That was when my $9000 Mac Pro — which had been a great machine, and still was, except for the little detail about not having been updated since 2009 and thus being stuck with USB 2 (!!!) to say nothing of Thunderbolt and any kind of modern accoutrements — started to feel like a personal affront, a sneering fuck you directed at not just me, but everybody remotely like me. (Wow!!! Déjà vu bro!!)
Nevertheless, I didn't switch then, and all of us complainers won't switch now either.
Because the fucking OS.
I've tried every iteration of Ubuttnu, CentOS, and FreeBSD since. Even OpenWhatever, before the goblins bought it. I have Thinkpads and Dell XPS "Developer Editions" and a drawer full of other crap like that.
Executive summary: it's all garbage time. It's like going back 10+ years. Nothing works right, on any of them. Copy/paste, batteries, wireless networking, drag and drop, high-res displays, multilingual input, even like fucking word processing and email and image editors and terminal programs... it's all like Mac OS X Jaguar level.
We can't give Apple the finger, even though we want to (and definitely after last week, we all want to) because there literally isn't an OS in the world that can touch Mac OS for general-purpose workstation/laptop use. (For niche and limited-purpose, yes, there are options.)
Elementary OS is a fucking joke. Every OS mentioned disparagingly above is a better choice for almost any purpose. But those are still horrible.
Apple's OS advantage is what lets them say "Fuck you peons, here's some 3 year old technology and a bag of dongles, that'll be $4000."
But we're mostly all gonna buy the new shitty MacBook Hipster, or gut it out with our old ones, until a better fucking OS happens. And that won't be soon — it's not even remotely on the horizon.
But it would be unfair for me to blame Apple's OS for most of these faults.
I find this two-dimensional switching incredibly useful for multitasking, whereas Windows just flattens all windows to the alt-tab list, which quickly becomes overwhelming if you're a power user who doesn't like to close windows.
Of all the OS X criticism, this is the most absurd. Command, Control, they are all arbitrary choice, why even whinge about it. Is like going to France and complaining everyone speaks French
It's worth pointing out that Apple is the odd one out when it comes to modifier keys. Switching between Linux and Windows, alot of the keyboard shortcuts remain exactly the same. Going from Windows to OS X is a really frustrating from that aspect.
>> a sneering fuck you directed at not just me, but everybody remotely like me.
You overpaid 8k for a machine so why should Apple care? You are clearly going to buy their next product.
>>But we're mostly all gonna buy the new shitty MacBook Hipster, or gut it out with our old ones
According to Netmarketshare stats at least 2% have abandoned OSX since May 2016.
When I go into a brand new elementary installation to try it out, and I can't set the proxy, i shake my head and wonder how anybody can take this OS seriously.
Not even that the proxy setting didn't work, I actually couldn't set it in the GUI, it would just wipe my setting.
Yeah... linux is not perfectly viable, its a mess.
oh. well, as long as that's been cleared up.
And that right there is the problem. Laziness is a good thing, it means the software is being more useful. And you should encourage complaints and fix the problem, which can only make things better for everyone.
Can you be more specific? i.e. - copy paste with a highlight+middle mouse button is frankly awesome in GNOME.
- Batteries - yeah, Windows laptops usually don't have amazing battery life and it can even be slightly worse under Linux, however if you're working in a mode where you laptop is 99% plugged in and you just need occasionally a couple of hours from it, it's quite doable, which I'd imagine is the use-case for most "workstation" usage scenarios.
- wireless networking - works great if you're willing to do a bit of research before buying, instead of just dropping Linux on any garbage PC and expecting it to work flawlessly, (why won't you try that with macOS and report back?)
- drag and drop - that seems... highly unlikely, unless you're dragging/dropping from/to some weird, wrapped wine port that doesn't communicate with your desktop
- high-res displays - not as good as macOS, but works quite well in GNOME 3 and improving all the time, (far better than Windows)
- multilingual input, even like fucking word processing and email and image editors and terminal programs - things like multilingual input work well, word processing works well, but certainly there's no MS Office, (which isn't that great on a Mac either), there's no Photoshop, but I find it strange that Krita, GIMP etc. won't suffice you for many tasks, mail works well and terminal programs work amazingly well as well. In addition gaming on Linux is now miles better than on macOS, in addition to the far superior customisability and superior package management, not to mention not being under the will of a single company that does whatever it feels like that day, which matters to some.
