Comment by cosmic_cheese | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cosmic_cheese | Hacker News Reader

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It stuns me that a polished 1:1 2K/XP/7 clone DE (which it mimics is a setting) hasn’t existed for a 10y+ already. It’s such an obvious target for a mass appeal Linux desktop that many techies and non-techies alike would happily use.

Rough approximations have been possible since the early 2000s, but they’re exactly that: rough approximations. Details matter, and when I boot up an old XP/7 box there are aspects in which they feel more polished and… I don’t know, finished? Complete? Compared to even the big popular DEs like KDE.

Building a DE explicitly as a clone of a specific fixed environment would also do wonders to prevent feature creep and encourage focus on fixing bugs and optimization instead of bells and whistles, which is something that modern software across the board could use an Everest sized helping of.

Yea, you raise some good points. Perhaps your comment/this discussion can help someone be interested in this. I am clearly not educated about DE creation so much but I am sure that some people might create this

I think one of the friction could be ideological if not than anything since most linux'ers love Open source and hate windows so they might not want to build anything which even replicates the UI perhaps

Listen I hate windows just as much as the other guy but gotta give props that I feel nostalgic to windows 7, and if they provide both .exe perfect support and linux binary perfect support, things can be really good. I hope somebody does it and perhaps even adds it to loss32, would be an interesting update.

The problems with cloning the exact look is fear of copyright/IP issues with Microsoft. You can be pretty sure they won’t look away if such a desktop becomes really popular. Remember how Apple sued Samsung over using rounded corners on icons?

It is becoming obvious that some people didn't live through the Lindows era.

I remember Lindows, but I think their problem had more to do with their branding and marketing and the fact that it was sold commercially than it did with its UI resembling Windows, and all of those mistakes are trivial to avoid.

That said, even if the UI looking the same is an issue, it’s not that difficult to come up with a look and feel that is legally distinct but spiritually aligned and functionally identical… random amateurs posting msstyle themes for XP/Vista/7 on DeviantArt did that numerous times.

This is how every open source project GUI feels.

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