What is elementary OS and what are its top alternatives?
elementary OS is a user-friendly Linux distribution based on Ubuntu that offers a visually appealing and intuitive desktop environment. It features a clean and simple interface with a focus on productivity and ease of use. Elementary OS comes with its set of custom applications like Files, Photos, Music, and more, designed to seamlessly integrate with the system. However, one limitation is the lack of a large software repository compared to other popular Linux distributions.
- Ubuntu: Ubuntu is a widely used Linux distribution known for its stability and large software repository. It offers regular updates and long-term support versions. One key feature of Ubuntu is the Unity desktop environment, which provides a modern and customizable user interface.Pros: Large software repository, stability. Cons: Unity desktop environment may not appeal to all users.
- Linux Mint: Linux Mint is a popular choice for users looking for a familiar and user-friendly desktop environment. It offers a variety of desktop environments to choose from, including Cinnamon, MATE, and Xfce. Key features include a streamlined installation process and a focus on multimedia support.Pros: Multiple desktop environment options, multimedia support. Cons: Not as visually appealing as elementary OS.
- Manjaro: Manjaro is a user-friendly Arch-based distribution known for its simplicity and ease of use. It offers a rolling release model, ensuring users have access to the latest software updates. One key feature of Manjaro is the Manjaro Settings Manager, which allows users to easily manage system settings.Pros: Rolling release model, user-friendly. Cons: Less stable than Ubuntu-based distributions.
- Fedora: Fedora is a cutting-edge Linux distribution that focuses on innovation and emerging technologies. It offers a wide range of software packages and development tools for users. Key features include the GNOME desktop environment and the Fedora Workstation edition, optimized for desktop use.Pros: Cutting-edge technologies, GNOME desktop environment. Cons: Less user-friendly for beginners.
- Pop!_OS: Pop!OS is an Ubuntu-based distribution developed by System76, a manufacturer of Linux-powered computers. It features a customized GNOME desktop environment with a focus on performance and productivity. Key features include the Pop!Shop for software management and the tiling window manager.Pros: Performance optimizations, tiling window manager. Cons: Limited software support compared to Ubuntu.
- Solus: Solus is an independently developed Linux distribution known for its focus on desktop computing. It offers a curated selection of software packages and a custom Budgie desktop environment. Key features include the Solus Software Center for easy software installation and updates.Pros: Desktop-focused, curated software selection. Cons: Smaller package repository compared to Ubuntu-based distributions.
- Deepin: Deepin is a Debian-based distribution known for its visually stunning and intuitive user interface. It features the Deepin Desktop Environment (DDE), which provides a modern and clean design. Key features include a variety of custom applications and seamless integration with the system.Pros: Visually appealing design, custom applications. Cons: Limited customization options compared to other distributions.
- Zorin OS: Zorin OS is a user-friendly distribution designed to provide a smooth transition for Windows users. It features a familiar desktop environment with a customizable layout. Key features include the Zorin Appearance app for easy customization and the Zorin Connect app for seamless integration with Android devices.Pros: Windows-like interface, customization options. Cons: Limited software availability compared to Ubuntu-based distributions.
- OpenSUSE: OpenSUSE is a stable and flexible Linux distribution known for its YaST configuration tool and the choice of both the GNOME and KDE desktop environments. It offers a reliable system with strong community support and regular updates. Key features include the Open Build Service for building and distributing software packages.Pros: Stable system, YaST configuration tool. Cons: Limited software availability compared to Ubuntu-based distributions.
- PCLinuxOS: PCLinuxOS is a user-friendly distribution designed for desktop users. It offers a rolling release model, ensuring users have access to the latest software updates. Key features include the PCLinuxOS Control Center for system configuration and the APT-RPM package management tool for easy software installation.Pros: Rolling release model, user-friendly. Cons: Smaller community compared to other distributions.
Top Alternatives to elementary OS
- Ubuntu
Ubuntu is an ancient African word meaning ‘humanity to others’. It also means ‘I am what I am because of who we all are’. The Ubuntu operating system brings the spirit of Ubuntu to the world of computers. ...
- Linux Mint
The purpose of Linux Mint is to produce a modern, elegant and comfortable operating system which is both powerful and easy to use. ...
- Mac OS X
It brings new features inspired by its most powerful users, but designed for everyone. Stay better focused on your work in Dark Mode. Automatically organize files using Stacks. ...
