Slashdot Mirror


Elementary OS 0.2 "Luna" Released

First time accepted submitter kazade84 writes "Over the weekend the Elementary team released the stable version of Elementary OS, codenamed "Luna" which is based on Ubuntu 12.04. The new OS features an entirely custom desktop shell called Pantheon which has been developed from scratch using Vala and Gtk+ which allows for fast apps with a small memory footprint. Elementary OS has been years in the making, and the team have documented the process in their latest blog post."

23 of 117 comments (clear)

  1. why by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I don't understand why everyone is making such a huge fuss about this. Do so many of us really desire an OS X themed window manager?

    1. Re:why by CrimsonKnight13 · · Score: 2

      To go further with this thought... Is it any good regardless of "popular" consensus for an OS X alternative?

      --
      Libera te ex Inferis!
    2. Re:why by iggymanz · · Score: 4, Interesting

      My Mac at work makes a fine X terminal, of what X conventions are you speaking? my mac has in .xinitrc. some crazy people even install X11 based desktops on their mac osx.

      customizing? I have computer to do work, not fart around with desktop appearance beyond color or font.

      my three monitors are working well, get video hardware/drivers that are well supported by mac osx and there are no issue.

    3. Re:why by oPless · · Score: 2

      Middle click: Different OS, sorry.
      Clipboard: Oh wait ... it's a different OS, sorry.
      FFM: I'm sure if you talk to the barman at your local hotel, you'll be able to sort out a FFM. Might cost you though.
      Thunderbolt/HDMI: works fine for me, and I've got a random mini-displayport -> HDMI cable that now works with audio now I've upgraded from my old 2009 mbpro.

      I've had a bunch of monitors (Maximum three at the last count, though I probably could do four if I wanted to cope with bazillion cables attached to my laptop) set up without problems:
      1. Air Display
      2. Lenovo DisplayLink monitor
      3. Another DisplayLink Adapter on a wide range of monitors (VGA/HDMI/DVI)
      4. DisplayPort/ThunderBolt -> HDMI
      5. DisplayPort/ThunderBolt -> DVI

      None have "reset" even once a day.

  2. YALDBOALD by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · · Score: 2, Funny

    Yet Another Linux Distro Based On Another Linux Distro.

    *yawn*

    --
    "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
  3. What's new? by pipatron · · Score: 3, Insightful

    So what's in there which isn't in Ubuntu?

    Judging the book by the cover, it looks like someone thought this new cool programming language of the week was the most awesome ever, wrote a few wrappers to some applications, and released it as a new distro.

    --
    c++; /* this makes c bigger but returns the old value */
    1. Re:What's new? by AlreadyStarted · · Score: 5, Insightful

      More like someone wanted something different from what was already available, and put their desire into a project that created something new. Good for them. Hacker spirit and all.

    2. Re:What's new? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      and why the need to release and advertise an entire new desktop OS when just the desktop shell is novel? people don't know how to create software packages anymore?

    3. Re:What's new? by geek · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The distro itself is a joke. I've been battling these guys for a couple years on another Linux blog. They love to swarm it like flies on shit and tell everyone how great they are. They've done nothing but copy OS X's look and feel from the start and then go off on tangents about how "It can't be done any other way"

      There isn't an original thought in the entire group. They even have one guy that does nothing but hang out on social media and spam about Elementary. He went so far as to email me personally (how he got my email I dont know) and wrote a 4 page letter trying to sell me on their distro.

      The only upside I see to it is that these young guys are learning a thing or two about Linux and programming which may or may not benefit them in the future when they grow up. I'll give them props though, they are far more productive than I was at that age. I just wish they would contribute to a decent distro instead of this pile of garbage.

    4. Re:What's new? by gl4ss · · Score: 2

      I thought from your comment it can't be that bad.
      then I opened their homepage.

      immediate result: burst out laughing.

      spent some time trying to find screenshots, couldn't find them. the fuckers even implemented a hidden end of page menu on their homepage, that wouldn't be too bad hipster design if on their journal they hadn't implemented automatic load more upon reaching end of page...

      I did gather as much as that they don't really understand why double clicking exists(to select an item vs. activating it).

      oh well..

