3 ms·

They have a very slick and professional looking webpage. Is it weird that that makes me wary? I’m used to the best distros having webpages that look like a wiki

They have a very slick and professional looking webpage. Is it weird that that makes me wary? I’m used to the best distros having webpages that look like a wiki or a professor’s website.

jimbo808 11mo ago
In the past it made more sense to have a shitty webpage because open source projects don't tend to have graphic designers contributing to them, but anyone can AI a decent looking static site these days, so it wouldn't surprise me if some of those open source maintainers start choosing to use them.
- HumanOstrich 11mo ago
  "AI" isn't a verb, and most people don't care to cargo-cult their designs just to appease other members of the cult.
  - layer8 11mo ago
    In English, any noun can be verbed. https://learningenglish.voanews.com/a/verbing-nouns/6838872.html https://learningenglish.voanews.com/a/verbing-nouns/6838872....
  - jimbo808 11mo ago
    Some people appreciate a nice looking site, they just didn’t have time to spend making it look nice. Now those people have the option of doing that without a huge time commitment, so undoubtedly some of them will.
hombre_fatal 11mo ago
You can so easily vibe code a landing page that these days still having a bad landing page suggests you really don’t care about the details, and that’s a bad sign. It’s a brochure website.
- GaryBluto 11mo ago
  Who decides what a "bad" landing page is? I'd argue many older and more simplistic landing pages look way better than their current equivalents.
  - deleted 11mo ago
    [deleted]
- JoshTriplett 11mo ago
  > You can so easily vibe code a landing page that these days still having a bad landing page suggests you really don’t care about the details, and that’s a bad sign. "Looks like a wiki or a professors web page" is not "bad landing page", it's "aesthetic that is not the mainstream aesthetic". We're not talking about "things don't line up", we're talking about functional. And frankly, if I see that someone pointedly doesn't vibe-code their landing page, that's a good sign that they're not phoning in the rest of the work, too.
- II2II 11mo ago
  > having a bad landing page suggests you really don’t care about the details, and that’s a bad sign. That depends upon your definition of a good landing page. Personally, I will pay more attention to a Linux distribution if the landing page has information that is valuable to the community. If it looks like they are trying to sell something, I will just move on. In a way, I treat caring about the details as a bad sign (though I realize that I am just prioritizing a different set of details).
- swatcoder 11mo ago
  "At least vibe code it, so people know you care about detail" Do you see the irony there? If something is a cheap template or just vibe-coded slop, it denotes precisely that someone doesn't care about detail. It's exactly for those style-over-substance people that these tools exist! That's not to say that a dated, perfunctory, or poor attempt might not suggest a lack of interest in detail itself, or at least a lack of personal insignt for user experience. It could, but vibe coding delivers no cheat around that. It just writes it in big bold letters.
GaryBluto 11mo ago
I think a project's web page design conveys a lot about the philosophies of the project itself. My first thought when the page loaded was "Chinese knockoff of Windows 11" - it looks like a product. Update: It is a product. To get themes/configurations more palatable to former Windows and Mac users, you need to pay $48 https://zorin.com/os/pro/ https://zorin.com/os/pro/
- omnimus 11mo ago
  Unfortunately for microsoft it looks better than windows.
more_corn 11mo ago
I’m used to Linux having a user experience that looks like a wiki or a professor’s website. At this point Linux is stable and works and is reliable. It just usually looks jankey. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the zorin desktop experience reminded me of a professional OS.
- prmoustache 11mo ago
