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Looking for an Ubuntu Unity Close Cousin? Elementary, My Dear...

posted by Fnord666 on Friday June 30 2017, @02:56PM   Printer-friendly
from the unity-was-so-cumberbatch dept.

Phoenix666 writes:

Ubuntu's Unity interface is gone, which means there's one less desktop to choose from in Linux-land. And while dozens remain to choose from, Unity was one of the most polished out there. Many will miss its detail and design.

One of the desktops that is nearly as well polished, and therefore worth Unity fans considering, is the not-quite-as-new-kid on the block, Elementary OS.

Elementary OS actually began in 2011 as a theme for Ubuntu. It has evolved well beyond that now, with its own homegrown desktop environment dubbed Pantheon, 13 custom apps, and a distinct and very nice set of custom icons and themes. Under the hood it's still very much Ubuntu/Debian, so all the commands and basic apps you're used to will be there, even if you have to install them yourself. The Ubuntu/Debian underpinning also means you get the security and stability of those projects.

I've tested Elementary OS quite a bit over the last few years and I can say that, if you were put off by the bugginess of early releases, it's worth another look. The latest release, called Loki, has been very stable in my testing and features some really nice homegrown apps. The Elementary OS team is very good at getting the core of an app right and then polishing up the details over time.

Awesome. I really miss how Unity would slow my desktop to a crawl.

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 2) by driverless on Saturday July 01 2017, @09:29AM (2 children)

    by driverless (4770) on Saturday July 01 2017, @09:29AM (#533864)

    I have an old Gateway laptop that I can't put on the network because it runs XP. Still can't find a distro that will run on it.

    This distro [freedos.org] should do the trick.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  
    Total Score:   2  

  • (Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday July 01 2017, @03:29PM (1 child)

    by mcgrew (701) <publish@mcgrewbooks.com> on Saturday July 01 2017, @03:29PM (#533917) Homepage Journal

    I remember that one... it's capapble of internet access now? Does it run Linux or Windows programs? I used it way back before Windows 95. There was one called FreeDOS, too.

    --
    mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 02 2017, @04:41AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 02 2017, @04:41AM (#534085)

      Yup.

      4 cool facts you should know about FreeDOS [opensource.com]
      DOS is an old system and the original didn't support networking out of the box. Typically, you had to install device drivers for your hardware to connect to a network, which was usually a simple network like IPX. Few systems supported TCP/IP.

      With FreeDOS, not only do we include a TCP/IP networking stack, we include tools and programs that let you browse the web. Use Dillo for a graphical web browser experience, or Lynx to view the web as formatted plain text. If you just want to grab the HTML code and manipulate it yourself, use Wget or Curl.

      -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]