Ceci est une ancienne révision du document !
In FCM#90. Arnfried Walbrecht submitted a link to a review of the “Elementary” OS. This sparked my interest as I had been wanting to test this distro for some time but releases are few and far between. The UK reviewer summed it up as “my top pick these days for Linux newcomers”.
I liked the fact that the download was small compared with many ISO's, less than 1GB. I created a bootable 8 GB USB stick with no problem. I went straight to the full install and this was using the standard Ubuntu install program so no problems there; it completed within 30 minutes. I then used update manager which brought the whole system up to date as at 1st November 2014.
Elementary booted up fast to an attractive login screen with a limited number of pre-installed applications. I like this as the user can then install their favorites from the Ubuntu repositories. The desktop is very clean and responsive and the only bug I found is that the date disappeared from the top panel and there is no way to re-install it; remember it is a beta release. The dock at the bottom shows some static items and any open windows. You can right click any icon and elect to pin it to the dock permanently, or remove it. My only gripe with this is that you cannot recognize whether the icon represents a launcher or an open window. Also I prefer my icons in the top panel to save real estate but that is a personal preference.
The initial applications supplied are a mixed bag. Many of them are unique to Elementary and use the brand Name “Pantheon”. The Calculator, Calendar, Screenshot, Simple Scan and Snap are quite standard and Evince is supplied for reading PDF files. Gnome Font Viewer works as expected but it is a strange choice when supplying a basic install; it can hardly be considered essential.
Pantheon Photo is a fork of Shotwell which is my favorite photo library so no complaints from me. It appears to be a re-branding as there are no obvious changes.
Pantheon Music worked well with my .flac files with the usual playlist functions.
Pantheon Video was a different story. It provided sound only for FLV files, and the video for MP4 files only appeared if I hovered the mouse over the timeline.
The Pantheon File Manager was a disappointment as there are no configuration options. You cannot select which columns to view or set default list/icon views. Worse, you cannot drag and drop files to another folder or to a text editor. You cannot create bookmarks and right-click options are very limited. It is very basic indeed but, hopefully, a work-in-progress.
Pantheon terminal worked as expected and allowed multi tabs but it was gray text on a black background with black borders. There were no options to configure this. I installed “RxTerm”.
The text editor supplied is “Scratch” which is adequate but if you select “line wrapping” it will break lines in the middle of a word; very odd.
Email is handled by “Geary” which would not allow me to register a POP3 account. I could create accounts with Gmail or Hotmail but if you select “Other” and enter your email address then the “Next” button is disabled. Maybe it would work with an IMAP address.
“Midori” is supplied as the default browser but this has a problem with Adobe Flash. Sites which require this will report that it is not installed but, if I try to install via Software Center, it is shown as being installed. I installed Firefox and it worked fine with the same sites.
The Pantheon applications are linked to the desktop. They do not have an “About” menu but you can access this facility by right-clicking the menu icon. It is impossible to uninstall them. In software Manager they are listed as options under the main desktop install. I unchecked the options and clicked “Update” but they were still there. The window manager does not follow the common convention of putting “Minimize”, “Maximize and “Close” icons the top right corner of windows. “Close” is in the top left corner, “Maximize” is in the top right corner and “Minimize” is missing completely.
The Ubuntu “System Settings” is supplied with many items removed; there were only 19 items compared with 31 in Mint LMDE. This highlights the fact that there is very little customization allowed. This is a matter of personal choice, but I would like the ability to change the color of the panel and add or remove applets. There are no themes available, but a selection of wallpapers is supplied. My biggest problem was to add another language – but I suspect this is a Ubuntu problem not unique to Elementary. There are three separate places where you can add a different keyboard input. In two of them I could not add “Thai” but eventually I found the third option.
I appreciate the efforts of everybody who create new distros. This is a beta version, but there are so many “*buntu” versions available and this doesn't seem to offer anything new. Maybe more effort should be spent on the desktop and replace the Pantheon apps with existing tried and tested applications.