Oh my gosh, this is my least favorite thing about using gnome! I accidentally paste all the time and can't turn it off particularly easily. Very sad.
Unfortunately, it turns out this usage pattern is terrible for the battery.
Why doesn't Linux track actual hardware proved to be compatible. Each year the same 'bit of research' with no guarantees at all. Oh, wait, Linux does not — because it isn't a Product.
Paste is Ctrl+V in your browser, in your notepad, in your IDE, but it's Ctrl-Shift-V in your terminal.
Now copy a bunch of IPs from your AWS page into terminal to ssh into them for an hour or so.
Fuck that shit, I'm getting a second mortgage for the MBP and a set of 19 dongles.
The battery lasted about three hours, the $300 graphics card did not function at all because of poor drivers (graphics switching is still theoretical on even user friendly linux os' because of dark age xserver)
I had to spend two weeks to get the wifi working by messing around with conf files
The concept of hardware/software integration seems to evade the general purpose computing industry to the detriment of us all, I am not sure why someone hasn't built a tightly integrated linux laptop yet.
At this point the GUIS look pretty decent and there is plenty of software (most people only use browsers anyway) we just need to get the basics working well.
Honestly if you put together fancy slides in Keynote, it might work (though Beamer is still nicer). I even managed to set up the email client and read emails occasionally when my workstation was rebooting. After two years I asked for a laptop with Linux and nicer keyboards and I couldn’t be happier.
The OSes are miles behind though.
Very useful, intuitive UX, Alfred like functionality out of the box, very nice UI (not just for linux, for anything!), productive workflow, and gets out of your way when you need to get things done.
I still have to find a hardware replacement with a great keyboard, solid trackpad, killer battery, and great display, but my OS concerns are finally resolved.
Edit: Repo with screenshots: https://github.com/varlesh/Arc-Dark-KDE
You apparently have a strong preference for MacOS. Lots of people do, but many people dislike it. IMO, there isn't a clear winner.
Although I did use a Mac as a workstation for a couple years ~ 2010, and found that particularly trying, so that may factor in to how people receive my assessment. It was close to what I wanted, but still far enough away to just generally annoy me by not being configurable enough to actually do what I wanted.
I'm still amazed at your impression though, as I'm happily using Linux on my laptops and feel like everything works as it should (because I can get my work done).
Is there a problem attracting quality graphic designers to open source projects?
But believe it or not, people exist that prefer other operating systems.
I myself am a gamer as well as a developer, so my primary OS at home is Windows 10. My secondary one which I use for development and writing is Ubuntu 16.10. I recently began abandoning Mac - not because the OS is horrible or Apple is a bad company, but because it no longer syncs with my personal flow. Well, that, and I can no longer justify the pricetag.
FYI there are macOS compatible PCI-E USB 3 cards available. Apparently some of the newest USB-C PCI-E cards work too though I haven't tried it myself.
Works with laptops too, just be super careful what you buy. Might work on a Thinkpad P70, not sure.
So while I haven't tried Elementary, I'd be astonished if it's any better at interoperability than Ubuntu...
Specifically, dragging images from your browser to the finder works the first few times, providing an overlay image which becomes a file icon as you hover over the finder window. A few transfers later, the file icon stops appearing. Then the semi-transparent image stops appearing; though the files are still being copied. Then, silently, the copying starts to fail completely. Not fun.
Sometimes I can't drag attachments out of emails (which is about the only damn reason I don't use Mutt for everything) on the first few attempts; I thought for a while it was because the attachment hadn't completely downloaded, but no, it doesn't seem to be as predictable as that.
Moving files around in the Finder in general seems problematic, especially dragging between directories in the list view. This often causes much cursing.
