The Truth Behind Elementary OS: Why They Chose to Create Problems Instead of Solutions

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At some point in time, I know you have used Elementary OS and you were really amazed by it. You thought it was a stunning Linux distro and everything about it was super polished. I also know it’s not your current operating system. Why is that?

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Elementary OS 7, Horus, which came out early this year, was based on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and came out with many iterative improvements.
With this big release, Elementary OS brought the same great old experience that its users fell in love with. It also brought the same old inconveniences.
Right out the box, the desktop looks super premium. No arguments here. But pressing the windows button doesn’t bring out the application menu. Instead we get the shortcuts. No issue, it can be changed from the settings. I would have liked it if, this was default and shortcuts message on holding down the super key.

Let me open up an application. And if i want to minimize it, there is no minimize button. Okay, this is an issue as I have multiple apps open at the same time and i need to minimize apps to focus properly. Maybe I can change this from the settings, apparently not.

And the available window controls are placed on the opposite sides here. Not the most intuitive thing here. While I can get used to this, I don’t understand the developers vision here. Anyway, can I change it from the settings. You guessed it, no.

But there must be a way I can fix these things. Let me go online and check for a solution. Where’s firefox, oh, we get epiphany web browser or gnome web here. Just fantastic.

While Epiphany is not a bad browser, it’s not a good browser either. Only recently has it become capable of playing youtube videos properly. Yeah.
Epiphany is slow, janky and overall is not an enjoyable experience. With the latest version, there have been many improvemnts and we can even use extensions now, but there are way better alternatives. But Elementary chose Epiphany.
Elementary OS chose to go with Flatpaks only. Personally, I was not a big fan of this decision. I understand the scope of unified pacakge managers like flatpak and snap and I've had great experiences because of these. I use few. But at the end of the day, I prefer to use full native packages like .debs or rpms. They are faster, they take up way less storage space and they integrate nicely with the system.

So I was a bit down about the decision to ship only flatpaks. Whataver, flathub has a great library of apps and whatever you want, you can find there, yeah this is not that kind of video bruh. This is not a love story. this is a horror story.

Elementary OS uses Flatpaks, but not the ones from flathub. Elementary OS provides it’s own curated library of apps. You can’t find any apps that anybody realistically uses here. There’s no browser, there are no popular apps.

One thing about the apps that are available here though. These apps are curated and specially made for Elementary OS. They are made by individual developers and look and integrate amazingly with Elementary OS. As an aspiring indie developer myself, I have massive respect for these developers and what Elementary OS tried to do here. Really, take a bow.

But as a user, I need the vlc media player, I need firefox, kdenlive, gimp, some games and many more software. Realistically, alternatives for all these apps cannot be created only for Elementary OS.

The software choice path that Elementary OS takes, this can be off putting for many and a big hurdle for Linux newcomers.
All these things combined with few more issues like over complicated NVIDIA driver installation, made what could have been a great experience plain inconvenience. I recently did poll and these were the results.

[centy]

Something I love about linux over windows is that if I don't like what the distro is doing I can just easily move to a better one. Since I stopped using windows I no longer feel like I have to just accept whatever is forced on me by the devs. Linux users aren't the captive audience that MS & Apple have.

[hanscronau]

Linux Tex: "I also know it is not your current operating system."
Me watching on Elementary: ...

[AndreaBorman]

No I do not advise new users who are coming over from Windows to use this desktop. I am testing this out right now and have installed the Pantheon Desktop which is Elementary on Linux Mint. Sorry to say that it falls short of many customisation options as well as settings. No moving the top panel and menu to the bottom of the screen. Although you can change the menu view from icons to list view but that's not enough. The terminal has no menu bar they took that out. No menu bar in the file manager either and no way to add icons to the desktop. There are not many apps in the App Center so you have to install from Synaptic or the terminal or use another software center. That's not good. The plank dock is useless. I don't know why it's there. While the Pantheon desktop is usable you are very restricted in what you can do on this desktop. Also Pantheon depends on Flatpak so you cannot remove it or most of the software won't work. I have never had this problem on other desktops. So it's a no for me. I will never run the Pantheon desktop as my main OS. Stick with KDE or the main desktops. At least you know where you are with them.

[kychemclass]

It's sad when change for changes sake trumps ease of use and intuition/muscle memory. So glad I'm married to Mint.

[gtPacheko]

Not being able to download debs or even Flathub software by default + no OTA upgrades make Elementary unusable for me.

I just use Fedora with GNOME and Dash to Dock.

[boredstudent]

I agree that the defaults are very opinionated, however they not inherently bad ans many Linux users are used to spend a day setting everything up to personal taste. I think the major (and almost only) issue is that pantheon development is stuck.

