 A few months ago, even closer to a year ago I suspect now, Elementary OS released Elementary OS 6, and it was met with a lot of enthusiasm because it had been a long time since Elementary had actually put out a release. And to say people were disappointed in it is kind of understating a bit, because when they finally got their hands on Elementary OS 6, a lot of people were quite frustrated with how meh the whole thing was, because there were several just glaring issues with Elementary OS 6 that kind of diluted the awesomeness that was Elementary OS prior to that. So what I thought I would do now that I'm back from being sick is actually take a look at Elementary OS again, and I've spent almost a day now with Elementary OS on hardware, and I have some thoughts. So first off, let's just get the elephant out of the room. Is Elementary OS 6 better now than it was when it was released? The answer to that question is yes it is. The problem is is that answer is a little bit more complex than the single word kind of is able to express, because while it is better than it was when it was at launch, there are still some things that are just frustratingly stupid when it comes to Elementary OS 6, and that's kind of what I want to talk about today. So let me show you my Elementary OS 6 install, and as you can see it basically looks like the regular Elementary OS out of the box. I've not done too much. I haven't even changed the wallpaper. Like I said, it's only been about a day. There are some things here that are still really good. So the dark theme that they put in with Elementary OS 6 is still fantastic. It's still one of the best dark themes out there, and it is one of the most consistently applied across all applications. It does a really, really nice job of just looking nice. And as everybody knows, dark themes are the best themes, bright themes are the worst themes. So the fact that they have a dark theme that is really good just makes me really happy. Now the thing is their bright theme still looks like utter garbage. Now this is just my opinion. So this is very much a me thing, but I've never liked their bright theme. It's one of the reasons why I never cared for Elementary OS in the first place. This bright theme is just not for me. It is better than it used to be. It's not so brushed metal as it used to be. Like when you downloaded it a few years ago, you would see that it was very much a skeuomorphic type of look and feel. It was kind of emulating what macOS looked like about 10 years ago. And they fixed that. It's much more flat than it used to be, and it's nicer, I suppose. The dark theme is still the way to go. It looks so much better. Even if it's just the dark theme of Attawita, it still looks way better. So the biggest problem that Elementary OS 6 had at launch was the App Center. And when you launched into the App Center and you tried to find some applications. So for example, the first application probably everybody wanted to install when they first got their hands on Elementary OS 6 is a web browser, right? Because the only web browser that comes with this is GNOME Web. And they call it Epiphany, but the only web browser is that one. And it is hot garbage. It's really not a good web browser. It does the job if you need to go find another web browser. But outside of that, you really shouldn't use GNOME Web. It's not very good. Maybe it has gotten better over the last year or so. It definitely blocks ads better than it did a year ago. But it's still not very good. So the first thing when you got Elementary OS 6 you probably want to do is download Firefox or Chrome or Chromium or whatever. And you probably, if being a new user, which is probably what you were if you were installing Elementary OS 6, or even if you're not a new user, you'd probably still go to the App Center and try to find Firefox, right? Well, you would have been out of luck. Firefox wasn't there. And that's because they transitioned from using their own repositories to using Flatpacks. And at the point of release, there weren't very many in the store. And Firefox obviously wasn't there at all. And there weren't very many things that you'd probably want. So things like Audacity and Kaden Live and OBS, none of that stuff was there when Elementary OS 6 first launched. And the thing is, is when I first installed this, which I've done this on hardware now, so I can actually show you this, that I want to prove that I'm on hardware, I'm very, very, very proud of the fact that I've been using this on hardware for the last day. The thing is, is when I first booted in this after installing it on my hard drive and got into the App Center, I had the exact same experience I had when I first tried this out when Elementary OS 6 first started. And that was that there was no web browsers there. There was nothing that I wanted to download. There was a few more applications in there were then that were hosted by Elementary OS. But outside of that, it just wasn't there. And when you search for something, and then it wasn't there, you'd get this screen right here, say try changing search terms, you can also side load Flatpak apps from FlatHub. And you click on that link, it would take you to the search on FlatHub, which is a website, you could go here and you could press install and it would install it for you, although it warned you first, saying that it was from a place where it hasn't been vetted by the Elementary OS team, which is superfluous, seeing as how it's coming from FlatHub, which does their own vetting and stuff like that. The point is, is that you could get stuff from FlatHub, it's just it would take you outside of the App Center and into a browser, and it wasn't a fantastic experience. And even then, when you searched for something, you would continue to get this warning here every time you search for something that wasn't