“The primary motivation was from the user experience point of view. Instead, they chose to create their own distro. The company could have chosen the path of other desktop environments where users could have used this new desktop environment on any distro of their choice. That was the foundation of elementary OS: a clear and very tight focus on user experience, polished and easy-to-use, with fast yet simple applications.
That’s when the project took off – they made a cool app and then they wanted to make a complete desktop environment that was full of such cool apps. That coverage gave them some much-needed exposure, and other developers started inquiring about how could they get involved. The project was mentioned by OMG! Ubuntu, which has a huge following in the Ubuntu world. We already have a Nautilus fork, what else can we do to it? And we came out with Nautilus elementary,” said Foré. ammonkey had maintained a fork of Nautilus to build this quick view function. The Beginning of elementary OSįoré came across a developer - known by the name ammonkey - who was working on Gloobus preview, which was a Gnome application based on Apple’s Quicklook.
He began getting interested in finding out what other applications he could apply this new learned skill to.
He got exposed to the idea of designing software and not just themes. Then, he got involved with Gnome Do and Docky, and that’s when he started doing more interaction design. I wanted to build an updater app for Gentoo!” Foré said.įor the first couple of years, Foré stayed purely on the theming side. “I started hacking around a bit with PyGTK on Gentoo, but I didn’t get very far or make anything terribly useful. He began uploading his work to DeviantArt and. Then, he went to Gentoo, and that’s when he got deeper into the open source world. “I started learning about iconography and then started developing the elementary icon theme.”
I was using Inkscape on Windows so I was already familiar with open source software,” he said.Īnd, once he began using Korora, he started doing all his development work on Linux. “I came to Linux with a potential of what things you can do with it. Korora, however, introduced him to the open source development model.
Foré said that initially he didn’t know how to dual boot, so he was using two hard drives and would boot from either of the two drives to go to Linux or Windows. All that shiny Compiz stuff got him excited about Linux. He dipped his toes into Linux with Korora Linux when it first came out in 2006, with the XGL live demo. “I was doing a lot of modifications on Windows XP, doing things like adding shadow to windows and stuff,” said Foré. From Windows to Linuxĭaniel Foré, the founder of the project was originally a Windows XP user - like many people. One reason behind such this design-centric focus is that the founder of the project comes from a design background. The latest release of elementary OS, Freya, is one of the most polished and good-looking distributions I’ve seen.
So far, the company has been successful in achieving this goal. It’s aim is to create a distribution that approaches the desktop from a design point of view instead of the crude “there-is-a-command-for-everything” approach that’s popular in the Linux world. I am not an elementary OS user I am more of an Arch Linux or openSUSE guy, but I do run it in a VM, to keep an eye on what’s going on with this promising distribution.Įlementary OS is trying to disrupt the desktop Linux world in a couple of ways. Elementary OS has been making waves for quite some time, and the distro has already created a loyal fan following that’s helping it become a self-sustaining product.