The worst thing about Macs for me now is how much guff pops up entirely unbidden - messages about not having done any backups in 90 days, messages about an update which hasn't been able to be completed (but has caused iTerm to try and quit, which, in itself, causes a dialog to appear that I need to get rid of), iCloud approval nonsense (which also happens on both of my iPhones periodically), iTunes Store requests that I may or may not have made days ago that have failed with an unknown error, etc. The list goes on. I'm sure all of these things in isolation are very clever and should help improve my life, but in toto it's immensely frustrating.
Among web devs Safari is considered "the new IE" (which among web devs is probably the lowest insult)
TL;DR avoid Safari. It's rubbish.
Right now everybody is using Macs. Walk into the Bay Area coffee shop, you see Macs everywhere. I love that.
I build desktop software for Macs (focuslist.co). My apps are prettier than any others. They are easier and faster to use. This is the reason why people pay me $5 while they can get the job done with paper and pen.
This is thanks to Mac as a platform. Mac developers don't want to just get the job done. They want to get the job done while winning an Apple Design Award. That's why Mac apps are the best.
Take Mac away and high quality desktop apps will go away. We'll have to endure multi-platform Electron stuff. Ugh.
As soon as Intel rolls out their full Kaby Lake line, the Macbook Pro will get a rev that will improve speed and permit 32GB of RAM. Counting in design and manufacturing time, that could be about a year from now.
And USB-C is clearly the future for connectors. In a year or two a lot more peripherals will be shipping with USB-C as the default cord.
This is why Apple carries a huge amount of cash around on their books: so that they can make long-term decisions even if it hurts in the short term.
Can you comment on why you think this is true? A cursory look at Kaby Lake does not seem to indicate any sort of intrinsic change that would allow the MBP to have more memory.
My biggest problem is the obsession with "Thin and Light" crippling system specs. I get that a 11-13" laptop isn't gonna have the best GPU in the world, but I'd like a decent one in my 15" 'Pro' model please...and I'll take a little less thin and light to get it.
This is even more true on desktop. I don't really care about how bulbous you make the back of my iMac or Mac Pro, just give me SLI GTX1080s.
I get it, I'm the niche, I'm a gamer with a Mac, but I still exist.
Well, thats kind of a narcissistic statement. How many people develop for Windows? How many for Linux? How many for Mac? oh.
I try to make my software as beautiful as I can, and keep a simple and usable UX. There are developers who don't care about guidelines, or design. That's not a platform fault, is just that there are developers who just want the job done, even in a ugly fashion.
And that is the biggest problem in software world, that's why our computers are full of half-baked, ugly, poor documented and uncompatible programs - because someone "just wanted to get job done".
Well... no. Ubuntu, Gnome, KDE, XFCE; they are all high quality desktops. Don't mix the desktop with the applications you're running on it.
> We'll have to endure multi-platform Electron stuff.
Now that is indeed a real issue, and yes, ugh.
Edit: I've misread the original, sorry, so adding a few things: if you're using the default apps or the ones built for that specific environment only, you're good to go with GTK3, QT, whatever. The trouble comes when you mix these, but that is true even for the MacOS. Personally I really dislike the approach of Chrome, not giving a s* how it _should_ look like to look at least a little native.
It looks great in screenshots, but the feeling is much inferior, a fact I lament.
Sure, but since last time I've started KDE, I got a ton of segfaults errors coming from all over the place (and not just nepomuk)... Well, if the desktop is fine but the wifi interface or the notification tray is segfaulting, I'm just gonna throw the whole thing.
GNU/Linux doesn't have desktop stack capable of matching Objective-C, Swift frameworks both in feature set and related GUI tooling.
well... no. Speaking as long-time Linux user who tried all of this and in the end using i3 to avoid constant stream of bugs from DE.
This may be one of the most pretentious things I've ever read on HN.
I can see how having a simple UI with few controls on it can sometimes be translated as "pretty" in certain circles, but simply having few features and few controls doesn't magically mean your app is top of the pile on the entire Earth regarding "prettiness". It is quite an assertion to make.
EDIT: Again, this is not meant offensively but was more of a response to the assertion that the app is prettier than ANY others.
Furthermore, I certainly agree with the rest of the comment where they state that more attention is paid to UI etc. on MacOS than other platforms, typically.
Really this is just what users have been telling me last 6 months. "I bought it because it looks good."
