Naive user orientation. Few questions. Can make it to a FAQ somewhere.

Asked by SputnikOne

Hi there,

I'm a naive Windows user, looking for switching to something nicer, safer, with good (community) support. Who knows? I might just fit the image of your targeted audience.

1) Elementary OS is at the version number 0.4. I was not able to figure out if it is considered an alpha or a beta release. When your OS will be ready for *production* use, as they say? Version number, approximate time frame?

Is there any other support at the present stage other than this Q&A, and what is intended for the future? Community support, I mean, but directly related to Elementary OS. Safe and simple.

2) I wonder if you plan such a meticulously detailed user guide as how much you care about aesthetic design, so naive users can not only have a *nice looking* operating system, but also a *safe* one, which *just works.* I searched for such a detailed user guide on your online pages, but this is all what I have found: https://elementary.io/docs/learning-the-basics. It doesn't mention important things like how to stay safe.

A proper OS needs proper documentation. I understand Ubuntu falls into the category of Linuxes that *hides* what's happening under the hood from naive and advanced users alike, unlike distributions like Gentoo and Arch Linux (a Linus Torvalds favorite). But sooner or later you can't hide the inner workings of the OS (that may be Linus' dream, which sounds nice in theory, but what about practice?), naive user also has to learn some basic system administration skills, just like with Windows. Is that sounds about right?

Thanks for your contribution

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David Hancock (dhankook-r) said :
#1

Community pages:
- https://elementaryos.stackexchange.com/ (support oriented)
- https://www.reddit.com/r/elementaryos/ (general discussion oriented)

I am not an elementary OS team member. Whether the OS is production ready depends on your specific needs; after all, Windows and Mac OSX have issues just as any Linux distro does. In my case elementary does just about everything I need it to. My most critical needs include running VirtualBox (no issues), text editing (Scratch is quite nice; a couple of very minor issues but there's a lot to like), LaTeX (typesetting program that is used heavily in academia; no issues in elementary), and web browsing (I had too many issues with the included browser, Epiphany, but I'm now using Google Chrome, and other browsers are available). The e-mail client is good though it doesn't support storing e-mail locally or running automated rules on received messages. There are a few details here and there that might or might not affect you (custom keyboard shortcuts don't work for me yet, secondary display is mostly great out of the box but there are a few corner cases that sometimes result in problems). That said I would also be interested to learn their philosophy regarding their version numbering. Just a total guess but I think goals for declaring a 1.0 would include secure enough funding to guarantee long term support, and maybe a few technologies from upstream that Elementary OS currently relies on but that they want to replace.

As far as being *safe* goes, I don't know what you are looking for. There is nothing about elementary OS that prevents you from applying security practices like firewall, anti-virus (probably a waste of time but whatever makes you feel secure), ad-blocking etc. Most things that work for Ubuntu also work for elementary. Security and other patches from upstream seem to be quickly available through Appcenter. But elementary has all the standard protection measures like requiring admin password for sensitive updates and adding non-standard software repositories. As long as you have a decently strong password and be careful about where your additional software comes from and don't store passwords unencrypted anywhere on your hard drive, well, again, I don't know what you are looking for.

Just my two cents, coming from a regular user. Switched from Windows a little over a year ago, was on Ubuntu until a few weeks ago. I did have a few technical issues with elementary at first but it seems they are all resolved or I've found workarounds or ways to avoid trouble by now, and I'm pretty much worry free at this point. Good luck.

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Adrian Cochrane (alcinnz) said :
#2

Disclaimer: I'm also not a team member but rather a long time user.

I can't find the source for this right now (I've looked), but I believe elementary has stated that they have stated that elementary OS 1.0 would be the first version they feel is polished enough to advertise more heavily. Until then the 0.x releases are very stable. Still needs a team member to confirm this understanding.

I don't think even the team will be able to tell you when 1.0 will be released, but new releases generally come out every 1 or 2 years.

As for documentation I would agree with you that it's somewhat lacking, and the team seems largely focused on application development. If you want it'd probably be helpful for you to get something started, outside of suggesting the change it should take little technical knowledge.

And for super user guidance, you can pretty much do whatever you would have done on Ubuntu that way.

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Launchpad Janitor (janitor) said :
#3

This question was expired because it remained in the 'Open' state without activity for the last 15 days.

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SputnikOne (sputnikone) said :
#4

@David Hancock

> - https://elementaryos.stackexchange.com/ (support oriented)
> - https://www.reddit.com/r/elementaryos/ (general discussion oriented)

I'm not sure what do you exactly mean by the terminologies of 'support oriented' and 'general discussion oriented.'

Let me translate this to my own terms. Do you mean if I start to blog about Elementary on my hobby blog, but personally I have no affiliation with Elementary core, will the community developing around my hobby blog be part of the Elementary support community? Unofficially: yes. Officially: no.

