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
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.