Remix.run Logo
Imustaskforhelp 16 hours ago

Someone please create a windows 7 like user interface or even XP like interface too and you got yourself a serious fan

I might seriously recommend it to newbies and like there is just this love I have for windows 7 even though I really didn't use it for much but its so much more elegant in its own way than windows 10

like it can be a really fun experiment and I would be interested to see how that would pan out.

cosmic_cheese 15 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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.

Imustaskforhelp 15 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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.

layer8 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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?

Klonoar 4 hours ago | parent [-]

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

mmmlinux 15 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

This is how every open source project GUI feels.

Zen1th 13 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You should try KDE with https://github.com/ivvil/aerothemeplasma

The screenshots could easily fool me into believing it actually is Windows 7 :p

exitb 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

There's usually an "uncanny valley" feeling to this kind of projects, but damn, this is good.

Imustaskforhelp 13 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Damn you got me. I am not a big fan of KDE (Currently using Niri) but I can try to use KDE+aerothemeplasma with nixos as a dual boot (I already used to have KDE nix as dualboot until I accidentally removed that disk and ended up using the glorious tool testdisk to save that) so I will try it some day thank you!

There is also anduinos which I think doesn't try to replicate windows 7 but it definitely tries to look at windows 10 perhaps 11 iirc

trelane 13 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> it can be a really fun experiment and I would be interested to see how that would pan out.

It would fail, and just be another corpse in the desktop OS graveyard.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitachi_Flora_Prius

https://www.osnews.com/story/136392/the-only-pc-ever-shipped...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linspire

Unless you ship your own hardware or get a vendor to ship your OS (see the above), and set up so the user can actually use it, you have to get users to install it on Windows hardware. So now your company is debugging broken consumer hardware without the help of the OEM. So that hopefully someone will install it on exactly that configuration for free.

This is not a winning business model.

Imustaskforhelp 13 hours ago | parent [-]

Hm I see the confusion, what I was proposed was for something like loss32 to have a window manager / desktop environmnet which looks like windows 7

Loss32 is itself a linux distro and thus there should technically be nothing stopping it from shipping everywhere

I think you were assuming that I meant create a whole kernel from scratch or something but I am just merely asking a loss32 reskin which looks like windows 7 which is definitely possible without any of the company debugging consumer hardware or even the need of company for that matter I suppose considering that I was proposing an open source desktop environment which just behaved like windows 7 by default as an example.

I don't really understand why we need a winning business model out of it, there isn't really a winning model for niri,hyprland,sway,kde,xfce,lxqt,gnome etc., they are all open source projects who are run with help of donations

There might be a misunderstanding between us but I hope this clears up any misunderstanding.

trelane 13 hours ago | parent [-]

I think fundamentally I disagree with your optimism. I've seen a number of these come and go over the decades. I do not think making something that looks like Windows would be sufficient to be successful.

> you were assuming that I meant create a whole kernel from scratch or something

No, making Linux run reliably on random laptops is already a monumental challenge.

Imustaskforhelp 13 hours ago | parent [-]

Agreed but there have been some real strides in innovation recently in linux, definitely worth checking out :)

Regarding successful, well they already are, ZorinOS is an OS which looks like windows 7 or has some similarities to it and its sort of recommended to beginners but usually linux mate is the most recommended distro

> No, making Linux run reliably on random laptops is already a monumental challenge.

Not sure about this but I ran linux in 15 year old dell mini like its no big deal so I can only assume that support has been better but I feel like I can assure you that linux support is really good for most laptops in my observation.

trelane 12 hours ago | parent [-]

I am a huge fan and user of Linux.

The problem is slapping Linux on some random bit of Windows kit and expecting it to work as though it had shipped with Linux, with support to back it. The more recent, the worse it will be.

If you want to run Linux, buy Linux computers that ship with Linux and have a support number you can call. Just like you'd not expect to be able to slap OSX on some random Dell and have it work.

Imustaskforhelp 11 hours ago | parent [-]

Sir, I am just saying that we can have linux (which works on almost all devices) and then we can have wine which I think is just a software layer so it should work on most hardware considering what it does is Wine translates Windows API calls into POSIX calls on-the-fly, these Posix calls would still be handled by the linux kernel and its support for its drivers.

This is how loss32 works and I am just saying that sir, instead of merely using the win95 design that loss32 uses, perhaps we can modernize the style a little towards something like windows 7 as a good balance?

Sir of course, if you are worried about the software emulation aspect of things, you are worried about loss32 itself and not my idea of "hey lets reskin it to look like win7", We can have a discussion itself on loss32 if you want and weigh in some pros and cons and it certainly isn't something that I will use as a main driver but I think as linux is certainly built on ideas of freedoms, having loss32 isn't really that bad. Its an experiment of sorts even right now and people will test it out because they are curious and we will hear about responses of people who try it out and what they think.

