elementary OS 5.1 'Hera' Linux Distro is Here (betanews.com) 42
An anonymous reader shares a report: elementary OS has long been viewed by many as the future of Linux on the PC thanks to its beautiful desktop environment and overall polished experience. Development of the Ubuntu-based operating system has been frustratingly slow, however. This shouldn't be surprising, really, as the team of developers is rather small, and its resources are likely much less than those of larger distributions such as the IBM-backed Fedora or Canonical's Ubuntu. And that is what makes elementary OS so remarkable -- its developers can make magic on a smaller budget. Today, the latest version of the operating system is released. Code-named "Hera," elementary OS 5.1 is now available for download. Support for Flatpak is now baked in -- this is significant, as the developers explain it is "the first non-deb packaging format we've supported out of the box." The Linux kernel now sits at a very modern 5.0. One of the most important aspects of elementary OS, the AppCenter, is now an insane 10 times faster than its predecessor.
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Heh, guess it is. You can enter $0 under custom. I'd have to be a jerk to do that, right?
I did just that. I'm curious about it, but have no intention to use it on a regular basis. I already financially support several FOSS projects, so I'm not feeling too bad. If by some miracle, I actually switch to it, I'd be glad to support it financially.
Linux on the desktop is here! (Score:2)
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Name checks out.
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Yep, and I'm sure this new distro I've never heard of before is going to be the one to usher us into this new era. What a time to live in!
Re: Linux on the desktop is here! (Score:2)
You seem to not understand what forking means. (Score:4, Informative)
You take the variation out there that you is closest to what you want. So all you have to add, is a few patches.
The whole Linux kernel works like thst. EVERY git clone is a fork. Torvalds' one is just the official one. But everyone else merges patches just like he does. He just takes a closer look so you can merge his fork blindly. But you could just as well have a few patch sets on top of your family patches on top of your department patches on top of your university patches on top of your government patches on top of a independent vanilla fork managed by someone else (like Android's kernel used to be).
That freedom to choose and adapt and inherit based on a web of trust, is half the point.
If you want one OS/computer to rule them all, go get a PC from Apple.
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you described a very low quality shoddy un-trustworthy series of forks, no one would want that shit.
that's not how the major popular apps and distros are done
Re: Fewer resources than Ubuntu (Score:2)
Could you make a fork of Elementary OS so that I can make my own distro a fork of your distro?
It's still alive? (Score:4, Interesting)
I originally had my mom on it but moved her off it ages ago, because I was convinced it was abandoned and no longer being developed. The apps had gotten so old that she was starting to have problems.
I can't say that this news makes me any more inclined to install it for anyone again.
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Looks like a MacOS clone. (Score:3)
Too bad. I had hoped the name would suggest a relationship to the enlightenment team, which are some pretty amazing guys.
If they went for limiting, cumbersome and feature-lacking ... or in one word: minimalist ... they surely got it to look that way.
But at least its "App"Center, a concept that couldn't be more anti-unixy, is ten times faster. So they improved what really mattered. /s
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If they went for limiting, cumbersome and feature-lacking ... or in one word: minimalist ... they surely got it to look that way.
It's right there in the name, "elementary". It's obviously Linux for children and noobs.
Re: Looks like a MacOS clone. (Score:2)
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It's right there in the name, "elementary". It's obviously Linux for children and noobs.
I thought it was for fans of Jonny Lee Miller as Sherlock Holmes . . .
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Too bad. I had hoped the name would suggest a relationship to the enlightenment team, which are some pretty amazing guys.
Why would "elementary" necessarily have anything to do with "enlightenment?" I must be missing something here.
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it's a pretty big stretch and had me scratching my head too. i mean, they sound similar if you're very drunk i guess, and there's some implied contrast; the OS is the "elementary" part (basic not as in easy, but as in fundamental), through which you find "enlightenment" in the window manager?
idk they're both kind of abstract ideals that serve as building blocks for imagination? something like that.
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You missed the "by BAReFO0t".
Re: Looks like a MacOS clone. (Score:1)
Bodhi is based on Enlightenment. It's a fork of E17 called Moksha. So not official Enlightenment. Runs like a champ on my low spec hardware (an obsolete netbook)
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But at least its "App"Center, a concept that couldn't be more anti-unixy,
Yeah, it's ant-UNIX to have a curated place to install known working versions of apps from! If it was the all holy and right and proper way all distros would do it that way, and we could even name it something like software depots or... maybe repositories!
