elementary OS 7: is it enough for me to switch back?

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#elementaryos #linux #linuxdistro

00:00 Intro
00:32 Sponsor: Secure and monitor your internet connection with Safing
01:37 The basics
02:30 Installation and First Run Changes
03:57 Look & Feel Changes
05:50 AppCenter: looks good, but it's been surpassed
09:15 Sideloading Flathub, and app integration
10:40 Apps updates: evolutionary changes
15:07 Settings: power profiles and more configuration
16:31 Is it enough for me to switch back?
18:43 Sponsor: Get a device that runs Linux perfectly
19:38 Support the channel

First, the store now works better on small sizes. The headerbar was redone, with a permanent "updates" button, and a settings icon to enable auto updates.

In application pages, you now get bigger screenshots, and they're surrounded by bright accent colors, and even captions to describe what the app can do.

OS 7 adds a few mentions on app pages as well, like an "outdated" tag if an app hasn't been updated for OS 7, and you also get more update notes, with up to 5 versions.

Now, let's look at the updates to the applications!

First, you get GNOME Web, ported to GTK4, with a much faster webkit engine. It supports creating webapps, that will show up in your elementary OS Menu.

The mail client also received a refreshed UI, that should make its way to other elementary apps as well: the icons are now part of the content, and not split in a separate headerbar. Office 365 accounts will now also appear in the unified inbox. The app is also a lot more stable.

The tasks app is much improved. You can create new task lists offline, and they'll sync to your caldav account when you get back online, and tasks that reach their due date can now send notifications.

The file manager now lets you select folders by clicking on them, when before a single click would open them. You can turn that option on in the context menu.

The Music app is the one that changed the most. It's been rewritten, and it's no longer a music collection manager: it's just a player, with a queue. You just add songs, and they play, and that's it.

Code, the text editor / small IDE also got a few updates, with a full height project bar. It also now supports your system wide dark preference instead of only having manual options for light and dark theme, they added the find tools to the application's menu, and they now support regular expressions, and selecting some text in a file will pre-fill the find tool with that text.

Hiding and showing panels is also now done from the app's menu, and hidden folders will appear in your project tree automatically.

The Terminal also now can follow your system wide dark or light mode, but it lost its transparency by default, which I'm sad about, but it gained the ability to create custom color profiles, which is pretty great.

Now let's finish this with the settings! First, you now get power profiles, with a performance mode, powersave mode, and balanced. Hotcorners are also more configurable, in the multitasking preferences. You can now execute a custom command when activating one of these.

The keyboard shortcuts panel lets you reset something to the default easily. More importantly, though, you can now easily set the super key to open the multitasking view, instead of either the shortcuts or the application menu.

You also get cleaner printer settings with the ability to clear the print queue per printer, and it shows ink levels much more legibly.

You also get a new option in the security panel to prevent new USB devices from being mounted when the computer is locked.

[mirage]

Thank goodness for Elementary. They showed that a coherent looking ecosystem on Linux was possible. Without them I don't think Gnome and KDE would've made the leaps they've made in the recent years. Even if they're getting surpassed in usability and neatness now, they still blazed the trail.

Good to hear that Gnome Web is shaping up into a functional web browser. I'd like to use a web browser that natively integrates nicely into the whole Gnome system. Perhaps it might finally be ready for prime time. Don't worry though Nick, I too am still clinging to Firefox like a stubborn fool. I'll staunchly make sure that Chromium doesn't achieve their monopoly.

[janehoyken]

I think elementary os still needs to recover from that drama last year. I really hope the project can get back to full speed someday

[brundle_fly_]

It’s the macOS of the Linux world, everything made with a reason and they want things done there way, I love it

[dustanddeath]

Not a dragging release. I'm calling it now: a *strolling* release.

[altrogeruvah]

As a GNOME user, I absolutely need to praise elementaryOS's amazing font rendering engine. I don't know how they do it, but there's nothing remotely close to it on Linux. They've taken the time to craft a framework akin to macOS's and it shows.

[Speaktrap]

The "flat design" NEVER looked good, I'm so glad elementaryOS theme never went full-on this way

[xenajin]

The distro is really nice for not so tech savvy users. Installed it and zorin on a lot of my friend's laptops because they were tired of random reboots from windows updates😂. Nice work, Microsoft

[aclayfish]

I have used ElementaryOS since the very beginning. I used PearOS before that. However, when elementaryOS 6 came, and upgrading required me to format the whole PC, I switched to Ubuntu, and I stay at 22.04LTS.

[MrJellmoo]

For the life of me, with all of the efforts they have made to put together a distro that seems very friendly to new users with solid QoL innovations for working out of the box, I cannot understand why they make it so ridiculously difficult for a new Linux user to find and install the apps that they are going to want and need.

[walking_on_earth]

I can't f***ing believe that they shipped another release of Elementary where you have to download a flatpak from the WEB BROWSER to enable flathub in the app center. It makes NO SENSE. Let me flip a switch in the app center settings to enable flathub, that is the only user-friendly way to handle it!!

[talkysassis]

Their idea for the appcenter was great. The problem is that you can't really monetize anything here.

[StarlordStavanger]

I'm good. Fedora is all I need, thanks for the video tho!

[lynn_targz]

for me, the disadvantages of elementary OS 7 and Pantheon are not an issue, but I will not switch back right now, because the elementary project is basically handled by a single person. I'll keep an eye on it, just like you'll do :)

Your videos are amazing btw ^~^

[peterkoi]

Its weird that Linux is pretty poor on modern music players

[fenndev]

For me, Fedora and GNOME have taken a clear lead in the desktop experience and desktop environment departments.

I want consistency and fluidity - I wish I didn't have to install GNOME extensions or themes to get that, but slap on the GTK3 Libadwaita theme and the MoreWaita icon pack and it almost looks like a complete, cohesive ecosystem. ElementaryOS walked so that GNOME and KDE could fly, in my opinion.

[jadongearhart]

Literally today I downloaded 6.1 to put on a vm to try out. Lol

[proctoscopefilms]

All the good music library organization programs on Linux are outdated :(

[RU-qvjl]

We need more people on Firefox. I have used it for years and I hope it continues to live. If it dies and we are left with only Blink and WebKit it will be a dark day once again :( It would be nice if the Mozzarella foundation wasn’t quite as fat at the top in terms of what they pay the people at the top who seem to have screwed up each time I read about them. Although maybe they do a good job most of the time and I only read about them when they screw up. Still Firefox needs to survive.

[maximum]

This doesn't really have anything to do with elementary OS, but I'm glad I'm not the only person sticking with Firefox lol. Sure, Gnome Web and Konqueror are alright nowadays, and Chromium and Brave have been getting love from the community for a while, but in my mind Firefox is still the default option that comes to mind when somebody says "web browser".

[lisovyy]

still no upgrade from previous major version without full re-install, yuck. this is kind of unacceptable nowadays.