Guess they're just used to worse.
Worse yet, is if i pick a stable variety of Linux, it's likely to not be pretty. The pretty Linux OSs (in my experience) tend to be at least as unstable as OSX. Ugh.
(Note: I upgraded to Sierra, crash or have weird crap happen ~4times a week)
edit: Why the downvote? Note that i explicitly stated this was my experience. Furthermore, i had the same experience when my Macbook Pro Retina was new, and came with OSX Mavericks. Both Mavericks and Sierra have gave me the impression that Apple releases unstable OSs for major versions, and need time to make it stable again.
For me, even as a Mac user, I avoid Mac-only apps as much as I possibly can because I want the freedom to switch platforms in the future. I will happily have all my apps be slightly less pretty if it means they work on any OS.
Times are changing
Times are always changing. Markets grow rapidly, and then they mature and growth gets flatter.
Specifically looking at Apple, while I agree that their focus has shifted away from the Mac platform somewhat and towards iOS, wasn't that to be expected with the huge growth in mobile and tablets over the last 10 years? Now, mobile growth is slowing[0] and tablet sales are flat/dropping[1].
Laptops aren't going anywhere... the vast majority of white collar workers use a laptop or desktop everyday. And while I can't predict what Apple is going to do (who can?), it seems unlikely that they'd completely drop a market that generated $5.7B in revenue in Q4 of 2016 [2].
[0]: http://www.businessinsider.com/smartphone-growth-is-slowing-... [1]: http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/tablet-decline-q2-2016/ [2]: http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/apple/apple-q4-2016-financial...
ETA: Btw, macOS Server is over here: http://www.apple.com/macos/server/
The issue is that Apple is alienating early adopters by removing ports, charging double for obsolete hardware and introducing gimmicks instead of real innovation. And there is a decrease in OS quality from Apple.
Questions to ask when deciding what platforms to support:
Of Android and iOS, which has the users willing to spend money on apps? More than $0.99?
Of Windows, Linux, and macOS, which has the users willing to spend money on apps? More than a few dollars?
But yeah, not everyone's using Macs. It's the biggest vendor, but there are more non-Macs than Macs.
For me and a lot of others what I really want is a UNIX that just works.
Meaning it just works with its hardware in all ways... audio and video playing, recording, editing and everything else all work very well, without having to recompile the kernel or hunt down and install alpha drivers without source hosted on sketchy sites, which is what drove me away from other UNIXes.
Also macOS is a good platform for developing native iOS apps. Why iOS and not Android? Mostly because the version adoption curve of Android is pretty bad.
The point is it's more about functionality and getting stuff done than it is about pretty. With other UNIXes there was always too much fighting with the system.
I'm a multi-plat guy who has a Macbook and a Windows machine. This makes me want to get a real open source initiative going on Windows to enable better UI assembly. Xaml is great but it has a ways to go.
Because there's some price spike? If anything things are as cheap or expensive as ever.
They hid the download button really well: You have to type in "0" into the "how much you'd like to pay" field for the "Purchase" button to change to "Download".
I mean I understand that open source projects need funding. But if you want people to try your niche OS at least make it obvious how to download it. Ask for money later after people had to chance to try it out.
I only typed in 0 because I know that "trick" from other websites. If I hadn't known I would have just left the website and would possibly never return.
I also think if you read the rest of what they're saying, it's probably is true that we will only get Linux GUIs which are competitive with Windows or Mac when people are willing to fund their professional development. OSS works exceptionally well for lower level components, or for components targeted at developers, because everyone involved benefits. For a professional developer a contribution acts as a good mechanism to raise your profile within the community and improve your ability to earn a decent salary elsewhere. For a company, running open source projects means they can solicit contributions and improve their profile; they contribute to other projects because it gives them a base to be able to build their products. We don't expect or find that OSS developers of high profile projects are starving in garrets, they are in fact leaders of their communities, highly prized and in-demand.
