Hi everyone. I thought this is maybe the right place to present you my thoughts about making a customized version of elementaryOS. Why? Well at first because I really admire the spirit behind elementaryOS - but (and yeah, since loki there is a big but for me) - I also see so many potential of getting things better. Really, elementaryOS is great: lean, slim, smart. A Linux OS which really feels a bit like macOS i thought at first. But in my eyes the developers didn't do themselves a favour by restrict their own system even more than a Mac is restricted by not allowing adding PPAs as default or installing .deb packages. I know, you can get all this back - but than you find long instructions online like "the 11 first things to do after intalling elementaryOS". I thought to myself this might keeps people from using elementaryOS. Because if I first have to do a lot of terminal interaction and stuff just to get elementaryOS at the same level than normal distributions - than it's over for many people right from the start. So I went through all this stuff, reactivated the features, including desktop-symbols (I don't know any other OS in the world which doesn't activate desktop symbols by default...) and put the macOS Sierra theme of the b00merang-project on top as well as exchanged many of the self-coded default-apps by well known projects like Chromium, Thunderbird and stuff. And now why I made this thread: Maybe others felt the same way like me and also went through all the steps which made their version of elementaryOS different from the Original. I think if this is the fact, we should share our customisations with the community. Because if many custom versions for different needs are out there, everybody can easily pick up, what is best for him. Some might want to stay with the original, some would maybe prefer a system which is optimized for server environments, tablet computers or whatever. and with the spirit of elementaryOS in providing a easy to install and use linux system with great look&feel experiance I thought maybe we stop saying people "the 20 things they need to do after install" instead of providing these steps we think which are necessary in own customized versions. The result i made up i called "elementaryOS iBuntu Edition" - or just "iBuntu". And at first i just shared it with my collegues at work which are big Mac-Fans but also interested in Linux. They said my little customisation of elementaryOS would really be a benefit for all who want a nice looking but still flexible OS without the restrictions and limitations the originally loki 0.4 came with - all out of the box. I just wanted to share this with you, maybe you have a look at it, test it out for yourself - I appreciate your comments or critics If you want, you can find the .iso file here: https://ibuntuos.com Many regards B0FH
A lot of these lists you refer to mostly only cover installing programs not in the AppCenter (and thus may not completely work with eOS's design philosophy) but that people may want regardless. You can't really stop that. These lists exist for all distro's AFAIK. And these lists do draw attention towards the OS, it's how I found out about eOS. There are a couple things that had me scratching my head as well though. Most notably the absence of gdebi and software-properties-common (repo's) are moves that I have a hard time defending, even with everything in mind. At the end of the day it needs to work as a functional OS and not just look pretty. It's still linux so if you know what you're doing this is easy enough to fix, as you said, but I definately think the AppCenter is nowhere near populated enough to be the single go to thing and they should make it easier to circumvent it and talk to the Ubuntu software repository. I get what they are trying to do but it may not be the best thing to do at this point in time. It's just too limited for a lot of people. eOS doesn't have any weight to shift this balance any time soon either.
Hi everyone, I am undusting this thread because today I am glad to announce that almost three years after I started my little custom Version of elementaryOS which should be unjailed and more with macOS look-and-feel - we finally came out with Version 1.0 of iBuntu and we call it "Catalinux". During the years we released two more Beta-Versions but with 0.3 we switched to Ubuntu as our Base System - but still we get all our Inspiration for our work from elementaryOS. We just can't use it as Base OS any more since it's now even more jailed than it was in 2017. Desktop-Folder might be half the way to get back a fully working desktop (which is a KO-criteria for us and always was a real show stopper when we wanted to use elementary in a productive environment) but if you really want a full desktop back the effort of "jailbraking" elementary today is just too much. So we decided to switch to Ubuntu with elementaryOS as Inspiration and macOS as the goal to achive. So far i think we did a good job. Although last year we announced on reddit and really got roasted there while from here and on our Homepage itself so far we only got nice and postive feedback. This is why today you guys here will be the only ones where we announce our final release. If you want to try it out and find it fitting your needs and taste you are free to spread the news around the world and make iBuntu Catalinux more popular You can take a look at it here: https://ibuntuos.com So long and thanks for the nice feedback we got over the years from you. Regards B0fH
Oh, I expected it to be more independent. It is almost literally MacOS. You see, I imagine there will be very many legal roadblocks ahead of you and your project... Regardless, I am impressed. I imagined that it would have had design inspiration from MacOS, and maybe not had been a mere knock-off of it. It's fair to be roasted on Reddit, because this is the equivalent of making a "uPhone" and selling it to look exactly like an iPhone, but a tiny, tiny fine text which reads "Ubuntu based."
I See your Point. But since all components we use to build our system comes from legal sources like gnome-looks.org and we dont aim to earn any money with it i dont see the legal problem. It's not illegal to make a macOS Theme and make it public on gnome-look.org. It's not illegal to use it. Otherweise the plattform would have to bann these theme packages and companies like Apple would do lawsuites against the publishers or even Users of these theme. So since nobody earns any money here Apple obviously doesnt seem to bother that these custom themes exist. And now we come along and do all the effort and put all these together - like anybody else could so. We just combine themes to a custom made experiance and offer it for free so that people dont have to configure and customize everything on there own. It's Like instead we do a long Tutorial in what to download and how to configure (which also already exist lot for years and also doesnt seem to be a Problem for Apple) - or just do it on our self and say to the users, "here we pre-configured everything already for you". If Everything Else seem to be ok and nobody seem to bother, why our last little step suddenly should? It's just a Help for everybody who is not that skilled in customizing his system but would like to. Thats just our point of view. But if people really like long tutorials with a lot to Download and customize more than somebody who does this and than offer to share his effort with Others so be it Right now we are not convinced that this is the case otherwise we just close the project and also do a giant tutorial in how everybody can mod ubuntu to "iBuntu" in their own and appologize to everybody left who would have liked it more if we would have done this work already for them ;-)
