11mo ago

UPDATE! Any reason not to use Elementary OS?

Update: I chose mint. I can trust Mint to update the backend.

I'm about to switch back to Debian.Any reason I don't know of that Elementary OS would be a bad idea? I know Debian. I don't know the nuances of Arch or red hat.

I found my final missing FOSS video editor that finally gets me off Windows. I've been having issues with indexing on windows, and they keep turning on that fucking reminder to sign into One drive even after I destroy it with a registry change.

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ElementaryOS is a great system, if you need something that behaves and looks a bit like MacOS. It's based on Ubuntu LTS versions, so should be good for a few years at a time.

So let me ask the usual question: why not Debian?
- Debian + Flatpak for Gaming (Steam, Heroic Mangohud, etc.)
- Idk. Let me ask you, why Debian over a prepackaged setup? Genuinely asking. No sarcasm.
  
  Because for the most part you can achieve everything these packaged distro offer without the middle man, which means greater trust in the system, faster turnaround on package updates, easier time finding help, etc.
- Debian is that friend that you model your love interests out of but want to keep strictly as a friend.

There really aren't any reasons not to use Elementary OS. Sure it's highly opinionated but that also means that it's super cohesive and has superb user experience.
It has a Live Session so check it out if you like it and then simply install it.
- Oh it's my go to Linux distro. I wanted to know if there were any reasons not to use it and for better alternatives or opinions that could sway me to a different distro.
  
  I would switch to eOS if there would be a word processor or a WYMIWYG editor that follows it's guidelines. Because I damn love the cohesive look and feel.

Which FOSS video editor did you find?
- Most likely kdenlive. It's no resolve or première but it's really good.
  
  Just used it the other day to put together a birthday slideshow/video compilation for my wife. I couldn't get resolve to run, and I was in a hurry because my organisation skills are severely lacking. Kdenlive was perfectly serviceable, easy to understand, and I got a really acceptably decent end product with absolutely no previous experience. Definitely be using it again when my wife forgets this year's gift and I can reuse all the photos I got off her friends 🙃
  
  Yep! This one.
- Kdenlive like the other guy said. I was using shotcut for a while and it was.....basic.

Packages are older than debian, older than ubuntu, and it isn't more stable than debian or easier than Ubuntu. I honestly don't see the point to that distro. If you want the look, there are ways to do that with any other distro.

in my personal experience of using it, it doesn't feel very polished in most places + strange bugs like being unable to install certain packages. doesn't have the comforts of a distro like Pop OS or Mint (i.e. automatic timeshift setup on first time boot, checking for missing dependencies for other packages). that's just my personal opinion on it.

its basically ubuntu LTS with probably the best DE
but its base is really old and they take their time to upgrade it. and there is no inplace upgrade method, you have to reinstall every time.

I would suggest pop os instead. I can't remember all the specifics but when I used elementary, they ended up changing a lot of stuff in an upgrade that didn't float my boat.
What I do remember is that there is no system tray and the creators are philosophically very against having one (despite that still being a somewhat common design pattern that apps rely on), theming support got janky with the upgrade, and Nvidia support was not great.
Of course, Nvidia on Linux has a lot of issues all around but at the time I had one of those cards and pop os worked mostly fine despite that. I'm still on pop os due to what I perceived as a bad direction that elementary took back then. That was around 2021 iirc.
On the plus side, pop os is wonderful! It's like Ubuntu minus all the bad parts and plus a lot of good ones. It feels very fast and I don't really recall the last time I felt like I was fighting against it as a distro.
- See, you kinda painted my mindset of why I made this post. Sometimes I felt like I was playing with eOS more than I was just using my computer apps. I was fighting to make sure they worked all the time.
  
  Yeah I felt that way too sometimes. I've been using pop os for a couple years now and I'm quite happy with it

I used it for years and loved it but after a while the reinstall for every upgrade sucked and I ditched it and went to GNOME Fedora. I mean honestly Debian with GNOME is probably good enough but if you really wanted to you could install the pantheon desktop environment

ElementaryOS has nothing to do with Red Hat or Arch. It's Ubuntu LTS with a custom macOS-like desktop environment called Pantheon. Being based on Ubuntu LTS means packages only get updated every two years, so they can be a bit old. Debian has the same problem, tho. If you like macOS, you might want to use it. Otherwise, you might not. Worth noting that Pantheon is available on distros other than ElementaryOS (but not Debian).

Last time I used Elementary OS, it was great if you were only using the official apps, with insane degrees of polish, but things like LibreOffice were surprisingly hard to configure the way I wanted. That was a while ago, though.
- This was my experience about a year or two ago. I was really impressed with how polished it was in ecosystem. Using Firefox, Typora, Plex and a bunch of other things that solved my user needs better don’t quite fit in right. When the update came that required me to wipe my system, I switched to Mint. I’m happy where I am now, but don’t believe Elementary was a bad thing - just clearly wasn’t aligned with what I needed.

I've been an elementary OS user for something like 7 years. And I've been running Linux as my only OS since 1999. Previously I had been running Ubuntu since warty warthog, but switched to elementary when Ubuntu introduced their horrible unity desktop.
elementary is a great Linux distribution, and is a great user experience. The ONLY 2 negatives that I can think of are that it lags other distros because it's based on Ubuntu LTS releases, and it has no upgrade mechanism so you have to wipe and reinstall with each release.
I use it for work, gaming, and all my various side projects and haven't had any issues with any of those. Give it a go and see if it feels right for you.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but don't new major version upgrades of eOS require full re-installations?
- Yea, this is actually why I switched back to try windows 11.
- Yeah, it’s not too bad to back up manually (or with a tool)

Used it a couple of years ago. Stunningly beautiful but buggy as hell. Got frustrated and switched to PopOS. Today I’d use Mint, or just plain Debian.

No reason here, other than the fact that it's not slackware.

I found my final missing FOSS video editor
Which one? I've been looking for a good long term solution.
- Kdenlive is great! Shotcut was too basic
  
  Kden kept crashing on me a few years ago. I'll give them another shot, though, because I loved it (aside from that).

Fedora Pantheon or something. But really, GNOME, KDE, LXQt, Cinnamon, Mate, soom COSMIC are all in a better state.

I am unfamiliar with the current state, my experiences are from a couple of years ago. I had problems with ubuntu-specific installs, ppas and the like, stuff broke easily on upgrades; that's possibly not an issue anymore on account of flatpaks.
my biggest turnoff was that the default apps had their distinct look whereas 3rd party apps looked different. add to this the occasional QT app and the cacophony was too much to bear.

Best reason I have is that I never remember if it is spelled ElementAry or ElemenTRY, due to the way the word is pronounced in the US.

It's kinda unmaintained, last I heard
- That's definitely wrong. You should follow danielle's mastodon, she's working on elementary all the time.
- Where would you have heard that? Their org has projects updated within the last day: https://github.com/orgs/elementary/projects
- Nah they just brought about 7.1 if I'm not mistaken.

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