{"id":10413,"date":"2014-02-08T09:59:31","date_gmt":"2014-02-08T14:59:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/?p=10413"},"modified":"2016-09-07T09:12:26","modified_gmt":"2016-09-07T13:12:26","slug":"elementary-os-could-be-worse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/2014\/02\/08\/elementary-os-could-be-worse\/","title":{"rendered":"elementary OS: could be worse"},"content":{"rendered":"

Imagine there’s a really nicely arranged screenshot of elementary OS<\/a> here. You know, browser arranged just so, dock showing shiny icons, and a coy little dropdown showing that I’m playing music that’s faaaar<\/em> hipper than you’ll ever be. Got that image? Good. ‘Cos I just spent a \u00c2\u00bd-hour setting it up, then deleted it in a second of unthought when I cleaned up the elementary OS VM from VirtualBox. Aargh!<\/em><\/p>\n

elementary OS is a very pretty Ubuntu\/Debian distro. It has a very strong visual identity, and is designed and managed by a very small group. This rigidity may annoy the seasoned Linux user,\u00c2\u00a0 but will likely work in a more logical way if you’re used other OSs. You won’t face jarringly mismatched user interface elements, as still happens with Ubunty\/Unity. Linux UX allows too much choice, so you’re never sure which options do what at any given time.
\n(F’rinstance: Ctrl+Q used to quit programs. Now, Ubuntu wants us to use Ctrl+W, the old close-the-window<\/em> command. Some programs no longer quit with Ctrl+Q, so you’re left with an awksmash<\/abbr> of Ctrl+Q_no-I-meant<\/em>_W. Don’t make me think!)<\/p>\n

A couple of things put me off elementary OS:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. You can’t put files on the desktop. In an effort to be tidy, eOS forbids you putting the stuff you’re working on in the place you’ll see it. This is a major annoyance, but worse things are coming.<\/li>\n
  2. It expects you to pay<\/strong> for it. No, really. They want $10 from you, right from the get-go. While you can get around this (click the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Download\u00e2\u20ac\u009d button; it only looks like it’s linked to the payment button), they do something far, far worse:
    \nThey use a PayPal pop<\/span>–under<\/span><\/strong>.
    \nSrsly. Gahh. Eww. Pop-unders are the web equivalent of taking a \u00f0\u0178\u2019\u00a9 on an art gallery floor. If they’re low enough to pull that kind of stunt, who knows what leakage lurks under their pretty graphics?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Imagine there’s a really nicely arranged screenshot of elementary OS here. You know, browser arranged just so, dock showing shiny icons, and a coy little dropdown showing that I’m playing music that’s faaaar hipper than you’ll ever be. Got that image? Good. ‘Cos I just spent a \u00c2\u00bd-hour setting it up, then deleted it in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[2778,270,305,2780],"class_list":["post-10413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computers-suck","tag-elementaryos","tag-linux","tag-ubuntu","tag-usability"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pQNZZ-2HX","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10413"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10413\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13266,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10413\/revisions\/13266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}