[kitsunesoba]

I don't agree with all of the design choices in Elementary OS, but I appreciate the sense of craft it has that largely vanished from mainstream software from 2012-2014 onward in favor of a dollar store version of IKEA minimalism. I hope it can continue to carry that torch until the industry finds its way back.

[gjsman-1000]

Elementary OS is the pinnacle of a nice-looking OS with questionable technical decisions under-the-hood. The biggest one? No upgrades. You literally can't go from 5 to 6, or 6 to 7, without a full reinstall. There's not a terminal command for the adventurous either.

That, to me, is extremely nasty. You have to take everything out of your computer, and put it back, every year to get the latest features and make sure you are secure? That's so bad, it feels like false marketing to call it "Elementary OS." You might as well download a random customized Windows ISO from the internet and disable Windows Update forever. At least Microsoft Edge would still get updates for years but Elementary OS's browser won't for very long. Unless, of course, you enjoy taking personal responsibility for updating every PC of those non-technical folks you recommend it to or install it for. I'd happily install it for quite a few relatives who would otherwise use Chromebooks, but that's a big showstopper.

I can read about how they've improved the Music app or made the App Center better for developers all day, but they have this massive hole in the ship that makes it fundamentally unsuitable for the intended purpose and they still haven't fixed it after 7 versions. Elementary users don't find pleasure in reinstalling their OS on weekends.

[hugs]

Yes, they lost me on the lack of upgrades. When a new version came out, I saw there were a few random blogs posts on how to do a very much unsupported upgrade through the command line. But I avoided the risk. Since I'd have to do a reinstall anyway, I downloaded stock Ubuntu and never looked back. And I was a happy Elementary OS user. Alas, I can understand where they were coming from, though, on that decision. They are/were a small, scrappy team and the QA effort for testing upgrade processes is non-trivial. They had to pick their battles on what to support. I didn't agree with their choice, but I can empathize with them on why they did it.

[gjsman-1000]

I 100% agree, they can prioritize however they want, but please for the love of well-meaning techies, drop the "replacement for Windows and macOS" talk, and make a pop-up warning that reinstallation is going to be necessary in the future before you download, so that you don't spread it everywhere only to discover you've just sunk everyone.

It's really not that hard, just a "Note: Elementary OS does not support in-place upgrades. You will need to reinstall Elementary OS every time a new major version comes out every 2 years. If you want to support our in-place upgrade development, please donate. < Donate > < I Understand >".

[hugs]

Yeah, the lack of a sane upgrade path really is a massive issue that should be labeled more clearly. (And a headline level bullet point in any written review of it.) The lack of a sane upgrade path completely undercuts their marketing message.

[28304283409234]

Seriously, how is this a big deal? Make a backup of $HOME, restore it after fresh install of OS. Done!

[tjohns]

In a managed corporate environment (or heck, even with family members), asking users to reinstall the OS themselves is a big deal.

Also, what about apps? Non-standard drivers? Background services? System configuration?

[latexr]

That does sound inconvenient, but is it so bad as to warrant three similar comments in the same short thread in the space of twenty minutes?

[mynameisvlad]

This is an odd critique. If it's an issue that someone cares about, they should be allowed to comment about it as long as it's within the guidelines.

There doesn't seem to be a guideline that defines the number of times someone can comment about a specific topic relative to the total number of comments within a specific amount of time.

Two of the three comments are also replies to someone who replied to the first, so it's not like the person is spamming the same message over and over again. People are allowed to have discussions.

[latexr]

> they should be allowed to comment (…) People are allowed to have discussions.

My comment doesn’t contradict that. On the contrary, I do think their particular experience adds value to the thread.

> it's not like the person is spamming the same message over and over again.

After reading the three comments multiple times, I disagree. The comments were (they’ve since been deleted) superficially different but none added to the conversation over the others. I would even say the repetition detracted from the point, since it made it seem like a personal gripe instead of a legitimate technical complaint.

[mynameisvlad]

You’re criticizing the fact that the person commented three times. While you’re not directly telling them “don’t do that”, you’re still admonishing someone for doing something well within the guidelines and even intentions of this site, to talk about things that are interesting to the user.

