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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."
hey, it's the secure WinXP release! (duck for cover)
This is a cool project. Windows is awesome. It is good to finally see Linux users realizing that the Windows UI is the best one there is and adapting to use it.
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
It's easy to use and very fast! (I tried 0.4) but it lacked essential DE stuff. If they keep up the good work and more developers join the team, that could become a good xp looking-like DE.
Shouldn't that be a Windows desktop for Linux users?
if MS can take down "Lindows", they can definitely take down "XPde Professional".
some of the icons are so similar that it looks like they've changed maybe one or two pixels at most.
Isn't this similar to the reason why Apple took Microsoft to court over the similarities between Mac OS and Windows? Or similar to the reason why Apple took some folks to court because they copied the look and feel of their Aqua GUI?
... look at a screenshot ... Start button is named Start, My Desktop is My Desktop, etc. Watch the headlines here in a week to a month for the cease-and-desist letter from MS to the XPde folks. Makes me glad I have a friend going through law school ... heh.
I don't mean to piss in anyone's Corn Flakes, but damn
Even superheroes once were losers
Is there any legal issue with this? As I remember Apple always threatens those who reproduce the Mac OS user interface. Would Microsoft do the same?
I tried this out one night when I was planning out a desktop for a person I knew who wanted to try out Linux. On a visual level, it was very well put together, and one could forget they were in Linux until one tried out the control panel, or wanted to get any work done. Menus and things still had to be assembled manually also, which didn't mean too much to me, as it was still 0.31 at the time. It wasn't ready for my friend's system, and I ended up putting Gnome 2.2 on there which they were more than happy with. I'd say this project definitely has a future, from what I see their mock-up of the Win2K desktop was pretty right on target, behaviors and all. The lack of some key features are what kept it from being ready, but I imagine much of it will be dependent on the distribution, placing icons in the start menu, etc when one installs a .deb, .rpm, or runs an emerge.
.
If XP has eye candy then I'm superman. The first thing I do on any install is take away that snot green interface and replace it with the classic interface.
I think that one of the areas that linux can really beat windows given enough effort is with it's desktop environments.
Given this, wouldn't it be better for people migrating from windows to become acustomed to the more powerful desktop environment of linux, rather than one which sacrifices some good features for the sake of making windows users feel more at home?
Also, if you shroud the differences between windows and linux behind a look-alike gui as soon as something goes wrong, or the user trys to install something the os will likely throw up a very un-windows like error, which will most likely confuse the user, leaving a sour taste about linux in their mouth.
You may claim my $0.02 via Paypal or Direct Credit
Man, the more I watch the Linux world from the outside, the less i'm beginning to believe in "the revolution". It would be funny if it wasn't crushingly dissapointing - Two sides that "just don't get it".
*Sigh*
Pretty much all window managers-themes look /horrible/ on linux, this looks nice and might just make it more attractive for people to switch.
Might encourage them to try it but it also makes them less likely to stick with it when they find thing don't work quite right. A different appearance helps people with the learning experience because they have visual cues that things ARE different. Mimicking XP's appearance will mean they're constantly caught off guard by small differences, and they'll find that harder to cope with than bigger differences would have been.
The real Ralph Yarro posts as Anonymous Coward. Anyone else is an impostor.
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
I have mixed feelings about this. At first I thought "if linux is better than windows, why try to be windows". But then I realised, that this is exactly what I'd show people whom I wanted to convert to linux. For most people, the GUI is Windows. They don't know about kernel stuff or hardware compatibility issues (if it works). If they saw this, with a properly wordes sales pitch "free, no viruses, cool geek factor" etc, I think a "sale" would be easier.
I do have concerns about the legal side of the project, but other posters has already made good comments about that.
Very few people have made a conscious choice for Windows and its UI, and few people will really base their future decisions on this.
95% of the angst most people feel from using Windows comes from one single thing: security. I find it remarkably easy to switch people to a distro like Xandros by telling them: it is safe and will protect your photos and documents from viruses, trojans, and worms.
All that is needed is a reasonable level of compatibility so that people can continue to make their documents & spreadsheets, download their photos from their digital cameras, and email their friends.