[therobyouknowtv]

Touch screen gestures simply didn't work when I tried Elementary OS. The config settings mismatched the actual number of fingers in a gesture. Where is the QA - Quality Control with Linux distros? If those that champion Linux on the desktop really want it to be a success then they can't expect ordinary folk to be motivated to tinker: not everyone has the time and that's not laziness or any other negative attitude. As for anyone who might say that touch screens with Linux is a niche market: no, it isn't. Touchscreens ARE mainstream: iPad, Windows 10/11 touchscreen, Android (which is based on Linux). I do still feel that there's a fair bit of intellectual masturbation about which windows manager is better: KDE, GNOME, "K" this, "G" that and regular folk don't care. They just want something that works.

[victorodg]

that's a video I really wanted! I used Elementary a lot before, when I couldn't afford a better PC. After I got a nice laptop, I tried Elementary a number of times, but I just couldn't NOT use Pop!_OS

[vishalkumar]

I still use elementary, but will switch soon. There are plenty of issues with it, slow file explorer and search functionality. Lack of minimize button, no toolbar icons for applications like Dropbox.

[RpgplayersInc]

I've always loved your videos brother. Always very informative!
If you ever have any desire to improve your audio I recommend getting some sound insulation panels to prevent the big echo I'm getting from the audio.
I can't complain, as your audio and video is always improving over time, but food for thought!

[warthunder]

Elementary OS could be a good distro, but they choose to make boneheaded decisions that are not in the interest of the their users. They could easily have a driver manager like Linux Mint, they could easily show all flathub apps (if they are adamant about curated apps, then show them as non-curated) and just have a better user experience. Also system upgrades should be a top priority rather than having to nuke and pave every major version.

[XAUCADTrader]

Whoa, your channel quality got a lot better! I think I last visited in like 2019?

[nelsono]

I am fairly new to Linux. Taught myself about Linux during the pandemic by watching lots of youtube videos. I tried quite a few distros in virtual machines. I have settled on Arch Linux and Arch-based distros. I found a channel that walked me thru an Arch Linux install with the KDE desktop and that is what I am using now. I'm a longtime Windows user but I have to say I am really liking Linux. Really loving this channel too. Great content. Thanks for all you do!

[timnowak]

Yeh, I totally agree.I will add that currently most distributions, and desktop environments like gnome, kde, etc. offer much more possibilities than the current Pantheon. in addition, there is a mass of unrepaired bugs. Which with the mentality the system will come out when it's ready is irrelevant. It looks like the system has not been tested by developers at all.

In addition, the information that appeared when installing other applications is lame from the creators. Not to mention all the Elementary OS drama present. They're all for free software, and freedom, but they're not for free speech. In addition, they begin to mix the world of linux with politics.This is just pathetic, and ridiculously lol 🤢🤮.

[maximb]

Still using Elementary OS as main distro 🥱

[linuxprincess]

I loved the look of Elementary os and it's newish design compared to others but what got me out of love of it was the "no-no" of it. No installing apps that wasn't made for Elementary. No updated apps that was made for Elementary. No software center with massive free apps. Linux is suppose to be free and customizablly free but if I got to pay $5-10 per app to get the same software experiences that I get from FOSS apps, then it's not technically a free OS. It's like those games with DLC or paywall to complete. Even as money crazy windows and Apple is, at least they let you download apps from other companies. I just wish someone would fork this OS and fix the wrongs. And then there's Solus OS :(

[Cipricus]

I have to confess the rancor of former lovers. There was a time when elementary was almost as light as Xfce (while Ubuntu was Unity). Now I use Plasma/Kubuntu on a MacBook — after having removed macOS. When you give up macOS you don't do it for elementary!
I have stopped using elementary at some point after waiting for a while for some flexibility (something like the damned synaptic by default, and the tweaks for that button — how ridiculous was that and still is that people have to do tutorials on that!), but things went downhill, even design-wise: replacing default blue folders with the color of some organic liquid was already a bad sign. But I had no idea they went totally cuckoo.
To be honest, I don't think their admiration for Apple was sane in the first place. Look at the wallpaper. They try to imitate even that. — But the fully flatpak thing? Sorry. It's lunacy. On a Macbook like mine, with their small drives? Oh, and if I'm on a normal PC with a big drive? Will I use this OS? That would be masochism. The author of this video is too kind.

[skelebro]

TL;DR: It's very slow with its updates and improvements as compared to other distros.

[SuperChocolateCocoaBear]

I feel like Elementary OS is like the MacOS of the Linux world...so to speak.

[itsPenguinBoy]

I wish elementary OS was more of a flagship for eOS software the way the pixel installation is the flagship for android. Then we could use eOS themes, apps, wm, de, could be more easily used on other distros.