in the App Store. Now, that was my first experience when I booted this onto hardware for the first time yesterday. And to say I was not pleased is to understate it quite a bit. I was like, nothing has changed in the last eight months, or whatever it's been, nothing, absolutely nothing. I was shocked. I was flabbergasted. I was like, what the is going on here? The thing is, is once you do an update, once you've performed all the updates that come through in the App Center, when you go up here, there will be updates here. And I did a pseudo app update and upgrade in the terminal. Once you've done that and rebooted your system, then and only then it appears, can you find things like Firefox in the App Center. And even then it's still something that shows up in something called non curated apps. And that's fine. At least it shows up, which is way better than it was before. Because when this was first introduced in elementary OS six, you couldn't get to this point at all, which is again, was disappointing for a lot of people. Now it is at least here. But the fact that you have to update first before this happens is still kind of mind boggling, because there are applications that you just kind of need to install before you even do an update. Specifically, I'm thinking of a browser because you may not know what you're doing and want to look for a tutorial or something like that. And I mean, yes, you could do that in GNOME web. But I mean, most people are going to want to try to find a browser that they're familiar with. So they are probably going to search out a browser before they do anything else. And that includes updating their system. So they would never see this. Or at least they wouldn't see it until they've done an update. Now, by that time, it's probably too late. So that part there is still very, very frustrating. But it is better, like I said, than it was before. So that's why I put a qualification there at the beginning, like, yes, it is better, but it's still frustrating at times. Outside of that experience, there are still some things about elementary OS that just I absolutely completely dislike. And the biggest one of those things is the way that they minimize applications. And the answer to that question of how they do that is they still don't. You can minimize an application by clicking on a icon down here in the dock. So if I click on this, it will minimize it, but you have to know that that exists. And you probably only know that if you've used Mac OS in the last probably four or five years. But if you haven't, you may not know that exists, because there's no button up here to minimize. There's a full screen button, which does this. And there is a close button, which closes the application. There's no minimize button. You can double click on here to maximize or full screen the application. But other than that, there's no way to minimize it other than clicking on the icon. Now I know that there's somebody in the comments like Matt, you can install elementary tweaks and enable that. And that's a GNOME problem, more likely a GTK problem. But the point is that I want to be able to minimize my applications. If I'm going to be using a floating window manager slash desktop environment, I want to be able to minimize this. And it should be an option out of the box. The fact that it's not is still mind boggling. It's mind boggling in GNOME. It's mind boggling here. The fact that these people who develop this thing do not want to minimize their windows just drive me. I don't understand it. It's one of those things that I just can't conceivably get my head around. The fact that they don't want to minimize their things or they're happy having to be up here in the application doing something, wanting to move over here to go to this application. But instead of having to, you know, just instead of being able to go up here, hit a button to minimize and then go over here, they have to go all the way down to the dock, find the application icon and then click it. That's I mean, that's a lot of mouse travel and it's unnecessary. Maybe I'm outside of the norm when it comes to wanting to minimize things. Maybe that's the case. But I still think that that is a huge thing that is just missing that a lot of people actually want to see. Another thing that really bothers me about elementary OS is the use of the super key. The super key brings up the key binding cheat sheet. That is such a waste of a key. I'm just I will put that out there that as a waste of a key. Put that on F1 where it should be. That's a help page. If there ever was one super key should bring up the menu. And I can't tell you how many times over the last day, I've hit super key to bring up the menu and that thing comes up instead. I have to go all it and I know there's a key binding. It's super space, but why can't it just be super? Why can't it just be super? And the thing is their system for making a new key binding for the application menu or any other as far as I can see is actually broken. So if you click on this in order to change it, you can barely read what that's supposed to be. I think it's saying trade a new like press the new keys or whatever. And you can do that. So you can create a new key binding for that so that when you then use that new key binding, the menu comes up. But you can't just use this. You can't just use super. That's not possible as far as I'm aware. And that drives me bunkers. Like I like I want to be able to do that. Like I and I should be able to do that because that's what the buttons for, you know, come on. Like it's not this is not rocket science people. It's really, really not. And the fact that we're now like eight months into this and this behavior still happens is still again, not great. I mean, I understand bugs happen like bugs always happen. So that's not a big deal. But and it may actually