How good is gOS?

Gotta give credit for the gOS. In no time they are able to produce a Linux distribution that raises a huge hype and also made it to the Wal-Mart shelves - and to customers’ homes. Actually gOS is not an independent operating system, but a remastered version of Ubuntu Linux. The main difference is that they replaced the Gnome desktop environment of Ubuntu with Enlightenment, which is supposedly easier on the system resources and provides Macintosh OSX like bling for the visuals.

To be honest for some time I have been bugged by Ubuntu and Canonical. They managed to get significant user base and the most recent wave of desktop Linux hype is greatly due to Ubuntu’s success. They put a lot of effort in productization of Debian into a end-user friendly desktop environment, but in my opinion they do a half-ass job. While Ubuntu is very good and a solid platform, they have chosen not to polish the user interface and desktop environment at all. Their plain vanilla Gnome configuration combined with the brown/orange theme is anything but appealing.

So if Ubuntu is not willing to finalize their desktop properly, then others have to do it for them. LinuxMint is a fine example of Ubuntu based distribution that brings the initial user experience to a whole new level. And now gOS is doing the same, while aiming for commercial success via the deal with Everex that is producing the budged PCs that come with gOS pre-installed. I briefly tested gOS 1.0 when it first appeared and now it was time to check out their gOS v2.0 Rocket beta version.

As said, under the hood the gOS is Ubuntu v7.10 Gutsy, but with a new green Enlightenment desktop. It is quite a flashy theme, with a lot of similarities to Apple’s OSX. Unlike in any other operating system, the gOS promotes the web services by Google, even though they say they are not affiliated with them. The task bar includes Gmail, Blogger, Google Documents, just to name a few. Unfortunately the icons on the task bar are just links to websites and the integration does not go any further. There is also a large Google search gadget on the desktop.

The gOS v2.0 Rocket is in beta stage, and it certainly shows. Some icons in the notification area are broken (example: Pidgin instant messenger). I tried it on two computers, and on the other one the desktop froze every time after 5-10 seconds of usage (IBM ThinkPad X23, which runs Ubuntu just fine). Clicking the WLAN icon for network configuration in LiveCD mode caused Enlightenment to crash. It does work after installing, but once clicked it shows a rather awful user interface not skinned for gOS theme – certainly not newbie friendly. We also experienced more or less random Enlightenment crashes a few times, so there are some stability issues to solve.

I would see that gOS is a good fit for a net cafe or a public similar web client. A lot of stuff is inconveniently hidden and popular web services are brought up to the task bar. At first sight the Enlightenment look good and provides good visuals even without 3D acceleration, but honestly I don’t find it a very usable desktop environment. I have also tried the eLive distribution and came to the same conclusion. I actually wonder why they chose Enlightenment, as it is still in development stage, since they could have done the Mac OSX imitation with just about any desktop environment. In my opinion the Brasilian DreamLinux has done a similar desktop experience with much better results in their Debian based distribution using the resource friendly XFCE desktop environment.

So overall I don’t quite see gOS living up to the hype. Majority of the development credit goes to Ubuntu, while these guys are just giving it the finishing touches. On the other hand we must give gOS a lot of praise for bringing Linux for the average people, and raising the recent hype around Linux even futher. Budget PCs may finally be the break that Linux needs in order to become main stream. Go go gOS, and best of luck and success for the 2008!