Better tell Debian / Redhat / every other god damned distro that they are doing (U/Li)NIX wrong!
Packages Other Than Deb (Score:2)
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I don't know why anyone would want something other than a Deb, or RPM
Because some developers are going to one of the three sandbox package formats (flatpak, snaps, appimage), to have "more control" over the distribution. Now by some I obviously mean that it's still not a big thing to go to one of the sandboxing formats. However, there is a trend of going that way. Slack is one that I know the Flatpak is promoted more than the deb. There's also a Juniper VPN client that is popular as it's easier to support the sandboxed JVM than attempt to port to whatever JVM is on your
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Okay, but you can just install that stuff on any distribution. So why would you not use a distribution that is deb or rpm based, and just install flatpak or whatever? That way, you get the best of both worlds. For example, on the current version of Ubuntu, you can literally just sudo apt install flatpak. (On older versions, you should get flatpak from its ppa, which is not exactly an arduous requirement.)
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Okay, but you can just install that stuff on any distribution. So why would you not use a distribution that is deb or rpm based, and just install flatpak or whatever?
Yeah, that's exactly what distros are doing. Having DEB/RPM as the main and adding a sandboxing format along side. I don't know any distro that's gone full on sandboxing only for package management. I think what elementary is saying is that this is the first time "they've" done the side-by-side that everyone else is doing and they've gone with Flatpak instead of Snap. Which I guess is interesting since it's Ubuntu based and Ubuntu is full on with Snap.
However, what I was saying is that some 3rd parties
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There are quite a few apps that only really work right if installed as a flatpack. kdenlive has been one of those here - the deb packages seem to leave out a number of dependencies that aren't present unless perhaps you use the KDE desktop - not exactly default on most debian distros. Some other video editors the same - they are much more crashy for unknown reasons when installed via debs, but work if not perfectly, a lot better as flatpacks or appimages.
This is especially prevalent for things developed wi
Re: Packages Other Than Deb (Score:1)
I like .tgz better than .deb or .rpm. Then I can port them to any environment without being tied to a particular distro.
Slackware and a few other distros produce .tgz or .tbz2 files that have some additional package meta data in a subdirectory. It makes it convenient when you have to upgrade or repair vital packages from a recovery boot.
I thought the focus of this distro (Score:3)
was supposed to be educational environments. As someone who works K-12 in a big public school district, everything new is Chrome OS based (Chromebooks/boxes and locked down) or iPads. Windows S being tied solely to the app store makes it DOA, no one uses it.
Teachers greatly favor these over Windows based devices because it's much easier to test on than Windows and test scores are what are on their performance reviews. No one cares that these devices are tied to walled gardens and spying on kids.
They're as cheap as the shitty Windows devices in this space and since Windows is doing the same thing only worse with 10 there is little benefit for keeping them unless there is something you need it for (autocad labs and stuff like that are still Windows based).
This seems like Google ate their lunch before even finished making it.
I feel bad for these kids, part of the reason I was able to learn anything was because the computers we had were open to run anything and not tied to spyware.
Some fresh (Score:2)
Mint to rule them all, well at least for what Linux on desktop should be.
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Presumptuous (Score:1)
"elementary OS has long been viewed by many as the future of Linux on the PC thanks to its beautiful desktop environment and overall polished experience."
A very presumptuous statement! I think that Mint has firmly cemented that position actually.
Is 2020 the year of the Linux Destkop Now? (Score:3)
the screenshots make it look like it is trying to emulate a Macintosh PC with the ribbon on the bottom.
budgie is better (Score:1)
10 times faster (Score:2)
One of the most important aspects of elementary OS, the AppCenter, is now an insane 10 times faster than its predecessor.
Looks like original was really badly coded.
Claimed by many? (Score:2)
Can anyone name a single person who uses this operating system? Or name one company that uses it for any supported desktop?
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Me, Simon. I'm using it right now. It's alright...
Mouse lags under memory pressure but I suspect that's an x11/linux bug. It seems strange from an NT developer perspective that memory paging can bring an operating system's UI and HID inputs to a dead crawl -- you'd think there'd be some sort of priority scheduling to keep a basic desktop and input devices responsive, above user processes. Other than that Elementary OS gets out of my way for running an IDE + browser + terminal and letting me get work done, w
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I'd agree that modern complex UI's get in the way. When feeling the burden of Gnome or KDE, I tend to simply use "twm", which is very stable indeed and adds no clutter.
its developers can make magic (Score:2)
> its developers can make magic
oh, marketbot submission. Not clicking.