Core features

AppCenter

After install, AppCentre is the first piece of elementary OS software a user will likely encounter, as it delivers system updates, and lets face it — even though there is pre-bundled software to get you going, most users have some specific needs that will be met by third party software. I installed updates and Darktable, it all worked well, was easy to navigate. The basics of this — ready!

I do think there should be a tab for “recently installed” that includes software currently being installed. This is a minor complaint though, as software showed up almost immediately in Applications (top left corner of the topbar), and my laptop touchscreen worked out of the box, so sometimes it is easier to poke it than open with my mouse!

Notifications

The notifications are great, I’m particularly fond of the terminal integration. Being notified when long running commands complete, that’s a nice touch. elementary OS have got a lot right here. You can customise the behavior easily too. You get a custom setting for each internal app, and then a general setting for all others (show bubbles, play sounds, keep log). My main experience was with Spotify, where I liked the bubbles popping up, but didn’t want a sound, or a log of song notifications I hadn’t suppressed, so I had to alter the default settings. Notifications are a hugely personal thing though, but it’s a great integration, and behaved similarly to the MacOS notifications, but with a greater simplicity. Apple are always desperate to show you stock prices and weather — I don’t care, I just want the notifications. I can only see this continuing to be central to elementary OS, and getting deeper integration, but retaining it’s behaviour and simplicity.

I have one suggestion for notifications — a shortlink (maybe right click menu) to edit the settings for that particular notification source. I accidentally edited the wrong settings on first try.

Multitasking

A couple of days ago I was running multiple programs, multiple browser tabs, and I accidentally stumbled upon the shortcut for switching workspaces.

Windows Key (cmd) + Number

The screen subtly animates as it switches to whatever software you have loaded up, smoothly and conveniently. This feature is intuitive, and certainly seems ready.

While writing this article (and trying to learn the Medium.com hotkeys) I stumbled upon the zoom feature for elementary OS.

Windows Key (cmd) + (+ / -)

This feature really makes life simple, and is extra helpful on a HiDPI screen, where for various reasons sometimes things load up miniscule.

WiFi

WiFi worked in the installer, it works really well on startup, and often re-connects on system suspend and wake, however sometimes when I wake up the computer it doesn’t see networks, and I need to run:

sudo service NetworkManager restart

Maybe there is something I’m missing, but it seems more effective than using the GUI WiFi off/on toggle switch in the interface.

HiDPI

If you don’t know what HiDPI is, I suggest you look at elementary OS contributor Cassidy James Blaede’s excellent article on the subject. I was very impressed that the scaling settings were applied correctly for my HiDPI laptop screen from the install, there used to be less variety on this front and many software developers continue to neglect accounting for this. Some users also prefer to have greater screen real-estate where everything is just tiny, although I’m not one. I just like the crisp details.

Spotify was an offender here. It’s not really anything to do with elementary OS, but Spotify opens tiny on HiDPI Linux, the fix is simple:

Open: /usr/share/applications/spotify.desktop and edit…

Exec=spotify — force-device-scale-factor=2 %U

Second Monitor

Initially I was very excited my USB-C to HDMI adapter worked instantly, and I was able to plug-and-play, however on an standard HD monitor, the scaling set for my almost 4k screen is ridiculous on a normal DPI screen. The settings are not the same for both screens, and there is no auto-detection. Work is ongoing, in the Linux community, as this variable DPI issue won’t be going away any time soon, and it’s complex because a screen’s size, dpi and viewing distance (very different for a projector and laptop screen for example), are all related to the viewing experience. Things like the size you’d want text to be, for comfortable reading.

I’m not the only with these issues, my solution (thanks to a bit of research), was to put this command into a file, and run it when I need:

xrandr --output eDP1 --scale 1x1 --pos 3840x0 ; xrandr --output DP1 --scale 2x2 --mode 1920x1080 --fb 7680x2160 --pos 0x0

This works, but if the elementary OS topbar stays on the laptop screen, which it doesn’t always, it covers the top of fullscreen apps and you can’t reach some of the controls (such as selecting browser tabs). Get in touch if you have any ideas why this might happen, as if I wasn’t comfortable with keyboard shortcuts, this would have been a real problem.

I also have a problem where the Displays settings app doesn’t fit the screens inside it’s constraints, which makes it very difficult to use. Notice the settings cog is not available on second screen in this setup.

When trying to document this, the screenshot app (installed with elementary OS) crashed the whole machine, which I’m confident was caused by my custom settings above — my machine panic rebooted and I had to use the default settings to get a screenshot. When I tried to return to my custom settings, I had a nightmare. After loads of messing around, I discovered that if I plug in my monitor after login, it has much more stable behaviour, but otherwise Pantheon (the elementary OS desktop software) kept crashing when I adjusted the scaling.

Localisation

I found that while the timezone and keyboard were set correctly, when I looked at keyboard / language settings, I discovered that you need to manually install the locale (English UK for me), and select the appropriate formatting. This was easy, but should perhaps be part of the initial setup.

My keyboard also jumps to US configuration erratically, there is an icon so it’s easy to switch back, but I haven’t got to the bottom of why this happens.

Colour Profile

I like editing photos, but I don’t have the reliable environment needed for a perfect calibration, nor tools. I opted to install a custom colour profile for the XPS 13" (9360). The installation was simple, all I needed to do was open Device Colour Profiles from Settings, and add in my new profile, it then installed the necessary dependencies via the interface and then it was set.

Immediately I was able to see my white balance neutralise, it had been on the blue end, and looking at photos in a colour managed environment, things seem to have improved. I paid $4.96 for the Office / Web Design profile.

USB Key

I had a USB key, with ExFat encoding from using in a Mac, and that meant it didn’t load and mount initially. This could be problematic for a lot of users. Microsoft and Apple are incredibly unhelpful in supporting each others file systems though, and they are the cause of these types of problem, but the primary solution is to get ExFat file system handling (update: previously I had incorrectly suggested NTFS package, and NTFS should work out-of-the-box):