Everything Good(and BAD) About Elementary OS 8.1(3Speak REPOST)

Transcript

A few years ago, if you were looking up best Linux distros, you'd almost certainly find Elementary OS on that list. And you might also find some dissenting comments, calling it a Ubuntu flavor with a MacOS skin. An elementary is now on release 8.1. and a lot has changed. By the way, I'm Jay, and you're watching DS Tech Media. I make videos about tech, open source, and Linux. Oh, and I make everything using Linux. So if any of that interests you, please go ahead, like. share, and if you're a real G, subscribe. Oh, and also, I made a documentary about how PlayStation beat Nintendo and Sega and changed all of gaming forever, and hardly anyone who's seen it. I'm going to put a link to it up in the corner here. I put a ton of work into it. I promise you, if you watch it, you're going to learn something new about not just PlayStation, but the N64, Saturn, and the others. Elementary may have began as... Ubuntu with some MacOS themes, but by its third release, it was already a very unique distro. I ran it for several years on my laptops, and unlike other distros, it has its very own applications and its very own desktop called Pantheon, made with very specific human interface guidelines with the VALA programming language, and Elementary's Granite Library, which is a subset of the GTK toolkit. And one of the best illustrations of what a Linux distro really is, is summed up in this infographic. At the bottom, you've got what we traditionally consider Linux. The GNU, Shell, Compiler, C Library, and Core Utils, and of course the Linux kernel. Above that, the Xcelorg display server and a free desktop.org, a lot of what makes an operating system work is in the free desktop. spec including G Streamer, Codex for Video, Pulse Audio, and System D. Above that, you've got Gnome, which includes VALA, GLib, D-Conf, GTK Plus, User Interface Toolkit, and all of this is used to make Ubuntu. and Ubuntu add some extra figurations on top. Above that is where everything that elementary maintains and touches. The Pantheon platform, granite and contractor is how elementary apps communicate with each other. It's sort of like the share function on your Android or your iPhone. And then you got the Pantheon desktop shell, which is the GTK Plus style sheet, the icon theme. Gala is the window manager. the Doc, Plank, Slinghot Applications Launcher, Wing Panel, and most Linux distros don't even really make that much, but Elementary takes it even further and has all the elementary applications. Also, Elementary represents a lot of innovation for Linux as a personal computer OS. Third-party developers preferred to develop for Elementary. And all those developers led to Elementary creating the App Center. One controversy was their Pay What You Can model, and then they expanded that to the App Center, and that allowed developers. to set a price for their apps, and Ubuntu had an app store when I started using it, but I don't think it was very successful with the paid apps because nobody wants to pay for an application that they've never even tried. If I recall correctly, Pantheon was the first desktop to have transparent panel icons within that panel changed from bright to dark. That was kind of a wild feature to have. There's also the first distro that I can recall implementing parental controls first to implement showing you when your computer was recording, video, or audio, a microphone icon would appear in your panel. And there's a lot more, so let's take a look at it, shall we? The Welcome app has been redesigned. It starts with some links, including a basics guide, which is something I'd like to see every distro do. Next, you choose light or dark and your accent color, or you can let it automatically choose basement wallpaper. Online Accounts is still a weak spot for Elementary, still only has Caldav or IMAP options. For comparison, here's all the integrations Ubuntu has. Then we're prompted to get some app from Elementary's App Center or sidelode them from alternative app stores like FlatHubs, and it opens FlatHub's website in the browser. Clicked install and nothing happened. Later, I found the Flatpack Ref files were in my downloads folder, but the web browser didn't make this obvious at all. Also, opening Flat Hub in a browser doesn't make a ton of sense because one of the biggest changes to Elementary 8 is FlatHub included out-of-the-box in App Center, something users have been requesting for a long time now. But the keyword there was Side Load. And sure enough, Flatpack refs have a dedicated app that automates installing them, which is actually awesome. Then you choose if you want to auto update from both App Center or Ubuntu's repositories via Apt, which are now separated. So Elementary 8 keeps the tradition of using names from Greek mythology. Its codename is Circe. I should also mention if you're already running Elementary 7 Horus, you can't simply upgrade to 8, but they're trying to fix this in