Not a single person ever says: "but it looks nothing like Windows!" - the only counter objection is that "certain things do not work".
Emulating XP safely may be an intellectual challenge but it is not part of the Linux sales argument. Distributions like Xandros - which install easily, and handle smoothly - are.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
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
As long as there is choice, there will be no breakthrough. One more choice won't help either.
Sure, starting in various ends will perhaps give a Darwinian process of development, but now with a plethora of applications developed on the different desktops, incompatible with eachother, there will be no survival of the fittest. All the desktop technologies seem doomed to live side by side forever. sigh.
seems even at 6:30 am the site is getting slashdotted but, for one, i like it.
i know microsoft is the devil and all that, but i've grown accustomed to the XP interface at work. i use SuSE linux at home, and i like it. however, at work i use xp and find its interface better in many ways.
if only we could integrate all the hardware settings into the main gui like xp does for display settings and such, then linux would really take off with a window manager like this.
there's also a lot to say for copying OS X, or developing our own little gui interface altogether, but that's another post...
Emory: Uh..we're still..beta testing that.
Oglethorpe: What you're testing is me and my patience!
Does this mean that for "Windows users", Tux will be replaced with Tinky-Winky?
Hell is not other people; it is yourself. - Ludwig Wittgenstein
I mirrored the screenshot:
Screenshot
A shot of the 0.5.0 release, the rest of shots are from the previous release.
If you really want to you can run KDE on Cygwin.
The purpose of actually swapping out the UI in Windows and running GNU/X/etc. over the kernel frankly escapes me. The Win32 kernel isn't particularly sturdy and doesn't itself really offer any benefits over, say, the Linux or BSD kernel.
ReactOS already has their explorer replacement running natively on ReactOS and WinXP.
KDE and GNOME wouldn't be that hard. It would really only involve usage of native ports of their respective toolkits (Qt Win32 non commercial edition and GTK+2)
Keep in mind there are other alternatives like LiteStep etc.
Sorry, that was me. I scrolled down using the middle button, which also moves the dropdown selection.
Just to prove I'm not on crack, I'm posting this to undo the moderation.
"It's not your information. It's information about you" - John Ford, Vice President, Equifax
I really don't see the point. People claim that users will be "comfortable" with a Microsoft work-alike, like aping Microsoft's interface will somehow ease the path for regular users.
Fast flash: Microsoft breaks all of their UI conventions with every major rev. Everything from the start menu to common control panels to file managers are all wildly different from one rev to the next. A slavish adherence to Microsoft standards will only put you behind when they move on to the next mediocre interface, wasting a lot of effort that could be geared towards making a better, friendlier, easier-to-grok-than-Microsoft interface that "Joe User" will take to like a fish to water. Kinda like, you know, how Apple does with the Macintosh? And no, this does not mean to mimic the MOSX interface. Get creative and think everything through to the logical end, and you'll be all right. See the earlier article on ROX.
Aping Microsoft won't steal users, it will just confuse them when stuff breaks because it doesn't precisely match up with the way its Microsoft analogue works.
SoupIsGood Food
I've used windoze on my machine since win3.1. I've done the 3.11 thing, 95, 98, 2000 and now xp. I'm an engineer and did tech support for my department. I grew up with computers, I remember playing with a sinclair when I was like 6 or something.
I tried redhat 5.2 when it was current, got it installed as a dual boot, got X configured manually, got on the internet with it. Couldn't do anything else, thought it was a neat thing but not of much use, and removed it.
Tried redhat 7.2, and while the install was SO much easier, I simply didn't have the patience and time to learn how to recompile the Kernel, compile my apps, and become a command line wizard just to get anything done. (I knew a bit about the command line, I had used sun boxes at work for CAD)
Flash forward to this year, I seriously wanted to get linux to work, I want to have a fast, streamlined system with lots of good, free software. I installed Mandrake 9.2, and I *am* seriously impressed with this thing. I got so much of it working, the way it handles the rpm's is great, the desktop is great, the install was great, but why am I still using windows?
