Title: Review of ElementaryOS 6 (Odin) | |
Author: Solène | |
Date: 06 September 2021 | |
Tags: linux review | |
Description: | |
# Introduction | |
ElementaryOS is a linux distribution based on Ubuntu that also ship | |
with a in-house developed desktop environment Pantheon and ecosystem | |
apps. Since their 6th release named Odin, the development team made a | |
bold choice of proposing software through the Flatpak package manager. | |
I've been using this linux distribution on my powerful netbook (4 cores | |
atom, 4 GB of memory) for some weeks, trying not to use the terminal | |
and now this is my review. | |
ElementaryOS project website | |
ElementaryOS desktop with no window shown | |
# Pantheon | |
I've been using ElementaryOS a little in the past so I was already | |
aware of the Pantheon desktop when I installed ElementaryOS Odin on my | |
netbook, I've been pleased to see it didn't change in term of | |
usability. Basically, Pantheon looks like a Gnome3 desktop with a nice | |
and usable dock à la MacOS. | |
Using the Super key (often referred to as the "Windows key") and you | |
will be disappointed by getting a window with a list of shortcuts that | |
works with Pantheon. Putting the help on this button is quite clever | |
as we are used to press it for sending commands, but after a while it's | |
misleading to have a single button triggering help, fortunately this | |
behaviour can be configured to display the desktop or the applications | |
menu. | |
Pantheon has a very nice feature I totally love which create a floating | |
miniature of a target window that stay on top of everything, I often | |
need to keep an eye on a window or watch a movie, and this mode allow | |
me to exactly do that. The miniature is easy to move on the screen, | |
easy to resize, and upon a click the window appears and the miniature | |
is then hidden until you switch to another window. It may seems a | |
gadget, but on a small screens I really appreciate. You can create | |
this for a window by pressing Super+f and clicking on a target. | |
Picture in picture mode, showing the AppCenter while in a terminal | |
The desktop comes with some programs made specifically for Pantheon: | |
terminal emulator, file browser, text editor, calendar etc... They are | |
simple but effective. | |
The whole environment is stable, good looking, coherent and usable. | |
# The AppCenter and Flatpak | |
As I said before, ElementaryOS is based on Ubuntu so it inherits all | |
the packages available on Ubuntu, but they will be only installable | |
from the command line. The Application center GUI shows an entirely | |
different package sets that comes from the ElementaryOS flatpak | |
repository but also the one from flathub. Official repository apps are | |
clearly designated as official while programs from flathub will be | |
displayed as third party and a warning about quality/security will be | |
displayed for each program from this repository when you want to | |
install. | |
Warning shown when trying to install a program from a different repository than… | |
Flatpak has a pretty bad reputation among the groups I regularly read, | |
however I like flatpak. Crash course to flatpak: it is a Linux | |
agnostic package manager that will not reuse your system library but | |
instead install the whole basics dependencies required (such as X11, | |
KDE, Gnome etc...) and then programs are installed upon this, but still | |
separated from each other. Programs running from flatpak will have | |
different permissions and may be limited in their permissions (no | |
network, can only reach ~/Downloads/ etc..), this is very nice but not | |
always convenient especially for programs that require plugins. The | |
whole idea of flatpak is that you install a program and it shouldn't | |
mess with the current system, and it can be installed in such way that | |
when you use it, the person making the program bundle can restrict the | |
permissions as much as wanted. | |
While installing flatpak programs take a good amount of data to | |
download because of the big dependencies, you need them only once and | |
updating flatpak programs will use delta changes, so only difference is | |
downloaded, I found updates to be very small in regards to network | |
consumption. While installing a single GUI app from flatpak on a Linux | |
system can be seen as overkill, the small Gemini browser Lagrange | |
involve more than 1GB of dependencies from flatpak, it totally make | |
sense to install everything needed by the user from flatpak. | |
If you are unhappy with the current permissions of a program, you can | |
use the utility Flatseal to tweak its permissions, which is very cool. | |
I totally understand and love the move to full flatpak, it has proven | |
me to be solid, easy to use and easy to tweak despite flatpak still | |
being very young. I liked very much that my Firefox on OpenBSD had the | |
unveil feature preventing it from accessing my data in case of security | |
breach, now with Firefox from Flatpak or Firefox run from firejail I | |
can get the same on Linux. There is one thing I regret in the | |
AppCenter though but this is my opinion and I can understand why it is | |
so, some programs have a priced button like "3,00$" while the other are | |
"Free", there is a menu near the price that let you choose the amount | |
you want to pay but you can also put 0,00 and then the program is free. | |
This can be misleading for users because the program is actually free | |
but in "pay what you want" mode. | |
Picture of a torrent program that is not shown as free but can be set to 0,00$ | |
I have no issues paying for Free software as long as it's 100% free, | |
but suggesting a price for a package while you don't know you can | |
install it for free can be weird. The payment implementation of the | |
AppCenter could be the beginning of paid software integrated into | |
ElementaryOS, I have no strong opinion about this because people need | |
money for a living, but I hope it will be used wisely. | |
# No terminal challenge | |
While trying ElementaryOS for some time, I gave myself a little | |
challenge that was to avoid using the Terminal as much as possible. I | |
quite succeeded as I only required a terminal to install a regular | |
package (lutris, not available as flatpak). Of course, I couldn't | |
prevent myself to play with a terminal to check for bandwidth or CPU | |
usage but it doesn't count as a normal computer use. | |
Everything worked fine so far, network access, wireless, installing and | |
playing video games, video players. | |
I'd feel confident if I recommended a non linux users to install | |
ElementaryOS and use it. On first boot the system provides a nice | |
introduction to explain basics. | |
# Parental control | |
This is a feature I'm not using but I found it in the configuration | |
panel and I've been surprised to see it. ElementaryOS comes with a | |
feature to restrict time in week days and week-end days, but also | |
prevent an user to reach some URLs (no idea how this is implemented) | |
and also forbid to run some installed Apps. | |
I don't have kids but I assume this can be very useful to prevent the | |
use of the computer past some time or prevent them to use some | |
programs, to make it work they would obviously need their own account | |
and not able to be root. I can't judge if it works fine, if it's | |
suitable for real world, but I wanted to share about this unique | |
feature. | |
Screenshot of the parental control | |
# Global performance | |
My netbook proved to be quite okay to use Pantheon. The worse cases I | |
figured out are displaying the applications menu which takes a second, | |
and the AppCenter that is slow to browse and the "searching for update" | |
takes a long time. | |
As I said in the introduction, my Netbook has a quad core atom and a | |
good amount of memory but the eMMC storage is quite slow. I don't know | |
if the lack of responsiveness comes from my CPU or storage, but I can | |
tell everything works smoothly on an older Core2 Duo! | |
# Conclusion | |
Using ElementaryOS was delightful, it just works. The team made a very | |
good work for the whole coherence of the desktop. It is certainly not | |
the distribution you need when you want full control or if you want | |
something super light, but it definitely does the job for users that | |
just want things to work, and who like Pantheon. It doesn't seem | |
straightforward to switch to another desktop environment. |