elementary-dev-community team mailing list archive

[Cassidy James <cassidy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Ivan,

Thanks for your interest. Hopefully I can answer your questions for you
here. I've also gone ahead and CC'd our Council and Developer mailing lists
to share your email and in case they can provide any additional input.

On Feb 18, 2012 2:47 AM, "ivan kruzenshtern" <kleb.ifnby@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> Good day to the elementary OS team. I made the decision to feature your
OS in our class regarding the topic about Linux systems.

Awesome! We're glad you like elementary and are sharing it with others.

> Unfortunately the elementary OS doesn't even have its own Wikipedia
entry.

Yes, unfortunately the entry that had been there was removed a while back.
We can look into having someone add it back, however we're not technically
allowed to do it directly as it'd be considered a conflict of interest.

> I hope you could tell me why the elementary team decided to create this
beautiful and easy to use operating system.

It all started with Daniel Foré designing an icon theme for fun. He
developed it to beautify his computer, and consequently others' as well,
and it was very popular. From there, he decided that icons only helped so
much and that he needed to design a theme to bring it together. The
elementary theme was born. After that it was a natural progression of the
quest for a beautiful, perfect desktop into apps and then the culmination
of the journey with a complete OS.

> I'm curious about the principles behind its design and the reasons why it
was derived from Ubuntu.

Concision, minimal configuration, and minimal documentation are our design
principles of elementary from a developer perspective. Simplicity,
ease-of-use, and the best user experience are our guiding design principles
as far as users are concerned. We're really focused on just providing the
best experience possible without making the user do anything to get it that
way. Read more about these principles in our human interface guidelines:
http://elementaryos.org/docs/human-interface-guidelines/design-philosophy

The reason elementary is derived from Ubuntu is multi-fold. First, it's
simply one of the biggest, best, and easiest-to-use open operating systems
today. When we have similar goals, it's easiest to start with that and
build on and take away from rather than starting completely from scratch.
Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, also provides tools such as Launchpad
that really enable us to create elementary, so it makes the most sense to
derive from their OS which uses the same tools. We also like a lot of the
work that has already gone into Ubuntu, such as the indicators,
notifications, etc., so it again makes sense to build from there.

> Is DanRabbit still leading or part of the team developing this?

Definitely! Daniel Foré (aka DanRabbit) is the founder, leader, and lead
designer of elementary. It's his baby and he does a great job of involving
the community while having the final say. He's extremely active in
designing, discussing, and organizing elementary.

> Please tell me more about the structure of the OS, its kernel,
programming languages used, system libraries, utilities, etc.

I'm not a developer myself, but I can direct you to some more information.
First and foremost, our current release, Jupiter, is derived from Ubuntu
10.10; its structure is nearly identical, including the kernel, libraries,
and utilities. There is some more info about Jupiter here:
http://elementaryos.org/docs/user-guide/technical-specifications

In Jupiter, our apps were written in Vala, C, and Python for the most part.
We prefer Vala for its simplicity, beauty, ease, and compatibility with C.
For more info on the technology behind elementary, see:
http://elementaryos.org/developer/tech

> Finally, when do you plan to release Luna to the public?

When it's ready. I can't give a set date, but I can say that Luna is being
built from the same core as Ubuntu 12.04.

> I hope that more people will get to know about this amazing project and
please do reply to my queries. Good luck to the  development team and do
add that Wikipedia entry to your future plans. :)

Hopefully I answered most of your questions; if you have more or would like
me to clarify something, feel free to ask. Thanks again for your interest
and for sharing elementary with others!

Regards,
Cassidy James
On Feb 18, 2012 2:47 AM, "ivan kruzenshtern" <kleb.ifnby@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Good day to the elementary OS team. I made the decision to feature your OS
> in our class regarding the topic about Linux systems. Unfortunately the
> elementary OS doesn't even have its own Wikipedia entry. I hope you could
> tell me why the elementary team decided to create this beautiful and easy
> to use operating system. I'm curious about the principles behind its design
> and the reasons why it was derived from Ubuntu. Is DanRabbit still leading
> or part of the team developing this? Please tell me more about the
> structure of the OS, its kernel, programming languages used, system
> libraries, utilities, etc. Finally, when do you plan to release Luna to the
> public? I hope that more people will get to know about this amazing project
> and please do reply to my queries. Good luck to the  development team and
> do add that Wikipedia entry to your future plans. :)
>