be in one of those places where you can it might look fine. If we're in this, not best, it's still broken that in that position too. So you know, it's just one of those things like there's those little things all the way around this operating system where they're just some things just don't work all that well. And you just notice them like none of them are like deal breakers, right? But there are little things like that where text is overlapping or something that is just notice. And while it may not impede functionality, it's just kind of annoying in a distribution that is trying to proclaim itself as polished and well designed, you know what I mean? It has a very highfalutin attitude towards itself in terms of design and aesthetics and stuff like that. And to have those kind of things pop up in a release that is this old is kind of weird, right? Now, I know that I'm coming across as super negative, right? And I do this every time I look at elementary OS. There are so many things in this distribution that just drive me bonkers that I kind of can't help being negative about it, right? I just kind of can't help it. So I'm going to stop here and talk about some things that I like about it. So I talked about the dark theme. The dark theme is still one of my favorites. It's really, really good. The overall look and feel of elementary OS is still one of the best you can find. The dock along the bottom, the bar along the top works really well in terms of aesthetics, in terms of actually being useful. When you use GNOME or vanilla GNOME out of the box, that top bar is basically useless in vanilla GNOME. You can obviously add a whole bunch of extensions and stuff like that, and they're working on making it much better. But if you're using it now or in an older version of GNOME, their top bar up here is basically useless with elementary OS. They've actually gone through and tried to implement some very good features. So they've got Do Not Disturb up here. The Bluetooth stuff is up all up here, and it's split out into actual separate menus instead of being all shoved into one menu like it is with GNOME. And they have cool things like being able to control what's using your speakers and your your microphone, things like that. The fact that that exists is still very, very nice. They've done a good job with that, along with having a broken out power menu. So you can click on that to set your computer down or log out or whatever. Also, the design of a lot of the applications for elementary OS are still really good. So things like the music application, a very good music application. It's very simple, but again, very nice. You can do playlists, you can play music and stuff like that. It's very nice. The tasks list is also very, very well designed. And while it's probably not something that I'd ever use because I prefer something that has sync or something like that, but this is still a very nice app if you just need to jot down something to remember. The other thing that I really have to give a compliment to elementary OS about is that it's really, really fast. Like this distribution was one of the fastest installs I've ever seen on Linux. It was like three and a half minutes from the minute I got into the live environment to the installer being done. Now if you've ever installed Linux before, and I assume most of you have, you know that when you have multiple external hard drives and internal hard drives attached to your computer, Linux installers like to scan those things. And that takes forever, especially when those drives are big. Elementary OS didn't scan them at all. It just gave me a list of the drives. Let me pick the one that I wanted and move down to the rest of the installer. It was wonderful. And once I've gotten into the actual distribution and used it for a while, I have to say the actual launching of applications is usually very, very fast. The music one for whatever reason is now sitting there spinning because it's wanted to prove me wrong for whatever reason. But if I launch like photos, you can see their photos came up really fast, videos came up really fast. The music one still hasn't launched. Oh, there it is finally. But as you can see, it's just, it's very, very quick. It's very snappy. And that is something that you can give kudos to elementary OS about because a lot of times distributions kind of downplay the speediness of their applications, especially when they get focused on things like animations and stuff like that. Like GNOME was big on animations for a long time. And it caused their desktop environment to be sluggish because they focused too much on those things and they just took too long. You don't have that problem here. If you click this icon here, you can see it in the exploded view that it just works really well and it's very, very quick. So elementary OS has a lot of stuff going for it. I don't want to be completely negative about it because it is a very nice distribution in some aspects. It looks really nice. It's very functional if you aren't interested in customizing things. And even then there are some ways you can customize it, you can change the accent color, you can change between light and dark themes. So those things exist. And that has improved the use of elementary OS by all ton because you can now choose a dark theme, which is what you should have by default. So there have been some improvements in that space as well. So like I said, I don't want to be completely negative. And that's usually what happens when I use elementary OS 6. The problem is that despite my thoughts on elementary OS and trying to be more open-minded about it, more positive towards it, I still can't help to feel that there are things about it that just are not right. The Flat Hub integration is bad. Either include it or don't. Those are the two options. A lot of distributions don't