Q4OS 0.5.11 Linux Distro Is an Almost Perfect Clone of Windows XP – Screenshot Tour

I know there will be many of you that don't see this as that special but I very much like this. Its yet another tool to help get those who would not normally try Linux to try it because of the 'familiarity' of the desktop interface.

If it helps get someone who has never used anything but 2000 or XP to try Linux, its done its job. :-)

i'd love to see a real review of that, based on watching windows users using it. looks can only go so far. i always get terribly annoyed when i see something look like the interface i want but don't actually behave like it.

all these OS X dock clones for example, not one is comparable to the original. with the exception of the one from unity which doesn't attempt to clone the OS X dock, but create a user experience in itself.

greetings, eMBee.

I suspect that if the distro were virtually indistinguishable from XP - and became popular - then the distro folks would find themselves in some form of legal trouble or other. But personally, I'd love to see them become wildly popular.

XP is not to my taste (I loathe the tele-tubbies (sp?) look), but plenty of people like it. That's one of the cool things about freedom. People are free to do stuff I don't like, and you know what? I'll cheer them on! (Go http://hannahmontana.sourceforge.net/Site/Home.html)

I've been saying for years that there needs to be a "theme" for some Linux GUI that would mimic the look/feel of XP.

Glad it's being done.

I just took the distro for a test drive in Virtualbox on my Slackware Linux work station. My initial impressions are very positive. The installer boots in graphical mode and gives the option of installing in Classic mode or Full Automation. I opted for Classic mode and was immediately dropped into the very familiar text based Debian installation routine. The installer prompts you to input the full name of user, username, and password. It is interesting to note that it does not prompt you for a root password, so your username password gives you elevated root privileges. When the installation finished and re-booted ir detected that it was running within Virtualbox and prompted me to install Virtualbox additions which worked flawlessly. When you are up and running the distro looks and acts like a standard KDE 3.5x install (Trinity). This desktop will be comfortable for Windows users as the old style KDE has a familiar look and feel with the start menu and easy to understand system navigation. This software is presently beta, but, I think this may be something for XP users.

Quoting:It is interesting to note that it does not prompt you for a root password, so your username password gives you elevated root privileges.

Ouch.

Ouch, really? Seems to me to be an over-simplified take on "sudo".

Besides, on mostly-single-user systems, isn't the root password typically the same as the primary user's password anyway? And wasn't WinXP a mostly-single-user system? Even in factory environments, the actual logged-in user was typically the workstation name. Office people got their own desktops, as well.

For myself, when I'm doing remote tech support (Hi, Mom!), I can say "start the terminal emulator under Applications Menu, then type ess-you, hit enter, then give it your password and hit enter again." In this case, "your password" is the same as the regular user's password.

I'm not seeing any "ouch" here.

Quoting:Besides, on mostly-single-user systems, isn't the root password typically the same as the primary user's password anyway? And wasn't WinXP a mostly-single-user system? Even in factory environments, the actual logged-in user was typically the workstation name. Office people got their own desktops, as well.

You can set XP to require an admin password if you like. I think the developers who created this version of Linux did a pretty good job of locking it down for a regular user, that is, I tried to open a root shell prompt and could not figure out how to do it. I tried the su command and got an authentication failure. Having said that I do like to have a clear separation between user and admin privileges. On my Linux/BSD boxes I like to have a root password.

So, I had some free time today to try this out in a VM, and I must say that I rather liked it. I can see this actually appealing to some family members, when it comes out of beta. (Depending on price? I assume it's going to cost actual money when it's finally released?)

But the 1st thing it needs is a more "user-familiar" package-manager/software-center than apt-get. Even Synaptic will be too intimidating and/or confusing for the users who are still on Windows because they will find learning a new system difficult or can't even manage their good-old, familiar WinXP or Windows7 without help.

I tried installing a few packages, and they all seemed to work fine. It seems to show what might be done with a "newbie-friendly" distro built on Debian for a change, rather than Ubuntu (I gave it only a quarter (768 MB) of the RAM on my test system, and a single CPU, and it still ran noticeably snappier than the Ubuntu host that was using the other 3/4 of system resources).

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I also, while I was at it, finally got around to looking at EasyPeasy: it turns out it's no longer maintained, but I can see why so many non-techies loved it so much. It was perfect for all those people who are comfortable with their smartphones, but can't deal with "real" computers -- if that was still maintained, at least one of my change-resistant, afraid-to-leave-Windows-even-though-they-hate-it relatives would gladly switch to Linux this summer.

*edit: missing word

Quoting:But the 1st thing it needs is a more "user-familiar" package-manager/-center than apt-get. Even Synaptic will be too intimidating and/or confusing for the users who are still on Windows because they will find learning a new system difficult or can't even manage their good-old, familiar WinXP or Windows7 without help.

Agreed. It took a bit of digging, but, I also found the root shell prompt buried in the menu. A command prompt is not going to make sense to any Windows user. I installed claws-mail using apt-get. Interesting to note that the command aptitude install claws-mail which works on a standard Debian install does not work here. It is a very light and fast distro.