Distro hopping: Finishing up with elementary OS

I’ve been using elementary OS since I started this little distro hopping adventure and while I have enjoyed my time with this sleek and speedy distribution it is time to move on to the next one. Before completely jumping ship however I would like to just put together some of my brief thoughts on how elementary OS worked for me as a day-to-day operating system.

Pros:

  • Very beautiful: If you ever need to show off what Linux can look like given some spit shine and polish this is the distribution to show.
  • Very fast: Applications load quickly, and you can easily jump between them almost instantly.
  • Very easy to use: Many applications have nice default settings that should work for the majority of users.
Showing off the Applications Menu
Showing off the Applications Menu

Cons:

  • Weird defaults: Why is Midori the default browser? I understand that it might be about looks but it is not mature enough yet and can give a seriously negative impression of the distribution as a whole when it won’t stop crashing.
  • Terrible application names: Music? Videos? Photos? Really? You know how hard it was to write a post about how to import music into Music from your music folder so you can listen to music? Ugh..
  • Not enough customization or power user settings: There is certainly something to be said for streamlined applications with good defaults but once you’re familiar with your system you’ll start to want to tweak things to your liking and sadly elementary OS just doesn’t have a lot of options to do this.
It looks like there are a lot of settings... but that's a trick!
It looks like there are a lot of settings… but that’s a trick!

Other:

  • Why does almost every application try to remember where I was last?
  • Why is there no minimize button by default?
I understand that a minimize button isn't really required but it can be confusing for new users.
I understand that a minimize button isn’t really required but it can be confusing for new users.

Check back soon to see where I end up next!

This post is part of a series:



3 Trackbacks / Pingbacks

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