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I have to say that I agree with this. The primary purpose of an operating system now that I passed my *rties is to get out of the way. And Linux does that reall

I have to say that I agree with this. The primary purpose of an operating system now that I passed my *rties is to get out of the way. And Linux does that really well, while Windows is doing it less and less. I'm happy that we have at least 3-4 popular operating systems still, and that this should help drive innovation. But at the same time, I feel like Linux gets all the free innovation because of its openness. And if you add all the benefits of Linux being very user-friendly (as in not spamming me with ads), then it's just going to be a better choice.

skinnymuch 5y ago
Aren’t most Linux UIs largely copying or being strongly influenced by Windows? Not saying Windows has done anything special in a while. I don’t know what innovations Linux has done in the past decade either though.
- jaywalk 5y ago
  Whenever I fire up a Linux distro, I can never shake the feeling that the UI is just a subpar ripoff of Windows and MacOS. I can't really pinpoint anything, but it just doesn't feel as polished. And that even includes the mainstream distros like Ubuntu.
  - maxk42 5y ago
    Try cinnamon. It's better than the current generation of Windows UIs.
  - kaba0 5y ago
    That’s funny because windows 11 is such a Gnome 40 copy that it hurts.
    - skinnymuch 5y ago
      If that is true, it’s like saying iPhone has done some copying of Android and is too funny. Still, Android dropped their entire Blackberry inspired/copied design and copied iPhone instead in 2007/2008.
      - smoldesu 5y ago
        It's not just true, but blatantly obvious. Compare the design language of Big Sur with GTK 3.38 which predated it, and as the other anon mentioned, Windows 11 is effectively just GNOME with Dash-to-dock enabled. Whether or not Microsoft knowingly copied it is a different argument, but I find it hard to believe that their designers weren't at least inspired by the touch-friendly, reactive desktop UIs built with GTK.
        skinnymuch 5y ago
        So does that not make what I said even stronger? It isn’t really that amusing for the original (iPhone, windows) to copy aspects of the original inspiring copiers.
  - howinteresting 5y ago
    i3, sway and pop shell aren't a subpar ripoff of anything. they are plain superior to what you can get on other platforms.
    - jaywalk 5y ago
      Pop is the only one of those three that I'm familiar with, but I'd very much call it a subpar MacOS ripoff.
- marcodiego 5y ago
  > Aren’t most Linux UIs largely copying or being strongly influenced by Windows? No.
- ad404b8a372f2b9 5y ago
  Do you have concrete examples in mind of improved UI and UX in Windows and Mac in the past 20 years? I'm genuinely curious because comparing my memories of Windows XP and Windows 7 I can't think of any great innovations. Windows 10's innovations were so bad I left the OS entirely with extensive telemetry, an abusive and confusing cloud account system, ads on your desktop. The only UX improvement I saw was being able to enter your session with a pin that doesn't require you to press the enter-key, but they even botched that by not letting you type letters and not showing any warnings: Something we learned was necessary 20 years ago with the caps-lock warning. Can't speak to Macs as I only recently began checking them out. I've been studying Desktop Environments for a FOSS project, I have over a dozen VMs setup with different distros and operating systems using different DEs, and they're all basically the same. It strikes me as unfair to say Linux is copying either Windows or MacOS. I see a lot of innovation in open-source, there are a lot of innovative desktop components, settings and paradigms (Compiz comes to mind, have you seen such a customizable compositor in MacOS or Windows?) but it's natural that distributions end up choosing a common visual language by default, simply because it's what people know and expect.
  - skinnymuch 5y ago
    Ah okay I was using innovation more in the way it’s used to describe a distinct big impactful change. I didn’t know the meaning of the word is simply change. I included “either” at the end to point out I don’t see any of the three desktop OSes having done much of anything for a long time. 20 years for Mac is a long time though. OS X was just coming out then. I think just based off the fresh OS and simpler/cleaner user interface Mac was doing initially were decently big changes. You could say that only goes up to ~10.4 before there aren't many impactful positive changes besides security changes every one has been doing. 10.4 came out in like 2005.
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  Isn't the Windows 11 UI basically a total ripoff of Plasma? KDE for example can trace it's heritage from CDE, which is based on Motif, which predates Windows.

