elementary OS
The future of Linux desktop for the general public. Offers a system that's easy to adapt to for users of Windows and macOS. Will make your old device feel like new again. And most of all, free.
elementary OS is an operating system that uses Linux under the hood. It uses Ubuntu LTS as its base. This operating system feels like the most cohesive Linux desktop I have ever used.
I have had my share of distro-hopping[1]. I have tried many desktop environments too, mostly KDE and Cinnamon. But none of them comes close to how much I like elementary OS' Pantheon desktop. eOS wants to achieve an ecosystem of apps, and that's why it is very cohesive.
eOS does not give its users much control about the way their system looks[2]. But it doesn't need to. Their target demographic includes people who are not so much into tech—your mom, grandparents, or people too busy to tinker with their systems and just want something that works. And keeping this in mind, the design (that is very well thought of) is enough. It works. Even for me, who is a front-end developer, and nit-picky about how things look.
I also like the fact that it does not hog on resources. The latest version of this operating system works on my 7-year-old laptop that came out at the peak of Windows 7's supremacy and has since been neglected by Windows 10. It runs like a new device. I, at one point, even used it to sculpt 3D models with Blender.
What I like the most about elementary OS though is that it supports its developers. Before elementary OS, the majority of apps were either free and open-source or paid and closed-source. But elementary OS gives their app developers an opportunity to earn income while giving their users a chance to use their software in a price they can afford. With their pay-what-you-can scheme, elementary OS and their developers can give users a recommended price to download their software, but users can choose to pay a higher or lower price, or even not pay at all. This, surprisingly, works well for all of them.
My daily-driver PC runs on elementary OS 6, the latest version. I use it for development, and ocassional gaming. Linux is now capable of games, thanks to Steam. It does everything I want it to do, and does them very well.
Distro-hopping is the act of trying different Linux distributions and tinkering with them to one's own liking. ↩︎
One controversial choice was the removal of the Minimize button on application windows, restricting users to making their app windows either maximize or close. The elementary OS team has since addressed this. ↩︎