 So earlier this morning elementary OS 7 was released and when a new version of elementary OS comes out I usually take a look at it I go through all the new features and try to compare it to the previous versions because I've taken a look now at several different versions of elementary OS and Every time I do take a look at elementary OS It never really fails to disappoint me because it has so much potential But there's always these really weird or crappy problems that I just can't get past so I've never actually been able to recommend it to actually be used by anyone and I had high hopes for elementary OS 7 simply because it's version 7 and They managed to bump the version number up a whole digit so I figured maybe that this one here was going to be a big release and they're going to fix some of the problems that I had with it and Well, I was going to do a small first look and see how it went right on a laptop And you know, I was going to make this whole video was going to be great But I didn't get that far. I installed elementary OS 7 and Yeah, it looks basically the same which is not a huge problem The dark mode fixed a lot of the problems that I had with the look and feel of elementary OS It just looks so good as a dark mode Desktop environment. It's fantastic. The light mode is still freaking ugly But the dark mode makes it looks fine and as long as I stick to that I can forget that the light mode even exists So the fact that it still looks mostly the same and yeah, there's a whole bunch of different features But the first thing that I always do with any distro that I install is I update it now If I were to do it my normal way I would just open up the terminal and do an update that way But because I'm trying a new distribution I do it the way that they expect most people to do it and that's opening up their app store now on elementary OS 7 and just like elementary OS 6 and all the elementary OS is before that the app store is called app center and the app center has always been the Shining jewel of the elementary OS install It has been the things that they've been able to tell that makes them different because it's the thing that's supposed to help monetize applications and supposed to tout open source applications and it's been Supposedly really really good, but I've always had many problems with it, but honestly it was always Fine until they switched over to flat pack in version 6 and I talked about this in my video there because Basically their whole plan there in version 6 was to transfer everything that was in the app center over to flat pack And I'm a big flat pack supporter. I like flat flat pack a lot So though the switch over didn't bother me But because they were doing this transition the app center felt really empty, right? When you first when elementary OS 6 first came out if you got in there You'd find that there weren't very many applications actually available anymore because they had to take a whole bunch of them out because they weren't flat packs and they had to kind of wait for the development ecosystem to kind of Fill in the gaps to update themselves in order to make themselves available back into the repository The problem is is that it didn't get better, right? Yeah, there's more applications in it now than there were when elementary 6 was released But there's not that many and the biggest issue that I had then remains now and this is the reason why I couldn't get the Actual, you know first look done because I got to this point and decided to test to see if the problem was still there And the problem is this flat hub is not enabled by default now There are a lot of distributions out there that use flat pack that don't have flat hub but those distros almost universally are Tying their app stores into some kind of distro repository be it Ubuntu or Arch or Fedora Whatever when you install something when you go to their app stores Cheryl they try to focus on flat packs first maybe but they also have access to RPM files or dot deb files or whatever so that runs the collection of Applications that they have available to them, but elementary OS doesn't do this all they have available are their small collection of flat packs And while it has been growing it doesn't compare to what's available on flat hub now I know what you're thinking Matt enabling flat hub is literally one line in the terminal or you can even click on a Link inside of that center to enable flat hub. It works fine. It's not even that hard the problem. I have is elementary OS is a distribution that is touted for new Linux users and Sure, it does say in a small little blurb at the bottom of the Product not found page that you can click on this link install flat hub and maybe find your application the problem there is that you have to kind of know what flat hub is and It's also a very small line of text So some people are just gonna see a product not found page and not even read the small line of text It just adds this extra step that someone has to take in order to Find the vast majority of the applications that elementary OS is supposed to support and even all that's not the worst problem The worst problem is because they've limited themselves to the small batch of applications They don't have access to things like Firefox or Libre Office or literally any office suite Like it would be different if they had Libre Office installed by default, but they don't They don't have any office suite installed and because of the limitations of apps center You have no way of actually installing an office suite without enabling flat hub first it adds that extra layer of stuff that the user is supposed to be able to do and understand that they're supposed to do and that hurdle while not hard is definitely not something that you would expect a new user to know why they need to do this why If I'm trying to put myself in the shoes of a brand new Linux user I'm coming from Windows and I'm used to being able to go to the Windows store and just downloading anything that I want or Going on to the web and you know and downloading it that way Whatever one thing that I don't have to do is enable or repository in order to do it Right and well if this was arch Linux or something or gen 2 I wouldn't have any problems with a user being expected to have to and you know enable a repository to do something Even fedora requires you to enable a third-party repository in order to get anything that's non-free Right if you want the Nvidia drivers or anything else you have to enable rpm fusion to get a lot of the Proprietary stuff that you may want right so I have no problem with that aspect of it But the problem is like fedora does not tout itself for new users Arch doesn't tout itself for new users gen 2 should definitely tout itself for new users now that I think about it It's definitely a new user distro But elementary OS does right elementary OS is supposed to be this thing that draws in new Linux users to Linux itself for the very first time and they have this hurdle And it's the biggest hurdle you can put in there and that is the lack of software The biggest stereotype that Linux has or has had over the last 32 years or whatever It's been is that Linux doesn't have software That's the thing that if you ask a Windows user that just happens to know what Linux is and you ask them why they don't