not sure how many people are working for them, but creating a modern desktop and all the apps you’d expect from scratch is a huge undertaking. I hope they do well and provide Linux a real alternative experience. I’d love to see some way that they can extend into apps to make their look and feel more consistent somehow (gnome/kde skins? Something much more? Their own forks of popular apps?), and that the community ends up focusing around them so we get a distributed effort.

  • by spindle on 8/10/21, 10:17 PM

    I love elementary OS and would use it on all my computers if I didn't love NixOS even more (and sometimes I use NixOS with Pantheon, elementary's window manager).

    > all AppCenter apps are now packaged and distributed as Flatpaks, a modern container format that keeps apps siloed away from each other—and your sensitive data

    All apps are siloed from your sensitive data? That is a little um simplified or misleading or something. They may have done a great job with security now that they have Portals, but it is surely a much more complicated story than the above quote suggests.

  • by temp8964 on 8/10/21, 5:01 PM

    I have tried Linux desktop. One of the couple things I can’t get over with is remote. It seems there’s no straight and reliable way to remote to the same session of the host desktop. In addition, Windows RDP can also reliably adjust to client screen setup.

  • by gabereiser on 8/10/21, 4:29 PM

    For cloud workloads, I prefer alpine on Amazon Linux 2 hosts. For desktop, I prefer Elementary. It's great to see an update on the best (imho) desktop distro.

  • by Flex247A on 8/10/21, 4:41 PM

    Elementary is really great. I have to admit that no other OS (other than alpine/void/arch) can run smoothly on my Intel Atom N450 netbook.

  • by wlesieutre on 8/10/21, 4:28 PM

    That trackpad gesture support where it actually tracks with your finger movement looks really nice. Is this typical in Linux distros now, or is elementary going above and beyond the rest with that?

  • by netcyrax on 8/10/21, 5:16 PM

    Big fan of eOS. Congrats on the launch!

    I always wondered how an open-source project develops from scratch so many different apps (e.g. Web, Mail, Calendar, etc). Why not focusing more on the OS rather than wasting resources on apps that there are mature open-source alternatives (e.g. Thunderbird, Firefox, etc)?

  • by jjice on 8/10/21, 5:28 PM

    I love the look and feel of elementary, but I'm always skeptical of trying new Linux DEs. I want them to work well, and they often do, but 4K and scaling support is very hit or miss with the ones I've used. I'm currently using Gnome and not impressed at all, just settling on it. Does anyone have experience with other DEs recently with this? Either KDE or Pantheon, or something else? I just want good 4K support and scaling that doesn't causes awful tearing or window bugs.

  • by schmorptron on 8/10/21, 9:46 PM

    I really like elementary and the ecosystem-like, but open approach they're taking to desktop linux.

    One aspect of it I feel often goes underappreciated is how lightweight it is. Provided you have a reasonable amount of RAM for the tasks you're trying to do, e.g. 4GB+ for normal desktop usage and an SSD, you can run it on fairly old CPUs and it will be blazing fast still.

    Congrats to the team!

  • by _spduchamp on 8/10/21, 5:27 PM

    Can't wait to give this version a whirl! As I've said before (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26661615), we use Elementary OS as our point-of-sale terminals in a small chain of resale stores, and it's been super solid. It's been a good choice for us.

  • by HerbMcM on 8/10/21, 7:42 PM

    Been using Elementary for a couple months and it's pretty comfortable. Every new version, however, I look to see if they've added support to increase mouse scroll wheel speed with no success. Sadly, it's still in the limbo circle of blame between GNOME,libinput,x,wayland,etc.

  • by neilalexander on 8/10/21, 10:21 PM

    This is a great looking release and I really don’t think enough attention is being drawn to just how lovely the elementaryOS desktop looks and feels on a hi-DPI display, which is not something I can say for most Linux desktops. Also the font hinting/text rendering looks excellent too.

  • by AdmiralAsshat on 8/10/21, 5:15 PM

    Can it do major version upgrades yet?

  • by princevegeta89 on 8/10/21, 6:15 PM

    Never had any problem with them however there were some serious usability issues like the AltTab behavior, absence of mouse focus options etc etc. I also remember the animations were laggy. Switched to KDE and it feels like the full package

  • by gytdev on 8/11/21, 3:33 AM

    The biggest hurdle Linux has to overcome is somehow convincing major players to release Linux version of their apps. Making a beautiful skin is not going to solve the main Linux catch-22: not enough market share to have main apps, not enough main apps to increase market share. Excel, Power point (essential for business and school) creativity apps like Photoshop, Premiere, etc. Their are essential to most people work-flows and the biggest hurdle to adoption.

    VM's partly solves the problem, but You need to have a decent computer and small technical chops.

