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Pantheon (desktop environment)

elementary OS
Elementary logo.svg
ElementaryOS Loki.png
elementary OS "Loki"
OS family Unix-like
Working state In beta stage
Source model Open source
Initial release 31 March 2011; 5 years ago (2011-03-31)
Latest preview 0.4.0 "Loki" / 9 September 2016; 6 months ago (2016-09-09)
Update method APT (AppCenter)
Package manager dpkg
Platforms x86-64
Kernel type Monolithic (Linux kernel)
Default user interface Pantheon
License GNU GPL, LGPL, and various other free software licenses
Official website elementary.io

elementary OS is a Linux distribution based on Ubuntu. It is the flagship distribution to showcase the Pantheon desktop environment, similar to how Linux Mint introduced Cinnamon.

The elementary OS project aims to solve a number of perceived deficiencies in the established desktop environments:

Although not contrary to the GNU philosophy, these deliberate design choices diverge from what most GNU/Linux distributions opt for: a freedom to set up and customize one's own desktop environment. The Human Interface Guidelines of the elementary OS project focus instead on immediate usability with a gentle learning curve, rather than full-fledged customization. The three core rules the developers set for themselves were "concision", "avoid configuration" and "minimal documentation".

Since its inception, elementary OS has received both praise and criticism for its design, which closely resembles that of macOS both visually and in terms of user experience.

Pantheon's main shell is deeply integrated with other elementary OS applications like Plank (a dock), Epiphany (the default web browser) and Scratch (a simple text editor). This distribution uses Gala as its window manager, which is based on Mutter.

Pantheon is built on top of the GNOME software base, i.e. GTK+, GDK, Cairo, GLib (including GObject and GIO), GVfs and Tracker


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