Infamous Chinese pirates launch Ubuntu that looks just like Windows XP | Hacker News Reader

Infamous Chinese pirates launch Ubuntu that looks just like Windows XP

74.125.95.132

2 pointsmlLK5 comments

Microsoft could use this in their next FUD campaign - "Linux is a cheap/pirate knock-off of our product".

There have been repeated attempts to make Linux look like Windows over the last few years, and usually it's done in the name of helping Windows users transition to a new OS, but actually I'm not sure that's what it really achieves. Instead it further entrenches Microsoft's brand and UI into the minds of users, such that to the naive person "Windows" and "a computer" are the same entity.

As terse as downloadsquad.com articles are, it seemed unfair to include this domain in your submission filter (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=499044). Unless of course they were doing the spamming, which it appears they were not, but given how interesting the article's outbound links are and the fact that this article could server as an interesting entry-point for discussion, I submitted a cached copy.

The picture that says "that's actually ubuntu" doesn't look anything like the screenshots from the actual distro's website.

And 2010 will be the year of Linux on the desktop! Thank you, infamous Chinese pirates. The official, government sponsored Linux distribution already copies the Windows XP interface. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Flag_Linux

I don't know how many signs Microsoft needs in order to understand that the success of their operating-system is not correlated to how many features it has or secure it is; in fact, it is almost the opposite. . .if Microsoft spent less time building Cathedrals and more time sharing their source code (a portion at a time given the problem and the community) then maybe they could finally start iterating in the right direction, rather than attempting to integrate their next-gen 'space station' of an OS on planet made up of pueblos.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com