If you read my recent post about being an operating system “floater,” you might be wondering what it’s like to float into something totally new for me. Are there growing pains? Is it easy? Or do I get too caught up in my usual style to adapt?

It’s a fair consideration, and one I’ve been thinking about a bit since I decided to kick the tires on the latest version of elementary OS. The Linux distro, one of the more ambitious efforts to bring a visual flavor and consistent user experience to the Linux ecosystem, has been around for close to 15 years at this point, and unlike a number of competing distros, it effectively is built around its interface, which evokes a very specific era of MacOS—to my eyes, it appears to be focused on the MacOS Lion era, which is a pretty nice era to relive.

It largely skipped the Jony Ive “flat” era which forever reshaped the appearance of Apple’s operating systems, and as a result, has become less of a Linux-y Mac revamp over time and more of its own thing.

Honestly, “its own thing” is kind of the project’s M.O. For years, it had an app ecosystem that was largely disconnected from the rest of the Linux ecosystem. But in recent years, that has started to shift, thanks its embrace of Flatpak, a type of packaged application that is partly sandboxed, making it play somewhat nicer with elementary’s ecosystem.

Elementary’s AppCenter now supports a wider array of Flatpak apps than it used to.

Elementary 8 is the first to natively support the most popular Flatpak distribution system, Flathub, out of the box. (It allowed you to sideload Flathub apps previously but has favored its own native app ecosystem.) I found that to be a huge quality-of-life booster for the Ubuntu-based distro, a small change that almost overshadowed all the work the team had done to rebuild its dock to make it more multitasking-friendly. I was able to install a GUI interface for Syncthing, Obsidian, and Vivaldi in a matter of minutes.

Good start so far, but floating between operating systems can be challenging if the operating systems are inflexible. And that’s where elementary, in my view, struggles. Like its initial inspiration, it tends to be prescriptive and opinionated. However, unlike MacOS, elementary doesn’t have a large ecosystem of extensions to work around its more inflexible parts—making it a tough sell for power users. Which explains why I found the experience a difficult go.

Example: Apple long ago gave up the war on custom tray icons and let people just do whatever, to the point that some of the most popular extensions are essentially just organizers for tray icons. Other Linux-based window managers, like GNOME, have also eschewed tray icons for philosophical reasons, but it was easy to just add them back in. (That’s what Ubuntu does.) But elementary just kind of leaves tray icon users out in the cold—which would be fine, except because of their support of Flatpak, they’re now offering apps that rely on tray icons, with no way to access them. That was what happened to me when I tried to use my Syncthing GUI interface. I think a little bending on this specific issue would do everyone a little good.

Elementary is built with its own paradigms in mind. It’s not thinking about what GNOME, KDE, or other desktop interfaces in Linux are doing—it’s doing its own user research studies and using the data to apply its own lessons. Which is fine if elementary OS is the first place you land in the world of Linux. But if it’s not, suddenly you find yourself comparing it to every other desktop interface you use.

Example: In GNOME, which I usually use, the Applications Menu and the Multitasking View, as elementary OS calls them, are combined into one interface, making it possible to get a view of your current applications and allow you to open up a new one. Unfortunately, elementary OS only allows you to select one or the other with a key command, so as a result, you can see your current windows or your list of applications. Gaps like that can be pretty rough from a muscle-memory standpoint.

If you’re a seasoned Linux user, you might find this warning message surprising.

But elementary does make up for it with some prudent changes to its interface. Example: in version 8, it now separates out application updates from system updates, so such updates live in separate places, allowing you to better assess their importance. Additionally, it puts up permissions screens when you do things like paste a sudo command into the terminal or add a piece of software that tries accessing specific features like your webcam or microphone. These are all things MacOS and Windows have done for years, but they’re relatively unheard-of in Linux land.

And the developer’s decision to sidestep the Xorg vs. Wayland debate by referring to Wayland as a “Secure session” is honestly something that more distros should do.

That said, trying to work around elementary’s arbitrary limitations can cause headaches. I’m pretty particular about my key setup. These days, I like swapping my Control and Alt keys, while putting the Super key in the caps lock spot, so as to leave the left Windows key open to be a de facto Option key, a similar format to the default MacOS layout, while taking advantage of the fact that the Caps Lock key often goes unused.

If you click on an icon in the dock and you have multiple windows open, it now displays those windows in a style similar to Apple’s Mission Control layout.

There was no easy way to set this up on Pantheon, elementary OS’ windowing interface, not even in its intended tweaks application. I eventually had to install GNOME Tweaks via the command line, which did offer it, and I was then able to set it up. I know how to do that because I’m a relatively seasoned Linux user at this point, but a regular user may be lost. This is more problematic when errors happen with the default tooling: A Flatpak error was giving AppCenter some headaches that could only be resolved by using the command line. A new user trying to navigate that error is going to be lost.

Sometimes when using elementary I get the feeling that it would be better if it was more separated out from the built-in cruft that Linux ecosystem gives it. In this way, I compare it to the hello project, which was developed on top of FreeBSD—intentionally separating it from the very critiques I’m making, but also cutting it off from the strong resources of the Linux ecosystem. Elementary is much more mature and built out than hello, but that project’s primary developer is known for some strong views that clash with Linux orthodoxy, so they offer a neat comparison point.

Some of my hiccups were caused by elementary’s decision to lean on stability over the bleeding edge. Example: elementary OS is built from versions of Ubuntu LTS, which supports a huge number of devices, but can introduce problems on newer machines. That includes my HP Envy 16, which I purchased late last year. It has had a nagging problem with sound support, a widespread issue with recent laptops that was not completely solved until version 6.9 of the kernel. Unfortunately, elementary OS ships with kernel version 6.8, meaning my speakers don’t work out of the box. The decision to not support the latest and greatest unfortunately relegates an otherwise pretty good OS to slightly older machines.

I think, to put a bow on all this: Elementary OS has some really great ideas for operating systems, but the fact it isn’t an island unto itself, like Haiku or SerenityOS, means that it inevitably and unfairly gets compared to other window managers that have different goals and user bases. And that’s the case even if you’re not trying to. I tried going into it with an open mind and just found myself hitting trap door after trap door. Which is to say that some of my frustrations are probably a side effect of me having 30 years of operating systems under my belt.

All that said, I see the work the team has done to make elementary OS do a better job of supporting Flatpak as evidence that a more flexible design philosophy could do it some real good—and it could help convince people that some of their more prescriptive decisions carry some real benefits for end users. It may not be the OS ecosystem you want, but it’s the one you have.

In recent versions of MacOS, Apple has started to finally make some changes that it seemed rigidly opposed to in the past, such as a basic tiling window capability. MacOS was literally the only modern desktop OS that did not support the feature out of the box, and it took so long that it was clear it was philosophical, as half solutions like Stage Manager were meant to scratch the same itch, but did not. I think projects like elementary could learn from that.

If it’s your first Linux rodeo, it’s probably a great starting point, but more seasoned users will find its limitations frustrating.