Elementary OS 0.3.2 "Freya" Released

linuxscreenshot writes: Just in time for the holidays, it's a new release of elementary OS. Freya 0.3.2 is a minor release, mostly focused around solving some issues folks have had with UEFI & SecureBoot, but we've also managed to sneak in some internationalization updates and a couple new features. Screenshots are available.

Comments

Now THIS is more like it.

[Anonymous Coward]

elementary OS with the dark theme is probably the most aesthetically beautiful operating system I have ever seen.

This is the OS I'm going to dump Windows for. Great job elementary LLC! Keep it up.

Re:Now THIS is more like it.

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess some people care how it looks: I forgot that was something to consider when picking a desktop environment (I'm not going to call it an OS).

Wow, I guess I'm a bit disconnected to actually not realize people might care about the aesthetics: that should have been obvious. I'm one of those wacky people with javascript turned off who is used to broken web UI everywhere, and happy in a terminal. I Pick my theme based on how annoying it is in a dark room. For most stuff for me its first priority is transparency, then security / privacy, then reliability and functionally. Usability is a product of transparency and functionality, and it just needs to look good enough to be possible to use and easy to understand (transparency).

Re:Now THIS is more like it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed. This is a true contender, like Ubuntu in 2006. I dropped windows for Ubuntu then, but was sad to go back around 2010 when Ubuntu and Gnome went off the UI deep-end. This could bring Linux back to the nerd desktop.

It's also a sad state of affairs that this really cool attempt at a usable Linux gets downvoted on /. nowadays. How I long for the slashdot where four or five actual users and maybe a core developer would be here...

Re:Now THIS is more like it.

[Anonymous Coward]

You're way more than "a bit"' disconnected.

a byte ?

Re:Now THIS is more like it.

[Tallfeather]

Word.

Re:Now THIS is more like it.

[Hognoxious]

my 2d monitor gets a bit wonky sometimes

That's a bummer, I don't have any other kind.

About Elementary

[Anonymous Coward]

Since I couldn't find it on their site (I had to head over to Wikipedia to find out) I figured I should post it here:
Elementary is a Linux distribution (Its based on Ubuntu). I was looking around for an FAQ, or their source code, or the license, what ABIs it supports (aka what runs on it) and couldn't find anything on their site other than stuff about how to make good UIs. I think they suck at their main goal.

ProTip: that icon in the top left of your pages: I had no idea it was a link. The web has standard styles for links, use them! Also, have an about page that says what the project is and why it exists. Your developer page should mention its Linux based, and some info about porting stuff to it, how you manage packages, what licences you like to use, and link to some source, it appears to do none of those things.

So far I believe Elementary is all about making UIs where I can't tell whats a link, does not fit on my 1440 pixels of vertical space without pages of scrolling, and does not give me any of the things I want. Is there anything good about it, or is it just the Windows 8 style take on linux: new UI because shiny is shiny?

I only looked into it because I'm interested in OS design. I was wondering it it was a microkernel or not, what licence its under, what security models it has etc. Instead I get a nearly useless pretty looking web site and another Ubuntu mod claiming to be the future. Not interested. It would be nice of the summery made it clear what this linux distro claiming to an OS was, especially since the site is trying to hide it.

Re:About Elementary

[Anonymous Coward]

Mint is the bomb. Having used Linux on the desktop for about 10 years now (since the original ubuntu release) I'm very impressed with it. It... just works. always. Never had an update break something unexpectedly, which is a Linux first for me.
Never had to manually (re)configure X after installing or updating whatever, which is a first, too.
Never had to fiddle with boot settings after updates.
I upgraded major versions with only the smallest of issues. Usually on other distributions that leads to all the things above.
In fact, the biggest problem I have with it, is the default green/silver color scheme.

Re:About Elementary

[LichtSpektren]

Try Ubuntu MATE.

what's the point?

[NostalgiaForInfinity]

It seems like another lightweight Ubuntu variant. Doesn't Xubuntu have that area covered adequately? I mean, if people have fun doing this, good for them, but from the point of view of Ubuntu distributions, it just seems a bit redundant.

Re: Does it include systemd?

[Stormwatch]

That almost sounded like that old Apple ad...

"Here’s to the crazy ones. The nerds. The malfaisants. The socially inept. The pedophiles and terrorist sympathizers. The ones who see things differently."

Beauty = copy Apple aesthetics?

[LichtSpektren]

Sorry, I don't particularly think elementaryOS is beautiful. It basically is just a knock-off of OS X's aesthetics. Midori is not a bad browser, but it doesn't have the same power as Chromium or Firefox; the creators only included it as the default because its UI is the same as Safari's. Same for its music player, control panel, and file manager. Plus there's a lot of annoyances abound in this distro, such as no preinstalled office suite (from what I can tell).

Basically, it might be a good OS for the specific niche goal of needing Linux to wear the flesh of OS X, but beyond that, it's nothing special.

Re:Beauty = copy Apple aesthetics?

[hey!]

Er... copying the aesthetics is more likely to yield a beautiful result than copying the mechanics of the user interface -- not that they went very far on this other than the dock. I've been messing around with elementaryOS on parallels on my MacBook Pro and in fact I think the basic shell looks nicer than the Mac.

As far as the office suite, well, it's an Ubuntu derived Linux; it has all the usual Linux office suite offerings: LibreOffice, Gnumeric, Abiword, Calligra, etc., plus the usual geeky oddballs like Lyx and Retext. You must "sudo apt-get install libreoffice", or if you prefer search in the software center. It doesn't include an office suite in the default installation, but from my point of view that's the way it should be done.

Re:Heh, "OS"

[hey!]

Well, I played around with it a bit and it's, in a word "nice". It's really nice. It's Oh-my-God-this-thing-is-nice nice. It's probably the distro now I'd demo to someone who was curious about Linux.

Linux enthusiasts are all about power. To us power equals simplicity; it really is so much easier to open a terminal and type "sudo apt-get install blech" than it is to slash our way through some kind of stupid app-store GUI. So we tolerate a lot of crap in GUIs; ugly, bad layout, lousy typography, idiotically convoluted design, because we implicitly expect GUIs to be badly designed crap. Nice isn't even on our punch list, but don't knock it until you've tried it.