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Prediction: Microsoft will eventually ship a Windows-themed Linux distro

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Re: Prediction: Microsoft will eventually ship a Windows-themed Linux distro

#181

Post by Ekaros »

wmf wrote: post #139
gmuslera wrote: post #98

Besides of the advantages and disadvantages of Linux and/or Windows on this, the problem I see on a Microsoft Linux distribution is not the Linux part, but the Microsoft one. The problem that is driving away users are the company policies, not what the OS can or not do, they were mostly OK with how things were in previous version. So putting the Microsoft policies in a Linux desktop will probably have the same result…

Agreed; the ads and OneDrive and such are not mistakes. They're in Windows because they make money.

I don't really understand why anyone expect similar crap not happening if there ever was some actually popular commercial consumer Linux distribution.

Re: Prediction: Microsoft will eventually ship a Windows-themed Linux distro

#182

Post by nunez »

Alupis wrote: post #20
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a sysadmin and Group Policy is the entire moat Microsoft has. Linux has nothing like it, and it probably can't because it requires a level of top down authority over a platform's design and implementation that would be hard in the Linux space. Maybe something like systemd could do something similar which defined policy over all the components they've taken over, but a distro doing it would be pointless, we're no…

Nothing in the linux world would forbid something like Group Policy. A commercial distro that targets large-scale enterprise customers could implement something exactly like Active Directory + friends. Ansible, FreeIPA, and more can be used individually or together to achieve what AD provides. There are large enterprises that are non-windows...

You can do a lot with Ansible but GPOs are unbelievably configurable and you'd need to know lots and lots of registry lore to get close.

Re: Prediction: Microsoft will eventually ship a Windows-themed Linux distro

#183

Post by nunez »

delta_p_delta_x wrote: post #14

As a Windows system and user-mode dev, I absolutely never understand these sorts of drive-by posts with nearly zero technical depth. If there is one thing about Windows that is really good, it is its kernel and driver architecture, and absolute plethora of user-mode libraries that come with the OS , that can be programmed against with a variety of languages from ancient to brand-new, all maintained by the vendor. Doi…

That's a great point about DPI scaling. I remember being extremely surprised that I couldn't get a sharp image ona 4K monitor with macOS because of this limitation

Re: Prediction: Microsoft will eventually ship a Windows-themed Linux distro

#184

Post by pjmlp »

gmuslera wrote: post #98

Besides of the advantages and disadvantages of Linux and/or Windows on this, the problem I see on a Microsoft Linux distribution is not the Linux part, but the Microsoft one. The problem that is driving away users are the company policies, not what the OS can or not do, they were mostly OK with how things were in previous version. So putting the Microsoft policies in a Linux desktop will probably have the same result…

Linux distros for Netbooks, Chromebooks, Android and Cloud VMs, prove the point of how OEM driven Linux distro experience would look like.

Just like with CP/M, MS-DOS, UNIX, and any other OEM driven platform, everyone wants to make differentiation part of their story.

Welcome to Asus Linux, Dell Linux, Microsoft Linux, HP Linux,....

Re: Prediction: Microsoft will eventually ship a Windows-themed Linux distro

#185

Post by pjmlp »

bschwindHN wrote: post #53
delta_p_delta_x wrote: post #14

As a Windows system and user-mode dev, I absolutely never understand these sorts of drive-by posts with nearly zero technical depth. If there is one thing about Windows that is really good, it is its kernel and driver architecture, and absolute plethora of user-mode libraries that come with the OS , that can be programmed against with a variety of languages from ancient to brand-new, all maintained by the vendor. Doi…

You "never understand" these posts and then list off a ton of crap I shouldn't have to do to an OS to make it usable. The default experience of using windows is downright user-hostile and it reveals the thinking of the corporation behind it. Yeah, you _can_ do all that to make it somewhat usable, but when alternatives exist that are much less of a pain, I'll be taking those.

Large majority of population considers Windows usable as is, that is why you still see Windows at best buy and not Linux powered desktops, other than castrated Chromebooks.

Re: Prediction: Microsoft will eventually ship a Windows-themed Linux distro

#186

Post by pjmlp »

barbs wrote: post #155
prima-facie wrote: post #150

I don't want Linux to become as popular as Windows currently is. Its quality would decline drastically as it would be subjected to all sorts of corporate forces. I don't want it to become a commercially driven, adversarial OS like Windows and Mac OS. I want it to remain the free, stable and decent OS it currently is, in a comfortable 3rd place.

Surely the fact that it's open-source means that it can always be forked if it trends in a direction you don't like?

Distrowatch already has too many options.

Re: Prediction: Microsoft will eventually ship a Windows-themed Linux distro

#187

Post by soraminazuki »

tombert wrote: post #164
codedokode wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, both NT and Linux kernels are bad because they are monolithic and not sandboxing-first.

