Stop Microsoft
Operating Systems => Linux and UNIX => Topic started by: reactosguy on 11 March 2010, 06:00
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http://www.longhorn.tk/ (http://www.longhorn.tk/)
These people are introducing Longhorn Linux, a Linux distro with its GUI customized to look like Vista's Aero. :D
Do YOU think it's great? Fail? ::)
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Why Vista?
Isn't Windows 7 better?
I don't know since I've used neither OS.
Wow Vista has been out for over three years now and I still haven't even used it; should I be proud of that? :D
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There's been a lot of these kinds of projects. And they aren't always as popular as the project members think they will be.
Ubuntu is popular because of GNOME, which is a simple and beautiful GUI, and Ubuntu's apt front-end which makes it easy to install applications and run updates.
The Longhorn Linux team should have tried to mimic Windows 7. At least Windows 7 has Snap, and the Longhorn team could've written a Compiz plugin to introduce that feature in Linux.
But now, there's no real advantage of mimicking Vista in Linux.
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There's been a lot of these kinds of projects. And they aren't always as popular as the project members think they will be.
Ubuntu is popular because of GNOME, which is a simple and beautiful GUI, and Ubuntu's apt front-end which makes it easy to install applications and run updates.
The Longhorn Linux team should have tried to mimic Windows 7. At least Windows 7 has Snap, and the Longhorn team could've written a Compiz plugin to introduce that feature in Linux.
But now, there's no real advantage of mimicking Vista in Linux.
I agree that they aren't popular.
But they couldn't mimic Windows 7. It started in the beginning of 2009 and mimicking Windows 7 would've taken longer.
But in the future, ReactOS shall take the role of Windows 7 mimicking.
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If they really want to make it look like Windoze, it needs some fake virus scans to randomly popup when the user is surfing the net telling the user that their computer is infected and they need to buy anti-virus protection now from someone in the Ukraine. And Blue Screen at random intervals that force the user to reboot. Maybe a system tray popup that says the OS may not be "Genuine." and ask for a cd key and permission to call home to authenticate.
They should add security popups like the really annoying UAC Vista hits you with every time you actually try to do something..
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I'm sure I've mentioned before that Aero looks like somebody at Microsoft gave a 4-year-old kid a box of crayons (only 9, with no sharpener) and told him to make it look like Aqua. And the kid failed, but by then it was too late. I really don't see the point of making your OS look like the crappiest UI design of the last 5 years.
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I'm sure I've mentioned before that Aero looks like somebody at Microsoft gave a 4-year-old kid a box of crayons (only 9, with no sharpener) and told him to make it look like Aqua. And the kid failed, but by then it was too late. I really don't see the point of making your OS look like the crappiest UI design of the last 5 years.
I recall hearing a similar comparison when windows xp went mainstream..
I fucking despise microsoft designs. Of windows, of windows mobile (the new one of which may even be impressive technically, but is a shit departure from an iPhone-esque interface).
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Xp should've had media centre, the Zune theme or even luna in silver as the default setting.
Fortunately it wasn't long before fix for uxtheme.dll was developed so people could make their own themes.
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While these projects seem "neat" at first. I think they actually do more harm then good. Whats the point of even trying to get *Nix popular, if people will just think they are using windows anyways?
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While these projects seem "neat" at first. I think they actually do more harm then good. Whats the point of even trying to get *Nix popular, if people will just think they are using windows anyways?
Microsoft doesn't have any control over *nix?
Btw, I don't think these projects are "neat" in the least.
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Plus, it's Linux. You can't run Windows apps unless you have WINE (which does poorly anyway).
Look at the system requirements. 3GB Hard drive space filled up, sounds good? Ah, but it uses 512MB of RAM. Enough to clog your PC?
Conclusion: If there's an operating system to mimic Windows' basic functionality, it's ReactOS (because they are working to make their OS neat and run many of the Windows apps).
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Wine actually does pretty good now a days. React OS works very closely with the WINE project. React OS has a A LOONNGG way to go however before its even remotely useable.
But anyways, my point was that I think these type of projects to make Linux look and act like Windows do more harm then good.
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hi ,
i started the longhorn linux project a while back , and i would like to tell you , it is not to mimic vi$ta's shitty interface , but more the concepts of vista , from the pre-reset period (wikipedia search it )
we are aiming , finaly for a interface that resembles this :
oxygen :
Double-decked taskbar (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGpN5hwOxR8#)
plex :
Longhorn concept (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9ifQvQCO7Y#)
aero :
Windows Longhorn (with DWM enabled) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxB_Ubs4A74#)
to make a professional , free linux based os , with the ideas of this wonderfull creation , well ... until it became the horror today that we know as vista!
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In those videos you posted, I saw a lot of "too flashy to be useful" shots, which were probably done in AfterEffects for the demo reel. I suppose if that's what you want in an interface, then more power to you. That's what Linux is all about, anyway - make it however you want to make it. Still, I don't think it will be the right product for me.
As a side note, I found a really succinct comment on one of the other Longhorn demo videos seen at YouTube:
Was waporware then, is waporware now, will probably forever be waporware.
