Elementary OS 8 'Circe' conjures Wayland magic Elementary OS 8 "Circe" is here, based on Ubuntu 24.04, with Wayland support in the Pantheon desktop. Elementary has its own desktop environment, Pantheon, which resembles a desktop version of iPadOS. The release supports Wayland, which the login screen amusingly calls a "secure session," as opposed to a "classic session" …
Ubuntu has a built in updater that I've found to be very slick (and broke far less things than when I updated Mint the other day on another machine).
Debian requires you to play with some config files to redirect everything to the new repo. Doesn't look too bad but I'd imagine rather daunting for the average home user.
Liam mentioned this issue in passing, which is not limited to this OS; others will only let you update if you have /home in a separate partition. Now I'm thinking about what's involved in having an installer look at a single-partition setup and break it into the desired / and /home partitions. (After which the install can proceed.)
Let's say you have one drive-filling partition, with just enough empty space to hold the files that would be in /. (Which most of us have; most of our hard drives are cluttered with "our" stuff, and the root partition doesn't have to be all that big. Though I must admit I've plenty of older machines with smaller hard drives... we also have the issue that some file systems lack support for shrinking. But I think this would be possible most of the time.)
You shrink the existing partition enough to make room for the new root partition, create said partition, and move files over to it. So the root directory of your original partition contains only the /home directory. Run mv /home /, modify the /etc/fstab in the new root partition to know where it should now look for /home (and to boot from the new partition), and you're in business.
I think the installer could do this in a non-scary way, and either say "yes, we can turn this into a two-partition drive and update" or "sorry, you don't have enough room/your filesystem won't support this".
The tool to split the partition (maybe call it Homewrecker?) could then be used and improved by a variety of distros. Might just be a tool by itself, to be downloaded and run before you install the distro of your choice.
> You shrink the existing partition enough to make room for the new root partition,
Huh. At that point I thought you'd made a typo, but no.
I have never tried it this way: keep `/home` where it is and move everything else.
I've done it the other way a few times: leave `/` where it is and move everything under `/home` somewhere else. In size, it's probably a lot bigger, but the OS will mostly boot and run if /home is missing, so recovery is easier!
I enabled `root` and worked as root to do it, because uniquely, root's home directory is usually `/root` and so it is not under `/home`.
1. Shrink main partition (as you said)
2. Make new partition (again, as you said)
3. Copy everything in `/home` to the new partition.
4. Adjust permissions appropriately on the new filesystem *and its mount point*
5. Add it to `/etc/fstab` at some safe location such as `/newhome`
6. Reboot, check it mounts, check users can access it.
7. If all is well, rename old `/home` to `/oldhome` or something. Rename `/newhome` to `/home`.
8. Reboot, check everything works.
9. If all good, delete `/oldhome`. Reboot again and check again.
10. Resize now mostly-empty `/` partition.
It's a lot of work and takes a long time. It is also failure-prone. I would not recommend it.
Easier:
Backup your stuff, reinstall the OS in the desired partitioning scheme, restore your stuff.
These days, it's often viable to either:
[a] use a new drive, because storage is cheap. The old drive is your #1 backup
[b] reinstall OS in some spare space on the original drive, if your drive is big enough and you have lots of available space. Dual boot old OS installation and new installation.
True, your "move /home" stunt is simpler and safer. But it does require enough space for /home to be duplicated.
I think the stunt I've described, surrounded with checks to make sure the partition is resizable and there's sufficient space for /home, could be made equally safe for an OS installer or updater. (With maybe some logic to check which is larger, /home or everything else, and move things around accordingly.) As you say, doing it by hand is "...a lot of work and takes a long time." I wouldn't recommend it either.
In practice, almost every time I've moved to a new distro or upgraded, it's been from an older system with a drive that would now be considered "small". So moving to a new drive is safer, gives me more space, and means I can put the old drive on a shelf as a backup. Your solution [a], in other words.
