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Comment by Jarred | Hacker News Reader

The clean, simpleness is good, but it's looking over the wrong pond for inspiration.

Windows 7 has a great desktop experience, and it's whats keeping me from switching over to Linux. Gnome 3 is really close to it though, if not for the font rendering[1], games[2], and comfortable software I would switch over to Linux. I think Linux can do it if the people who develop software with a GUI only work with their GUI to develop their software. This would force them to be frustrated enough with their application to make it work, or just give up. Either case, it's better than wasting other peoples time.

[1]: While the freetype2-infinality library tries to solve this problem, it's not quite there yet. It's close though

[2]: Wine is a good effort, but it needs to look more like Windows 7, and less like Windows 2000 (lots of the great UX was introduced in 7 in my opinion).

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What? I'm on GNOME2 and my fonts are gorgeous. Far superior to Windows's ClearType or my MBP's blurry rendering.

Also, not sure how the appearance of buttons plays into UX... it's not like Wine comes with Windows 2000 or Windows 7 applications. I assume you're referring to the visual style of the buttons. It's a very small issue that affects people dependent on Windows applications... and besides, you can use Windows themes in Wine... very, very easily. That feature's existed for years and years.

I was more so talking about Gnome 3. The titlebar fonts are generally okay, but the way fonts are rendered in web browsers on really any desktop environment in Linux versus how they're rendered in OS X or Windows are considerably worse.

I'm referring to the visual style in general, there's a huge difference between having something work and enjoying using it, and Wine is most of the time the former, but rarely, if ever, the latter.

I guess I don't understand what you want. Like I said, Ubuntu fonts out of the box are rendered gorgeously and I've had similar or identical rendering in GNOME 3. Maybe it's just me, but I think these all look decent:

http://i.imgur.com/4dGbR.png

http://i.imgur.com/mfyjw.png

http://i.imgur.com/BqOdg.png

In fact, I would venture to guess you couldn't differentiate between Linux and Mac OS X (the Windows one is obvious), out of those three.

Again, the "visual style" of Wine is adaptable. winecfg allows you to use the uxtheme files that are used by Windows. There is even a uxtheme file that makes applications run in Wine look just like native Ubuntu applications.

Wine is great considering what it is. And anyone who understands what it does, has reasonable expectations for what it can do. They've effectively written their own implementation of Windows APIs to the point that Team Fortress 2 and the (current_version - 1) version of Office runs with little to no problems at all.

I love Wine. It lets me use self extracting ZIP files, small executables, small tools, old programs I wrote but don't have the source code for. I don't "enjoy" using it because I'd rather use a native app... but again, I'm really just not sure what you're expecting. It's not an emulator...

Anyone trying to use Visual Studio or AutoCAD in Linux (wine that is, I use Visual Studio in VirtualBox for my day job) is asking to be laughed at. Fortunately, there are half a dozen excellent virtualization technologies for Linux... and many competent replacements for Windows tools in the Linux world.

He just doesn't like them. Get over it. People have different tastes. You don't really need to write essays about why he is "wrong".

I think the blurryfonts in the 3 imgur urls you've provided are way worse than what I see in Windows 7 and Mac OS X every day. They're somewhat misshapen and smudged-looking.

Hey dude buddy friend, maybe calm down a second. He has bad preconceptions regarding linux fonts and is nearly completely wrong about how he's considering Wine.

And by the way, those screenshots were, in order, Linux, OS X, Windows (default settings, font, browser zoom level, etc in each). But nice to see that confirmation bias is still alive and well. That's the whole reason I provided as much context as I did. I knew someone would reply with a comment like yours. Sad that I was right.

The last one is ok, but I like thinner fonts. MS fonts are legally available on Linux (just accept the license). I know that may be blasphemy to some, but here's how fonts look on my system:

http://i.imgur.com/vBi93.png

If anyone cares:

    $ sudo apt-get install ttf-mscorefonts-installer
    $ cd /etc/fonts/conf.d
    $ sudo rm 10-hinting-slight.conf
    $ sudo ln -s ../conf.avail/10-hinting-full.conf .
    $ sudo ln -s ../conf.avail/10-sub-pixel-rgb.conf .
    $ sudo dpkg-reconfigure fontconfig

Since people seem to be missing the point, those three screenshots are (in order): Ubuntu, OS X, Windows 7. Latest versions of each, default fonts (msttcorefonts installed in Ubuntu), with the default browser zoom level.

I think mine look even prettier: http://i.imgur.com/29dRv.png http://i.imgur.com/Nf087.png

Anyway, some fonts look good at a specific size. I'm currently using the big size in the first picture and everything looks gorgeous.

The third one is Windows.

edit: I just looked at this thread again. I didn't fully scroll down and see that you already said it was Windows.

Ubuntu/Mac OS X both have distinctively different ways of font rendering. Windows' font rendering looks more readable (in my opinion), and OS X/Ubuntu's were designed for print.

I hastily put this together to better illustrate what I mean.

http://i.imgur.com/Ag5DK.png

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