use Linux Probably what they're going to tell you is one of two things one that say they're too hard or two It doesn't have apps that they need or alternatives that they can learn right those are the two main reasons why a person Who knows what Linux is probably doesn't use Linux right if they still use Windows and if you come Let's just say you decide. Oh, it's time to give Linux a try again I'm gonna go to Linux in the first distro that I come across because maybe I'm more familiar with Mac OS I'm gonna try elementary OS 6 or elementary OS 7 in this case, right? And you go there and you are used to using an app store on Mac OS So you get into the app center because well, that's cool That's you know has a collection of applications that I can go download and what do you find? Well, it doesn't have an office suite or you don't it doesn't have access to any of the browsers that you might want You know even open source like I could understand if they didn't have access to Chrome or something like that But they don't have access to Firefox, which is open source So they can't they can't argue to me that the reason why they've done this is to protect the users from proprietary software or proprietary garbage is DC says because the way they've done it precludes them from Any type of extra software because flat helps just not enabled now Flat helps not enabled on fedora either it is going to be enabled in the next version of fedora and They're going to be doing some really weird filtering to take out the proprietary stuff from flat I don't agree with that at all But it's a solution to maybe what elementary OS is trying to do here I don't know and you got to remember they're a very small team So maybe they don't have the manpower to do that kind of thing But my biggest issue with this thing and it has been since elementary OS 6 and that's what's really Really got to me and the reason why I'm making this video instead of a first look is that this should be fixed Like it's exactly the same thing as elementary 6 was if you search for something that's not there They give you a this really small link in order for you to fix it yourself right adding flat up flat Hub by yourself, and it's not a hard hurdle But it is a hurdle that does require some knowledge and that just it This should be fixed This is not a hard thing to do if you switch to flat pack There's no reason not to use flat hub because as far as I know elementary OS Does not have some Philosophical reason not to include flat hub like fedora is vehemently anti proprietary software like they'll literally take out codecs from their distros Even if it risks breaking a whole bunch of stuff right because they do not want to have any problems with licenses or proprietary nonsense now, maybe I'm just not up on the whole business ethos of elementary OS, but as far as I know they don't have the same kind of anti proprietary software as Fedora does I mean, maybe it's just kind of goes without saying that they do but still if that's the reason why they're not Including flat hub, then why do they link to it in the first place because like Fedora doesn't tell you to install flat Hub at all. They don't even mention flat hub. You have to know that it exists a Mentor OS will tell you that flat hubs there and you guys got to click the button, right? So they're not so anti proprietary software that they won't link to it It doesn't make sense to me just Enable flat hub and all of your problems are gonna be gone because you will have access to Libre office and only Office and Firefox and on Google Chromium and Brave and whatever, you know, it's It's an easy solution, right? It's not like I There there is an argument to be made that the reason why they have it this way is because the stuff that's in their own repository right now is done by developers who put it in there themselves and Want them to monetize that stuff So all the stuff there has the ability to be monetized by adding in flat hub You'd be populating the store that with a whole bunch of applications that would necessarily probably push all of the Promoted applications that you have down which would then make it less likely that those apps would make money That's an argument that I can see But you're doing that on you know at the cost of Usability for new users and if that's a that I mean that's obviously a Trade-off that they're fully willing to take if that's the reason why they're doing this if they don't want to risk Crouting out their own applications inside of that store by enabling flat hub If that's the risk that they want to take, you know, then fine I suppose but it's this one thing No matter how good or bad elementary OS 7 is would prevent me from ever recommending it for a new user I just can't do it. There are so many different Distributions out there that do app stores way better. I mean miles and a head better than elementary OS and I mean, you can you can use Ubuntu which has access to a lot of software out of the box And sure it's going to force you to use snaps, but say what you will bus snaps There's a lot of them, you know, and you can have it you can get a you can get Firefox and you get Chrome and Whatever, there's a lot of them there, you know, or you can if you were, you know Interested in using man jar or something like that. You could use man jar or endeavor OS. They all do App stores way way better Than elementary OS does same thing with like Kaboom to or Katie neon or whatever I mean, I could just even solace which has a very small a Very very small repository of applications still does it better than elementary It does because it has like a third-party repo that you can Peruse to get to your applications that you might need right plus it also supports flat pack flat hub and I think snaps I'm not sure about that part But even solace that is a very small team does it just better than elementary elementary OS does and it's it's mind-boggling that this is still a problem and It makes it completely like I said, I can't recommend it to anybody. So those are my thoughts on elementary 7 It's not probably what you wanted to hear But if you want to watch a video where they go through all of the Brand-new features and stuff like that. I will link to Nick at the Linux experiments video He does a fantastic job of going through all of the new features and stuff like that his videos are always good So I will link to that in the video description. That's kind of what I was going to do But I couldn't get past this like it would have been a waste of my time to do anything else on this distro Because it's just I don't care like if you if you're doing this it just bothers me So that's it for this video if you have thoughts on this you can leave those in the comment section below I'd love to hear from you you can follow me and master down our odyssey those links will be in the video description You can support me on patreon at patreon.com slash the Linux cast links for libera pay and YouTube will be in the video description as well Thanks to everybody who does support me on patreon YouTube you guys are all absolutely amazing without you the challenge It's not be anywhere near where it is right now. So thank you so very very much for his report. I truly do appreciate you guys You're just seriously. Thanks so much Thanks every for watching. I'll see you