Linux: How come Elementary Unleashed has Ease?

[sanctified Veteran]

I thouth Ease (The first real alternative to Powerpoint in Linux) was at very early alpha stage and was not available to the public. How come it's installed on the latest Elementary Unleasehd distro?

The official Gnome project page for Ease has nothing about it.

Here's a screenshot:

[Prince781]

I think Ease is okay. It'll be hard to beat PowerPoint in terms of 3D transitions and various other features, though.

Not to derail this topic, but this has been bothering me so much: Does ANYONE notice how many UI features this has blantantly ripped off from Mac OS X? I mean, come on, a 3D reflective Dock with similar icons?!!! Please tell me that this is a custom build and is not shipping to the masses.

[sanctified Veteran]

Of course we all notice :p Shuttleworth and his minions love the OS X GUI. They have said in several interviews that, for them, it's the perfect GUI. Not that I blame them, I mostly agree with them (Mostly because, llet's be honest, Finder sucks without Total Finder).

[farmeunit]

Looks interesting, but how is it feature-wise? Looks kind of sparse. I've used Impress quite a bit and no real issues.

[Prince781]

Of course we all notice :p Shuttleworth and his minions love the OS X GUI. They have said in several interviews that, for them, it's the perfect GUI. Not that I blame them, I mostly agree with them (Mostly because, llet's be honest, Finder sucks without Total Finder).

-_- You would think that creativity would be more usable, especially for the army of Linux developers who work on these sorts of things every day. I mean, if other companies like Microsoft can come up with their own unique GUI, what's stopping these guys?

[sanctified Veteran]

Looks interesting, but how is it feature-wise? Looks kind of sparse. I've used Impress quite a bit and no real issues.

It's sparse because it's in its early development. The developing philosophy for this app (and in my opinion it should be the philosophy for all apps) is too have a small base set of features and polish them as much as possible. Then add the next batch of features (if needed).

-_- You would think that creativity would be more usable, especially for the army of Linux developers who work on these sorts of things every day. I mean, if other companies like Microsoft can come up with their own unique GUI, what's stopping these guys?

Developers =/= GUI Designers.

In fact developers are the worst designers (Remember the GUI hall of shame?).

Yeah, it's not original, but at least I appreciate that they are trying to copy something intuitive instead of TRYING to do something new just for the sake of originality. Just look at Unity, it's an intuitivity hell.

[4CxbqFxVnstmA Veteran]

It's sparse because it's in its early development. The developing philosophy for this app (and in my opinion it should be the philosophy for all apps) is too have a small base set of features and polish them as much as possible. Then add the next batch of features (if needed).

This does look promising. I use LibreOffice Impress, but all competition is good. I'll be looking into this! :)

[tiagosilva29]

I use Beamer for presentations. Ease is perfectly fine as a GNOME presentation software.

[.Neo]

Does ANYONE notice how many UI features this has blantantly ripped off from Mac OS X?

These days most Linux distros and window managers are nothing but half-assed rip-offs of Mac OS X' Aqua with hints of Windows Aero's features.

[sanctified Veteran]

I use Beamer for presentations. Ease is perfectly fine as a GNOME presentation software.

I will check this out. But as far as I know, all LaTeX based apps are very hard to use, arent they?

[tiagosilva29]

I will check this out. But as far as I know, all LaTeX based apps are very hard to use, arent they?

Well, Beamer is just a LaTeX class... all you need is a text editor and the manuals! :p

[fremantle]

Ease is indeed in alpha stage, but it is pretty usable right now. I am using it on EU without any issues, and it also integrates nicely with the elementary desktop.

These days most Linux distros and window managers are nothing but half-assed rip-offs of Mac OS X' Aqua with hints of Windows Aero's features.

most Linux users love docky, and if you didn't know, the icon and gtk themes are elementary, they look quite different from os x. I do admit that all in all it looks similar to os x, but if thats how people want their desktops to look, i don't think its a crime.

[sanctified Veteran]

Ease is indeed in alpha stage, but it is pretty usable right now. I am using it on EU without any issues, and it also integrates nicely with the elementary desktop.

most Linux users love docky, and if you didn't know, the icon and gtk themes are elementary, they look quite different from os x. I do admit that all in all it looks similar to os x, but if thats how people want their desktops to look, i don't think its a crime.

Is there anyway to compile it for Natty?

[ViperAFK]

I could't get it working in natty for the life of me, but it was in the fedora 15 repos so I installed in there. Pretty much unusable right now... Couldn't even edit anything, it said "double click to edit" and double clicking just did nothing. Also some of the menus don't even do anything yet. I don't know why on earth anyone would include this as a default app in its current state.

[fremantle]

I could't get it working in natty for the life of me, but it was in the fedora 15 repos so I installed in there. Pretty much unusable right now... Couldn't even edit anything, it said "double click to edit" and double clicking just did nothing. Also some of the menus don't even do anything yet. I don't know why on earth anyone would include this as a default app in its current state.

I have no idea why its not working in fedora, to be honest I have never used fedora for more than a week in my life :p

However, in Ubuntu it just works. Double clicking to edit, saving as a pdf, playing the slideshow in fullscreen with smooth transitions, all of them worked. Right now its super minimalistic, but I hope it will become something more in future.

And the other question, you can follow the instructions in ease-project.org, they have a pretty simple instruction on how to build ease from git. My suggestion is, first get all the build dependencies using "sudo apt-get build-dep ease" and then start from their instructions.

[fremantle]

I've put together a little video showing how EASE works in the latest version of EU. Done with gtk-recormydesktop and output is .ogv, so DO NOT expect anything smooth and crisp looking. Just to show you how EASE performs :D

ps.: its on my dell mini9

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrbyANB4ii0

this is new, the video seems tilted...at least yt handled ogv...