The "Extra" Long Awaited Elementary OS "Jupiter" is Finally Out!

The Elementary project is actually started as a project for giving away applications and GTK based themes for Ubuntu around 2007. For instance the Nautilus Elementary file manager is actually created by the "elementary" dudes!. This again shows the characteristics of the developers and from the start they've been doing things that impressed the Linux users + developers all around the world.

Wanna "desktop" on Jupiter! :)

After seeing the success they had with the little customizations they did to the Nautilus, they started creating and customizing a lot of other applications thus "converting" them into "elementary". So I guess after some time they thought... "well, we have a file browser of our own, have customized few apps that look awesome (almost rhymed :P ) then why not create an operating system of our own". Bingo!.. that's how the Elementary OS was born (based on Ubuntu).

Here are some of the main applications it ships with

*. Midori - A GTK based web-browser (not the best of its kind though).

*. Docky - A Mac OSX dock type application (very popular).

*. Postler - An e-mail client created by the elementary developers!.

*. Lingo - A web dictionary.

*. Totem - The default Gnome media-player frond-end (can be set-up to use both Gstreamer and Xine).

*. Abiword - A lightweight word processor for GNU Linux (cross-platform actually).

*. Shotwell - An awesome picture manager for Gnome.

*. The Ubuntu software center.

*. GNUmeric - spread-sheet application.

*. Nautilus Elementary version - Dah... :).

These are the main programs and there are no audio players. Totem is the only choice. I think the reason for this type of behavior from the developer may have something to do with wanting to keep the development process restricted to a minimum of apps but making a lot of customizations to those "chosen" apps which resulting a more "elementary-ed" OS.

This has to be expect since it was obvious from the beginning that the developers wanted to "keep" the respect they had or for the thing that they are quite famous for. In fact in the next release they are focused on creating a music player of their own!. I really like this attitude from them actually... sometimes you just gotta have some balls! to create something of your own.

Few apps such as the new Slingshot app launcher (in the screenshot) are "missing" in this release

Anyhow, still things such as the Slingshot (an application launcher) or Plank, etc seems to be missing. So hopefully those original Elementary apps will be available in their next release. To be honest, I haven't used Elementary OS... I never will probably... but for those of you who wants an easy to use, highly personalized (don't know how else to put it) Linux operating system, then the Elementary OS looks like an excellent option nonetheless.