I personally don’t use it anymore, and its parent company, Canonical, hasn’t had the best track record (It’s better than Microsoft at least). However, it’s by far the most popular consumer Linux distribution and a lot of people start out with it. It has introduced a lot of people to Linux and maybe even convinced many of them to switch from closed source operating systems. It was my first full time Linux distro.
Do you think it has a net positive or negative on the Linux scene, and would you personally ever use it?
Elementary OS has the best out-of-box install IMO. Like something that you could install for a grandparent and require almost no instruction from you.
If I were to install something for someone who’s not imprinted on by Windows I might actually pick Elementary OS. They actually seem to care about simplicity, accessibility and style which is an impression I don’t really get from any other distro in the same way.
I periodically check out Pantheon (their DE) for some freshness, so I keep a configuration file for it around and just swap
./plasma.nixforpantheon.nixin my NixOS module imports. In fact I might just check it out right now! (This is why I want this kind of distro to recommend to friends - you just hand them a configuration file with cool stuff to show them).