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XPde 0.5 - A Linux Desktop for Windows Users
Nissan Dookeran writes "From the website: 'The XPde Team today announced the immediate availability of XPde 0.5.0, a complete rewrite of the XPde desktop environment...XPde aims to recreate the Windows XP desktop environment on Linux in order to allow Windows users to "feel at home" in front of a Linux computer' Full announcement of release here with screenshots here. Might be a good transitional tool for Windows users looking not wanting to give up their eye-candy interface initially. The main page also has a good PDF document regarding legal issues when developing software that emulates Windows functions. A StarOffice version of the document also available."
g1powermac already created a livecd using Morphix that has xpde5 inside. Just boot it using desktop=xpde5 boot parameter. It will default to 0.4.2 since xpde5 is still lacking some of the features. Sourceforge download
I liked the last version much, even though it was far from complete. But IIRC it was based on Kylix, and there was no good way to run it on any other architecture than x86.
So can I run this completely rewritten version on our Sun boxes?
Mirrors
xpde.qadram.com
xpde.holobit.net
xpde.tech-critic.com
xpde.abenks.com
xpde.debian.co.nz
toxic-systems.de/xpde
xpde.linuxring.hu
xpde.gaesi.org
xpde.jt-webservice.de
In my expirience with advocating GNU/linux there is enough Linux hype going around to convince some-one to take a look, and the KDE/Gnome desktops are in themselves easy on the eyes. The problem is to convinvce someone to work at learning the new system.
GNU/Linux is diffrent then windows! I hope it will always remain so, but when talking about user friendlyness the problem isn't with switching windows or what your icons look like, it is more about setting up programs.
In the GNU/Linux world people still open a text console on a every day basis, Somw of us find it the more convinient way of managing the system.
I have several times tried using some automatic configuration tool(usually by Mandrake) and quickly found myself opening emacs in a split window with a man page and a config file.
In many cases the problem is with the GNU/Linux gurus not being able to help with GUI tools. On several ocasions my brother came to me with linux questions how do I do this or that and I knew my way of doing it(Typing in a console window) but I knew very little of which GUI tool will do the job and how.
These are the major issues in GNU/Linux UI
Me
I mirrored the screenshot:
Screenshot
A shot of the 0.5.0 release, the rest of shots are from the previous release.
Uhh, those icons are from the crystal icon set that comes with a lot of linux distros. They may look similar to the XP/2k icons but they're certainly not direct copies of the Windows icons.
xpde.qadram.com
xpde.holobit.net
xpde.tech-critic.com
xpde.abenks.com
xpde.debian.co.nz
toxic-systems.de/xpde
xpde.linuxring.hu
xpde.gaesi.org
xpde.jt-webservice.de
Jonah Hex
hexagon.tk
Xpde.qudram.com
idyllic != idealistic
c
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=idylli
I was looking at the screenshots before the site was on slashdot, and they got saved to my cache. here is a mirror, but the connection is not that fast.
I detect a smidgen of trolling going on here dude....
That said, I agree with you about the GUI. One of the reasons I stopped using Linux (after having used it in some capacity for about 4 years) is that, to my eyes, XP is just prettier.
Seriously though if you have been using linux for around 4 years you must have seen many many cases where Linux can look soooo much nicer than XP's fisherprice look and feel, sheesh!
I've got mine set up to look like OSX Panther
here is a screenshot! how subjective is that ? And personally if I had to stare at those garish XP colors all day i'd imagine my eyes would hurt pretty bad.
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
Well the Trash is no longer the Trash when you drag a disk to it, it's *gasp* an Eject icon. This was always planned to happen beginning in the Copland era (1994/5/6) but wasn't accomplished until Mac OS X. For the floppy problem, Steve solved that bit of confusion real quick by eliminating them. ;)
Mandrake isn't for power users, and it has no UI's for a lot of Hardware setups, Try SuSE, though it's probably not for power users either it has a lot of UI's mandrake doesn't have. I was surprised with the joystick UI, I got a analog digital joystick that you have to hand stands to get to work in windows to work perfectly, I couldn't even get Mandrake to see the joystick port. SuSE also has a lot of hot plug support, a lot of this is broken in the 2.6 kernel but when 9.1 comes out this will hopefully be fixed.
Star Trek, there maybe hope.