I love Linux just as much as you do but I would admit I never really gotten into windows ecosystem that much so I went to learning Linux really good and took it as a challenge to conquer (mission accomplished)

Many people might not go with that mindset and may come with the mindset that Microsoft is treating them really badly and moral dilemmas as well and so having something which can cater to them isn't bad.

I also want to say that something like this might be good because yes, people say for others to just linux mint but I never really found it good option, not for the gen-z. I think Zorin can be an answer or perhaps AnduinOS but we definitely need more young people in linux and I will tell you as young guy what's happening

People want to get the freedom but they aren't able to articulate it. They are worried about AI but they just can't do anything about it and to be honest they are right, how much can I or you do anything about ram crisis. Maybe there is something that we can do but we just don't know (like did you know that there is a way to convert laptop ram to desktop ram with its gatchas?)

They simply don't know about the open source side of things since they just weren't exposed to it. To us, it may be the core feature but to them its a word written between other words of features that they want to use.

So like I don't really know but pardon me, I don't understand your side of the discussion and I am trying to find a common point.

Do you find an issue within the loss32 architecture itself? Or with the idea of a re-skin towards win7.

I presume its the loss32 architecture but I don't know what to tell you except that it uses wine and wine just works, so much so that the original title of this i think might've been/was about how win32 was the most stable ABI even for linux and that's only possible due to wine.

Not sure what you meant by support there sir, perhaps you are red hat user for a company license or similar and of course this isn't targeted for that sector but for niche users at homes who just want to try out what's "linux" perhaps :) I find the idea of loss32 very interesting as I had thought of designing something similar so I am glad that it exists and I would probably look at it from afar.

I'd love a discussion about it because I think we are saying the same point from different angles and perhaps I can do a better rephrasing but what i mean is completely open source and all linux-y but just have windows applications run easily and have win7 like UI (really similar) and that's it. Everything's linux and these wine programs just convert them to posix syscalls but perhaps I am missing your point of concern and we can talk about it since clearly nothing's better than talking about linux (oh the joy) to another linux user! I think I may be misinterpreting somethings if so pardon me but I am unable to understand how hardware might take a role in wine/what I said and I would be interested if you can tell me more about it perhaps and (have a nice day sir, I got enough quota for the day or the year of talking about linux haha!)?

trelane 10 hours ago | parent [-]

It's cool. If we ever meet in person, I'll buy you a beer and we can discuss Linux. :)

Imustaskforhelp 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Haha of course! (Although, I will never drink beer and never will, 1 I am still a minor lol and 2 I just dont really want to ever drink beer like ever) but I get the sentiment!

In beverages though, I just drink cole drink usually but in this time of the year, I'd rather froze to death if I did something like this (the cold is crazy out here) xD

But yea, there have been some instances where I talk about linux to people my age or maybe irl and its definitely frustrates that sometimes they don't understand it.

fragmede 15 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

XFCE plus a windows theme would get you pretty far. Is there anything specific you're thinking of which that plus some pre-configured Wine wouldn't hit?

Imustaskforhelp 15 hours ago | parent [-]

I 100% agree with your comment.

Pro tip but if someone wants to create their own iso as well, they can probably just customize things imperatively in MxLinux even by just booting them up in your ram and then they have the magnificient option of basically snapshotting it and converting that into an iso so its definitely possible to create an iso tweaked down to your configuration without any hassle (trust me but its the best way to create iso's without too much hassle and if one wants hassle, nix or bootc seems to be the way to go)

Regarding Why it wouldn't hit. I don't know, I already build some of my own iso's and I can build one for windows (on MxLinux principle) and upload it for free on huggingface perhaps but the idea is of mass appeal

Yes I can do that but I would prefer if there was an iso which could just do that and I could share it with a new person in linux. And yes I could have the new person do the changes themselves but (why?), there really is no reason perhaps imo and this just feels like a low hanging fruit which nobody touched perhaps and so this is why I was curious too.

But also as the other comment pointed out, I feel like sure we can do this thing, but that there is definitely a genuine reason why we can probably create this thing itself as well and they give some good reasons as well and I agree with them overall too.

Like if you ask me, it would be fun to have more options especially considering this is linux where freedom is celebrated :p

HeckFeck 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity is just that, except it's a whole OS that's Win2k styled. If it ever gets good hardware support it might have a chance.

Or maybe ReactOS - the actual windows clone - gets finished. Rumours put a first release date some time after Hurd.