What should you expect from elementary OS? Is it still around? I answer some of those questions here.

elementary OS may not be as much as popular as it used to be.

That being said, elementary OS 8 release is still on the horizon with some useful changes based on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS.

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However, amidst disagreement between co-founders during the pandemic in 2022, co-founder Cassidy quit the elementary OS team.

Right after that, the development pace took a big hit, and we saw elementary OS 7 being released almost a year after Ubuntu 22.04 LTS came up.

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A good indicator about its development activity is its upcoming major release, elementary OS 8, based on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS.

I took a sneak peek at it using the daily build, and elementary OS 8 is almost ready to have an RC release.

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You can expect things like:

  • The settings app handles system updates (instead of AppCenter)
  • AppCenter is now Flatpak only
  • New toggle menu icon giving you easy access to the screen reader, onscreen keyboard, font size, and other system settings
  • WireGuard VPN support
  • probableprotogen@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    1·
    2 months ago

    The development complexities of this would be insane. Plus modern Apple uses ARM chips.which doesn’t help since most Linux users (desktop and server) are on x86.

    • merthyr1831@lemmy.mlEnglish
      3·
      2 months ago

      MacOS still ships x86 builds, and most software either provides binaries for both platforms or some kind of universal/hybrid binary. Still a few years before that becomes an issue.

      At some point an ARM->x86 translation layer is going to be needed too, regardless. It’s not long until ARM becomes popular enough to make it necessary to translate both ways.