- Manjaro
It is an accessible, friendly, open-source Linux distribution and community. Based on Arch Linux, it provides all the benefits of cutting-edge software combined with a focus on getting started quickly, automated tools to require less manual intervention, and help readily available when needed. ...
- Windows 10
It is the latest iteration of the Microsoft operating systems and has been optimized for home PC performance in a wide variety of applications from serious work to after-hours gaming. ...
- Fedora
Fedora is a Linux-based operating system that provides users with access to the latest free and open source software, in a stable, secure and easy to manage form. Fedora is the largest of many free software creations of the Fedora Project. Because of its predominance, the word "Fedora" is often used interchangeably to mean both the Fedora Project and the Fedora operating system. ...
- Kubuntu
It is a free, complete, and open-source alternative to Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X which contains everything you need to work, play, or share. It unites Ubuntu with KDE and the fabulous Plasma desktop, bringing you a full set of applications. The installation includes productivity, office, email, graphics, photography, and music applications ready to use at startup. ...
- Debian
Debian systems currently use the Linux kernel or the FreeBSD kernel. Linux is a piece of software started by Linus Torvalds and supported by thousands of programmers worldwide. FreeBSD is an operating system including a kernel and other software. ...
elementary OS alternatives & related posts
- Free to use230
- Easy setup for testing discord bot96
- Gateway Linux Distro57
- Simple interface54
- Don't need driver installation in most cases9
- Open Source6
- Many active communities6
- Software Availability3
- Easy to custom3
- Many flavors/distros based on ubuntu2
- Lightweight container base OS1
- Great OotB Linux Shell Experience1
- Demanding system requirements5
- Adds overhead and unnecessary complexity over Debian4
- Snapd installed by default2
- Systemd1
related Ubuntu posts
We use Debian and its derivative Ubuntu because the apt ecosystem and toolchain for Debian packages is far superior to the yum-based system used by Fedora and RHEL. This is large part due to a huge amount of investment into tools like debhelper/dh over the years by the Debian community. I haven't dealt with RPM in the last couple years, but every experience I've had with RPM is that the RPM tools are slower, have less useful options, and it's more work to package software for them (and one makes more compromises in doing so).
I think everyone has seen the better experience using Ubuntu in the shift of prevalence from RHEL to Ubuntu in what most new companies are deploying on their servers, and I expect that trend to continue as long as Red Hat is using the RPM system (and I don't really see them as having a path to migrate).
The experience with Ubuntu and Debian stable releases is pretty similar: A solid release every 2 years that's supported for a few years. (While Ubuntu in theory releases every 6 months, their non-LTS releases are effectively betas: They're often unstable, only have 9 months of support, etc. I wouldn't recommend them to anyone not actively participating in Ubuntu the development community). Ubuntu has better integration of non-free drivers, which may be important if you have hardware that requires them. But it's also the case that most bugs I experience when using Ubuntu are Ubuntu-specific issues, especially on servers (in part because Ubuntu has a bunch of "cloud management" stuff pre-installed that is definitely a regression if you're not using Canonical's cloud management products).
There is a question coming... I am using Oracle VirtualBox to spawn 3 Ubuntu Linux virtual machines (VM). VM1 is being used as a data lake - just a place to store flat files. VM2 hosts Apache NiFi. VM3 hosts PostgreSQL. I have built a NiFi pipeline that reads flat files on VM1 and then pipes the data over to and inserts it into the Postgresql database. I left this setup alone for a while, and then something hiccupped on VM3, and I had to rebuild it. Now I cannot make a remote connection to Postgresql on VM3. I was using pgAdmin3 on VM3, but it kept throwing errors - I found out it went end-of-life in 2018 and uninstalled it. pgAdmin4 is out, but for some reason, I cannot get the APT utility to find/install it. I am trying to figure out the pgAdmin4 install problem and looking for a good alternative for pgAdmin4 that I can use to diagnose the remote database connection problem. Does anyone have any suggestions? Thanks in advance.