Up to a point, and only for people who really understand what they’re doing. Even for most Linux users this argument doesn’t hold much water (or we’d all be using Arch). And this is the main problem with Linux as a desktop OS - most people don’t know what they’re doing. Functionality wise, Linux scores 100%. Appearance wise (and, by extension, consistency wise) Linux still has a long was to go - even the best looking Linux is only consistent as far as the apps that it comes with are concerned (the instant you install a third party application the illusion of consistency gets thrown out of the window). And for day to day work, I think we’d all like a consistent OS - whether we admit to it or not.
Fingers on the downvote button. I’m about to be controversial. I love Linux. All of my servers run it. Hell, my games boxes run it as well (Steam and RetroPie). But for work? I need to be fast and efficient, and I still want Unixy underpinnings, so I use a Mac. It gets worse (or better, depending on your point of view). All of the members of my teams, barring two hold-outs who’re sticking with Windows (it takes all sorts), have switched too - even the hard core Linux hold-outs. Once you overcome any prejudices you might have, once you drop any geek machismo that you might be holding on to, you find that consistency can be a great accelerator in day to day tasks.
> consistency can be a great accelerator in day to day tasks.
Indeed. When I fire up a word processing app, I see a menu option called EDIT however, the one thing none of it's functions does, is allow me to edit my file.
This happens with all the programs. Slavishly repeating the historical error made by MS, decades ago and continued as everybody "knows" what lies behind that option.
Cut, Copy, Paste and Delete are always in the Edit menu. They feel like typical editing tasks. Similarly, Edit feels like a good place to put Undo (and by extension Redo). I suppose you could have an extra menu for Select tasks - but the menu bar might get a bit unwieldy. Looking through my Edit menus they do all seem to be the sort of tasks an Editor might use. But fine. Rename it. But be consistent about the name, its contents and its use.
A small point of correction though - it's not Microsoft's error. Once again, this seems to be an example of the industry slavishly following Apple's lead. Origin of the file edit view help menus
Functionality wise, Linux scores 100%.
Depends on what you class as functionality and what you class as appearance - personally I find that Windows is still better for:
1. Display Scaling - especially where you have multiple monitors (say a laptop in a docking station in a corporate setting plus a pair of desk monitors) where you only want to scale one monitor (the laptop monitor)
b) Visual assistance, namely for colourblind people. I suffer from red/green colourblindness and I find the Windows accessibility tool works well to "shift" the colours to where I can easily tell the difference. I have yet to find anything similar built into Gnome, XFCE, or Cinnamon (to be honest I've not been looking elsewhere). Even the Android tools on my phone a. adjust the colours badly for my eyes and 2) stop me using the blue light filter in the evenings so I have to have it off.
Elementary isn't for me but the distribution has always emphasized design and usability and I credit it with helping nudge the rest of desktop Linux along in the right direction, especially back in the day when anything that looked good on screen was often derided as eye candy.
Good now to see the emphasis on accessibility, where Linux lags.
...I was looking at it and thinking, "huh, a small image superimposed over a scaled-up, blurred version of itself. Where have I seen that graphical technique used before?"
And then it came to me. Anyone else here remember Lotus Turbo Challenge II on the Amiga, and its loading screens for each track? :)
(https://youtu.be/oLQiwjGrEjE?t=187 if you have no idea what I'm talking about)
Circe was the bewitching lass that turned men into pigs (swine) not that they generally need any assistance.
Calypso was the nicer one who whatever her failings at least could usefully provide a chap with an adze.
Nausicaa was a sensible, decent young woman but as usual it's the bad girls that grab the headlines. :)
"Sadly, in our testing, ... the Wayland session wasn't usable."
(Obligatory Wayland-hate comment withheld)
Speaks for itself.
X.org : STOP WASTING DEV TIME ON WAYLAND AND STREAMLINE X11 INSTEAD!!!!! Linux and FreeBSD are NOT Micros~1 Windows, will NEVER BE Micros~1 Windows, and you are DIVIDING THE OPEN SOURCE COMMUNITY!!!
J U S T _ S T O P _ I T !!!
I want to like ElementaryOS, I really do. And each new version I have tried and ended up replacing it. The elementary apps, like the OS are pretty, but limited and you end up having to load lots of other apps in to do the things you want to do which kind of negates the whole point of their OS. Great for a basic beginner but not much else.
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