I can't figure out how to maneuver around X to update my video drivers and I can't get Firewire working. My goal is to have a killer video editing machine, and I gots to have firewire. The hoops I jumped through to get the video capture software working was dependency hell, and in the end I couldnt get the 1394 subsystem working.
Again, I don't have the time, I can install windows and have it all in just a couple hours. Maybe later... I promise, I will try again. I AM a power user. I AM competent enough. I HAVE programmed. I just don't have the patience and time to have to make things work that take a SINGLE CLICK and work OUT OF THE BOX in windows. Here's my point: Either give me to a single, difinitive guide that explains these problems or make it as easy as windows. I WANT To use linux, and I'm not alone. Help us.
Flappinbooger isn't my real name
graphics card drivers, network drivers, tv-out, many things that have drivers in windows that don't in linux. this is the only situation i can think of.
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.
This is a typical example of critics proposing the wrong solution to a problem.
We don't need one implementation, we need implementations to be compatible and interoperable! Instead of trying to make a dictatorship, go support effords like Freedesktop.org.
GTK has C++ bindings and QT has C bindings, so it doesn't matter what language you use.
"The linux people need to understand that ONE half-assed product is better than the choice between TWO superb products."
What?! Being forced to use one car that breaks down every week is better than being able to choose between two cars that don't break down for years?
Being forced to use DOS as a server OS is better than being able to choose between Linux and Solaris?
You are heavily underestimating peoples' intelligence and their ability to choose.
Again, we need interoperability and compatibility, not a dictatorship.
Since when was XP eyecandy? Looks like they haven't looked at enlightenment recently... You get multiple desktops *overlapping*, the bottom of the screen ripples and waves with a watery reflection of the windows, windows slide in smoothly rather than just appear, the list goes on!
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
Exactly. There's choice on the desktop area because people disagree! Forcing one implementation down everyone's throat will make about 50% of the userbase unhappy. Do you really want to pay that price just for the sake of avoiding potential confusing?
The top parent post is yet another example of critics proposing the wrong solution to a problem.
What we need is interoperability and compatibility. Don't try to make a dictatorship, encourage effords like Freedesktop.org instead.
Luckily interoperability is improving more and more. I don't know about KDE but both GNOME 2.6 and ROX have adopted the Freedesktop.org MIME standard. All desktops have already adopted the Xdnd standard quite a while ago. KDE 3.0+ has adopted the clipboard standard. GNOME 2, and I believe KDE 3.2 too, have adopted the menu vFolder standard. This list goes on and on.
What people really want is to be able to write software that can integrate in every desktop. They want to write for one standard and work anywhere.
That's exactly why we need interoperability and compatibility, not a single implementation.
Whilst the idea of making something familiar to people switching from Windows is all very nice and that, there are some issues:
1) It doesn't need to be exactly analogous in order for someone to know what is going on. Windows users appears to handle the change from classic interface to XP interface without suddenly dying!
2) I can see that they have recreated some of Windows' worst aspects as well in the name of familiarity. I saw the old 16-colour drop down box in one of the screenshots, surely a relic from the 80's or something! Sadly this also means that Windows' nasty way of having configuration utilities spread everywhere is recreated - whereas a single configuration utility like KDE's is much better overall, especially if it was simplified.
I really don't see why they have to recreate the frustrating aspects of Windows! Shouldn't they be striving to improve upon Windows whilst retaining familiarity?
That's an interesting idea.
Now someone should write a clone of COMMAND.COM for Linux, for as we all know it's The Superior Command Interpreter(tm).
Sure it may look like XP, it may even ACT like XP, but when aunt martha wants to upgrade Real (or Winamp, or Internet Explorer, or Mozilla, or Flash) she's gonna pick the XP version to download and the app will fail.
She'll either call her service technician (you), or take it to CompUSA, where the tech will blow a gasket trying to figure out why his windows based diagnostic tools don't work.
I'm not saying there aren't linux equivalent apps for most windows XP things, but there isn't a 1 to 1 correlation, and the Devil is in the Details.
Case in point: I got my mom an iOpener one year. It worked well, it did what she needed, but she always felt there was stuff she couldn't do because the device couldn't accomodate 100% of the things her church buddies could do. (Quicktime? Windows Media? Get infected with Gator?)