  • by wraptile on 8/11/21, 5:15 AM

    I have a rather weird question: can Elementary be tiled and keyboard driven (at least for windows)? I like the general app visuals and their GUI philosophy but floating windows are so passé.

  • by Royi on 8/10/21, 6:09 PM

    I don't get how an OS is released and performance isn't mentioned.

    I think each OS release must include data about the performance (Speed and resources at steady state).

    We want performant and lean OS's.

  • by Flex247A on 8/10/21, 4:26 PM

    2 years in the making. Been waiting for this since last year!

  • by Sammi on 8/10/21, 11:28 PM

  • by pull_my_finger on 8/11/21, 1:53 AM

    Would I be correct to say that AppCenter releases are tied to GitHub exclusively[1] or can you use other version control hosts?

    [1]: https://github.com/elementary/houston/wiki/Submission-Proces...

  • by edsimpson on 8/10/21, 5:13 PM

    I haven’t been following development closely, are there any comparisons of Elementary and Ubuntu Budgie?

  • by thewrinklyninja on 8/11/21, 1:32 AM

    My main issue is still app notifications in the panel. IF I'm running a syning app like Insync. I want to have the app notifier in the system tray so I can see the status without having to check the service manually to see if its running.

  • by brundolf on 8/10/21, 5:06 PM

    The main things keeping me from using Linux as a daily driver are:

    1) My personal desktop has Windows for games

    2) My laptops (personal and work) are Macs because Apple simply makes the best laptops

    When I've dual-booted in the past it's been a huge pain, and I didn't end up bothering to switch to Linux very often in practice anyway. Linux laptops exist, but they tend to be spotty in terms of build-quality and power. Gaming on Linux can technically be done, but I don't want my expensive machine to be unable to play some things because of the OS.

    There are lots of little things, most of which could be overcome with effort, but these days I'd rather use my devices than tinker with them most of the time.

    I guess I just wish I had an excuse to use something like Elementary or PopOS. I would if I had an a) desktop that b) was mainly for projects. But alas, I don't.

  • by pmarreck on 8/10/21, 4:42 PM

    Whoa. Congrats! Very nice OS.

  • by greyivy on 8/10/21, 9:13 PM

    Congrats Elementary team! The focus on accessibility and inclusivity (gender neutral iconography too!) is awesome! Not a fan of Debian-based distros, but still tempted to take it for a spin.

  • by qwerty456127 on 8/10/21, 9:05 PM

    I would migrate an office of dozens computers to this if only it used classic packages and dndn't depend on Flatpaks.

    I already tried to migrate to Pop_OS! but it failed to install.

    So I had to keep with Ubuntu.

  • by yosito on 8/10/21, 6:00 PM

    Is it possible to install Elementary's DE on Ubuntu?

  • by stonogo on 8/10/21, 10:17 PM

    The Mail app now sandboxes html emails ... but it still loads remote resources by default. Seems like a strange combination of defaults.

  • by kaba0 on 8/10/21, 8:46 PM

    Are they planning on converting to Wayland?

  • by tediousdemise on 8/10/21, 6:21 PM

    FYI - there is no minimize button in elementary OS, and judging by the screenshots, this hasn't been fixed yet.

  • by andrekandre on 8/10/21, 10:36 PM

    wow, the icons, window borders, shading, everything is crisp and just pops

    maybe just me but i felt a lower cognitive load compared to big sur, and especially monterey where everything is super low contrast, large margins between items, and all the icons are hard to differentiate same-color outlines...

    looks nice!

  • by RandallBrown on 8/10/21, 4:34 PM

    I've never heard of Elementrary before. Is the goal to have the look and feel of macOS?

  • by fattybob on 8/11/21, 7:23 AM

    hmm, not so impressed, ran it up and its a bit of an all or nothing ultimatum on boot - i won't be running that instead of my osx for a while yet...

  • by DenverCode on 8/10/21, 5:06 PM

    Question, best solution for running it on an M1 Mac?

  • by gclawes on 8/10/21, 5:07 PM

    Are there still Pinebook Pro builds available?

  • by skrtskrt on 8/10/21, 5:55 PM

    I am sorry but those tray icons are horrific. I don't think they would have looked modern or clean or nice at any time. Just bad design for any era.

  • by imwillofficial on 8/10/21, 4:53 PM

    So happy to see them continue their work of a solid, unified desktop Linux. Perhaps this year is the year of desktop Linux!

  • by pjmlp on 8/10/21, 5:39 PM

    Nice to see some Vala love.

  • by dancemethis on 8/10/21, 7:17 PM

    How dare them call us old geezers?

    It's the Isis drama they invented all over again.

  • by Shadonototro on 8/10/21, 6:22 PM

    very nice, this is what gnome should have been, they took the best of macOS

    however, i'm still gonna stick to XFCE4