XPde Makes X11 Resemble Windows

Gentu writes "Here is another way of penetrating the Windows market, which might even prove more successful than the current efforts: XPde is a desktop environment that mimics the Windows 2000 look and feel and behavior. Currently on version 0.3, the team has re-created a number of applications from its Windows equivalents, including Explorer." T. cuts in: It looks like they've made a lot of progress since this project was last mentioned.

Comments

Screenshot Mirror ... All of them ...

[pgrote]

They screens look gorgeous. I don't know how they can use the copyrighted elements from Microsoft, but they look great.

Here is a real screenshot mirror with all the screem shots included. Thumbnails and full size:
Screen Shot Mirror

Re:Mirrors

[pgrote]

This is all of them. Thumbnails and normal size.

Screen Shot Mirror

The ROX desktop addresses these problems

[kollivier]

ROX is a desktop manager that isn't about mimicking any "desktop style", but focuses on usability issues - for example, it has (IMHO very good) solutions to the first two problems you mentioned.

In fact, I'd argue that it finally creates a Linux desktop that Joe Sixpack could be happy with. It doesn't spew an application's files all over the filesystem - instead it leaves them all inside the application's folder. In fact, double-clicking on the App's folder runs it! To delete a program, just delete that folder. Program preferences are stored in a Choices folder so that you can keep your preferences even if you delete a program.

And since you don't need to "Install" the program, you either move it to the system's "Apps" folder, or the "Apps" folder in the user's Home folder to install local or system apps. (BTW, as some may notice, it actually works very similarly to Mac OS X, which some people think is very easy to use. =) This makes managing the 'start menu' a non-issue. It also gives the user more power to manage their programs folder (i.e. create their own categories).

Check it out at:

http://rox.sourceforge.net

I've tried KDE and GNOME and while they look pretty enough, I never felt they were usable in the Mac or Windows sense. This desktop is definitely headed in the right direction... It may even convince me to put Linux on my PCs. I'm really surprised that most people haven't seen this yet!!

Sure, it requires apps to be modified (and it looks like many have already been), but sooner or later people are going to have to realize that this is far easier to understand for the desktop user. Linux (and Unix) were designed for server and terminal-based environments, not the desktop, so any solution will need to modify the current way of doing things. IMHO, this desktop addresses some of the most important issues and deserves more attention and support!

Re: True CLI

[JKR]

I do know what a true virtual machine, and when I label the MS dos emulator as a virtual machine, it's only because that's what I've read. Either way, it emulates DOS like other dos emulators do.

In that case, you don't know what "CMD.EXE" is; here's a free clue, it's NOT the same as COMMAND.COM. It's a real 32 bit process, which JUST HAPPENS to emulate some DOS commands.

CMD.EXE is a real CLI to Windows, in the same way that "bash" is a CLI to Linux; it's just that bash is more configurable and more powerful. CMD.EXE is most certainly NOT a virtual machine; start one up and compare the running processes to COMMAND.COM, which will start up an NTVDM.EXE process (which is actually the NT Virtual DOS Machine you have heard about).

NTVDM is also commonly found hanging out with WOWEXEC.EXE - this is the 16 bit Windows-on-Windows process which runs Win16 applications. Win64 on Itanium will use a similar mechanism to suport Win32, probably called WOWEXEC32 or similar.

Jon.