Granted, that's not all bad - especially the inherent security features, but it IS an issue that will arise.
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
The point of the Windows GUI is not that it looks nice, it's that you can do everything in it. If this project provided a functional Add/Remove Programs, Device Manager and Control Panel then that would be a good thing. But it doesn't. To be fair the authors didn't intend it to do anything but recreate the look, but I think that will be counterproductive. It will only serve to make the limitations of a GNU/Linux system in terms of ease of installation and configuration of hardware and software more obvious.
The day you put the driver or software CD into your machine, click "install" and it Just Works(tm) - your new printer appears with an icon along with the rest, your software appears in the menu, the control panel lets you configure your new graphics card - is the day ordinary folk will switch to Linux.
The project has set out what it intended to achieve - a Windows XP look-alike. So well done on that front. But I think the authors are wrong if they think the look of the GUI is what's stopping people adopting GNU/Linux for the desktop.
Intellectual Property
Intellectual: of the mind
Property: that over which one has control
>breakthrough. One more choice won't help either.
Are you insane? Almost the *entire* reason why Windows is as much a security nightmare as it is, is because of it's homogenous nature. Sure, maybe it makes life a lot easier for end users, but have you ever stopped to think how much easier it makes life for virus writers and crackers as well?
Having only one system has it's pros and cons, the same way having choice does...but from where I'm sitting, choice has a lot more advantages. An example...I don't like KDE as an overall environment...it's bloated, buggy, and slow. However, there are some individual K apps which I like, and so I use Fvwm with the Gnome dock and Enlightenment, gtk/gnome libs, and K's libs as well. My RAM-resident windowmanager (Fvwm) is tiny, Enl gives me enough eye candy to satisfy without being too huge itself, and having just the libs from the other two systems means that they get loaded in on a single-app basis only, and thus don't cause instability and bloat.
I can already hear you arguing about how much initial effort that would take to set up...and yes, it does. The effort is spent only once however...and then the system works far better than Windows could ever dream of doing. What you're advocating is that we all accept a single, lowest common denominator, with all of the inherent problems that will bring us. What I prefer is my own setup, and for everyone else to have theirs...that way I can run what I want, and they can do the same.
Freedom requires effort...and the worst thing anyone can do is advocate that everyone be chained to one thing so that they can also be lazy. There is no way around it. If you want a good result with anything, you need to work.
OK, they mean well. They want to 'translate' XP to the Linux-platform. Not an easy task. But: while translating they better try to copy also the 'illogicalities' and plain bizar things that float around in the Windows-world : they will have to do this because the regular windows user expects these things to behave exactly like the real XP. (E.g. push 'start' button if you want to stop etc...). All this time , (money?) and resources would be much better spend if they would work on an open source project right-away. For instance contributing to KDE or Gnome to augment the 'eye-candy' factor , since this seems to attract people as is implicitly stated in the posters text.
less is more
This whole idea of copying the Windows desktop is one of the reasons I get turned off Linux. If I want to use a Windows like interface why wouldn't I just use the real thing? People in the Open-Source community do a lot of talking about being innovative but I just ain't seeing it with projects like this. The post yesterday about ROX (even though it does copy an older RISC type OS) is at least a fresh idea in the Linux world and I give cudos to the author for trying something different. Sun also deserves cudos for their work on a 3D desktop as mentioned last week or so. It's innovative directions like these that Linux needs to go to differentiate itself from the Windows and Mac OSes that are already out there. How about working on a graphical and gesture interface like in Minority Report? Now that would be cool and would interest me in Linux. For now I'll just stick with my Mac.
I think instead of copying XP interface, we should copy Longhorn instead? I know Longhorn is still 2 or 3 years away, but by the time Xpde goes 1.0, will longhorn be in beta already?
"Those who like linux for the choices I realize are able to choose, and perhaps also very intelligent. Ordinary users however neither CAN nor WANT TO make any choices!"
They don't have to. Buy a Linux PC at Walmart and everything will work out-of-the-box. The user don't have to choose *anything* at all.