  What kind of OS are you calling professional? Solaris is dying, Irix last release was in 2006, is nowhere to be seen, all that is left is AIX and HP-UX but their available desktops are the very same you find on Linux and the BSDs
shevy-java 11mo ago
May be an age problem. Slackware has a homepage stuck in the 1990s.
oAlbe 11mo ago
That has not been the case for quite a long time now. Lots of distros still have websites that look like a wiki, see Arch. But in their case the Arch wiki is one of the best wikis ever existed for what it covers. If you look at modern yet established distros, I struggle to find the outliers that don't have professional looking, slick web pages. See all the *buntus, Fedora, Elementary OS, Cachy OS, Bazzite, Endeavour, Manjaro, Linux Mint, and so forth.
- oarsinsync 11mo ago
  Check out the Debian website. Slicker than it used to be. Still not slick.
  - oAlbe 11mo ago
    I mean, ignoring the fact that it's one example versus a list of examples I posted, I still don't think Debian website is that bad. I remember how it used to be, when it had a link to get the CDs with the distro and the option of getting all the packages in the package manager repository. Debian evolved like everybody else. To me, and of course this is personal, Debian website looks pretty professional in an enterprise-y kind of way. I quite like it. But then again, it's one example. Hell, even OpenSUSE's website looks super slick and modern.
    - oarsinsync 11mo ago
      > ignoring the fact that it's one example versus a list of examples I posted It’s the root example, of which many of the examples of your list are derived from. Debian is the daddy.
- odie5533 11mo ago
  I think the medium is the message here. When I see Arch's home page, I know it will be a hobby OS where there's countless hours of fun in terminal land editing config files. That's how I know it's not for me.
ac29 11mo ago
Zorin OS' main pitch is the design work they put into it to make it look like Windows or macOS. As far as I can tell they wrote zero new software (the taskbar is a forked GNOME extension, and the Zorin Connect app is a forked KDE Connect). So, its not surprising they made an effort to make a nice looking webpage, design work is basically the only thing they are doing.
- aucisson_masque 11mo ago
  Honestly that's one of the thing where Linux is truly behind other os. Design really need someone to step up, gnome choices are really debatable, kde is great but c'mon.. it's not for beginners or people who just want things to work. I found that Linux mint desktop environment is the best of both world, zorin a bit behind then everything else.
  - AuthAuth 11mo ago
    there is actually nothing complex or hard to understand about KDE. You can navigate your way around as you would with any other piece of software you're new to.
    - doubled112 11mo ago
      My 8 and 11 year old both use KDE. About 10 minutes and they figured out enough to start a browser and mod Minecraft. I think the people who have the hardest time are those who think they know what they’re doing so feel they need to change things. I’ve never seen a beginner at anything start digging through settings wildly, and experienced people know what they want to change. It’s that middle ground.
      - aucisson_masque 11mo ago
        maybe i'm less smart that your 8 years old, i remember i wanted to switch the bottom bar to the left and the overlay was so cumbersome... i tried a few things and ended up breaking the layout.
debo_ 11mo ago
It's not weird, but it is wrong. I have used zorin as my daily driver for years now, and it's a great, boring Ubuntu distro. I love it.
mhitza 11mo ago
Looks pretty generic to me, in line with modern trends of spaced out, extra padded, pale tones. What it does well compared to websites of the same bunch is that it has good contrast for text. Not the obnoxious light gray on white.
VadimPR 11mo ago
If you know what a distro is, and that distro is most trustworthy when the website looks unappealing, chances are you don't need to be convinced of benefits of Linux!
layer8 11mo ago
It isn't weird. They also don't seem to provide any proper screenshots on the website, or at least I couldn't find them. (By "proper", I mean 1:1 actual pixels, not some photoshopped screen mockup.)