the future. Searcy comes with Linux kernel 6.11 from Ubuntu 2404, symmetric multi-processor with dynamic preemption, meaning you can tweak it to increase performance in things like audio production or gaming. Sercy also adds Ubuntu's long-term support hardware enablement stack. This means you have the stable and reliable LTS kernel that's supported until 2029, but you'll be able to receive future updates for drivers, kernel hardware modules and software related to graphics as they become available. And speaking of hardware, Wayland and Pipwire are now included. Pipwire replaces false audio for better performance, lower latency, and improved Bluetooth support. It's also better suited for audio production work, and even works transparently as a replacement for jet audio. Wayland only replaces X if you're using the new Secure Session, which more on that in a second. With Wayland comes mixed DPI support, meaning if you're on a high IDPI laptop, you can use a low DPI external monitor. It also means improved support for multi-touch gestures on touch screens and tablets, improved performance and smoothness, especially on lower power hardware. Secure Session is a major new feature, claiming to ensure applications respect your privacy and require your consent. Secure Session introduces four new portals that are built into Flatpack that require your authorization when an app wants to listen in the background for your keystrokes, take a screenshot, record the screen, even pick up a single color from a single pixel on the screen. And you can play with all of these by downloading ASHPD demo application stands for Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device, and yes, it's a reference to the game, but it's a Rust and Z -Bust wrapper of the X-DG Portals-D -Bus interfaces. Elementary also brings colorful new cursors. The wing panel now has extended quick settings that lets you prevent sleep, switch between light and dark mode, enable the screen reader or the on-screen keyboard, and even change font size for the entire system. Speaking of fonts, the fonts app's been redesigned and should have better performance than before. Another hardware feature, the power settings now displays the battery levels for connected device like wireless mice or keyboards, which I can't show you because I'm in a VM, so here's a screenshot. A brand new dock now replaces Plank and adds some features while also losing others. So for apps that support multiple Windows, like the file manager, you can middle click to open a new window. If an app has multiple windows open, left -clicking now triggers a window spread animation of all of its open windows, even if they're on a different workspace. However, if it's a single window, doesn't really do anything except bring it into focus. If it's already in focus, it triggers an animation and sound to grab your attention. With Plank, clicking this window again would minimize it to the dock, which I prefer. It doesn't help that Elementary doesn't have a minimize button. So if you want to minimize a window, you have to use the hide shortcut, which is the Windows or Superkey plus H. Right clicking just about anywhere brings up a list of useful window controls, like taking a screenshot, always on top, always on visible workspace, move to workspace left or right. move, resize, maximize, hide, and close, etc., and so forth. You can, however, add the minimize button by installing Pantheon tweaks and selecting Windows or MacOS. But we lose Plank's hidden features where you could control, right click, and select preferences. From there, you could change icon sizes, Plank's theme, move it to any edge of the screen, and even adjust behavior and alignment, plus the... there were docklets that you could add like show desktop, a CPU monitor, and a simple clipboard manager, and it kind of sucks to lose those features. Elementary even addressed this in a frequently asked question on their site, stating you can still reinstall Plank or any other dock you want, but those will only work in the classic session. And of course, there have been several changes to Elementary Settings app, which still looks a lot like the older Ubuntu Unity style settings. The system section is now where you'll find updates for everything that is non-flat pack. So all of the elementary and Ubuntu software, it's also where you'll find firmware and drivers. So as you can see here, Open VM Tools Desktop. The application section has even more app permissions. There's a bunch of default ones, but there's... There's also ones that will appear as the app tries to access it. Under desktop, we've got two new wallpapers, large body of water surrounded by mountains, that's the one that I'm showing you now, or the trail of footprints in the sand. App Center has a number of changes. There's tons of apps again because they finally included Flathub. Native apps are now marked made for elementary, and they are still highlighted front and center on the main page. But in each category, the