Or, if you're installing Linux yourself, click "Default install" and let the distributor take care of all the choices for you.
Not having to choose is also a choice.
Hmm .. Let me think ...
.. which Inferior proprietary alternatives made by a certain redmond company came after these ?
Howabout
Apache? or OpenGL ?
Now let me see
What operating system is your favorite search engine Google built upon?
How long was the internet/browsers around before Microsoft decided it better implement a web-browser?
Are there any Movie players that beat MPlayer ?
nope, not that i've come across.
How long has GCC been around ?
I could go on listing stuff here but then you are probably a windows troll having never spent any great deal of time using open source software. Go and take a look at freshmeat.net and see the hundreds of original projects there.
You make generalisations without really having much knowledge about what you are talking. Yes, there are many open source project that copy ideas from other operating systems, but you seem to be living under the misconception that Apple and Microsoft never copied off anyone else.
Yes KDE steals ideas from a few places and so does gnome , but as any long-time user of KDE or Gnome will tell you there a lots of innovations and cool features of these window managers that do not exist in other operating systems.
There are reasons things like openoffice exist, howabout the fact that there is no Microsoft Office for Linux, or maybe the fact that Microsoft lock in their fileformats into windows. Heck considering the lack of documentation about certain Oses and there lock in fileformats; OpenOffice does a bloody good job considering. Okay so maybe its not strictly an original work, but i'd say there is a hell of a lot of innovation going on "under the hood" in order for the programmers to get the software to do what it does.
So before you make such sweeping generalisations, consider what the world would be like, and consider your personal freedoms that maybe wouldnt exist if Open Source software wasnt there for everyone to use. You should appreciate that the computing world, the use of the internet etc would be a very very different place if it wasnt for the time and dedication of Open Source programmers. You are lucky that you have choice and that Window's isnt the "one os to rule them all".
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
I would settle for a linux desktop for linux users.
I've gave myself XPDE a try for fun and honestly I really cannot see why this could be in any way positive to mass migration to Linux... Sure it is fun to see how similar to windows it looks and playing around with it for a day and show it to your friends for entertainment sure is amusing...
But let's face it... A new Linux user that has no clue about the power and advantages of Linux over Windows will just very quickly jump to the conclusion that "Linux sucks"! Why? Isn't it obvious? For example, one of the greatest things that Linux GUIs have to offer over windows is the virtual desktops. XPDE just dig deep down this feature by trying to "look" like Windows... So too bad cuz I think virtual desktops are a major feature that can help convince people the benefits of Linux (Personnaly that's one of the things I found most frustrating when I have to use Windows now, the whole windows all stuck in the same desktop, eww, awful!).. Anyways, that's just an example...
The main problem with this sort of GUI is that new users will try it, quickly find out that yes it's similar to Windows, but they cannot do half of what they can do under Windows. So they think "What's the point of using Linux? Windows looks just the same and I can do much, much more with it... Why would I switch to Linux? I tried it, I cannot see what more Linux can offer to me at all..."
To me XPDE is just bad news for Linux... The cool things about Linux are actually the differences, the choices, Gnome, KDE, Windowmaker, Enlightenment... Everybody has their favorite and that's what makes Linux fun and interesting! Personnaly I chose Gnome cuz it allows me to have the best of all worlds all-in-one... The virtual desktops, the windows style start menu, its intuitive drag-n-drop interface and last but not least the Mac OS 7-8-9 style "finder" ("Window Menu" in Gnome). I think that's a shame they dropped that feature in Mac OS X as I find it much more convienent than "Expose", which, imho, is sort of just a slow, eye-candy gadget that doesn'T really save that much time after all... I'm not a mac user but I do use macs sometimes and when I tried OS X although I thought its pretty nice I really missed the finder feature... it made it quite fast to find an "hiding" app..
Anyways, I think Linux has LOTS more to offer than Windows and it's not by hiding its power and differences under a limited copy of a Windows interface that we'll get new users to switch to Linux at all... There are a LOT of people that switch from Windows to Mac, and is it because the Mac looks like windows?? No, it is rather the opposite, it's more because of a totaly different and fresh approach that people just end up being seduced by after playing around with it! That's why I chose Linux anyway, because I just got seduced by its power and its differences, not because I felt like "I'm at home", in a stripped-down, lame copy of Windows!!