But these mechanisms do not have the same force when the consumer of the software is a general user, not a developer in the same field. i.e. when you're writing software in C++ which is then going to be used by graphic designers or artists, or by a casual user. In those case, the direct reputational benefits just aren't there, and that's why those sort of projects often struggle to take off. And on top of that those projects also involve a lot of painstaking and arguably boring work to get everything polished to a fine sheen. Krita for instance is excellent, but it has found a way to fund development through yearly crowdfunding. I think the same applies to Linux GUI's, that ultimately you need some pot of money able to support developers, which moves around according to the desires of informed consumers. In my opinion, that's what it will take for desktop Linux to become a serious mass market alternative to Mac and Windows.
But this time I regret every cent. Coming from Mac OS, or even Fedora, Elementary seems unpolished and unstable.
As it is, my Macbook Pro Retina has been crashing a lot and doing weird things frequently since i upgraded to Sierra. Between that and the latest Macbook Pro notebooks, i just don't like Apple anymore. I'm pretty set on buying a highend laptop _(similar build quality to Apple)_ and putting Linux on it... but that's where the fun stops. Linux UIs tend to lag behind significantly.
I want a for-profit UI company working on a Linux UI. OSS just can't compete with Apple on design it seems.. and in my opinion, users shouldn't have to choose between OSS and pretty design.
It's bad enough that if/when i leave OSX, i lose a lot of my apps due to them not supporting (or not supporting competently) Linux, but losing apps and UX.. well, it's a tough pill to swallow.
Talk more than others about usability - happily gloss over all kinds of weirdness[0] in your expensive setups.[1]
Happily pays quite a lot for your Macs - "regret every cent" after donating peanuts for the development of a Linux distro.
Just saying.
Edit: downvotes welcome! I cannot buy anything for my Internet points here in Western Europe.
A textual description of my wrongdoings would be even more awesome!
Edit2: you don't need to upvote me! Instead just tell me what I did wrong!
[0]: Yes, there is. If you cannot spot it I won't recommend you for any lead UX role.
[1]: Not saying it is bad or not worth the price though. Just expensive (given that you have to have a Mac to run it legally) and far from perfect.
"How much do you want to pay?"
"0 Dollars."
"Great!"
Why is that so horrible?
"We want users to understand that they’re pretty much cheating the system when they choose not to pay for software. We didn’t exclude a $0 button to deceive you; we believe our software really is worth something."
So apparently in the bait-and-switch mentality of the mac world, that you can pay '0 dollars' is not obvious.
[1]: http://blog.elementary.io/post/110645528530/payments
[2]: https://github.com/elementary/website/pull/655
It is a shame for Elementary OS Team, because this issue was many times discussed on GH issues / IRC about implementing just a "$0" button. As I remember in launchpad there is also a task or discussion about suggestion of the dialog which will remind about donation after certain time duration.
Edit:
Found https://blueprints.launchpad.net/elementaryos/+spec/donation...
They should include more videos and screenshots so people have a better idea of what they are buying.
If you were to email Elementary and ask for support with a non-working 'sg' kernel module, I would be highly surprised if they offered you any support. More likely, they would tell you to contact one of the authors, who did not receive one dime for our work. He takes your money, and shirks off supporting you to people that _didn't_ take your money.
edit: typo
I run a small software company myself. We're selling our software on the internet. But our website focuses on getting people to download the free trial first. The "asking for money" is then done once the trial period ends.
It's already hard to get people to download your stuff for free. With obviously visible download buttons.
If we did what Elementary is doing we would be closing our shop rather soon.
From what I can remember, there was never a time where they disallowed a way of downloading the OS for free, they just made it more difficult to figure out over time.
No thank you, I'd rather use Mint or Ubuntu if I want an easy distro.
If you use macOS because you need to run Mac software, then you probably aren't going anywhere.
now i'm back to linux because i can't stand the decisions apple took. plus, it feels like osx (now macOS) is less and less table on every iteration. i had a BSOD while trying to plug my external monitor ffs.
Inkscape and Gimp are the stalwarts, but for someone coming from Sketch or Photoshop they feel quite ancient and somewhat messy.
https://www.figma.com is cross-platform (web based), and a pretty good Sketch competitor
For a Lightroom replacement, Darktable is actually quite good (though I really miss the high quality shadows/highlights algorithm from ACR)
Since the Linux release of SD I've been dual booting elementary on my desktop and have had a pretty solid experience. For me it's games that make me keep a Windows installation around.