[latexr]

I have asked them to consider if the way they were going about the matter was appropriate. I have even explained to you what prompted it: I found their point valid and worthwhile, but in my view the repetition weakened their stance. Considering they deleted the extra comments a while back, perhaps they agree.

Respectfully, you seem unreasonably angry about this matter and I do not wish to continue a conversation where the other party keeps assuming the worst of my replies. There is no malice or ill intent in my post. If you see any, that is on you.

[gjsman-1000]

It's not just inconvenient, I've been personally burned by this issue and am livid that Elementary OS markets itself in this way without a warning. Imagine installing Elementary OS on a bunch of PCs for charity only to discover that those users are going to be completely insecure in 2 years because you weren't informed. You might never meet those people again, and who knows what will happen to them. It's reasonable to assume a user knows how to update their computer once in a while; it is not reasonable to assume an "elementary" user knows how to reinstall their OS.

@pacifika: The Ubuntu LTS core will not help the built-in apps that won't receive updates (i.e. Mail, Web, Music, the Parthenon desktop environment), and the LTS core for version 6 (which was current until yesterday) is 20.04 LTS, so it will be obsolete in about 2 years. If you installed Elementary OS for a friend a week ago, that's not what you expected. So, you got 3 1/2 years on the long end of support and 2 years on the short end between releases.

[hugs]

I'd bet that money and humanpower would have fixed the problem, but they didn't have enough of either. The problem was that Elementary OS was a very ambitious project, but they didn't have the same people and money resources that an Ubuntu or Red Hat has. Has that's changed? (I don't know.) And maybe this is a communication issue on their part. They innovated with adding a payment button on their downloads page years ago, which ruffled a lot of feathers. Maybe they should have gone bolder and added larger payment tiers. "Want free upgrades? Click here to pay $600,000 to fund a team of 3 for two years!"

[pacifika]

They’re not insecure they benefit from all the Ubuntu Lts security updates

[chrisdotcode]

From what I understand, OSTree-based images[0] are in progress and will remediate this.

[0] https://github.com/elementary/os/pull/582

[stonogo]

It's interesting that this is regarded as a problem for Elementary OS but the far-and-away market leader in Linux, Red Hat, makes the same decision. There is no supported upgrade path between RHEL major versions besides reinstallation.

This makes me wonder... is the policy itself problematic, or the support window the problem? If Elementary offered five- or seven-year support cycles, would the objection remain?

[28304283409234]

Upgrades? I just make a backup of my homedir to an external SSD. Flatpaks are recognized straight after reinstalling the (upgraded) OS, and the odd .deb package I install takes seconds.

I like the freshness of a new install. Crispy!

[garbagecoder]

I once tried to make its DE work on another distro and it wasn't great, but it wasn't a full effort. Wish that could be easier, because as you say, the no upgrades thing bugs.

[scns]

Form over function?

[theGnuMe]

I’m not sure that’s bad per se.. people should keep their OS separate from the data. Applications should be self-contained but the bigger issue would be app upgrades to run on the new OS.

[musha68k]

I'm definitely going to steal that phrase – that cheap perfumed / polymer smell – it's indeed about time we get rid of it!

[gradExMachina]

Perhaps you are thinking of Skewomorphism as opposed to Flat design?

[kitsunesoba]

That is maybe a facet of the change, but there's more to it.

It's also a certain attention to detail with regard to things like use of whitespace, the layout and flow of widgets, the types of widgets used, and user experience in general. These things have become increasingly phoned-in, with little thought applied; just dump it all into a grid and apply copious padding and you're done. Things that don't fit get removed or buried in dialog tunnels and there is no effort to make anything clear to the user.

There have been flat designs in the past that don't suffer these issues, like the earlier designs of Mac OS (System 1.0-7.5), which worked fine on 1-bit and grayscale displays but had a lot of thought and research put into their user experience.

This all got thrown out in the transition to flat design. Not only was skeumorphism discarded, but so was care for UI/UX in general. The baby was thrown out with the bathwater.