most recently updated apps are at the top, whether they're elementary or not, followed by the paid elementary apps, and then unpaid is a mix of both. There's lots of little added details. Like here, the Heroic Games app has a little in-app purchases label. and the individual app pages have been reworked, Heroic has content warnings for conflict and violence, and notes that it uses legacy notifications. Down further, we have change logs for versions, and at the bottom links including the type of license, sponsor, contribute, translations, get source code, the website, get help, and send feedback. App Generator is marked made for elementary and has home folder access. Steam shows that it's multiplayer online play with other people, unmoderated audio, video, and text for online interactions. collects usage data that can identify you and uses legacy notifications. Oh, and if the developer has other apps in App Center, they're also shown here, so Valve has Steamlink. I found this one, and it made me laugh. Pleasure DVR is marked for sex and nudity. It's an app that records chatterbate streamers as soon as they go live. It even has a detailed... changelog, and the developer has eight other apps, a man of culture, I am sure. Ensemble is one of the more impressive elementary apps that I've found. I managed to get it working with my MIDI controller and I played with it a bit, but it's kind of complicated, although it does include a manual, quite impressive. And one thing I noticed about the paid apps for elementary is a lot of them are marked outdated and their change logs show a lot of them were last updated in 2021, 22, 23. Some even have newer versions that are just free on FlatHub, indicating the developer is no longer developing them for elementary. NotesUp is an excellent note-taking app that I still use to this day, but back when I discovered it on elementary, it wasn't available anywhere else, and you'd have to build it from source. Akira is an elementary project I was really excited for because it was going to be the Linux alternative to sketch, and it's been dormant for four years. now, still there with its $15 price tag that I doubt anyone has paid in a long time. So one fatal flaw with elementary has to do with the panel. Here is my Ubuntu desktop panel, which includes a clipboard manager, Steam, simple screen recorder, and Dropbox. None of these indicators work with Elementary's wing panel since the fourth or fifth release, at least five years ago. It's a long, complicated story, and it's not technically entirely Elementary's fault. And I've rewritten this section like 10 times trying to explain it, and it's just two in the weeds for this video. Look into Ayatana indicators if you want to understand the full story. So what happens if you install Steam or Dropbox on Elementary? The options you'd normally get from the indicator are moved to a right-click menu in Steam's dock icon. So everything technically works, but it's still not the same because the great thing about having panel indicators is Steam can become invisible and doesn't have to be open all the time in the dock. So for people who don't want them open in the dock, this could easily be a deal breaker. Three of Elementary's most important applications originally were developed by Yorba Software. Those are Shotwell, which is now elementary photos, Geary, which became Elementary Mail, and then Valencia added Vala support to G-Edit, and Elementary Code is essentially Valencia G-Edit, but heavily modified. Shotwell come pre-installed with every Ubuntu desktop, and it's a great photo manager. I use it on every Linux install that I have. It lets you organize and edit photography. It automatically sorts everything by date. You can comment, tag, most importantly, develop and edit raw photos, flip, rotate, crop, straighten. And then there's automatic red eye reduction, pretty great brightness and color adjuster. There is even an automatic optimize that works pretty well. It gives you detailed information, the ISO, exposure, the aperture, the focal length, exposure bias, and if you've used Flash or not, pretty detailed, pretty good. Elementary Mail, it's my preferred email app, especially since I'm not a fan of Thunderbird. I didn't bother configuring my email for this demo, so here it is on Ubuntu, but it's a lot better looking on Elementary. I manage three mail accounts with it. It has a three pane view or a two pane view, and here's actually an older version of it running inside of Elementary 6. So as far as email clients go, Elementary's Mail is pretty much my go-to. Then there's Elementary Code. It has Git integration for projects, features support for tons of programming languages, sports a built -in terminal. It can restore files from previous versions and has a bunch of built-in plugins like the ability to export to pastebin. However, this too has lost some features that I loved, such as the split view for editing two documents side by side, and a built-in live preview that was awesome