They're actually claiming I'm going to give up Photoshop, Pixelmator, Lightroom, CaptureOne rather than buying an external card-reader. And that's ignoring that most of us already prefer 3rd-party external card readers for speed alone ..
This is probably the most painful thing on desktop at the moment, because no one gives a s* to desktop mail apps these days.
I recently switched back to evolution from Thunderbird, but where one if great, the other falls short ( in this case, GPG with Evolution is _painful_ ). Geary is... well, not mature, Claws and Sylpheed are a bit too oldschool and mutt is ... well, mutt.
I'd love to see something like Rainloop[1] as a real desktop app. Mailpile[2] is a nice idea, but is nowhere even close to the usability of Rainloop.
[1] https://github.com/matzipan/envoyer/blob/master/README.md#re...
As for mail, Thunderbird is not so bad.
The only laptops comparable to Macbook Pro hardware quality and battery life are the Dell XPS series and the Thinkpad X1.
I feel there is a serious shortage of good laptops with linux pre-installed that the non-technical user can pickup and start using.
Think about Atari, Acorn, Amiga and such. While there were a few Pro like models, the majority of the home users were using the full packaged ones, with connection ports for external extensions.
Apple was the last one with this mindset, and thanks to their survival and success, that is the trend the industry is now returning to.
Specially given that computers have reached a plateau for 90% of the users out there.
The build quality of their offerings seems to get better with each successive generation too, and of course everything works out of the box.
I just wish they would partner with someone in the EU; that way shipping costs, VAT, and tariffs can be handled more transparently.
What are you going to do when all other laptop manufacturers follow suit - switch back?
Mac users who make this threat sound just like people who threaten to move to Canada every election cycle.
As for when the escape key / function row is going to disappear from windows computers, I'd say that one is a ways off / never.
As for when it's going to be impossible to get a nice nvidea graphics card, but given the track record, I'd say this trends towards "never" as well.
I complain because Apple decided to make the macbook pro 15 inch lighter and thinner resulting in 25% less battery (going from 99.5 watt-hour to 76.0-watt-hour), this means that they have to make more compromises to keep a good battery life and instead of having a decent graphic card like the nvidia gtx 1080 or 32GB ram, the new macbook pros are underpowered.
Since, apple is unlikely to decide to go back to the previous form factor, they are unlikely to ever sell a laptop with decent performances compared to their competitors.
And to add insult to the injury, switching to usb-c forces users (at least for a year or two) to carry a lot of extra adapters which makes the weight loss moot.
Until USB-C becomes the universal standard it's meant to be, consumers are better served by having multiple ports on their PCs to choose from.
I may have to give this a try when the time comes. By far the best looking Linux GUI i've seen yet.
I can't wait to see an a GUI layer made for NixOS though. I really want to be done with stateful OSs, NixOS is so tempting.
I don't get the angst. To me the disappointment is wholly related to the action bar/etc/whatever it is called. Its such a lame approach to adding additional functionality I would have never expected it from Apple. The Windows environment has many machines fully embracing touch screens right where the action is.
This is purely a promotional article, pretending to be a help article. Look at the unattributed quotes it uses. Pretty sure the part about anybody switching from anything to anything is made up. Sure people switch sometimes. Sure people are complaining about Apple products, what else is new? Way to capitalize on our sincere discussions of platform choices.
If HN swallows this kind of marketing-masquerading-as-technical-advice article so easily, we're going to see a lot more of this writing pattern in the future. Which means more marketing noise. Please don't buy it so readily.
Perhaps you don't find it interesting, but as a developer, I like it.
It probably assumes you'll be installing from fresh.
First impressions, it's very very pretty, the design out the box is nice though it's completely the antithesis of how I work (3 screens, panel on each, window buttons only for windows on that screen).
The level of integration is nice, it feels cohesive.
That said XFCE4 with some tweaking is pretty much perfect for me, it exactly works the way I want things to work.
https://siliconislandblog.wordpress.com/2016/10/31/thoughts-...
