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Operating Systems Linux

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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elementary OS 5.1 'Hera' Linux Distro is Here

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  • by GoTeam ( 5042081 ) on Tuesday December 03, 2019 @10:42AM (#59480422)
    So... it's not free?
    • by GoTeam ( 5042081 )
      Heh, guess it is. You can enter $0 under custom. I'd have to be a jerk to do that, right?
      • by hduff ( 570443 )

        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.

  • See? I said it would be here any day now.
  • It's still alive? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by sremick ( 91371 ) on Tuesday December 03, 2019 @10:59AM (#59480496)

    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.

    • This. They clearly needed to come back and make more money -- the thing had every indication of abandonment for the longest time. Budgie on the other hand is a solid ubuntu-based distro with a good desktop experience.
  • by BAReFO0t ( 6240524 ) on Tuesday December 03, 2019 @11:08AM (#59480524)

    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

    • 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.

    • 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.

      • 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.

      • by Megol ( 3135005 )

        You missed the "by BAReFO0t".

    • 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)

    • I can't stand the Mac aesthetic, it's an immediate show stopper for me.
    • 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!

  • I don't know why anyone would want something other than a Deb, or RPM. They are the two most widely supported formats. If a program is available for Linux, it's usually in one of those two formats.
    • 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

      • 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.)

        • 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

    • 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

    • 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.

  • by waspleg ( 316038 ) on Tuesday December 03, 2019 @01:30PM (#59481186) Journal

    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.

  • Mint to rule them all, well at least for what Linux on desktop should be.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    "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.

  • Looking at this distro, it appears to be another Gnome-based distro. What's special? Is it lightweight? Focused on embedded devices?

    the screenshots make it look like it is trying to emulate a Macintosh PC with the ribbon on the bottom.
  • In the past I used elementary in my quest for the ultimate ubuntu variant that met all my needs. It failed miserably, however I ended up using Ubuntu Budgie which is everything elementary promises to be and more. https://ubuntubudgie.org/ [ubuntubudgie.org]
  • 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.

  • Can anyone name a single person who uses this operating system? Or name one company that uses it for any supported desktop?

    • by sichbo ( 1188157 )

      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

      • 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

    oh, marketbot submission. Not clicking.

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