Comment 22 for bug 1052152

I installed Luna beta, used it and I have to say it is a good solid OS. I would not go as far to use the word "polished" because it is still incomplete at many places. After using it for couple of days and elementary theme os Ubuntu I have realized a couple of things about the OS and the management that drives this OS:
1. There are few features that are very simple to implement, but are left out. A perfect example of this is installing elementary theme on Ubuntu OS. The theme is beautiful but it leaves user is a state of disgust with the white opaque selection background that comes up on desktop icons. Now one would think it is some bug of some kind but I have never seen any theme that would have an opaque background. After searching I realized, that it is removed by simply added two lines in a css file. after more searching I saw a comment by one of the eOS developer that they have not worked on this as eOS does not handle desktop.
2. Files: Files is a very light file manager. Well, it has to be since it is a fork of Marlin. Honestly, anything that ammonkey has started simply has been amazing, light and beautiful to look at. He admitted that one day we would like to see Marlin replace Nautilus as quite simply Nautilus does many things not in right way. And for that, it needs to implement some basic features that nautilus provides. "Desktop Icons". See a feature is something that people may or may not use. Essential feature is something that is vital for majority of users. This feature quite simply is... I have seen so many discussion, debates where the eOS developers advocate it is a waste of time and there are better way to organize files and folders. Admitted.. It is a couple of decade old way of handling files. But it frankly still happens to be an essential feature (see definition above).
3. Yorba Foundation: It is very easy to actually create a fork of Ubuntu. Please don't get me wrong, i am not trying to demean the efforts of Mint, eOS and other such communities. What I mean is creating a fork is not that complicated as creating an OS is. Given that I simply adore Yorba Foundation because they have not tried to do it. They have not forked Ubuntu or any other debian derivative to create another OS. What they are trying to do ( in co-ordination of many eOS developers I must say) is create good applications for such OS. I have to say that makes me admire them more then eOS. I had brief exchange of mails with Adam (founder of Yorba org) regarding the state of Geary and the features it lacks. I have to say I think he was the most modest person I have ever had a conversation with... He admitted the shortcomings of Geary and said they are trying to make it reach the stable 1.0 version which will have all basic features of a modern mail client. And hopefully it will replace thunderbird and evolution in most linux systems.
4. Other projects: Maya, Noise, Scratch. Almost all these projects offer incomplete functionality. Again, I am not trying to crib or demean I am merely presenting my critique.. eOS org already is short of resources as they have pointed it out then why are there so many open ended projects? Can scratch do all that geany/gedit does? Is Noise really offering something more than BeatBox?

Now for the conclusion, all projects of eOS are somehow made in the way that they can only be used with eOS. Be it their theme, their file manager etc. Users are forced to do what few developers decide. Yes those users are very happy with it, I am not doubting that and I am among such users when it comes to eOS. But this OS leaves users like me longing for much more than it offers.

My Suggestions:
1. Resources would be much wisely used to create an eco-system (not operating system) of softwares that might work with any linux OS. Eventually otherwise many developers will lose interest and will leave the project after which they will have no maintainer much like "files" is now...
2. Discard other project or put them on back burner and prioritize them. Take "Essential" feature out of these projects and implement them first. Only after that move to others...
3. Try spending more time or ask open help of the community to bridge these projects to other OS. Just do not let the user hanging. Say we are not doing this as we do not have time, but the moment someone comes up with a solution we will incorporate it in the next maintenance version.
4. Improve documentation on the website so more community members can help out. I know they are boring and tedious but the rewards they reap is many folds.
5. Last and foremost, please do not enforce your views on the user.