> and support a preferred programming language (Vala)
They lost their mojo because of their weird decisions in the past and not because their stack isn't hip. How many JavaScript developers did they attract by writing the Gnome Shell in JavaScript? And the Rust community is a tiny fraction of the JavaScript community.
They are trying to turn a donkey into a racehorse. And if they do a full rewrite, people will have forgotten about Gnome by the time they are finished. Someone give them Joel Spolsky's article on refactoring to read.
The great thing is that they all use the same core system, so try them, or even install them at the same time (except Elementary), and use them until you find your favorite.
Why would you use? I would list why I tried it and used it for 3 months - at work. I stopped using it because it became a little difficult to manage the stability issues, build problems (at that it was very unstable as I mentioned above) and then the start-up I worked for got funded and gave everyone the then latest Macbook Pro (I had been using an Air at home anyway).
I found it pretty. Simple. Not at all cluttered - very clean look. I was used to OSX and its look and feel was/is very much inspired from OSX (or a similar UX/UI design philosophy if I may say so). And it's open source.
I kept using it also because I kind of fell in love with Midori (the Elementary browser and that's one app from Elementary I still miss on OSX).
Why not Ubuntu? Honestly, everyone else in my team used Ubuntu and it worked perfectly fine for them and whenever I ran into issues I was just asked one question "why the h not Ubuntu?". It was mostly aesthetics. Elementary felt very simple and pleasing to my eyes (yes, even when compared to X/LUbuntu) and for some reason I never really liked Ubuntu after Unity and all that happened (that was back in college - can't recall all the reasons as of now). Also, it was definitely lighter then Ubuntu.
This may not be the answers you are looking for but I thought I will chip in with my own reasons. And yes, I am going back to Linux too. My Air is 5 years old now and is already showing its age. I don't think I would like to spend the latest Macbook Pro kind of money for another Apple laptop. Then most probably I will try one of these - Elementary or Solus or Apricity etc on a lightweight 13ish inch laptop.
Ubuntu veered towards the touch stuff, using nontraditional approaches; I honestly get lost these days when I have to use it.
I prefer it over Ubuntu because the UI makes more sense to me than Ubuntu's Unity.
There were other distros in the past trying to copy macOS, pear os[3] was one of them.
I remember Lindows[4] trying to market itself as a windows replacement. I can't believe they got sued and actually lost[5]! Xandros[6] was also in this space. They probably went BK.
Every year is the year of Linux for the desktop but it's really not possible to capture this market. It'll have to come from someone like google. Why couldn't chrome os have been a legit linux distro instead of trying for a niche netbook market with a locked down OS?
[1] http://xfce.org/
[2] http://wiki.go-docky.com/index.php?title=Welcome_to_the_Dock...
[3] http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=pear
[4] http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=linspire
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Corp._v._Lindows.com....
mac OS is built by one major player and they have a clear direction of where they want to take this. Linux, in general, is built by communities of people who may or may not have diverging opinions, priorities and interests. While this gives you a lot diversity, it can be quite problematic.
The financial aspect is also important. elementary LLC itself, has only 2 full-time employees, while Apple is sitting on a pile of cash. Yes, elementary builds on a solid open-source base [1] built by thousands of developers world-wide, some volunteers, some employees, but it's still a significant difference.
Having a smaller scale, it means elementary can be more agile in its changes. This also means that there is smaller testing base, which means there will be more bugs. The nice part is that, when you find a bug, you can help fix it [2].
What issues still exist with using Linux on laptops?
The last computer I had significant hardware problems with on linux had a Pentium 4, but I've been vary careful with hardware choice in the last decade. Do your research and you'll be fine.
It depends on laptop model, some are worse than others. Just google "<latop_name> linux problem" and see what others encounter. Personally, I don't have any problems with my 5 years old Dell laptop running Kubuntu.
I have a HP laptop for work running Ubuntu that appears on their Certified hardware list. Wifi is buggy, using an external monitor is buggy, there are always "Internal Errors", sleep simply does not work, it crashes regularly.
It was the fact that software I needed was available on Mac and I didn't want to use Windows.
Of course, not everything will work, but for me, they often fall into the nice-to-have category of features, not a must-have. Maybe my preferences are not shared widely.