      --
      world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
    5. Re:What's new? by geek · · Score: 2

      Watch their little Luna intro video. It's so Mac like as to be ridiculous. These guys are in complete denial of how much they copy from Apple. I think Samsung envies them for not being sued yet. Even the style of their website mimics Apple.

      They used to have a forum but it got shut down because they got so much hate on it about their inability to form original ideas. Now they have some blurb on there about "They feel social media provides the outlet needed" instead of a project forum.

      Just a complete joke.

    6. Re:What's new? by TheRealMindChild · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You mean like Ubuntu to Debian?

      --

      "When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
  4. Sheesh by JoeCommodore · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Can't you guys just let us have a menu where we can select a program from a list of all the ones already installed and let us put our crap on the desktop?

    Every GUI OS designer wants to present stuff stylishly and enforce some good file housekeeping paradigm, must of us users just want to be able to select (not find) our installed programs and store files were we expect them.

    Screen organization and the other stuff of elementary is nice, if you are going to be inspired by Apple, include letting us put stuff on the desktop and give us a thing like "applications folder" were we can quickly browse installed programs.

    --
    "Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
    1. Re:Sheesh by deviated_prevert · · Score: 2

      Can't you guys just let us have a menu where we can select a program from a list of all the ones already installed and let us put our crap on the desktop?

      Every GUI OS designer wants to present stuff stylishly and enforce some good file housekeeping paradigm, must of us users just want to be able to select (not find) our installed programs and store files were we expect them.

      Screen organization and the other stuff of elementary is nice, if you are going to be inspired by Apple, include letting us put stuff on the desktop and give us a thing like "applications folder" were we can quickly browse installed programs.

      xfce in pure form without some cludged up distros' customizations. Nothing around runs faster than good old slackware and a pure xfce DE. Simple mouse activated menu anywhere on the desktop and easily customizable. Zenwalk was great at one time but seems to have gone down hill.

      Patrick has it nailed, keep the OS clean as a whistle and avoid too much ln -s crap built in the install scripts. This is the whole problem with most distros, you spend way too much time trying to find how the linked libs work and each distro pollutes usr and obfuscates how to compile source! If someone uses a lib then you can bet instead of keeping the build environment simple they will change core directories to make their build not work with other distros. MINT has become a hodge podge of libs splattered all over the place in usr so have all the Ubuntu variants. LSB is a joke when distros deliberately obfuscate core functionality.

      For instance once upon a time you could just go to usr/lib/*browser/plugins folder and drop adobe flash.so into it. Now installing a flash plugin is so stupidly obfuscated that you need a frigging distro specific plugin installer to do the deed. THIS IS WHY Adobe and others have stopped supporting linux. Can you blame them for not wanting to field questions on their forums from Linux newbees wondering why they can't use flash from Adobe like they can with Windows?

      Why did Patrick drop Gnome? It was because these guys pulled the same crap and obfuscated where things go and made including gnome on in a distro a royal PITA. Once upon a time installing linux and running it was fun, now because of differences between how distros splatter around libs it is a steep learning curve to even do something as simple as install the latest Google Earth.

      I do not see this distro as being any different except that being coded in vala it might just be more multimedia friendly as there was some good work being done with DLNA and vala for GNOME 3 of all places. So if anything this distro could beat Ubuntu to the punch with communication through DLNA to things like Samsung phones and the like. Nifty things like playing vids pictures, and music through DLNA directly to your laptop desktop, something that should happen very soon with Linux if the distros stop bashing each other by obfuscating access to libs.

      --
      This message was not sent from an iPhone because Peter Sellers really was a deviated prevert without a dime for the call
    2. Re:Sheesh by deviated_prevert · · Score: 2

      Nothing around runs faster than good old slackware and a pure xfce DE

      Archlinux/slackware w/ Openbox,Xmonad, dwm, i3 etc etc does, in my tests openbox consumes less resources than xfce. why would any linux user want to emulate a mac ?

