elementary OS is a Linux distribution which aims to be a modern, fast & beautiful replacement for Windows and macOS. It also tries to mimic a lot of design decisions from the latter, it’s very similar to macOS in terms of UI and usability, and is used by millions of beauty lovers around the world.
In Oct 18, the elementary OS team released version 5.0 codenamed “Juno” of its operating system. Bringing tons of updates and improvements to both its core software and shape.
Here’s our review for the latest release and what you can expect from it. You may grab the release from the elementary’s official website
elementary OS 5.0 Review
The default look & feel for the Pantheon desktop (elementary’s default desktop interface) hasn’t changed a lot since version 0.4 Loki; A transparent panel at top and a dock at bottom:
There was, however, a number of changes in elementary’s apps their selves. The Files application now uses new icons for folders and file formats:
The Terminal application (and many other apps) received what’s known to be “quick controls”, which are simply quick settings available in the main UI of the program that can be used to adjust the application’s preferences. In Terminal, you can choose the color skin and font size:
Unlike most terminal emulators on other Linux distributions, you can easily copy & paste from and to the terminal using Ctrl + C and Ctrl + V. In case you were running something inside the terminal, the app will smartly recognize whether you want to use Ctrl + C to copy something from terminal or to stop the current command. More ever, there’s an embedded search functionality in the terminal app which allows you to search for text. There’s also an option in the context menu which allows you to open the current path in the files manager.
The Photos app now uses a dark theme by default. It also includes a redesigned photo adjustments dialog which allows you to play with photos’ colors. And includes some quick options to export the image in a different format, send it by Bluetooth or email, print it or compress it somewhere:
AppCenter, which is elementary’s software manager, got a set of huge updates since the latest release:
Now, the Appcenter features a pay-what-you-want model for many open source programs which are in the store. This allows 3rd-party application developers to earn money from developing free software, and also allows users to put their hands on generally better software for whatever price they choose. If you can’t pay, you can put 0 in the custom amount box and download the app for free, or you can pay what you want:
“Code” is the name of the default’s elementary’s text editor which is also customized for developers. It has also received quick controls which allow you to control space/tab length, highlighted programming language and current line. You can also quickly change the skin of the program:
You can easily expand the program’s functionality with extensions already installed. Some of them include a terminal emulator, a browser previewer and a word completion extension.
Talking about the elementary’s control center, you can now enable “Night Light” for your display in order to protect your eyes from blue light. Which will apply a layer of red color on your current display at time of night:
There’s also a service called “Housekeeping” which you can activate to automatically remove temporarily unused files from your system or empty your trash regularly:
The most remarkable feature in elementary OS 5.0 Juno is perhaps what is named “Picture-to-Picture Mode”; Which is basically a live scene taken for one of your workspaces which you can move to another workspace. You can toggle the feature using Super + F keys. Nothing better than the following video can demonstrate the new technique .
This is a seriously good feature for a lot of scenarios. Say you are someone who works in a TV channel and you are requested to monitor what other channels have in their breaking news, instead of searching for special software or monitoring RSS feeds or having tons of screens like in movies, you can have them all in one:
Most of elementary OS applications do not come with a preferences window, but rather focus on simplicity and unified workflow. However, this doesn’t mean that you can’t do any customizations. If you install the dconf-tools package, you’ll be able to browse and modify the values of a lot of applications, including the Pantheon desktop itself:
elementary OS 5.0 Juno boots in around 6 seconds:
Startup finished in 5.271s (kernel) + 1.389s (userspace) = 6.660s graphical.target reached after 1.383s in userspace
And doesn’t consume so much RAM after booting up:
mhsabbagh@fosspost:~$ free -m total used free shared buff/cache available Mem: 3378 427 2434 162 516 2575 Swap: 1239 0 1239
elementary OS 5.0 Juno is based on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, and comes with Linux kernel 4.15 and around 1600 installed package by default. You can view a full list of these from this link.
I would encourage you to upgrade your older version of Elementary Os to Elementary OS Juno
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