Alright, that was just my 2 cents...
You can dream but as long as Linux geeks continue the UI religious wars you are going to end up with an ugly hodgepodge of applications that look inconsistent and behave inconsistently.
Now we have this wonderful prospect that Miguel de Icaza has declared all existing toolkits obsolete and is presumably going to develop a new one from scratch and start a religious war in the Gnome/GTK camp when he decides he wants to switch existing apps over with all the devastating consequences. The one plus here is KDE will just ignore him and maybe he will sufficiently screw up GNOME for a year or two so that GNOME will fall behind and fail and then we can unify on one desktop.
Just do what I do and try to run OpenOffice and Evolution on a KDE desktop. It puts a massive suck on memory because there are three sets of software doing all the same things but differently. You have to shift gears everytime you move between them because everything about the UI's in each is different. I have utter contempt for people who complain they don't like the "look" of KDE and GNOME. The "look" is insignificant compared to consistency.
I don't even consider using Mozilla because then I would hate the massive inconsistency so badly I would just give up on a Linux desktop. Konqueror has its quirks but its really important that its small, light, fast and fits with the rest of the desktop. I'll drop Evolution and return to kmail as soon as the HTML editor in kmail works. I need to start evaluating koffice to see if I can get off OpenOffice or I need to buy a whole bunch more RAM. The time it takes OpenOffice to load is reason enough to want to get rid of it. KDE is using some major tricks to get apps to load quickly and to circumvent the major overheads in dynamic linking. When you load OpenOffice you benefit from none of this so you wait an hour for it to load.
Let me spell it out for you. Mac OSX and Windows have a consistent look and feel, all the applications behave consistently. This is especially true of OSX. Thats why ordinary people like it so much. If you use one app you can switch to another and use it with equal ease. This consistency is a hundred times more important to users than all the "innovation" you see in Linux applications. If you want Linux to win on the desktop the application suite HAS to be consistent, and I mean really consistent, as in how menus are laid out, how accelerators are defined, how tools work, how things look etc.
If you want Linux to continue to fail on the desktop just stay the course. You might win some enterprise support because big companies want free. You don't have a prayer with most average users with the current state of things.
@de_machina
For a .5 release, I'm surprised it's as incomplete as it is (as far as features are concerned). Several things of note:
- a complete file browser (file dialogs are lacking)
- an integrated browser (using khtml wouldn't have hurt too much, would it guys?)
- a MIME editor
- no Quicklaunch bar
The only really noticeable change is that it's a bit faster - and still pretty doggish, I might add. I don't personally notice any UI changes since when it was first anounced on slashdot some (6+?) months ago. Seems either their code is pretty bloaty, or their development suite is crap (Kylix).
This is certainly a project I'd like to see succeed, as it would make a very good drop-in replacement for a basic Windows desktop for the average user - to the point where they might not even notice the change, if they're already using things like OO.o and Mozilla.
I personally think that the file manager shouldn't "bother" to impliment things such as Unix permissions, but to abstract them to "Windows standards", if you will (maybe with an option for Unix permissions?).
I'd say it's VERY VERY important to impliment the Quicklaunch bar and make it so that the taskbar's position is "customizeable" as it is in Windows. Aside from the complete computer retard, it seems nearly everyone has their own "custom" taskbar setup (auto-minimize, double-deep taskbar w/ quicklaunch on top, quicklaunch on bottom, on the left side, on the right, no quicklaunch, multiple quicklaunch, quicklaunch to the right, to the left, etc.)
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
I have installed Linux 2-3 times over the last few years (Mandrake 7.?/RedHat 6.2/RedHat 8.2). I really want to be able to use it and leave MS altogether.
/etc/X11/XF86Config and switch from 16-24 and vice versa" ......HUH?...... I am sure that makes a lot of sense to a Linux expert but you will NEVER get the casual user to learn it well enough to understand what the hell that meant.
It usually stays on my comp. (dual boot) until the boot manager crashes or something then I reinstall Windows and decide to try again in another year.
