elementary OS

Long-term owners

My 12 year old cousins havE daily driven ElementaryOS for a year

Apr 2026 · comment

What hackers pick instead

• UbuntuA mainstream Linux distro that mostly just works on lots of hardware, suits beginners and offers long LTS support, though critics dislike Snaps and Canonical's direction.560recommend
• DebianA community-run, free Linux distribution recommended for rock-solid stability, curated trustworthy package repositories and painless in-place upgrades; critics say stable packages are old and bug fixes rarely get backported.552recommend
• Fedora LinuxA mainstream, beginner-friendly Linux distro that mostly works out of the box and balances stability with current packages, though frequent release upgrades occasionally break things.437recommend
• Arch LinuxA rolling Linux distro praised for up-to-date, near-upstream packages, excellent wiki docs and installs that last for years, though updates can break things and much is manual.362recommend
• Linux MintA beginner-friendly Linux distro that feels familiar to Windows users, works out of the box with no ads or nagware, though major version upgrades and display quirks can be troublesome.277recommend

Every quote

The 16 most detailed of 21 comments. Each links to the original.

1. beginner-friendly operating system in the same way that Fedora/LinuxMint/OpenSUSE/Pop!_OS/Ubuntu/ElementOS are

   Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux”

2. ElementaryOS is supposed to be a very clean transition environment for mac refugees

   Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “Welcome (back) to Macintosh”

3. everything just works, i never ever had to worry about drivers or stuff like that

   Recommends · Jun 2026 · in “Apple rejected my dictation app for using the accessibility API”

4. she's been using that laptop almost problem-free for two months now

   Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Windows 11's Patch Tuesday nightmare gets worse”

5. My 12 year old cousins havE daily driven ElementaryOS for a year

   Recommends · Apr 2026 · in “Tim Cook to become Apple Executive Chairman”

6. with its desktop environment resembling macOS

   Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “Welcome (back) to Macintosh”

7. have superb Apple flavored UI and UX

   Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “The Window Chrome of Our Discontent”

8. Elementary/Pantheon resembles macOS only aesthetically.

   Criticizes · Jan 2026 · in “Gershwin-desktop: OS X-like Desktop Environment based on GNUStep”

9. only interested in the surface fascia of macOS

   Criticizes · Aug 2026 · in “RavynOS: Pre-alpha open-source OS based on Darwin, FreeBSD, Apple open-source”

10. It just never went far enough for me by not having global menus, application bundles, etc.

    Mixed · Jan 2026 · in “Gershwin-desktop: OS X-like Desktop Environment based on GNUStep”

11. the issue that annoyed me was not the OS, but lack of proper drivers for my the touchpad

    Mixed · Jul 2026 · in “Ask HN: What Linux distro do you daily drive?”

12. Long battery life, smooth UI, smooth multi-desktop switching

    Mixed · Mar 2026 · in “Wayland set the Linux Desktop back by 10 years”

13. found it too limiting for me

    Mixed · Jan 2026 · in “Gershwin-desktop: OS X-like Desktop Environment based on GNUStep”

14. very polished and reliable

    Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “Ideas on modernizing the open-source desktop”

15. intentionally chose to Do Something Else, to Be Different for Difference's Sake

    Criticizes · May 2026 · in “It's time to talk about my writerdeck”

16. it has the same issue I have with elementary

    Criticizes · Feb 2026 · in “Palm OS User Interface Guidelines [pdf]”