Performance

When we talk about desktop performance in Linux we always compare from worst (GNOME Shell) to best (KDE Plasma) :p

I’ve read many comments on my YouTube that people don’t use GNOME and they fallback to elementary (or other desktops), not because they like it, but because it actually runs on their PC with more than 5 FPS ;)

Starting from GNOME 3.30 (that had lots of improvements) and at least on a today’s average PC with SSD and dGPU, elementary and GNOME Shell are pretty much the same

On “low-spec” laptops elementary might “run” better, but using elementary just because it can run on a “bad” PC, it is not something you want to advertise

elementary Core Apps

elementary is not GNOME, but elementary and GNOME apps are quite similar in UI guidelines, specially now that GNOME (3.32) dropped application menus

Both are made with GTK and I want to highlight an issue with the toolkit regarding the graphics. GTK-3.0 cant’t animate. Apart some slides and fades, that even those aren’t very good

That will change on GTK-4.0 that has GL (and Vulkan) direct rendering and shaders, but for now all graphics in GTK apps look static, and there isn’t motion that makes visuals cool

One more thing is the theme. Personally I find Adwaita outdated, but elementary theme is even more outdated. It feels like entering a house with old classic furniture or something. That isn’t necessary good or bad, but I just prefer things to look modern

A very short comment on some of elementary Core Apps

Files

Everytime I login to elementary desktop and I want to deal with files, I have to open GNOME Files, because working with elementary Files, is nearly impossible, for a very simple reason. Search very politely sucks :/

GNOME Files on Left, elementary Files on right

Search in elementary Files uses a drop down instead of filtering the main view, which AFAIK is something they want to change, but it is still here

Another thing I don’t like is the single click policy, without an option to change it, that can be painful specially for people that work on multiple systems (eg. Windows and elementary)

In general it is very typical for people to have more than one OS, so some very common things (like file selections) is a good idea to work everywhere similar. Even Google Drive that is a WebApp uses single click to select, and double click to “enter”

Terminal

Do you see that pop-over on the top right?

Those are all the options you get on elementary Terminal!?

Quite honestly, looking back 10 years ago, and seeing apps doing more with less resources than today it is really sad. This isn’t about design or simplicity. This is the “Windows Notepad of Linux!”

Photos and rest

Imagine you want to Tweet some animated Gifs. With elementary Photos you cant, because it doesn’t play the animation

Colored app icons might be last century, but in some cases they look great!

Point with elementary core apps is that they have the same problem with GNOME Core apps (with some exceptions), but in a much larger degree. They have extremely low development, and thus they are extremely weak. And what about that there isn’t even a CPU/Disk usage app?!

I’ve said my opinion on this many times. elementary should had simply picked GNOME Core apps, and even contribute to them. Look! I don’t disagree with elementary’s idea to create their own app ecosystem, but I just don’t finding it feasible at this point. Developing desktop apps is hard

Mate and Cinnamon did that too, and their file-managers suck. And if your file manager sucks, everything sucks :p

And they suck, not because I say so, but because people aren’t using these desktops. People use GNOME not just because is pre-installed on Fedora or Ubuntu, but because it is “better” ..and that is exactly why GNOME is still pre-installed at least in Ubuntu, that they aren’t the biggest GNOME fans :p

KDE hasn’t either major Linux vendors to ship it, but they do better than elementary and Mate and Cinnamon in terms of user base, and also contributions

AppCenter

I’m using my Silverblue installation here, so I’m missing AppCenter repos, the curated apps, and of course the payment system!

All those are cool, but also irrelevant to my complain, which is none other than Flatpak support! ..Or even Snap; but please lord go away from root packages!

I will skip the problems with elementary still using .deb files, specially on LTS editions, since elementary will eventually go either with Snap or Flatpak

But they are already late, and even if they were starting working today on that, it would take at least a year to port

They need the Flatpak/Snap support on AppCenter, they need the docs for the developers, and they need the online infrastructure that it is quite complex

Till this happen, first elementary users stay without an UI for Flatpaks and/or Snaps, but most importantly the elementary developers will see their apps to have low use, low donations, low contributions and low issue reporting, because they are available only for elementary with the small user base

Expecting people switching on elementary just because of their app ecosystem, is really an illusion, because it is not very probable to see really strong apps specifically for elementary

It is the same as it happens with Windows Phones or even Tizen than both MS and Intel spent millions on sponsoring people to write whatever app they wanted, so they could create an ecosystem

Development

That’s a GTK/Vala tutorial from Alex, it is the first part of an upcoming series, so it is a little bit over-explainful but you can subscribe to watch the rest if you want

The one single thing that made me the worst impression on elementary, it is the Code app

Christian Hergert has created a really nice IDE with very good tooling for GTK, and instead elementary pushes Code App

Imagine if a guy from iOS development is watching Alex’s video with an editor that it has not a designer, it has not a debugger, it has not starting templates, it has not building tools, it has not even auto-complete, and all those coming with a “What the hell Vala is!” ..he will totally freak out!

That might not be a big deal, and elementary developers can easily get Builder from Flatpak and work on that but..

How to Get Builder w GTK Designer (starting at: 3:31)

..this thing shows a denial from elementary team to realize what is good for their users, that affects lots of things around the project

Community Apps

This is where elementary shines! I have tried most of them, and I won’t lie that are powerful and super and you can’t live without them. Although some are pretty neat!

However most of them are new, they get updates, so hopefully in the future will be more and better!

I said before, elementary team does an excellent job on engaging developers, and they achieved that simply because it is the only project that is desktop + OS one thing! Do you remember how many community apps Unity 8 had, even if there wasn’t a working Unity 8?!

Then again, when elementary was started attracting community devs, there wasn’t Flatpak, and even today Flatpak is a baby! Fast growing, but still baby!

Thus my opinion is that the current elementary tools (Code + AppCenter + Vala) won’t last by the next year the most, specially with GTK 4.0 and Rust that is what the GNOME and GTK development really is driven to

Need of Changes

If I had voice inside elementary I would propose three things that I believe they could boost the project

Faster releases based on Ubuntu normal releases and not LTS. Don’t forget that Loki that is what we had a week ago, was based on GNOME 3.18! Move development to Flatpak and introduce GNOME Builder as elementary IDE Looking for development languages beyond Vala, possibly on Rust, but also examining Swift GTK bindings that has very good FFI, and it is more appropriate for apps, than Rust

Good from Far, Far from Good?

elementary till Juno release had always this problem that they were getting very positive reviews on blogs, but it was failing flat when people were trying to use it

It is not a lie that Mint does much better in user-base than elementary, and has much more community funding, even if they have less code contributors. To be realistic people in Linux care mostly for the big apps, games and developing, and that is the case in Windows 10 too

Anyway, “Good from Far, Far from Good” is not the case for Juno, and it is the first time I say that for an elementary release

However I don’t believe elementary is the “best” overall Linux out there, and I see it really hard to compete the current Ubuntu with GNOME 3.30

Not to compare it with my Silverblue + GNOME that eats all distros for breakfast :p

Anyway, that was my feedback! elementary Juno is free, get it, test it your selves, and if you like it, keep it!

See ya again in two years from now :p