Friday, June 5, 2015

elementary OS 0.3: If you can look past the misplaced philosophy, a great and beautiful distro

elementary OS is one of the newer distros that has catapulted to huge fame. It was introduced in 2010 with the singular aim of making Linux look pretty, and it has achieved that goal pretty well in my opinion. The public seems to think so too, as it ranks seventh in all distributions in page hits on Distrowatch over the past six months. In addition, I had used it for around two weeks in February 2015 as my daily driver and was mostly pleased with it, other than a couple of minor bugs. So I thought I’d review it.


initial desktop.png


Note: Although I was promising a CentOS review, it didn't play very nicely with VirtualBox, so I couldn't deliver a proper review.





1. First impressions and ease of use


The live ISO is 853 MB in size and can be downloaded from the main page at http://elementary.io. Unfortunately, it is hidden behind a paywall as shown, which has become the subject of a huge controversy (http://www.reddit.com/r/elementaryos/comments/2vk5ba/elementary_os_devs_say_youre_cheating_if_you_dont/).


Selection_001.png


You have to click in the custom box and type $0. This obviously has angered many Linux/OSS enthusiasts, myself included. So I’m going to have to lower its grade by a significant two points just because of this.


Firing up the live ISO, we get this beautiful desktop.


beautiful gtk.png
However, notice the weird window control layout. The close button is on the left while the maximize button is on the right, with no sign at all of a minimize button. However, we can fix this by using elementary Tweaks, which are sadly not included by default. You can install it by running:


sudo apt-add-repository ppa:mpstark/elementary-tweaks-daily
sudo apt update
sudo apt install elementary-tweaks


And then going to System Settings > Tweaks > Appearance and changing the Window Control drop-down to either Windows (for all buttons on the left, like Windows and most desktop environments) or OS X (for all buttons on the right, like OS X or Unity). There’s also an option for a custom layout, interestingly.


Since it’s hard to change muscle memory, another point off for this.


Ease of use score: 7/10


2. Installer


elementary OS uses the Ubiquity installer, which in my opinion is the best and easiest to use installer for any distro. There are no UEFI niggles either, having tested it on my own system three months ago. Since you’ve already seen enough screenshots in other reviews, I’m not going to attach them here as well.



Release date
ISO size (GB)
Distribution base
Default filesystem
Install time
Boot time
Size of install
Desktop RAM use
Kernel Version
KaOS 2015.02
2/24/2015
1.4
Independent
XFS
18:03
0:36
4.6
415
3.18.7
Ubuntu MATE 15.04 Beta 1
2/25/2015
1.1
Ubuntu Vivid (15.04 Beta 1)
ext4
12:57
0:27
4.2
457
3.19.1
Manjaro 0.8.12 Xfce
2/6/2015
1.4
Arch
ext4
11:33
0:27
4.7
351
3.16.7
Netrunner 15
2/16/2015
1.9
Ubuntu Utopic (14.10)
ext4
16:20
0:41
6.4
714
3.16.0
openSUSE 13.2 KDE
11/4/2014
4.4
Independent
Btrfs (used ext4 because of known bug)
15:29
0:39
4.4
422
3.16.6
Bodhi Linux 3.0.0
2/17/2015
0.6
Ubuntu Trusty (14.04 LTS)
ext4
5:50
0:34
2.2
348
3.16.0
Linux Mint 17.1 Cinnamon
11/29/2014
1.4
Ubuntu Trusty (14.04 LTS)
ext4
8:45
0:42
4.5
343
3.13.0
Pinguy OS 14.04.2
3/22/2015
2.6
Ubuntu Trusty (14.04 LTS)
ext4
20:54
0:47
7.4
745
3.13.0
Korora 21 Cinnamon
2/6/2015
1.7
Fedora 21
ext4
13:24
1:04
5.0
602
3.18.3
Fedora 22 Beta
4/21/2015
1.3
Independent
ext4
10:10
0:46
4.2
843
4.0.0
Lubuntu 15.04
4/24/2015
0.7
Ubuntu Vivid (15.04)
ext4
11:55
0:22
2.4
216
3.19.0
elementary OS 0.3
4/11/2015
0.9
Ubuntu Trusty (14.04 LTS)
ext4
11:20
0:26
2.6
392
3.16.0
Average of all distros

1.6


13:03
0:37
4.4
487



In the specs contest, elementary OS does not win anything, but it’s performance is above average.


3. Design


elementary OS looks absolutely stunning - probably the most beautiful distro I’ve ever used. With the addition of elementary Tweaks, it’s pretty customizable as well, although it’s nothing in the realm of MATE or KDE.


Out of the box, it looks excellent, a rarity among distros. With my tweaks, I got it looking like this:


customizations.png


In this screenshot, we have the Arc GTK and Metacity theme, the Ultra Flat icon theme, the Solarized color scheme, and my personal zsh configuration that you can get from http://linuxdesktopreviews.blogspot.com/2015/06/my-custom-zsh-config.html. The wallpaper is at https://i.imgur.com/xnVQkWk.jpg.


Font rendering is also excellent out of the box, and I didn’t have to tweak anything. The default fonts is Droid Sans.


The custom LightDM login screen is great too, and in my opinion it’s second only to Mint Display Manager (MDM).


login screen.png


Design score: 10/10


4. Applications


elementary OS doesn’t use the default Ubuntu applications, but uses lesser known ones tweaked in-house to offer the best experience.


Web Browser - Midori
File Manager - Pantheon Files
Email Client - Geary
Text Editor - Scratch (GEdit fork)
Image Viewer - Pantheon Photos
Terminal Emulator - elementary Terminal
Music Player - Pantheon Music
Office Suite - NONE


Some of the applications offered by default are truly excellent - Geary and elementary Terminal among them. Others less so - Midori is light and minimal, albeit substandard and lacking in features (such as Google Docs support), and the lack of an office suite sticks out like a proverbial sore thumb, although it is a two minute fix by running sudo apt install libreoffice-gnome in a terminal.


Applications score: 8.5/10


5. Installing packages


Being an Ubuntu-based distribution, elementary OS has one of the widest repository of packages, extendable using PPAs. Also, Ubuntu Software Center is included by default, making it easy to install software with two clicks.


Installing packages score: 10/10


Final thoughts:


elementary OS is beautiful and easy to use, with a couple of minor problems such as window control layout and some substandard applications. However, the paywall philosophy is one that angers other Linux/OSS enthusiasts as well as myself, and it has probably killed the public’s opinion of the distro. However, if you can look past that and are more of a practical user rather than a philosophical one, you’ll have no problem loving elementary OS.


Final score: 45.5/50 = 91%


Distro name
Final Score
Manjaro 0.8.12 Xfce
99
Ubuntu MATE 15.04 Beta 1
97
Linux Mint 17.1 Cinnamon
95
Fedora 22 Beta
94
openSUSE 13.2 KDE
93
Korora 21 Cinnamon
92
elementary OS 0.3
91
Pinguy OS 14.04.2
91
Netrunner 15
90
Lubuntu 15.04
88
Bodhi Linux 3.0.0
84
KaOS 2015.02
80
Average of all reviews
91

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