We have Elementary OS as a choice for beginners. Thought I'd install it, so I read some reviews first. There are probably some favourable reviews out there but I never found any. Most reviews described serious difficulties. And I think the release is still 0.4.1.
I didn't install it, but some beginners might, especially when they see it is 'like' a Mac. Not sure it's a good choice for them. I don't think anyone in the club uses it either, which is telling.
If you are referring to the reviews listed on Distrowatch, they are of version 0.4 and not the 0.4.1 update that may have addressed the glitches from the Distrowatch review. Jesse, the reviewer, uses AMD hardware and seems to have more problems than most with the various distros he reviews. The Dolmeido review was of the live disc; he never installs. The 3rd review listed, Teo of Mac (http://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2016/10/29/2240), was a positive review.
I had an earlier version installed briefly. I never had a problem with it, but it wasn't that interesting to me, because of all reasons, its Mac-like appearance. (If I want something Mac-like I can run the real thing.) I know Jason was running it for awhile; I'll leave him to speak to his own experience of it. But from my experience, I see no reason not to recommend it to a beginner.
I probably used it for more than a year and had no issues with it. It has an 8.7 rating from 87 reviewers on distrowatch. And as far as I know, it still gets updates through Ubuntu upstream. It's basically Ubuntu with a different desktop environment.
But if you want to point me to some of those reviews, I'd be happy to take a look at them. I'd suggest you give it a try, though.
https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/elementary-0-4-loki-again.html
What Fox said above, he tested it as a live disk only and admits that most distros don't work with the particular machine he used and then he complains when it didn't work with his. And also as Fox said, he was testing 0.4.0 instead of 0.4.1 and because he only tested in live mode it doesn't have the updates (that would have turned it into 0.4.1 and quite possibly fixed his problems with it.
I don't see it as a good review, particularly that he didn't even test installing it and concluded that if it didn't work very well as live, then why bother installing? I think lots of distros don't work that well as a live version. He also seemed negative in general about Linux desktops which makes me wonder if he went in wanting to hate it:
QuoteThe Linux desktop needs a reset. We're now in a post-Ubuntu world, with Unity gone, and we're back in sad and forlorn 2005. There isn't a single major project out there where you can look and say, wow, there's gonna be a fun and exciting year ahead of us. Well, maybe one or two. The rest? Just run-of-the-mill stuff. The forums are quiet, because there isn't anything to report, and rehashing kernel versions and desktop versions isn't really worth anyone's time.
I think elementary OS represents this crisis quite well.
Many of the things he complained about I didn't run across. But so far I only see that Mike and I both had great experiences with it and this guy didn't.
Do try it out yourself, Harry. I think the install is like 15 minutes, at least I remember it being that fast, and that was before I had an SSD. Even a VM install is going to be better than a live version.
So I am in the process of trying it out as a virtual machine. I have quite mixed feelings about it. But I'll switch over to
Best Linux Distro as a Guest in a Win 10 System