Trying Out System76's Pop!_OS Ubuntu-Based Operating System

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Trying Out System76's Pop!_OS Ubuntu-Based Operating System

Besides Ubuntu 17.10 "Artful Aardvark" launching tomorrow, System76 is also expected to issue their first official release of the Ubuntu-derived Pop!_OS operating system they plan to begin shipping on their laptops/desktops. Curious about their modifications to Ubuntu 17.10, I decided to give the latest snapshot of it a ride.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=25359

[KRiloshart]

It's a Ubuntu without canonical branding. This should make some 'canonical haters' happy.

[Cerberus]

Yawn, another Ubuntu reskin because we totally didnt have any of those, and not a particularly good one at that, poor design choices for their GTK theme, colors and icons, it looks childish and those color combinations are an eyestrain, any UI designer worth his salt would tell them that. System76 is a Clevo reskin so its kind of fitting they reskin the OS too.

[kaprikawn]

I think this is a solid basis for a viable alternative to Ubuntu. At the moment there's little to separate it from stock Ubuntu, but I've followed their progress in this project. And I have faith that the folks at System 76 know what they're doing and will make a worthy contribution to the FOSS ecosystem. I'm excited to see where this is going, just give them a bit of time.

[emblemparade]

I'm very impressed by the terrible name of this distribution. However, as impressed as I am, I believe that system76 can still do worse. I believe in you, guys! Go for the gold!

[tildearrow]

Typo?

machine learning, data science, robits, aerospace,

[awesz]

Yawn, another Ubuntu reskin because we totally didnt have any of those, and not a particularly good one at that, poor design choices for their GTK theme, colors and icons, it looks childish and those color combinations are an eyestrain, any UI designer worth his salt would tell them that. System76 is a Clevo reskin so its kind of fitting they reskin the OS too.

Remember when themes/icons had depth and contrast? Those were the days.

[Cerberus]

Remember when themes/icons had depth and contrast? Those were the days.

That is one of the main reasons why I think most Linux themes and icons are terrible, and PopOS excels at being terribly designed, most Linux themes either have weird color transitions that make UI elements have low readability, color transitions that are too sharp and generally elements of the UI are not clean and easy on the eyes.

One of the few themes on Linux I consider to be very well done is Arc-Darker, clean, pretty and with good choice of colors and easily readable even with a casual glance, Ubuntu's Ambiance theme is also clean and readable though a bit old and needs some redesign. Another very well done theme is Gnome Shell theme United Gnome, transparency, fonts, outlines all of that is extremely well balanced making it probably the best Gnome Shell theme ever, it is both modern, pretty and very readable. KDE's Breeze theme is not too shabby either in combination with Breeze-Dark taskbar though those Breeze window decorations are in need of modernization, I like Breeze system icons in the taskbar too, very nicely done.

As for system icons I find combination of Arc Icons with Numix Square to be the best although not perfect, but icons are for the most part easily readable and look modern enough for my taste. Most icon sets for Linux suffer from either too cramped design where icons have a too complex design and therefore lack easy readability and distract from the overall design or they have poorly chosen colors and gradients like Papirus icons that PopOS uses.

[bug77]

Well, at least they didn't botched it right out the door. Let's hope they started safe and they'll improve in the future. The world could use a noob-friendly distro even if it doesn't cater to the tinkerers here on Phoronix.

[tweak42]

Well, at least they didn't botched it right out the door. Let's hope they started safe and they'll improve in the future. The world could use a noob-friendly distro even if it doesn't cater to the tinkerers here on Phoronix.

^^This

Though I will point out there are a bunches of noob-friendly distros in the wild, just none shipping preloaded aimed at non-tech customers (well unless you count ChromeOS devices).

My initial reaction to the name was it's dumb. But from a marketing perspective it's clever and memorable. I see where they are going with this I'm just not the target demographic.