Linux User & Developer: In your own words, what is elementary? How would you explain it to a friend in a bar?
Cassidy James: elementary is both an idea and a project. It’s the idea that computing should be fast, easy, beautiful, and free. It’s a project that includes an icon set, a suite of apps, and an operating system (elementary OS).
elementary OS, specifically, is an open source operating system that adheres to those ideas. It’s the best-of-the-best from elementary. It’s both powerful under the hood and beautifully simple.
We really don’t like to think of elementary OS as “yet another distro in the Linux world.” elementary OS is an operating system that’s just as good for your grandma as it is for an IT guy.
What niche in the distro ecosystem does it fill? What sets it apart from the crowd?
Daniel Foré: When talking about the role of elementary in the Linux ecosystem, I like to compare it to an album. There’s a lot of “Top 10″ and “Greatest Hits” distros out there. But elementary is one of the few that have produced the entire experience from beginning to end. We build a coherent experience with a whole new home grown interface.
Cody Garver: elementary OS adheres to strict ideas and rules for how an operating system should interact with users. The ideas and rules are defined in our human interface guidelines or otherwise decided on by the design team.