NT is hybrid kernel, it has microkernel features, particularly with drivers if I understand correctly. But that said, I didn't say either were "good", I said that NT is "arguably better". ETA: I reread my comment; you're right, I actually said that NT "isn't bad at all". I stand by what I said mostly though; that doesn't imply it's "good" necessarily, just that it's arguably better than Linux.

NT is a monolithic kernel and "hybrid kernel" is a pure marketing term. You can move functionality out of the kernel into userspace or not. There is no in-between.

I also don't get why people claim NT is "better." Linux is a modern kernel under very active development.

Re: Prediction: Microsoft will eventually ship a Windows-themed Linux distro

#188

Post by antisol »

wackget wrote: post #156
amlib wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take a look at dash to panel gnome extension: https://github.com/home-sweet-gnome/dash-to-panel It's a very configurable extension for gnome that can do all you described except double stacking... I've uploaded a video demo and a config file that makes it kinda like what you want, again no double stacking: https://github.com/amlib/dash-to-panel-config/tree/main You can also configure it to keep open window buttons se…

Looks like an awesome project; thanks for sharing it. On my next attempt at a Linux desktop I'll most certainly try it. I'll also create a feature request for resizing/stacking of rows.

  > I'll also create a feature request for resizing/stacking of rows.
That's the spirit! Please do file feature requests with the docks that you think might be close to what you want. A lot of foss projects are pretty receptive to feature requests.

Keep in mind that in the foss world you're not a customer - the people doing the work will be donating their free time to build a feature you're asking for, so please be nice and polite to them - the worst thing you can do on a feature request is have an entitled tone, or insinuate that their software is crap because it doesn't quite do what you want :)

Someone else suggested that adding 2 xfce panels might accomplish something pretty close to what you're after. I had a bit of a play around and agree with that. I didn't replicate your request exactly (because my panel is very different and I didn't want to break my setup too much) but depending on where your priorities lie I think you could probably get something pretty close.

Options that are similar:

a) If you really want the 'start menu' button to span both rows, use a single panel and set "row size" to e.g 48px and "number of rows" to 2. The con of this method is that the task list (list of programs) will span both rows, which is not what you have.

b) If you want to replicate your preferred setup more closely, you might not be able to have the 'start menu' button span both rows. To accomplish this I would add 2 panels of e.g 24px and put them both at the bottom of the screen. In one you'll have the task list and in another you'll have icons.

The media player controls might be an issue in xfce. I'm not sure if anything like that exists. However you definitely can have a systray icon for your media player which pops up media controls when you click on it.

There are other docks with more customisable widgets that will give you media controls like those, but I can't really make a solid recommendation for you unfortunately. The one I used to use was called cairo-dock, but I think that might be dead. Before that I used one called avant-window-navigator. There's also a couple of others that I'm aware of, e.g tint2 and wbar.

I'd be a little bit surprised if there are zero docks out there that can do what you want. The thing is you might have to try screwing around with the config for 20 different ones if you insist on replicating that layout exactly :/

HTH!

Re: Prediction: Microsoft will eventually ship a Windows-themed Linux distro

#189

Post by antisol »

wackget wrote: post #153
jesse__ wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's literally the only thing stopping you.. you could always just write it yourself ..

It's not the only thing, although it is a big one. Honestly Windows just feels better to me and works the way I want it to. It might help that I've always used enterprise versions so I've never had to deal with the awful bloatware. The few things I do want to disable are pretty painless to remove through the group policy editor or one of many freeware GUI tweaker programs.

yeah, fair. There is a big learning curve for an entire desktop environment. And that's before you start getting into trying to do super-custom things and replicate exactly what you had on windows.

I've always held that switching to Linux is hardest for the most technical people, because you know how to do everything already - figuring out how to do X in Linux might take you literally hours, or you can just reboot into windows, where you know how to do it and it will take 5 minutes. It's hard to make that investment in learning the new stuff when you just want to get stuff done.

(But IMHO it's well worth it - For >15 years I've always been appalled every time I've used windows about how inflexible and unconfigurable it is. There's a thousand things that I've been doing forever that I'm just so used to, e.g the ability to make any window always on top, or to use my mouse wheel to roll them up so that only the titlebar shows. There's lots of things like that that I use every day without thinking about it, and the lack of those things makes windows extremely frustrating for me)

Re: Prediction: Microsoft will eventually ship a Windows-themed Linux distro

#190

Post by tombert »

pjmlp wrote: post #174
apexalpha wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The NT kernel misses all modern features like containers though.

Windows containers exist since Windows 10. Containers are hardly modern, they trace back to offerings on 1990's, like HP-UX Vaults.

Even prior to Windows 10, there was Sandboxie to give you something roughly analogous to FreeBSD jails.

Obviously not built into Windows but readily available since 2004.

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