      To a certain extent you are right. But at least xfce can easily be made to do things the way you want them. I have found that if you strip it down thunar is really a great file manager and that xfce does not hang or cludge up launchers the way other desktops do. I remember the Mac wantabee desktop OS called Dream which only proved that you could fool mac user into thinking you were using OS 10 LOL. Fact is that xfce runs really well if you want speed and you know how to set it up. Sure there are DEs which use less resources but a decent setup with xfce4.XX will run fast on old P11 450s and 512 meg of ram if you know what you are doing and how to set up a linux box the right way. The days of running on less than 512 meg of ram are dead, though it is possible with some skinny desktops that are essentially just a way to run an x session. This is the beauty of linux you can run old hardware and make it work well on the net on just about anything out there! These guys making a skinny Mac UI look alike is nothing new, I have been thinking of doing a Win95 clone DE just for laughs. Hell you can even rename the file manager to explorer ...who cares. ROLF

      --
      This message was not sent from an iPhone because Peter Sellers really was a deviated prevert without a dime for the call
  5. Congratulations by Luthair · · Score: 2

    You copied OSX.

  6. Dual Boot with Ubuntu .. by dgharmon · · Score: 3, Funny

    How do I dual boot with Ubuntu ..

    --
    AccountKiller
  7. More grids? Seriously? by mothlos · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Time for my occasional rant on grids.

    Grids are terrible for displaying sorted lists of item collections. Almost all of the time, we sort a collection along a single dimension; a grid positions items across two dimensions, but that second dimension holds no information about the sort being performed. If you have more than a few items, your brain has to bounce back and forth and conform to the line breaks that the computer has chosen in order to find items in the collection. Displaying a collection in a table with each collection item taking up one row and attributes of that item can be displayed in table fields (a.k.a. columns) allows for easier, more intuitive searching of the list based on those field values. It also leaves plenty of room for textual display, which fits quite well in a long, horizontal space.

    Grids of icons have been a blight upon GUIs for decades. Why do they persist?

  8. Re:XKCD by camperdave · · Score: 2

    If you're going to all the trouble to look up an appropriate xkcd, at least copy and paste the URL into your comment. Sheesh!

    http://xkcd.com/927/

    --
    When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
  9. A new OS? That's impressive!.... Oh... Wait... by Serif · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Methinks someone needs to learn the difference between an OS and a Linux distribution.

  10. Re:Room for improvement, but an advance for Linux! by OzPeter · · Score: 2

    They even have one guy that does nothing but hang out on social media and spam about Elementary.

    Guess you're that guy.

    Zzz...

    Oh Crap .. is /. really social media now?

    --
    I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
  11. A brazen copy of OS X by wjcofkc · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It's not just the docks behavior or the slightly less similar menu bar across the top. They actually went so far as to copy expose functions and the music player looks exactly like the version of iTunes before the most recent update, even the file browser is an obvious and direct clone of the Finder. For crying out loud, the default wallpaper that the video starts out with is even the default wallpaper in OS X. And all that just from the video. Since I'm going to install it, I'm willing to bet the similarities don't even come close to stopping there. I am really super surprised at what a brazen OS X clone this is, even shocked they would go this far.

    With all that said, and myself as someone who is a long time dedicated Mac user, I think it looks really freaking cool! I have been waiting for something like this and will be giving it a spin today. As someone who is also a long time Linux user, I'm about as excited as a six-year old on christmas morning to play with this new distro. Now if only I can drop that interface onto Slackware.

    Also, as I scroll down their page, even that flows and looks exactly like an apple website product page, even the navigation bar at the top comes close to a clone of apple.com - interesting. They should steer this in the direction of making it a platform that integrates with Edge, much like iPhone (disclaimer: I use an Android) is integrated into Apple's platform. Anyway, going to download and install now, hope it lives up to what they are advertising.

    --
    Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
  12. Isn't it Gnome 3? by Blaskowicz · · Score: 2

    I thought it looked like Gnome 3, with maybe a custom dock they've written.
    A top status bar, zooming windows, GTK3 and otherwise featureless design, that must be Gnome 3 right? At least it looks pleasing.

    I'm not too familiar with the Apple OS so I don't get why everyone jumps on it and say this copies Apple. I don't give a shit thanks. A bar on top, well, it was copied in the 1980s by the Atari ST and Dosshell already and the dock, a bunch of icons, available before OSX.. who gives a shit?
    I'm waiting for LXDE-Qt, now using a boring-looking Xfce 4.8, I'm not into the GTK3 stuff much but it doesn't hurt me too much some people are playing with it.