for doing web design. Elementary ships with its very own web browser that was at one point called Epiphany. And to be quite honest, I can't imagine anyone using this as their actual browser. Kind of a shame because you can tell a lot of work did go into making it, but the performance just isn't there. One particularly cool feature is the ability to create web apps, so here I'm gonna turn YouTube into a web app. and see, it's that simple, and it even makes an icon in the applications launcher, but if you try to actually watch videos, you'll constantly run into the YouTube has encountered an unknown error message. Firefox is the popular alternative thanks to Zanev's elementary OS theme. You can just paste this script into the terminal to easily make Firefox look like a native application. Terminal emulator is actually quite good. When you close the tab, this lights up and you can instantly bring that tab back if you need to get back to it. There's also a search built right in. You've just got four options here, natural copy paste, unsaved paste alert, event alerts. We can switch between three. themes here, or make our own lighter dark for the window controls. You can clear it back to original. If your foreground and background colors don't meet guidelines for contrast, it'll warn you. See, it checks. I also like that you can see the colors you're working with and change them. In a lot of terminal emulators, this opens up in a separate dialogue, and it's kind of a pain in the ass. calculator seems pretty minimalistic at first, but clicking Advanced View will give you a full featured calculator that records your operations into its history, and from there you can insert the expression or result into future calculations. The fonts app has been redesigned. And this is basically just the genome fonts app. Not only does it show you all of the fonts installed, but most of these are available, so like, embossed. And that will install that font for me. I'm assuming these are Google's web fonts, because there's a lot of them here. Also, if you download your own fonts, you can open and install them. Unfortunately, they do not have drag and drag. but here we go, Futura, you get to see it in all the different sizes, and you can install it. One thing I wish they would do is put a checkmark next to the ones that are installed versus the ones that you haven't installed, that would be really helpful, I think. Elementary's File Manager is actually quite good, doesn't have a ton of settings, you hit the gear here, these are all the settings you get, you can set it to single-click to navigate or double-click, sort folders before files, and restore tabs from last session, show hidden files, local thumbnails, and remote thumbnails. That's all you get. However, there are three views. pretty similar to Nautilus. In the list view, there's a droPeakDown, so you're not changing pages. You can see everything on the same page, or you can open it. And then the third view uses three panes. And one of my favorite things is the ability to set colors, basically highlight folders or files. Probably one of the best things I can say about Elementary's File Manager is it reliably accesses my Windows or Linux computers via Samba or SMB, which not every file manager is great at doing that. So props for that. You can open the calendar app straight from the panel here, and the calendar app is actually quite good. You've got the ability to export, compress the local calendar, birthdays, and anniversaries, or personal are both pre-configured. You can add a new calendar, import an iColender file, or online account settings, and mail the tasks app and calendar app all sync through online account settings. If I go to create a new date, you can give it... a name, can set from the date and the end, you can set like three days as an event, exact time, or make it an all-day event, set a location, or you can add participants from your email contacts, add reminders, of course. The Tasks app is a to-do list, basically. You set the date, the location. It's all here and integrated. Once again, you can make a list local or through your online account settings if you have it synced up. One issue that I encountered, you cannot change the colors of the list. You're supposed to be able to give them individual colors, so that is an error. Speaking of which, This feedback app, which is pretty cool. Virtually any component of the system is listed here. So like in default apps, they are all here. Panel indicators, system settings, and desktop components. If I want to report the color issue on tasks, just select tasks from there, and basically opens your web browser and takes you to the exact GitHub for every component. And there's the bug that I was going to file. This reminds me of when I first started using Ubuntu. Whenever an app crashed, you would get the option to submit a bug report. It would take you to Launchpad, and 8 times out of 10, I could…

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