ElementaryOS Freya Review

  • incredibly simple install (easier even than Ubuntu?)
  • why is it running rsync daemon and speech-dispatcher during the install (noted during shutdown: I wouldn't have heard speech as I was doing it in a VirtualBox) - but these aren't running after the install
  • froze shortly after telling me "install complete, you need to reboot"
  • boots very fast
  • a 852 MB image turns into a 2.9 GB on-disk install
  • for reasons I don't understand, it's installed with a 640x480 display resolution (this is under VirtualBox), so it may be unfairly crippled: keep that in mind as you read the review
  • their "System Settings" window, and at least the "Displays" sub-window don't know how to deal with this small a display window - and that's a failure of the OS: I couldn't get at some of the screen settings, so how can I reset them?
  • very pretty, but I've never been happy with the bar-at-top AND bar-at-bottom paradigm that's popular these days: we have wide screens, put at least one of them on the side(s)
  • "apt-get update" inspires a MASSIVE (34.7 MB - never seen anything like it before) round of downloading - despite having told it to get newer packages during install - the apt sources tell me that this is Ubuntu-based
  • despite which, "apt-get dist-upgrade" only wanted to upgrade five packages
  • VBoxAdditions compiled okay, but not the shared folders part ... and the screen integration isn't working, even after a reboot (VBox is running with Ubuntu as host)
  • aptitude not installed by default (I don't consider this a problem with the OS necessarily, but I like to have it available)
  • "whoopsie" is installed by default: "Ubuntu error tracker submission" - goodbye
  • also installed is Chinese and Korean font support
  • browser of choice is Midori, no Chrome/Chromium or Firefox, despite the size of the base install
  • the ever-helpful gdmap ("Graphical Disk Map") tells me the single biggest file on the OS is /usr/share/icons/HighContrast/icon-theme.cache - probably generated by the gnome-accessibility-themes package
  • while vim-tiny is installed, if you type "vim <filename>" you're informed that "vim" isn't installed, but can be had by installing "vim-tiny" (or other packages)
  • one thing they evidently had in prior versions was hot corners in the window manager: this doesn't appear to exist anymore, and I'm really not seeing much special about the WM - why did they write their own?
  • notable details with the window manager: the "X" to close windows is located in the upper LEFT corner, there's no (?) way to minimize windows, and right- and middle-click aren't utilized at all in most contexts
  • they use plank as a launcher - it's in always-visible mode while no applications occupy its space, but once one does it goes into auto-hide mode
  • it looks lovely and it's easy to use, but it's hard to recommend for beginners if the default browser is Midori! And I'm not liking it as a power user