Reading these posts I am thinking maybe I'll try it again. I wanted to see Wine's support list to see if I could run my fav. games. Looking up "Diablo 2", yes it's there, great! A little lower on that page, a help listing, "In case that something's wrong with the screen size , that's due to the default depth , just vim
I am the local computer expert in my circle of friends/family/work but that part of Linux gives me a headache. Guess I'll wait another year.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
Every point you raised is redundant:
* Unify the desktop
Linux is about choice. Gnome and KDE are easy enough to pick up. Choose one. Learn it. It's not that difficult.
* Easy installation.
SuSE is easier to install than XP in my experience. It can also auto setup a dual boot system and resize NTFS partitions automagically.
* Hardware support that JUST WORKS.
NVidia graphics drivers JUST WORK when you run the installer. Some dists will auto-install all hardware drivers, and even download them if they are not allowed to re-distribute them. Again, SuSE and others have mastered this. It's not a distributions fault if a hardware manufacturer doesn't want to provide drivers. In many cases, people are left to reverse engineer them.
* System updates that JUST WORK when vulnerabilities are discovered.
Debian's APT will do this for you. SuSE has it's own updater. Others do to.
* High performance drivers.
I have tried both ATI and NVidia drivers on Linux and Windows (dual boot system). Both perform exceptionally well. The NVidias had a higher framerate under Linux for me. If your hardware isn't supported, ask your hardware vendor why they haven't provided a driver.
* Keyboard shortcuts that work - shared desktop clipboard that is as easy to use as Windows. click, select "paste". Simple.
Choose your GUI and learn it. Simple.
Might be a good transitional tool for Windows users looking not wanting to give up their eye-candy interface initially.
I'm not sure that's the salient issue. Windows user who are savvy to Linux know about the great eye candy that is available for Linux. Frankly, if it came down to eye candy, projects like Enlightenment offer no advantage over ObjectDesktop, WindowsBlinds, and StyleXP. And so far, Microsoft's ClearType anti-aliasing technology is subjectively better than anything I've seen on MacOS or Linux. Note, this is an admittedly subjective evaluation. I found a Q&A that speaks to the technical quality of ClearType that is beyond my comprehension. The fact is, my eyes have never been happier! I work heavily with numbers and text. Show me how to anti-alias old Linux apps like xv and rxvt, and I'm yours!
As a longtime Windows user who does appreciate Linux, what keeps me from making the switch are three common issues that I and the thousands of Linux advocates and zealots still haven't resolved:
1. I, like most Windows users, spend a lot on Windows software. Windows software typically costs about $40-80 online or in stores. That's quite an investment. In order to let go of Windows I would have to write off my investment in software as a sunk cost. But what if I want to keep using that software? What do I do, toss it out? Maybe I should sell it all off on eBay? This is why Linux is an easier sell to first time computer users; there isn't an established dependency. There is a good amount of good software that doesn't run on WINE or any of the WINE spinoffs. Testing to see if my apps will work under Linux can require that I pay good money for Win4Lin or VMWare. WINEX is a gamble since I have to pay before I can try it out, and according to the site, none of what I run works!
2. I like my a Windows apps. I don't abandon my apps just because there's a new operating system in town. I still use a few DOS and Windows 3.1 apps. I also have MacOS and Amiga apps sitting around. Why should I abandon my favorite apps like MS Office XP or The Sims (I've bought all the expansions) just because there are shiny new alternatives available on Linux? At the end of the day, I bought my computer in order to compute, not so that I can fight a revolution. Being a Stallmanista is kinda cool too, but I want to use what I want to use... ultimately isn't Linux and open-source about freedom of choice?
3. I need to use specialized proprietary applications like SPSS, and I happen to use some hardware that isn't support under anything but Windows. For some apps, I just can't use an alternative. And for the hardware, I'm not talking about winmodems, I''m talking about video capture devices and software that rely on the current DirectX and DirectShow. It doesn't matter whether an alternative exists, I won't use it for reasons other than stubborness.
So far, the only solution has been dual-booting, which has its own problems, and purchasing a second computer.