The new generation
Check out these wonderfully crafted distros that give the operating system from a certain fruit-named company a run for its money.
Ubuntu-derivatives are a dime a dozen. Some you could probably recreate yourself by installing a desktop and changing some default applications. But some are simply outstanding, taking the rock solid Ubuntu base and adding unique and powerful features atop of it.
One such is elementary OS which, through its own Pantheon desktop, brings a sleekness and simplicity that rivals Mac OS. Instead of forcing users to read manuals (which in many cases just raises more questions), one of elementary’s aims is to have minimal documentation. It aims to be sufficiently intuitive that users should be able to figure things out for themselves. Another of its design aims is “concision”, keeping things simple and avoiding bloat. Finally, it strives for “accessible configuration”: not bombarding the user with options, or asking for information that could be obtained automatically. This all might sound like fluffy design speak, but when you see how the app indicators convey with subtlety useful information, how the infobars gently notify you of exigent situations and how everything integrates so nicely (like a new-age type wittering on about how “it’s all one, brah”), then you’ll see there’s substance to it all.
Contributing to elementary OS
Elementary OS is not free as in beer. It uses a pay-what-you-want model and when you download it you’re asked to make a contribution. Ubuntu and some others use this model too, and nothing bad happens if you select $0. There’s nothing inherently wrong with charging money for software – even free (as in speech) software. It’s even expressly permitted by the GPL. Elementary, in asking for donations rather than slapping on a price tag, is striking a balance. It’s ensuring that people get reimbursed for their work, while at the same time making it available to all. If you disagree with that stance then you’re under no obligation to use it. If you want to contribute in another way, you can help fix bugs or help users on the forum (as you can for any software). There’s even a bug bounty program, so if you’re willing to pay for a feature (or would like to get paid for fixing something), then subject to team approval and someone coding it, you can.
Fiscal models aside, elementary OS is beautiful. The Plank dock gives easy access to commonly used applications, and the bundled ones all follow a uniform design. They’re all coded in Vala, which makes them integrate easily with GTK (or elementary’s custom superset of it, dubbed Granite). They’re free of unnecessary configuration options, proving that sane defaults are possible. Most interestingly, many of them don’t have an explicit Save option. They’ll save as you go and reopen to the same state they were left. The AppCenter (sic) includes a section of curated programs (that adhere to elementary’s design philosophy and have been reviewed by the team) as well as everything you’d find in Ubuntu’s
erstwhile Software Centre (now the Snap Store). Flatpaks are supported out of the box too via a custom tool, Sideload. Unlike Apple’s walledgarden approach, elementary makes it possible for adventurous users to stray from the curated base camp and brave the open source jungle.
Besides looking pretty and being a pleasure to use, elementary OS is conscious about privacy. Onboarding, which debuted in the 5.1 release, offers to turn on location services or automatically delete temporary files (and optionally Trashed items). This launches on first run for each user (the new user selection screen is also lovely, by the way) and also guides users to the documentation, Night Light settings and AppCenter. Many users will have long-abandoned email clients, opting instead for the web-based offerings from their provider. But elementary’s Mail program might just spur those users to make their inboxes local again.
We’re looking forward to elementary OS 6.0, which will be based on Ubuntu 20.04, but the team snuck out a point release, 5.1.5, in June which brought yet more nice touches. Being asked for a password occasionally might not seem particularly onerous, but when you encounter the password prompt on a daily basis it gets tiring. Elementary aims to tackle this “authentication fatigue” through contextual authentication, or only asking for a password where it makes sense to do so. If your laptop (which typically only one person uses) asks for a password when you log in, then it shouldn’t really need to ask you again when you apply updates, or even install new software. Likewise, you shouldn’t be prompted for a password, for example if you just look at (but don’t touch) firewall settings. You can follow all the contextual authentication work on Github at https://github.com/orgs/ elementary/projects/74.
Parental relations
Desktop distros these days tend to all have a parent distribution. That might be something still going (Ubuntu, Debian) or something now defunct (such as Mandrake, where OpenMandriva and Mageia’s roots lie). Such distros may be forks (have evolved their own codebase), or they may retain compatibility with their parents. Ubuntu is technically a fork of Debian unstable, whereas Mint is an Ubuntu-derivative. Either way it’s rare that something totally freestanding comes out. Which is why we must give credit to the Solus project.
Solus started life as Ikey Doherty’s Evolve OS back in 2013. The project’s package manager, eopkg, was a fork of PiSi from Turkish distro Pardus Linux. At the time (Evolve remained in alpha until 2015), most interest was centred around its unique Budgie desktop, which used Gnome 3’s underpinnings to create a stylish yet traditional experience. Due to a trademark conflict (with the then-UK secretary of state no less) Evolve was renamed Solus, and Solus 1.0 was released at the end of 2015. By then Budgie had acquired its characteristic Raven sidebar (nevermore dig deep to tweak audio or see appointments with Lenore) as well as a substantial following.
By 2017 Doherty announced that he would be working full-time on the project, and Solus had moved to a rolling release model. The team had developed their own tool, ferryd, for rapidly deploying changes to their repositories. While not a strictly Solus project, work continued on his Linux Steam Integration tool (which forced Steam to use distro libraries rather than the antiquities found in its own runtime). Solus’s driver management tool saw its first release and Ubuntu Budgie (the desktop has long been available outside of Solus) became an official Ubuntu flavour. Ikey left the project in 2018, leaving it the capable hands of his co contributors, and the rest as they say, is history. Budgie uses the semi-classical Brisk menu, designed in conjunction with Ubuntu MATE, and (like elementary’s Pantheon) all development is done in Vala.
The current Solus release, 4.1, comes in four editions (Budgie, Gnome, MATE and Plasma) and packs a range of multimedia features. For gamers, tweaks to the default file limits have been raised so that ESync can be used for better performance in Wine (or Proton, via Steam).
Taking software solace
Since Solus maintains its own repos, you won’t find as many packages as in, say, Ubuntu’s traditional .deb repositories. However, Snap is installed out of the box, so you can now avail yourself of the many offerings in the Snapcraft store. Flatpak and the Flathub remote are only two lines away too:
$ sudo eopkg install flatpak xdg-desktop-portal-gtk
$ flatpak remote-add --if-notexists flathub
Eventually these will be integrated in a new plugin-based Software Centre, and eopkg will be replaced by a next-generation package manager dubbed Sol. We look forward to the next Solus release, and indeed Budgie 11.
Supporting your distro “Elementary OS is not free (as in beer). It uses a pay-whatyou-want model and when you download the ISO you’re asked to make a contribution.”