Linux Mint
- Simple, Fast, Comfort and Easy to Use15
- Stable14
- Elegant12
- Good for beginners11
- Free to use10
- Out of the box3
- Reliable3
- Good software support1
- Easy to mess up with a few settings (like the panel)3
- Security breaches2
- Idiots can break it because it is open source1
related Linux Mint posts
- Stability1
- Elegant, Minimalist look1
- Expensive if you don't want to break the EULA2
- Even less customization1
related Mac OS X posts
- Good for beginners9
- AUR is huge8
- Very stable6
- Friendly community5
- Pacman is very fast3
- Highly customizable2
- Nice-looking bootloader2
- Would you give your grandma linux?6
- Occasional freezes if wrongly configured3
- Not highly stable2
- High data requirement frequently1
related Manjaro posts
At labinator.com, we use HTML5, CSS 3, Sass, Vanilla.JS and PHP when building our premium WordPress themes and plugins. When writing our codes, we use Sublime Text and Visual Studio Code depending on the project. We run Manjaro and Debian operating systems in our office. Manjaro is a great desktop operating system for all range of tasks while Debian is a solid choice for servers.
WordPress became a very popular choice when it comes to content management systems and building websites. It is easy to learn and has a great community behind it. The high number of plugins as well that are available for WordPress allows any user to customize it depending on his/her needs.
For development, HTML5 with Sass is our go-to choice when building our themes.
Main Advantages Of Sass:
- It's CSS syntax friendly
- It offers variables
- It uses a nested syntax
- It includes mixins
- Great community and online support.
- Great documentation that is easy to read and follow.
As for PHP, we always thrive to use PHP 7.3+. After the introduction of PHP 7, the WordPress development process became more stable and reliable than before. If you a developer considering PHP 7.3+ for your project, it would be good to note the following benefits.
The Benefits Of Using PHP:
- Open Source.
- Highly Extendible.
- Easy to learn and read.
- Platform independent.
- Compatible with APACHE.
- Low development and maintenance cost.
- Great community and support.
- Detailed documentation that has everything you need!
Why PHP 7.3+?
- Flexible Heredoc & Nowdoc Syntaxes - Two key methods for defining strings within PHP. They also became easier to read and more reliable.
- A good boost in performance speed which is extremely important when it comes to WordPress development.
- On 4gb other applications less likely to run smoothly3
- Slow3
- Best for Indonesian PC Users2
- The best developer tools for all devices2
- Editors choice. But not suitable on 4gb ram. Alth1
- Complies with JIS Standard1
- Great is if you have 8b ram and a 128gb ssd minimum1
- Lags really much on low end devices3
- Slow, slow and slow3
- Worst OS to run on 2GB of RAM2
- Acts posh1
- Can't fix bugs yourself1
related Windows 10 posts
I have been using macOS for 12 years. I can't imagine switching to another operating system since I have all of my hotkeys memorized. Windows 10 has made some drastic improvements like adding GNU Bash/Linux to win developers over from unix-like systems, I just don't feel it is there yet. Maybe I'll give it a shot next time I need a new laptop. 🤷♂️
Fedora
- Great for developers22
- Great integration with system tools10
- Represents the future of rhel/centos10
- Good release schedule9
- Reliable7
- Fast6
- Docker integration5
- Has SeLinux4
- Latest packages3
- Updated with Bleeding-edge software3
- Great for ops teams3
- Awesome community3
- Python distribution2
- Complies with International Standard2
- Bugs get fixed slowly from kernel side3
- Much less support from Wiki2
- Systemd2
- Boring2
- Less packages in official repository1
- A bit complicated1
- Learning curve for new users1
- Slightly difficult to install for beginners0
related Fedora posts
We use Debian and its derivative Ubuntu because the apt ecosystem and toolchain for Debian packages is far superior to the yum-based system used by Fedora and RHEL. This is large part due to a huge amount of investment into tools like debhelper/dh over the years by the Debian community. I haven't dealt with RPM in the last couple years, but every experience I've had with RPM is that the RPM tools are slower, have less useful options, and it's more work to package software for them (and one makes more compromises in doing so).
I think everyone has seen the better experience using Ubuntu in the shift of prevalence from RHEL to Ubuntu in what most new companies are deploying on their servers, and I expect that trend to continue as long as Red Hat is using the RPM system (and I don't really see them as having a path to migrate).
The experience with Ubuntu and Debian stable releases is pretty similar: A solid release every 2 years that's supported for a few years. (While Ubuntu in theory releases every 6 months, their non-LTS releases are effectively betas: They're often unstable, only have 9 months of support, etc. I wouldn't recommend them to anyone not actively participating in Ubuntu the development community). Ubuntu has better integration of non-free drivers, which may be important if you have hardware that requires them. But it's also the case that most bugs I experience when using Ubuntu are Ubuntu-specific issues, especially on servers (in part because Ubuntu has a bunch of "cloud management" stuff pre-installed that is definitely a regression if you're not using Canonical's cloud management products).