Been using Debian unstable and Xmonad for a long time, and it's hard to try and use anything else now. Most dev tools work natively ... no funky VMs to emulate, except Windows for Edge browser testing ... all works really well.
Have been using Linux professionally and on my personal machines on and off for 15 years, sonce I was a student. A bit more work than Windows in some ways, less in others.
I came to Ubuntu back in 2005ish based on a tip from a then 50 year old electrical engineer who had fallen in love.
My bus driver this morning loves it (we sometimes talk while waiting).
So stop spreading this FUD.
And this comes from someone who has started liking Windows UX lately.
It looks like I dodged a bullet; in 4-5 years, when I'll need an upgrade, all these issues will be solved, USB-C will either have become standard or gone firewire's way, the pointless emoji board will be quietly shelved, more RAM will be possible, etc
The shiny & pretty, especially if you're coming from the shiny & pretty, seems better and you forget to appreciate the things that silently just work in the background.
I've recently switched from the previous elementary (due to bugs and missing features) first to Mint 18 Cinnamon, just to find a lot of bugs there are well ( at least no missing features ), then to XFCE.
I'm slowly building an itch towards where most distros are moving to (being swallowed up by systemd), so XFCE: to get familiar with something that is truly portable, and runs of BSDs as well. xfwm4 + tint2 as panel + synapse as "menu" to be specific, and I'm really happy I did it.
No, it's not as nice as eOS or Gnome Shell; some apps are quite ugly and the terminal windows don't line up when tiled.
But it works. It's fast, it's glitch and bug-free so far; power management flies, and it feels like I got all the good from the good ol' Gnome2 days with updates.
The truth is, tint2 eliminated the need for fancy indicators: it has an executor, with which you can do (nearly) anything, like displaying weather, cpu temperature, fan speed, changing governors with clicks, etc.
So, as I started: it takes a lot of frustration, but eventually, you'll get to the point of install the most simple, most robust thing.
Is the experience a lot better if it's just Debian alone?
"Exiting the ecosystem" is a guide crying out to be written though.
In many ways I even prefer Unity. OSX is becoming a bit stagnant and bloated of late. The Unity UI is fast, the effects are polished and not gimmicky, the launcher and search across apps and file is near instantaneous, driver detection and configuration is streamlined and everything looks well put together.
Most Linux users have put up with some pretty awful apps, UIs and configs over the evolution of Linux and I am glad how far Ubuntu has come.
Elementary is decent but at the moment both Gnome and Unity have moved ahead and offer a more consistent and professional user experience for first timers.
I'm just going to link conversation from a couple of days before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12830761
Do the apps integrate, in some meaningful way, more easily with each other than with, say, a stock Gnome install on top of Red Hat?
Is it as novel as Etoile? Or is it just a skin + conforming apps?
I mean why elementary as your choice for a Linux distro?
As to how many people really are migrating, who knows. I'm an Apple user, but I'm not going to take the rabid fanboy position that these distro makers must be lying when they say they've noticed more interest, lately.
A cursory search of OSX design patents[3] turns up the Dock patent[4]. Whether Elementary infringes the patent is a legal matter (IANAL).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_patent
[3] https://www.google.com/search?q=design+patent+osx&ie=utf-8&o...
[4] http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=H...:
Nonetheless, bravo to the Elementary team for taking the time to even write up this blog post (which is apparently the first in a series).
Edit: replies pointed out that Epiphany is the default web browser. Point still stands that Chrome implements the most security mitigations out of ALL browsers on the market.
Would any security-conscious person DO recommend a browser made by an advertising company for datamining purposes?
Firefox is a much better choice for the privacy/security-aware individual.
Also, how is this any different than macOS shipping with Safari only, or Windows shipping with Edge only? You're holding an open source project to a higher standard than two highly successful commercial offerings.
They switched to the default GNOME browser "Epiphany" in the latest release of elementary OS. But I agree, the first thing i did was install a different browser. In my case Firefox.
Of course, Chrome is still better feature wise, however, Elementary or any other distribution would need Google's permission to distribute Chrome.
That is why open source is still a thing: because of available choices.
