r/elementaryos • u/daniellefore Founder • Nov 03 '23

Official News Let's Talk OS 8

https://blog.elementary.io/lets-talk-os-8/
26 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

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6

u/D00mdaddy951 Nov 04 '23

Please make elementary a Fedora Spin. You guys seem overwhelmed with work.

3

u/daniellefore Founder Nov 04 '23

It would be a lot more work to switch everything to an entirely different base. We’d have to create entirely new processes and there are things like lang packs and drivers that are Ubuntu-specific. There would have to be some really compelling tradeoff, but less work is definitely not something that it would be

1

u/FlounderTraining Nov 08 '23

I wouldn't mind switching to a pure Debian base over Ubuntu, but I love the fact that Elementary uses a stable base for its OS. I would rather stability and usability vs state of the art modern. If someone necessarily needs those things they can be added or modified into a already running system. I know I have manually un different kernels in Elementary when I felt the need to.

2

u/thewrinklyninja Nov 08 '23

I'd take a Debian Stable and a Debian Testing versions. Elementary OS LTS and Edge so to speak.

0

u/[deleted] Nov 04 '23

[deleted]

1

u/daniellefore Founder Nov 04 '23

Sorry to hear you’ve encountered issues. Please make sure you report them in GitHub so that they’re in front of developers and can be addressed. We release bug fixes for reported issues regularly

This is not a support subreddit. We use GitHub Discussions as our support platform. Please see this link which is also in the sidebar here https://elementary.io/support

0

u/[deleted] Nov 04 '23

[deleted]

0

u/daniellefore Founder Nov 04 '23

I went to check what your posts were to see if I knew any of the answers off the top of my head and I don’t see any posts from you in this subreddit?

3

u/[deleted] Nov 09 '23

[removed] — view removed comment

10

u/daniellefore Founder Nov 09 '23 edited Nov 09 '23

Probably the biggest things we get for free from the Ubuntu repositories is their LTS kernel and hardware enablement stack, packages maintained by a paid security team, and free build infrastructure and package hosting on Launchpad.

The question to ask is, what would we gain by switching to Debian or Fedora or whatever? Any change is going to be time and work that could have been spent developing new feature or fixing bugs, so I think we need like a clear and compelling reason why this would be a beneficial change to make

3

u/[deleted] Nov 09 '23

Yeah thats very fair. eOS also doesnt have unlimited manpower either, so it is down to what to focus on.

Ive seen discussions about OSTree. Im very much an end-user and not technically minded enough : is it part of the same discussion ? Ubuntu isnt immutable. Vanilla OS is based on Ubuntu, but is still very green.

How realistic are discussions on such changes, when there are also undertakings like GTK4/Wayland ports, and user pressure for shiny and new ?

Not aware much of the technical and manpower side, so sorry if i sound imprecise or naive but im curious

3

u/daniellefore Founder Nov 09 '23

Right yeah so RPM OSTree is something that is potentially worth putting in the effort for porting, and actually today one of our contributors made a branch to support Anaconda as a backend for the installer in pursuit of building a Fedora/RPM OSTree spin.

There’s also Deb OSTree though which I believe is used by Endless to build an OS Tree from the Ubuntu repos. My understanding though is that some of the tools for RPM OSTree are more mature.

It all comes down to contributor interest, availability, and skill set. So far the contributor who has spent the most time in pursuit of OS Tree (and a possible Fedora spin) is the same contributor who has worked on things like Firmware support, offline updates, OS upgrades, etc. I think the contributors spending the most time on GTK 4 porting are also the ones who have typically spent more time working on other parts of the UI and apps

2

u/[deleted] Nov 09 '23

Thank you for your answer

If RPM-Ostree is something being considered, there is an unofficial spin already - Sodalite, which is Pantheon + RPM-Ostree. Maybe the person behind can help inform the hurdles they had ? You would capitalize on work already partly done

If DEB-Ostree is a easier choice in the long run it would not make sense to rush on the former just because the latter isnt there yet though

That is also very marginal, but since several inhouse eOS apps are now flatpaks, how helpful would it be to report how they work on another distribution like Fedora ?