What I'm looking for is the 'most official' Elementary support community, the one where team members interact with users and share ideas. (If that's a thing at all in Elementary, or they develop the OS rather just for themselves, or the imagined 'average user' they never interact with, that's a good topic.) Most open source projects have traditionally IRC and a 'user' mailing list as the main point of interaction between users and core team members. The same project may also have an official online forum, but if you, as a user want better user-core member interaction, you should check out IRC or the mailing list instead of the forum (experience).

Of course, that the best user-core interaction happens on IRC or a mailing list is not set in stone: Linux Mint primarily has its forum for it's core developers to listen to user feedback (they truly do listen). I concluded that for the Elementary project this Lauchpad may be the main arena of user-core interaction. ("This question was expired because it remained in the 'Open' state without activity for the last 15 days." Whatever.) Correct me if I'm wrong.

> Whether the OS is production ready depends on your specific needs;

In my simple definition an OS is ready for production when their developers announce it's ready for production. :) Whether it stands up to the expectations or not, is a different matter.

> As far as being *safe* goes, I don't know what you are looking for.

Good question! What I mean by "safe and simple" actually is what Bruce Schneier meant for Windows: for the regular user if she keeps the default settings, installs the updates, Windows (by now) is generally safe. According to Schneier, as I read somewhere on his blog a few years ago. I guess it was around the Windows 7 era. Of source, I'm not complaining if Linux has the added benefit of being even more 'safe and simple' (by average user standards), and unlike Windows, it doesn't spy on me. :)

@Adrian Cochrane

> I don't think even the team will be able to tell you when 1.0 will be released, but new releases generally
> come out every 1 or 2 years.

It seems. 1.0 may come quite a long time in the future, then. It would still be interesting and useful to find out if current version is considered 'alpha' or 'beta' by the team.

> As for documentation I would agree with you that it's somewhat lacking

> And for super user guidance, you can pretty much do whatever you would have done on Ubuntu that way.

And now we got onto the philosophical aspect of Linux, at least, the Ubuntu flavor, not the Arch Linux/Gentoo flavor. :) Some people (including Linus Torvalds) argue that Linux should 'just work' out of the box, without the user seeing a command line at all:

https://backchannel.com/i-moved-to-linux-and-it-s-even-better-than-i-expected-9f2dcac3f8fb
"What I like least about Linux is the occasional need to do something that would be downright daunting to a new user. No one should ever have to open a command-line window and type “sudo apt-get update” or other such instructions. No one should be confronted with a warning that space on a disk partition is too low to permit an operating system update, requiring the not-simple-for-novices removal of out-of-date OS components. No one should discover, after an update, that a piece of hardware has stopped working, as was the case for me when my computer’s trackpad went south until I found a fix in an online forum."

Which sounds nice in theory, buy keep in mind that Apple machines 'just work,' because they run on a very limited selection of hardware. Linux and Windows on the other hand is intended to run on a wide selection of hardware, which might work, might not. If your hardware happen to be just work, you are a lucky Linux user, the dream of Linux developers, you don't have to see a command line.

But in a number of cases, complications occur. This was one of the most relevant hit when I searched for Elementary related things on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3fAQmafyC8
From 4:01, quote: "Now I would like to quote the words of Aaron Griffin, he's one of the founders of the Arch Linux project. And once he said if you try to hide the complexity of the system, you will end up with a more complex system."

That's it! I wonder where the Elementary developers stand on the scale of either hiding the complexity of the system, might or might not work on your hardware out of the box, if not, good luck, or showing the internals, which has a learning curve, but at least, it's a rewarding journey. If they want a simple system for the average users which just works, they might as well want to have a list of supported hardware.

> and the team seems largely focused on application development.

And I wonder on which hardware, should their applications work. See #4 by me in this thread: https://answers.launchpad.net/elementaryos/+question/294863

So, if you are an average user, or in this case, a consumer shopping for a laptop, if you are not aiming for the cheapest options with a 1:1 physical to virtual pixel ratio (which is either a horrible 1366x768 resolution, should be banned: https://plus.google.com/+LinusTorvalds/posts/ByVPmsSeSEG, or a desktop replacement laptop equipped with a 15-17" 1080p display), or the most expensive with a 2:1 physical to virtual pixel ratio, the average PC laptop aimed at the average user uses a fractional virtual to physical pixel ratio, most commonly an 1080p screen. which, by the way, scales pretty good on modern Windows. Elementary developers said in the above thread they have no intention whatsoever supporting it. The laptop resolution which is the likely choice of the average user. Their target base is the average user. I see a small contradiction here, but whatever.

I concluded the main criteria for selecting a Linux distribution today is less about the internals, more about the desktop environment. The Elementary desktop looked nice, but if the team doesn't have any plans on supporting the partial resolutions the average user likely to buy into today (important note: the laptop the average user buys today is different from the laptop used by most average users today :), then I might want to look elsewhere.

Thanks for both of your contributions!

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Launchpad Janitor (janitor) said :
#5

This question was expired because it remained in the 'Open' state without activity for the last 15 days.