Elementary, my dear watson

Linux/FOSS Questions
1

Just noticed…

elementary 8.1.1 is out - and - you don’t have to jump through ridiculous hoops ($10 monthly github subscrtion) to get the arm64 version (for Pi4 / Pi5 etc).

Downloading both x86_64 and arm64 versions now…

Will probably test drive it on my Pi5 which has been powered off for a couple months now (was running Ubuntu 24.04 on it).

Apparently “tweaks” is now Pantheon-Tweaks and available as a flatpak…

So - I may end up back on elementary (I used to run 6.x on a gaming laptop - worked quite well - that was 10+ years ago now)…

elementary really needs some tweaks to bypass its locked down nature… that might have been one of the reasons I switched back to Ubuntu LTS… I think you need tweaks for things like transparence (compositor) and move the Window Control Widgets to the left (I’m also a Mac user).

And - while elementary defaults to Wayland - but - you can still choose X11 at the DM greeter/login, unlike Ubuntu 26.04 or Pop!_OS 24.04 “Cosmic” (I think there are workarounds - but I’d rather they kept it simple stupid).

Hmmm : the arm64 download is also an ISO - I’m used to getting an IMG file and flashing to the Pi3/4/5 storage… I’ll check it out anyway… The only installation guide assumes x86_64…

I also haven’t used my ThinkPad for a while… If I like it the Pi5 - I might give it a go on the ThinkPad (AMD Ryzen 5, AMD Vega 8 graphics, 1 TB NVMe SSD, 16 GB RAM) before risking it on my daily driver desktop machine…

There’s a few apps I need and if they’re problematic on elementary - I will probably stick with Ubuntu 24.04 for the time being…
Sayonara
ResilioSync
Synergy KVM

I’ve had problems with above before… but most other stuff that I use is fine : ffmpeg, mpv, vlc, libre-office, probably a bunch more… Oh yeah - Inkscape 1.2…

Hmmm - the arm64 download is an ISO file - not sure how to install on a Pi4/5…

Also - elementary linux is all lower-case - and Discourse won’t let me start my subject as “elementary”…

2

I thought it was free or is that limited access ?

3

elementary has nearly always been “name your own price”…

I actually paid about $25 (AUD) around 2015/2016 out of “honesty”… and I used it… IT was an honour system…

But arm64 version of elementary was previously hideously complex to try out - you had to have a subscription to GitHub or GitLab or something with a minimum spend of $10 a month…

I NEVER EVER commit to services with a montly bill (other than my ISP and simcard provider)…

The arm64 version of elementary indicates that it’s also targeted at “Apple Silicon” (i.e. M1, M2 and so forth)…

If I was going to run Linux on either of my M1 Macs - I’d probably go Asahi… But I can’t see the point - FFS - MacOS is UNIX… It’s classed as UNIX, where-as Linux can only claim “UNIX like”…

I can see the point in running Linux on Intel Mac devices - ones that have reached EOL with no more MacOS updates… If I had an intel mac - I’d wait till it was EOL before abandoing Apple UNIX :smiley: - but - I never saw the point in Intel Macs in the first place… PowerPC was RISC - IMHO superior to Intel’s (and AMD’s) CISC offerings… I suspect Steve Jobs hated having to negotiate with IBM and Motorola for CPU…

Apple and IBM (with Motorola) worked on a hardware and operating system “ecosystem” they internally code-named “taligent” it was going to incorporate bits of UNIX, bits of OS/2 and bits of Apple System 6/7… But it fell flat and never delivered anything… And of course - Apple rehired Steve Jobs in 1996 (helped by a 150,000,000 investment from Microsoft) and he brought his own UNIX from NeXT (BSD based)…

4

He was a great guy but liked his own way, or no way. Part of his departure from apple was about having to listen to others and follow the board especially when they brought outsiders in who did not understand his leadership. I joined apple just after he left but moved on myself before he came back. But not for the same reasons.

5

Why do you keep falling for these Ubuntu based distros?
There must be some important common aspect?

6

Cause they’re the best! :slight_smile:

7

pdecker: Cause they’re the best

I wonder that now with the demands on the system for the New version of ubuntu, thats why I jumped ships to LMDE.

8

Hi Paul,
What about regular Mint base on Ubuntu. It runs great for me. Do you believe all Distros base on Ubuntu will now have a problem?

9

It cant be. I could not start R?
Does it set some weird KB or locale?

10

NO!

Just the name - it’s not “Elementary” it’s “elementary”…

“Falling” - no idea…
You make it sound like “falling in love” - or - I’m being fooled or conned…

But it’s been my experience that it’s easier (for me) to get up and running with a desktop and terminal and my games library and private cloud sync on Ubuntu based distros than e.g. RPM based (i.e. Fedora)… If elementary were Debian based (i.e. pure debian, not ubuntu derived debian) I’d probably still go for it…

And I just couldn’t be arsed with ARCH based, never mind Gentoo, Slackware or LFS! The last “non-ARCH” ARCH (i.e. not actual “ARCH”) based distro I tried was Garuda, and I felt a distinct lack of “quality” control around - there were different jobs running from different sources trying to do the same or similar things…

And elementary looks “nice”… I like a nice looking desktop…

What are you referring to here? Do you mean older hardware? I generally don’t run on “older hardware” - i.e. everything less than 10 years old mostly… But even so - a Pi4 or Pi5 is fairly “underpowered” compared to a modern i5/i7/i9 or Ryzen and it will run Ubuntu…

11

Sorry, I meant choosing.
You have never tried Void?
It has risen to 29 on distrowatch.
Having to learn runit is probably a turnoff.

