Pretty, Performant Unix

Similar to my discovery of Ruby on Rails a decade late, I recently discovered Elementary OS which is also a piece of often-overlooked technology from the 2007 Technology era. This is a slightly edited version of a thank you post on their Reddit.

Just paid for and installed Elementary after being a Linux user for a decade. I was looking for something more polished that would stop me tinkering, and force me to focus on what I’m building and making money and life (I usually have had this experience owning macs, but love my Framework hardware).

I had never considered Elementary before due to it being on an Ubuntu LTS base. What changed? Over the last few years Flatpaks, Homebrew Linux and containers/distrobox became central to my workflow, so it doesn’t matter what the OS is based on and I can just pick something pretty that works well! It’s “pretty unix” as Paul Graham called it in an essay that stuck with me.

They make a new kind of computer that’s as well designed as a Bang & Olufsen stereo system, and underneath is the best Unix machine you can buy.

I installed Elementary on my Framework laptop. I also love how unlike every other Linux distribution, you don’t add another logo underneath the “Framework” logo on the bootsplash - such thoughtful minimalism.

Everything works really well and is integrated nicely. The system is also crazy memory efficient and snappy. I came from the Universal Blue / Bazzite ecosystem and loved the worry-free, automatic updates which also exist on Elementary since I leave the underlying system untouched and updates are applied automatically.

I was using Bazzite before but my OS was just too exciting as described above. I also like how Elementary is backed by a company and is more likely to (and has already been) long-lived, vs. a project that relies solely on free labor.

Thank you for building this! You have a new fan!