Has Chrome OS become ugly?

Has Chrome OS become ugly?

Chromebooks and Chromeboxes have done very well in terms of sales at Amazon and other retailers. But what about Chrome OS itself? Google has made some changes to it over the years and one redditor is wondering if Chrome OS has become ugly.

420blazeitquickscope asked his question about the current look of Chrome OS:

I remember getting a Chromebook in 2013 and loving how awesome the UI looked compared to the flat boringness of Windows 8 (which I know I probably shouldn’t say in a subreddit full of Material Design fans.) It just looked refreshing with the soft gradient touches and handsome glass window decorations.

Nowadays it’s gaudy, in-your-face colors that look like a bad theme for Windows 10. And yet, it follows Material Design to be “minimalist” but somehow ends up feeling much less minimalist than 2013 Chrome ever was. Minimize buttons to imitate Windows, and I dunno. Maybe I’m just a big stupid idiot for thinking this.

More at Reddit

His fellow redditors shared their thoughts about the appearance of Chrome OS:

KatsumeBlisk: “I honestly like them both. I like the transparency, but I also dig how Material Design looks. A more unified Google look is better in my opinion.”

Reygle: “I really hadn’t noticed having used it through each visual change. I have to say- I don’t really mind. I agree that material design is amazing on Android, but maybe not amazing on a laptop or desktop screen.

I’m just thrilled that they can do so much more (and so much more quickly!) now.

I really never thought I’d buy another ARM Chromebook after having used the Samsung for so long, but I did and I’m just pleased as punch with my C201. The changes they somewhat recently made to the display compositor has made ARM books (Yes, even the Series 3 Samsung) feel really zippy and responsive compared to before, so I’m quick to forgive things like the new Files app and the floating launcher.”

ExploringDev: “I think the new search button is ugly.”

Baseballandfreedom: “…material design is pretty awful on larger screens. It just ends up being a lot of wasted space.”

Mogwai: “I love chrome os but I think it needs a complete visual overhaul with everything material at once rather than one thing being ever so slightly updated every couple of months.”

Yusoff: “…material design is ugly.”

Nthpower: “Google has gotten a lot more colorful of late. I’m indifferent to it.”

Me2: “Yeah..it looked much better with transparency effects…”

Gargenville: “I don’t know how much truth there is to this because design trends seem to have been going in that direction anyway but a lot of people claim Microsoft came back from all the transparency and blur shenanigans of Vista/7 to a much flatter look because the PC market moved from desktops to laptops and it was eating a lot of battery. If that’s actually a thing it would make sense for a what, 95% mobile OS to not have a ton of resource-hogging transparency effects.”

Balefrost: “OTOH, MacOS has been ramping up the transparency effects, and it’s a very popular laptop OS. And I’m not an iPhone user, but my recollection is that iOS similarly uses a lot of transparency and blur. Surely it’s only necessary to recompute that if the window itself moves or if the thing behind the window changes. Maybe Microsoft’s repaint detect code wasn’t very good?”

More at Reddit

Solus distribution will be available October 1

The developer of the now defunct Solus OS distro has announced that a new distribution simply called Solus will arrive on October 1.

Silviu Stahie reports for Softpedia:

The Solus developers took everyone by surprise with their operating system because it looks like a traditional desktop experience, but the truth is that it’s nothing like that. If you use it even for a few minutes, you’ll notice that it’s actually a very modern OS hidden under a simple and efficient desktop design. In fact, the founder and main developer of Solus, Ikey Doherty, said this on many occasions. He wants a desktop operating system and nothing else.

The distribution changed its name recently, but that’s all behind now. The new name that was chosen is Solus, and some of you might confuse it with the old Solus OS. It’s easy to get confused since we’re talking about the same developer here, but the new distro dropped the OS part from the name. However, you should expect the same quality that you found in the first one.

…Solus is coming to a mirror near you on October 1. In the meantime, you can give the latest build of Solus a shot. It’s a Live CD, and it works very well on any configuration.

More at Softpedia

DistroWatch reviews antiX 15

antiX 15 is a Debian-based, lightweight distribution that is available in 32-bit or 64-bit versions. antiX 15 comes in three different versions: Core (which ships with almost no software preinstalled), Base (for older computers) and Full (for modern computers). DistroWatch has a review of the Full edition of antiX 15.

Jesse Smith reports for DistroWatch:

I quite enjoyed my time with antiX 15. The distribution is fairly easy to install, offers the user the choice of working with stable software repositories or rolling release/development repositories and antiX is very careful not to overwrite any data without our explicit permission. The distribution runs quickly and offers a fairly friendly interface that is also minimal in its resource usage.

I especially like that antiX ships with a wide variety of software and can complete many different tasks out of the box. Everything from productivity software to web browsing to transferring files to enjoying multimedia is available. If we need more software, we can access Debian’s massive software repositories where there are over 40,000 packages.

The antiX distribution worked quickly, properly detected all of my hardware and offered a nearly trouble-free experience. The one item on my wish-list is I would like to see some of the Control Centre modules launch nice graphical configuration tools rather than text editors, thereby lowering the bar to customizing the distribution’s interface. Those rare descents into configuration files aside, antiX was pretty beginner friendly. I think it is an excellent distribution for reviving old hardware or for giving a little additional pep to a computer that could do with a lighter user interface.

More at DistroWatch

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