This is the standard MS tactics, show something "soon we will be this good" to prevent customers from buying competitors products, then quickly back-pedal to mediocricy at release date. Worked like a charm every time until now. My god, amazing that so many people fall for it every time.[sic]
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hi ,
i started the longhorn linux project a while back , and i would like to tell you , it is not to mimic vi$ta's shitty interface , but more the concepts of vista , from the pre-reset period (wikipedia search it )
we are aiming , finaly for a interface that resembles this :
oxygen :
Double-decked taskbar (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGpN5hwOxR8#)
plex :
Longhorn concept (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9ifQvQCO7Y#)
aero :
Windows Longhorn (with DWM enabled) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxB_Ubs4A74#)
to make a professional , free linux based os , with the ideas of this wonderfull creation , well ... until it became the horror today that we know as vista!
I got the feeling from your website that you essentially wanted to create a Vista GUI clone in Linux. But if you're going for the "old" Longhorn style interface, then I suppose its not all that bad.
Also, welcome to the site!
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Surely you're better off copying Windows 7? It's obviously the future of Windows.
Microsoft doesn't have any control over *nix?
Btw, I don't think these projects are "neat" in the least.
But they do, at least indirectly, for example the WINE team running around after them trying to keep compatibility with Windows.
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But they couldn't mimic Windows 7. It started in the beginning of 2009 and mimicking Windows 7 would've taken longer.
Remember? Maybe in the future the dev team can work on that.
Also, I wonder how Jman6495 got here. Did someone in the forum tell the lead developer? Not me.
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Also, I wonder how Jman6495 got here. Did someone in the forum tell the lead developer? Not me.
Most web hosts are able to track referrals. A quick look at the referral list would have shown a number of hits coming from stop-microsoft.org, which might have triggered their curiosity.
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Surely you're better off copying Windows 7? It's obviously the future of Windows.
::)
I thought he made it pretty clear that they are not trying to create a Linux version of Windows, but a Linux version of the Windows that never was. If they were interested in Windows 7, they would have bought it.
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::)
I thought he made it pretty clear that they are not trying to create a Linux version of Windows, but a Linux version of the Windows that never was. If they were interested in Windows 7, they would have bought it.
No, it wasn't clear to me.
So was Longhorn actually different to Vista?
I thought it was the same, just a beta version.
I've never used either do I admit ignorance.
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The Longhorn project team originally wanted to produce a big flashy OS (see the YouTube videos on the previous page) with lots of innovative (by Microsoft standards) features and stable technology under the hood. But, like all project developers, their eyes were bigger than their stomachs. As is usual with IT projects, featuritis, focus creep, and deadline issue caused the original vision to be drastically scaled down. Longhorn (as defined by this project) was the concept, Vista was the actual product.
So, it depends on whether you think of Longhorn the initial concept, or Longhorn the name of Vista beta releases. I guess after watching those videos, it became clear to me that this project was more interested in the former.
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Watching the videos didn't mean much until I saw some Vista videos.
I suppose Longhorn was too full of eye candy for a typical 2003 PC which would typically have 256MB ram or so and a 1.8GHz single core processor and PC3200 board.
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When I was in geospatial analysis school, we did projects, and we presented the status of our project every 3 weeks or so. One of the groups started out like "We're going to have our own domain with a bicycling database and custom-served maps and Flex interfaces etc." And then six weeks later, "We're going to have a Google maps plugin in a blog post." It's easy to get excited in the beginning, but then it begins to sink in that you'll never be able to do all that in the time you have available while staying under budget. Early stage featuritis and over-hyped design specifications are to be expected from student amateurs, but you'd think that the programmers at Microsoft would be a little bit more fucking professional. Save the hype for the marketing department.
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Well if your marketing department is driving the programmers....
But yes, the big issue with Longhorn is that it was based mainly on the XP code base. It was supposed to be a small update to XP, ex adding more functionality, new themes, etc..but as development went on they started adding more and more stuff. It just really couldn't support all that added eye candy and features they were adding onto it. The last few builds of Longhorn were actually regressing in terms of stability. From what I gathered from the Wikipedia article the last build or two before they scrapped it and started over were actually unusable, sometimes even failing to boot.
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Plus, it's Linux. You can't run Windows apps unless you have WINE (which does poorly anyway).
Look at the system requirements. 3GB Hard drive space filled up, sounds good? Ah, but it uses 512MB of RAM. Enough to clog your PC?
Conclusion: If there's an operating system to mimic Windows' basic functionality, it's ReactOS (because they are working to make their OS neat and run many of the Windows apps).
Fuck ReactOS, I can run Windows inside VMware Unity and have its apps and even 3D games right on my Linux desktop, running on Xorg.
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Fuck ReactOS, I can run Windows inside VMware Unity and have its apps and even 3D games right on my Linux desktop, running on Xorg.
Have you actually tried this? I tried doing 3D gaming in Virtualbox, but it didn't work for RTS and FPS, since the mouse was uncontrollable (maybe due to having a 1800 dpi mouse). Racing games ran just fine though.
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Fuck ReactOS, I can run Windows inside VMware Unity and have its apps and even 3D games right on my Linux desktop, running on Xorg.
Have you actually tried this? I tried doing 3D gaming in Virtualbox, but it didn't work for RTS and FPS, since the mouse was uncontrollable (maybe due to having a 1800 dpi mouse). Racing games ran just fine though.
I have tried it with a shitter computer, I do plan on putting Debian on this system so I can see how Team Fortress 2 will run. Faggy games like WoW that a friend runs if she stays here work okay on that computer. The problem is ram (as usual) because you need to have Windows running and Linux beneath it. Though to save on memory usage you can always run vmware under twm or some ultra light window manager.
I'll get around to testing it on beefier hardware sooner or later.