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Chinese Pirates Launch Ubuntu That Looks Like XP
An anonymous reader writes "Ylmf, famous for pirating Windows XP, have just released a version of Ubuntu that looks just like Windows XP. Really, really similar. Apparently because Microsoft were cracking down on the actual Windows XP pirating — though I think they will still suffer for ripping off the GUI exactly." Of course, if that's the sort of look you like for your desktop, you need not risk any download cooties or language barriers; a reader in the Ubuntu Forums suggests this instructional video for giving Gnome the XP treatment.
User: What a pretty GUI you have.
YImf: All the better to confuse you with, my dear.
U: And what strange fonts you have.
Y: All the better to break your layouts with, my dear.
U: And what a lack of app support you have.
Y: All the better to irritate you with, my dear.
U: And what terrible hardware support you have.
Y: All the better to eat up your time with, my dear!
Just then the hunter entered the house and cut the YImf right down the belly.
Finally Linux gets a decent GUI!!! [ducks head]
Does this sig remind you of Agatha Christie?
I don't read Chinese, and I'm not about to download that--but is the point supposed to be that pirating windows is illegal and repainting Ubuntu is not?
Here's the thing: based on the screenshots, it's virtually certain that they used the copyrighted graphics that come with Windows to make this. Depending on how thorough they are, they may have used a fair amount of copyrighted text, as well.
As such, they are still "pirates". Why not just keep pirating Windows? What does this accomplish for them, exactly?
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
Not quite.
You'd need to find some way of slowing down file transfers too, add an a few dozen random "utilities" to the systray, set it to check in with Ylmf every few weeks and nag you about it, run another dozen or so malware and anti-malware apps in the background to eat some extra RAM and cpu cycles, send all your financial details off to the Russian mafia, deduct $90+ from your bank account for every app you've installed and lock itself so only 3 themes work.
That'd be a bit closer to the Windows Genuine Advantage experience...
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Make WinXP look like KDE http://www.tech-atom.com/windows/ultimate-linux-transformation-pack-for-windows-xp.html
Make GNOME look like WinXP http://ubuntu.online02.com/xpgnome
Make WinXP look likeUbuntu http://pc-hacks.blogspot.com/2007/10/make-up-over-your-windows-look-like.html
Make WinXP look like Enlightenment http://www.litestep.net/
Make Linux look like Win95 http://fvwm.org/
It all makes my head hurt.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
"The other classic vice of the Unix/Linux world is the one-way GUI. Input is graphical, but output is in a text window, because the GUI is wallpaper over some text-oriented application. This comes from a design flaw of UNIX - when you run a subprocess, you can pass in a list of arguments, but all you get back is an exit status and maybe a text stream. "exit" should have had "argc" and "argv" parameters via which the subprogram could return structured results to the caller. "
From what century are you writing this? 18-th or maybe 19-th, I wager?
Just add a cron script that has a 5% chance to reboot the system every half hour, and you're there! :P
For those of you who first started using PCs less than ten years ago, he's referring to the lack of stability Windows suffered from back then.
Are you from the future?
The Linux community does not get this at all, and the Windows community sometimes forgets it.
On this front, the Linux experience is worlds better than the Windows one. My biggest frustration when trying to sort out problems on other people's Windows boxes is the frequency with which one gets an error message which amounts to "Something went wrong, but we're not telling you what." The big mistake which the Windows developers make is hiding information from the user so even if you are capable of understanding the technical aspects of the problem, you're not allowed to see them.
It's true that the average user either ignores technical information in an error message, or goes into a panic when it appears, but there should always be *some* way of getting at it. Windows is dreadful in this respect.
So a friend who's working on the Incognito LiveCD project have got news from people being beaten and jailed by police in china. And how did they got discovered? Well, they used the LiveCD at a internet café and the owner realized that that's not windows and called the police.
Having linux looking like windows could be a privacy feature.
Your support people shouldn't have to waste their time, teaching people to use a new OS or office suite. Feel free to use this canned reply to any frivolous questions.
"Mr. Wimplestain, can't you see that I'm very busy? Isn't there a "Help" button at the top of your interface? Aren't you being PAID to use that software? Why don't you actually put the software to use, and click that "Help" button? I take it that you are literate, or you wouldn't have been hired. After you have read "Help" from top to bottom a few times, maybe you can come back and teach ME how to use Open Office, alright? NOW GET TO WORK, BEFORE I REPORT YOU, YOU GOLDBRICK!!"
Insert some profanity as appropriate, for effectiveness. Office workers seldom understand anything, unless it's emphasized with plenty of profane terms. They're mostly just mindless zombies, after all.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
The problem is not the people, it is how they are educated. For example, they are taught from school onwards that a "PC" has windows on it, with MS office, and that a "Mac" exists that is not a PC, and looks totally different, but does a similar task.
This is why most people I know will sit in front of a Mac and accept that it is not going to work like windows, and are even more tolerant of kinks, quirks and differences.
To do a car analogy, it's like someone being taught that a Honda is a "car", and there is this other thing called a "motorbike" that looks different and is used by fewer people. This Honda has a unique interface like no other car (but may be similar to them). If people drive Honda's all their lives, then they get into another car, they will freak out and get confused, because in their mind All cars should work like the Honda. If they were to get on a motorbike, they would realise "yes, I was told, different to cars" and will actually expect the unexpected, they will be aware that it's different and they will engage and try to learn how to operate it.
I've see this with people. My former gf's mum was like this. My former gf tried to switch her to Ubuntu, but her mum freaked out at the different buttons, the different "look" and the different order of her icons. After a couple of days she flat our refused to use Ubuntu. This same person would then go on to get a Mac, and spend 4 months trying to learn how to use it. The Mac's interface was more alien to her than Ubuntu's, but in her mind Macs were supposed to work differently to PC's, so this was ok and she just needed to learn. To her Ubuntu was still a "PC" and therefore must look and act exactly like Windows unless something is badly wrong.
My brother was in the same boat, at school they were teaching him this PC=="MS Win & Office" thing, and he would always have trouble when he borrowed my machine. So I went and taught him how to use an OS, Word processing and other office software, in general. NOT Windows, Word and he rest of MS Office. Now he is comfortable using pretty much any OS, in fact he prefers Ubuntu now, only booting windows in a VM for his "e-textbooks", that only work on IE with windows, and he isn't interested in computers (being a humanities student).
It appears that the screenshot was taken from the real Windows XP, and Ylmf OS does not look much like XP, but rather exactly like Gnome.
Here's a screenshot taken from someone who installed the ISO in VMWare and changed the locale to English: http://i50.tinypic.com/2lar9s0.jpg