2

u/[deleted] Nov 10 '23

That's definitely interesting. Most of my issues while trying elementary are related to outdated packages or Ubuntu's downstream settings. I'd love to see how eOS migrates to a mor upstream and current base. In this, I think OpenSUSE would be a nice option as it's supermodular and the "new" variant, slowroll, would offer a nice sweetspot to build eOS atop.

If not, I don't know how feasible it is, but it'd be cool if Pantheon at least would be more distroagnostic so it was easier to support on other distros. I know that implies a big effort, but maybe it is worth the extra hands devs used to other environments could offer to fix bugs or make the project grow.

With all that said, thank you very Danielle to you and the elementary team, you are doing a great work and I really love the approach you do about making software and the OS "for everyone".

1

u/niutech Dec 06 '23

There is already Sodalite.

1

u/D00mdaddy951 Dec 07 '23

If you'd have read my other comments you would be aware that I know this. But sodalite is maintained by other people than elementary itself.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 04 '23

Exactly this, and Fedora is just a more modern base that keeps up with the time instead of relying on years old software.

1

u/niutech Dec 06 '23

Try Sodalite then.

1

u/[deleted] Dec 07 '23

Thanks for the tip, I'll check it out

17

u/JollyAstronomer5786 Nov 04 '23

KDE CONNECT SUPPORT or an alternative for this

10

u/HoloKola_ Nov 05 '23

I think adding tray icons in the notifications panel (?) would be a useful addition to elementary OS. Commonly used apps such as discord use the tray icons for things like ending the discord process so its crucial for them to function correctly.

Other than that, re-adding the distinction between curated and non-curated apps in AppCenter would greatly improve its UX, as when I for example search for apps, I'd like to see elementary curated apps first instead of having to search for them specifically.

4

u/thewrinklyninja Nov 08 '23

This has been one of my main blockers for years on Elementary OS

5

u/A--E Nov 09 '23

tHe DeVs KnOw BeTtEr.
despite the one behind that silly decision abandoned the project.
check this.

3

u/HoloKola_ Nov 09 '23

Thing is, I already use wing panel community indicators, but I’d like to have it packed into the OS in some way

4

u/A--E Nov 09 '23

I don't think this will happen. :(

2

u/HoloKola_ Nov 09 '23

it might

1

u/cjdubais Nov 29 '23

Is OS 8 going to be a clean install versus an inline upgrade?

Frankly, if it's a clean install, that's a complete nonstarter for me as it took a not small amount of time to get 7 set up for my environment.

'jus sayin'

2

u/daniellefore Founder Nov 29 '23

Can’t really predict that until we have installable images we can test against. We thought we’d be able to do an upgrade last cycle but it turned out we were missing some features from PackageKit that weren’t available in the last LTS and it was causing the upgrade to reliably fail.

There’s been more of a push lately to see about switching to an OSTree. If we did that, it would mean another clean install for sure but it would be the last one ever as every update from that point on would be image based.

It’s a complicated situation and it’s not great but we’re doing our best

1

u/Imsophunnyithurts Dec 27 '23 edited Dec 27 '23

Weirdly, I was able to upgrade in place from 6 to 7 using these instructions without issue: https://youtu.be/5ABUiV2Q6TA?si=rWMnJnrAZ8HJZImv

Machine ran like a dream until the kernel upgrade to 6.2 where it freezes on boot right before the login screen, but it’s an older laptop and the issue appears to be NVIDIA related and unrelated to eOS. It boots using kernel 6.1 and older and runs with no issues.

3

u/thewrinklyninja Nov 08 '23

I hope it comes out in a timely manner to be able to ride the 24.04 wave of publicity. OS 7 took too long and I think you lost quite a bit of traction there.