include Flat Hub. Like Fedora out of the box, despite Flat Pack being a Red Hat project or a Red Hat supported project, doesn't include Flat Hub out of the box. You have to go to flathub.org and then enable Flat Hub through their interface there. You have to do that in Fedora. And that's the way it is pretty much in every distribution. And that's fine. It's not something that I complain about all that much. I complain about it a little bit, but not all that much. On elementary OS, it feels like they've gone half-assed. You know what I mean? It feels like they're trying to have it both ways where they control their own repository but also give you access to all the others. And by doing it that way, they've managed to make it so that it's just not a very good experience out of the box. It eventually gets there okay, but out of the box when you want to have that experience that is really good. Your first impression of a distro is oftentimes the one that is going to stick with you the most. And when you get into the software center and find out that a lot of the apps that you have just aren't there, you have a very hard time thinking good about that distro, even if they do eventually show up. And that's the problem. It's like they eventually show up, but there should be no eventually there. Either include it or don't. Not halfway. Don't include it eventually after an update. You know what I mean? It just doesn't quite make sense in my mind. So I still have very mixed thoughts about elementary OS. Many months after the elementary OS 6 release, it still feels half-baked in many ways. There are things, there are little bugs here and there that are still not fixed. And most of the time, I'm not a big person to point out bugs, you know what I mean? Because every Linux desktop environment, distro, whatever, they all have bugs. That's just the nature of maintaining something that is as big as this, right? The issue I have with the bugs in elementary OS is that they're not a fast-paced updater. Like, since elementary OS 6 has released, they've had one update, exactly one. And that doesn't mean applications themselves haven't been getting updated, but a lot of the system services and system applications are still where they were when 6.1 came out, which has been many months already. So if you're expecting some of the bugs to be fixed, you're going to have to wait until the next point release. And that's, I mean, that's the case with a lot of static release distributions. So I mean, that's not that big of a surprise, but it feels like elementary OS is way slower than even, like, Debian or Ubuntu. Like, and you have to work really, really, really hard to be slower than Debian. I'm just putting that out there. You know, you really have to work hard at it. So those are my thoughts on elementary OS 6. The question we should end on is, should you use it? Is it still a good distribution to use? And the reason why I ask this is because for a long time elementary OS was the distribution a lot of people would point to new users and say, this is the one that you should use. Because this is, you know, it's highly polished. It has a lot of software available to it. It has good support, a lot of community around it. This is the one you should use. And the question, does that still hold true? And my answer to that would be, no, actually, I think you should use Linux Mint if you're going to be a new user and coming from Windows or something that you should use that. Even if you are a Mac user, I think Linux Mint or something like Zorn OS would make a lot more sense than this. And they are, quite frankly, more frequently updated than this is. And they, both of those Zorn and Mint have a much better chance of still being around four or five years from now. It feels like elementary OS is on the verge of being abandoned. And I say that because it always feels that way. Like it feel, it just feels like the developers there just don't have a good chance of being around and developing elementary OS, you know, a few years from now. So should you use elementary OS? It's not a bad distribution by any means, but you're going to have to tweak it. You're going to have to put up with a slow update pace. You're going to have to put up with the odd software situation in the app center. Frankly, I would say just ignore the app center completely. If you're going to use this, just install everything from the terminal, you'll be happier because Fly Pack will pull from FlatHub from the terminal by default. You don't have to do any upbitting at all. It just works just fine. So that's my answer. It's okay, not great. So that is it for this video. If you have comments on about elementary OS, you can leave those in the comment section below. Was I too harsh? Because I feel like I was too harsh, but I can't help it. There's just things about elementary OS that has always rubbed me the wrong way and it remains to be the same situation it has been for years and years. So leave those comments in the comment section below. You can follow me on Twitter at Linuxcast. You can follow me on Masters on our Odyssey. Those links will be in the video description just below the like button. If you like this video, hit that thumbs up button because it really does help the channel. It just makes more people be able to watch this content, which is something that I'm, you know, happy about. So you can also support me on Patreon at patreon.com slash linuxcast, just like all these fine people. If you are interested in supporting me on Patreon, you can now get 10% off by paying for an entire year in advance. Thanks to everybody who does support me on Patreon and YouTube. You guys are all amazing people and I just cannot express my gratitude in nearly as many words as I should. So just thank you so very much. 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