skinnymuch 5y ago

Aren’t most Linux UIs largely copying or being strongly influenced by Windows? Not saying Windows has done anything special in a while. I don’t know what innovations Linux has done in the past decade either though.

jaywalk 5y ago
Whenever I fire up a Linux distro, I can never shake the feeling that the UI is just a subpar ripoff of Windows and MacOS. I can't really pinpoint anything, but it just doesn't feel as polished. And that even includes the mainstream distros like Ubuntu.
- maxk42 5y ago
  Try cinnamon. It's better than the current generation of Windows UIs.
- kaba0 5y ago
  That’s funny because windows 11 is such a Gnome 40 copy that it hurts.
  - skinnymuch 5y ago
    If that is true, it’s like saying iPhone has done some copying of Android and is too funny. Still, Android dropped their entire Blackberry inspired/copied design and copied iPhone instead in 2007/2008.
    - smoldesu 5y ago
      It's not just true, but blatantly obvious. Compare the design language of Big Sur with GTK 3.38 which predated it, and as the other anon mentioned, Windows 11 is effectively just GNOME with Dash-to-dock enabled. Whether or not Microsoft knowingly copied it is a different argument, but I find it hard to believe that their designers weren't at least inspired by the touch-friendly, reactive desktop UIs built with GTK.
      - skinnymuch 5y ago
        So does that not make what I said even stronger? It isn’t really that amusing for the original (iPhone, windows) to copy aspects of the original inspiring copiers.
- howinteresting 5y ago
  i3, sway and pop shell aren't a subpar ripoff of anything. they are plain superior to what you can get on other platforms.
  - jaywalk 5y ago
    Pop is the only one of those three that I'm familiar with, but I'd very much call it a subpar MacOS ripoff.
marcodiego 5y ago
> Aren’t most Linux UIs largely copying or being strongly influenced by Windows? No.
ad404b8a372f2b9 5y ago
Do you have concrete examples in mind of improved UI and UX in Windows and Mac in the past 20 years? I'm genuinely curious because comparing my memories of Windows XP and Windows 7 I can't think of any great innovations. Windows 10's innovations were so bad I left the OS entirely with extensive telemetry, an abusive and confusing cloud account system, ads on your desktop. The only UX improvement I saw was being able to enter your session with a pin that doesn't require you to press the enter-key, but they even botched that by not letting you type letters and not showing any warnings: Something we learned was necessary 20 years ago with the caps-lock warning. Can't speak to Macs as I only recently began checking them out. I've been studying Desktop Environments for a FOSS project, I have over a dozen VMs setup with different distros and operating systems using different DEs, and they're all basically the same. It strikes me as unfair to say Linux is copying either Windows or MacOS. I see a lot of innovation in open-source, there are a lot of innovative desktop components, settings and paradigms (Compiz comes to mind, have you seen such a customizable compositor in MacOS or Windows?) but it's natural that distributions end up choosing a common visual language by default, simply because it's what people know and expect.
- skinnymuch 5y ago
  Ah okay I was using innovation more in the way it’s used to describe a distinct big impactful change. I didn’t know the meaning of the word is simply change. I included “either” at the end to point out I don’t see any of the three desktop OSes having done much of anything for a long time. 20 years for Mac is a long time though. OS X was just coming out then. I think just based off the fresh OS and simpler/cleaner user interface Mac was doing initially were decently big changes. You could say that only goes up to ~10.4 before there aren't many impactful positive changes besides security changes every one has been doing. 10.4 came out in like 2005.
sudosysgen 5y ago
Isn't the Windows 11 UI basically a total ripoff of Plasma? KDE for example can trace it's heritage from CDE, which is based on Motif, which predates Windows.