Since #ATComputing is a vendor independent Linux and open source specialist, we do not have a favorite Linux distribution. We mainly use Ubuntu , Centos Debian , Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Fedora during our daily work. These are also the distributions we see most often used in our customers environments.
For our #ci/cd training, we use an open source pipeline that is build around Visual Studio Code , Jenkins , VirtualBox , GitHub , Docker Kubernetes and Google Compute Engine.
For #ServerConfigurationAndAutomation, we have embraced and contributed to Ansible mainly because it is not only flexible and powerful, but also straightforward and easier to learn than some other (open source) solutions. On the other hand: we are not affraid of Puppet Labs and Chef either.
Currently, our most popular #programming #Language course is Python . The reason Python is so popular has to do with it's versatility, but also with its low complexity. This helps sysadmins to write scripts or simple programs to make their job less repetitive and automating things more fun. Python is also widely used to communicate with (REST) API's and for data analysis.
- Highly customizable5
- Large community5
- Very Stable4
- Good for beginners4
- Lightweight4
- Unstable2
related Kubuntu posts
- Massively supported54
- Stable50
- Reliable21
- Aptitude9
- Customizable8
- It is free8
- Turnkey linux use it8
- Works on all architectures6
- Old versions of software10
- Can be difficult to set up on vanilla Debian2
related Debian posts
At labinator.com, we use HTML5, CSS 3, Sass, Vanilla.JS and PHP when building our premium WordPress themes and plugins. When writing our codes, we use Sublime Text and Visual Studio Code depending on the project. We run Manjaro and Debian operating systems in our office. Manjaro is a great desktop operating system for all range of tasks while Debian is a solid choice for servers.
WordPress became a very popular choice when it comes to content management systems and building websites. It is easy to learn and has a great community behind it. The high number of plugins as well that are available for WordPress allows any user to customize it depending on his/her needs.
For development, HTML5 with Sass is our go-to choice when building our themes.
Main Advantages Of Sass:
- It's CSS syntax friendly
- It offers variables
- It uses a nested syntax
- It includes mixins
- Great community and online support.
- Great documentation that is easy to read and follow.
As for PHP, we always thrive to use PHP 7.3+. After the introduction of PHP 7, the WordPress development process became more stable and reliable than before. If you a developer considering PHP 7.3+ for your project, it would be good to note the following benefits.
The Benefits Of Using PHP:
- Open Source.
- Highly Extendible.
- Easy to learn and read.
- Platform independent.
- Compatible with APACHE.
- Low development and maintenance cost.
- Great community and support.
- Detailed documentation that has everything you need!
Why PHP 7.3+?
- Flexible Heredoc & Nowdoc Syntaxes - Two key methods for defining strings within PHP. They also became easier to read and more reliable.
- A good boost in performance speed which is extremely important when it comes to WordPress development.
We use Debian and its derivative Ubuntu because the apt ecosystem and toolchain for Debian packages is far superior to the yum-based system used by Fedora and RHEL. This is large part due to a huge amount of investment into tools like debhelper/dh over the years by the Debian community. I haven't dealt with RPM in the last couple years, but every experience I've had with RPM is that the RPM tools are slower, have less useful options, and it's more work to package software for them (and one makes more compromises in doing so).
I think everyone has seen the better experience using Ubuntu in the shift of prevalence from RHEL to Ubuntu in what most new companies are deploying on their servers, and I expect that trend to continue as long as Red Hat is using the RPM system (and I don't really see them as having a path to migrate).
The experience with Ubuntu and Debian stable releases is pretty similar: A solid release every 2 years that's supported for a few years. (While Ubuntu in theory releases every 6 months, their non-LTS releases are effectively betas: They're often unstable, only have 9 months of support, etc. I wouldn't recommend them to anyone not actively participating in Ubuntu the development community). Ubuntu has better integration of non-free drivers, which may be important if you have hardware that requires them. But it's also the case that most bugs I experience when using Ubuntu are Ubuntu-specific issues, especially on servers (in part because Ubuntu has a bunch of "cloud management" stuff pre-installed that is definitely a regression if you're not using Canonical's cloud management products).