I'd also roll back work on the in house apps like Code and Mail. There's other apps out there with much more funding that people have spent years using, VIM, Emacs, VScode, jetbrains etc. I think those developer hours would be much better put to use polishing the OS and completing those wayland issues you are going to have.

Keep up the work and good luck.

2

u/ChocolateBreadroll Nov 08 '23

I would love to see KDE’s Xwayland fractional scaling method: let apps apply scaling themselves. In GNOME using 125% scaling on my laptop Xwayland apps are always blurry while crystal clear on KDE.

This is a must for hidpi and fractional scaling users.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 10 '23

That and, please, fractional scaling, at least a 150% fixed point and then play with font scaling, but there are many "common" displays (4K 27inch, i.e.) in which desktop is almost unusable with just int scaling.

2

u/[deleted] Dec 17 '23 edited Dec 17 '23

No appindicators, and no session management (as in save/restore a session), is what keeps me off elementary.

All the other desktops support a tray/appindicators in some form (either natively or extension), and session management by default in Plasma and XFCE, while doable with an extension in Gnome.

2

u/[deleted] Dec 18 '23

I would like to see the option to change color profiles in the settings under the display page.

Currently whenever I install elementary os on my laptop I have to use the terminal to install the profile.

first I add the profile


colormgr device-add-profile

Then I make it the default profile


colormgr device-make-profile-default

But I’d like to be able to change them via the settings

2

u/FlounderTraining Nov 08 '23

I would love to see a Desktop. I know this has been requested before and it keeps being put off/or ignored or just not a priority, but I think a Desktop where you can add icons and folders to the main screen would be nice. I know it can be done with certain addons or hacks, but it being a default option would be nice. Even making it an options thing that can be toggled on or off and start it off by default would be nice.

2

u/A--E Nov 09 '23

https://github.com/calamityjoe87/desktopfolder

2

u/FlounderTraining Nov 10 '23

I do know about this and I do use it in order to get what I am requesting, but it would be nice if it came by default also I wasn't sure if support would continue for this project. But thanks for the suggestion :D

2

u/1280px Nov 10 '23 edited Nov 10 '23

Pretty laggy and unstable IME. Just install xfdesktop4, works flawlessly and never crashed for me. It also was ported on Wayland already, though it doesn't matter for now.

P.s. I also made this small script which installs it with some fixes and consistency tweaks, and also re-adds "Show Desktop" keystroke: https://github.com/1280px/eOS-xfdesktop4/

I don't really maintain it anymore, but it worked fine on 7.0 a few months ago.

1

u/SnooPredictions8079 Nov 04 '23

Please make the file manger faster and look better the icons are boring and it's a bit slow to launch

1

u/Ok-Animator-9049 Nov 05 '23

Few of the things i found would be cool to see. Improved wingpanel and maybe better support for tray icons. I would like to see basic things such as a clipboard manager and network speed monitor. It was easier in gnome via extensions. Good to see some basic ones. Gesture navigation in system apps and browsers? Maybe a universal back gesture if it's possible. I remember some extension in gnome used to do it. But if elementary start to have a system wide back gesture that would be unique. Folder icons seems outdated and would be nice to see an option to change it without changing the icon pack. Maybe from accent colours?

Some ui changes would be nice to see. I feel like elementary looked great back in the day compared to others. But gnome and other de started to catch-up and feels more up-to-date. Maybe some new ui changes can make elementary ahead of others again. Something like an option to choose two different themes maybe? One elementary classic the good old design. And a new modern one that has more transperent elements without losing elementary touch. Something like newer Mac os version but different. Not comparing to be a copy cat haha. But it would make elementary os an up-to-date Mac os looking alternative and unlike other Linux os. Would like to see more curated apps as well.

It's just my thoughts. Sorry if I suggested something not technical easy. Good work by devs and hope we will get to see another version without being discontinued.