Elementary OS "Luna" 0.2 Review: Simple, effective, efficient

Like many other Linux users, I too, follow a lot about Elementary OS. They seems to be getting things right what's wrong with modern Linux in general and GNOME 3 in particular. Consider this, it is just the 0.2 release of Elementary and already ranked 27 in Distrowatch popularity! The 1.0 release is yet to come! As Darshak said in the comments section - it is going to be killer of a distro.

From Elementary 0.2 http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.in

Anyway, I used the 32-bit Elementary OS Beta 1 release a few months back and was deeply impressed with it. So, when the 0.2 release note came with some incremental improvements, I wanted to try it out myself. Elementary OS too, like 70% of all Linux distros, is based on Ubuntu and to be more precise, on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and the present update comes with Linux kernel 3.2.0. However, it doesn't believe in Ubuntu's Unity philosophy and has come up with it's own GNOME 3 forked desktop, Pantheon. Even the Files file manager is forked and named Pantheon Files. 

The main USP of Elementary is a sophisticated, uncluttered and uncomplicated desktop. It comes from the same developers who created elementary GTK2 theme for Linux. Elementary OS provides users the basic desktop to work with and customize. I set the expectation right the very beginning itself - if you are expecting a whole lot of applications with all possible codecs/flash installed like other Ubuntu derivatives (incl. Mint), then you'll be disappointed with Elementary.

The release note of Elementary 0.2 states of the following incremental improvements:

• Better support of international languages including some Asian languages like Sinhalese
• Multiple display support (didn't test in my review)
• Incremental refinements in design (checked most of them)
• Updated applications like Music player, Pantheon terminal, Midori, Shotwell, etc. (checked all of them, except Shotwell)

I downloaded both the 32-bit and 64-bit ISOs (both less than 700 MB) for this test. Somehow, the 32-bit ISO didn't work that well for me. I couldn't connect to wifi, all of a sudden the desktop started becoming unresponsive, etc. etc. So, I didn't install the 32-bit version but instead did this evaluation based on the 64-bit one. I tested it on my Asus K54C laptop, with 2.2 Ghz Core i3 processor and 2 GB RAM. I used Unetbootin to create a live USB.

Read more!