12

Funny - I’m having a major problem with SystemD on a RHEL9 system…

Somebody (a colleague : not pointing fingers - but - I don’t think they understood what they were doing) managed to trash some library dependancies that NetworkManager SystemD unit relied on - and thus broke NetworkManager - and thus no IP address on NIC, and it’s in EC2 so there’s no virtual VGA console - just a virtual serial TTY and it’s horrible… I should tell them to fix their mess I suppose? But I know I’m going to get saddled with sorting it…

But even so - I’m going to stick with Ubuntu based distros with SystemD…

13

I would not like to be the one to say that, but based on system demands from the new release of Ubuntu, I question, what needs to be taken out to then load the bits mint wants to offer and its functionality… who knows. But also is that why the new version of mint is pushed back to December?

14

Most of my Linux clients myself included are on 10 year old boxes due to cost considerations and why dump when it still works. For many 4gb memory is the normal and unable to upgrade due to physical limits in the box.

15

Damn! Looks like a “too hard basket” thing to get elementary 8.1 on a Pi5…

There’s an “unofficial” UEFI package for Pi4 - that’s semi-supported - but this doesn’t work on all revisions of the Pi5 and the github page counter-recommends using the “thing” on later Pi5 and Pi5 compute modules…

16

Almost all my computers are newer than 10 years. It does run fine in my one 15 year old computer with 8GB RAM though.

I think and hope the system requirement is more suggestion for reasonable performance rather than a hard requirement. Maybe you can experiment with Ubuntu 26.04 on one of your available systems with 4GB and let us know how it goes.

17

Thanks for the idea and suggestion, but going to turn the idea down. Really dislike Ubuntu and don’t want to go back down that path hence the debian mint move. Also I don’t really do that much work on my Linux machines to give it a fair test. Mainly Web stuff and libreoffice nothing too demanding.

18

I think all kernels have the ability to adapt to available ram.
In machines with low ram, it is more a matter of not overloading the system with unwanted services and large apps.
In Ubuntu that would be difficult if you were forced into using snaps.

19

I think snaps get that type of judgement a lot. They don’t seem bad to me.

I have 18 apps installed via apt, 12 via snap, 8 via flatpak. I can’t tell any difference between them. They all just launch and run.

The snaps update themselves on a schedule. That can be disabled but seems like a good idea. You can always roll an app back to a previous release if there is an issue.

20

I agree… I remember some 5, 6 or 7 years ago - I hated them - and I could see they took longer to load than other apps, Chromium Browser being one example… and Firefox… And there was also the issue of them not following desktop themes, and “sandboxing” things like open/save dialogs…

But it all seems to have fully matured and I don’t know, nor care, which apps are snaps, and which were installed as DEB packages…

Here’s what I have installed as snaps :

╭─x@titanii ~  
╰─➤  snap list
Name                                  Version                         Rev    Tracking         Publisher       Notes
bare                                  1.0                             5      latest/stable    canonical✓      base
brave                                 1.89.145                        626    latest/stable    brave✓          -
core18                                20260204                        2999   latest/stable    canonical✓      base
core20                                20260211                        2769   latest/stable    canonical✓      base
core22                                20260225                        2411   latest/stable    canonical✓      base
core24                                20260317                        1587   latest/stable    canonical✓      base
firefox                               150.0.1-1                       8247   latest/stable/…  mozilla✓        -
firmware-updater                      0+git.5645b80                   226    1/stable/…       canonical✓      -
gnome-3-28-1804                       3.28.0-19-g98f9e67.98f9e67      198    latest/stable    canonical✓      -
gnome-42-2204                         0+git.c1d3d69-sdk0+git.015db9a  247    latest/stable/…  canonical✓      -
gnome-46-2404                         0+git.f1cd5fa-sdk0+git.ca9c59c  153    latest/stable    canonical✓      -
gtk-common-themes                     0.1-81-g442e511                 1535   latest/stable/…  canonical✓      -
icloud-notes                          1.2.0                           3      latest/stable    swe-himel       -
kde-frameworks-5-99-qt-5-15-7-core20  5.99.0                          7      latest/stable    kde✓            -
mesa-2404                             25.0.7-snap211                  1165   latest/stable    canonical✓      -
snap-store                            0+git.10310e85                  1367   2/stable/…       canonical✓      -
snapd                                 2.75.2                          26865  latest/stable    canonical✓      snapd
snapd-desktop-integration             0.9                             361    latest/stable/…  canonical✓      -
teams-for-linux                       2.8.0                           1687   latest/stable    ismaelmartinez  -
upscaler                              1.2.2                           42     latest/stable    soumyadghosh✪   -

I use brave, icloud-notes, firefox and teams-for-linux all the time, all day, nearly every day… This might bother some people, but not me - to paraphrase Dr Strangelove :

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Not really “Love” as such, just not hate…