They have a very slick and professional looking webpage. Is it weird that that makes me wary? I’m used to the best distros having webpages that look like a wiki or a professor’s website.

jimbo808 11mo ago

In the past it made more sense to have a shitty webpage because open source projects don't tend to have graphic designers contributing to them, but anyone can AI a decent looking static site these days, so it wouldn't surprise me if some of those open source maintainers start choosing to use them.

HumanOstrich 11mo ago
"AI" isn't a verb, and most people don't care to cargo-cult their designs just to appease other members of the cult.
- layer8 11mo ago
  In English, any noun can be verbed. https://learningenglish.voanews.com/a/verbing-nouns/6838872.html https://learningenglish.voanews.com/a/verbing-nouns/6838872....
- jimbo808 11mo ago
  Some people appreciate a nice looking site, they just didn’t have time to spend making it look nice. Now those people have the option of doing that without a huge time commitment, so undoubtedly some of them will.

hombre_fatal 11mo ago

You can so easily vibe code a landing page that these days still having a bad landing page suggests you really don’t care about the details, and that’s a bad sign. It’s a brochure website.

GaryBluto 11mo ago
Who decides what a "bad" landing page is? I'd argue many older and more simplistic landing pages look way better than their current equivalents.
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
JoshTriplett 11mo ago
> You can so easily vibe code a landing page that these days still having a bad landing page suggests you really don’t care about the details, and that’s a bad sign. "Looks like a wiki or a professors web page" is not "bad landing page", it's "aesthetic that is not the mainstream aesthetic". We're not talking about "things don't line up", we're talking about functional. And frankly, if I see that someone pointedly doesn't vibe-code their landing page, that's a good sign that they're not phoning in the rest of the work, too.
II2II 11mo ago
> having a bad landing page suggests you really don’t care about the details, and that’s a bad sign. That depends upon your definition of a good landing page. Personally, I will pay more attention to a Linux distribution if the landing page has information that is valuable to the community. If it looks like they are trying to sell something, I will just move on. In a way, I treat caring about the details as a bad sign (though I realize that I am just prioritizing a different set of details).
swatcoder 11mo ago
"At least vibe code it, so people know you care about detail" Do you see the irony there? If something is a cheap template or just vibe-coded slop, it denotes precisely that someone doesn't care about detail. It's exactly for those style-over-substance people that these tools exist! That's not to say that a dated, perfunctory, or poor attempt might not suggest a lack of interest in detail itself, or at least a lack of personal insignt for user experience. It could, but vibe coding delivers no cheat around that. It just writes it in big bold letters.

GaryBluto 11mo ago

I think a project's web page design conveys a lot about the philosophies of the project itself. My first thought when the page loaded was "Chinese knockoff of Windows 11" - it looks like a product. Update: It is a product. To get themes/configurations more palatable to former Windows and Mac users, you need to pay $48 https://zorin.com/os/pro/ https://zorin.com/os/pro/

omnimus 11mo ago
Unfortunately for microsoft it looks better than windows.

more_corn 11mo ago

I’m used to Linux having a user experience that looks like a wiki or a professor’s website. At this point Linux is stable and works and is reliable. It just usually looks jankey. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the zorin desktop experience reminded me of a professional OS.

prmoustache 11mo ago
What kind of OS are you calling professional? Solaris is dying, Irix last release was in 2006, is nowhere to be seen, all that is left is AIX and HP-UX but their available desktops are the very same you find on Linux and the BSDs

shevy-java 11mo ago

May be an age problem. Slackware has a homepage stuck in the 1990s.

oAlbe 11mo ago

That has not been the case for quite a long time now. Lots of distros still have websites that look like a wiki, see Arch. But in their case the Arch wiki is one of the best wikis ever existed for what it covers. If you look at modern yet established distros, I struggle to find the outliers that don't have professional looking, slick web pages. See all the *buntus, Fedora, Elementary OS, Cachy OS, Bazzite, Endeavour, Manjaro, Linux Mint, and so forth.

oarsinsync 11mo ago
Check out the Debian website. Slicker than it used to be. Still not slick.
- oAlbe 11mo ago
  I mean, ignoring the fact that it's one example versus a list of examples I posted, I still don't think Debian website is that bad. I remember how it used to be, when it had a link to get the CDs with the distro and the option of getting all the packages in the package manager repository. Debian evolved like everybody else. To me, and of course this is personal, Debian website looks pretty professional in an enterprise-y kind of way. I quite like it. But then again, it's one example. Hell, even OpenSUSE's website looks super slick and modern.
  - oarsinsync 11mo ago
    > ignoring the fact that it's one example versus a list of examples I posted It’s the root example, of which many of the examples of your list are derived from. Debian is the daddy.
odie5533 11mo ago
I think the medium is the message here. When I see Arch's home page, I know it will be a hobby OS where there's countless hours of fun in terminal land editing config files. That's how I know it's not for me.

ac29 11mo ago

Zorin OS' main pitch is the design work they put into it to make it look like Windows or macOS. As far as I can tell they wrote zero new software (the taskbar is a forked GNOME extension, and the Zorin Connect app is a forked KDE Connect). So, its not surprising they made an effort to make a nice looking webpage, design work is basically the only thing they are doing.

aucisson_masque 11mo ago
Honestly that's one of the thing where Linux is truly behind other os. Design really need someone to step up, gnome choices are really debatable, kde is great but c'mon.. it's not for beginners or people who just want things to work. I found that Linux mint desktop environment is the best of both world, zorin a bit behind then everything else.
- AuthAuth 11mo ago
  there is actually nothing complex or hard to understand about KDE. You can navigate your way around as you would with any other piece of software you're new to.
  - doubled112 11mo ago
    My 8 and 11 year old both use KDE. About 10 minutes and they figured out enough to start a browser and mod Minecraft. I think the people who have the hardest time are those who think they know what they’re doing so feel they need to change things. I’ve never seen a beginner at anything start digging through settings wildly, and experienced people know what they want to change. It’s that middle ground.
    - aucisson_masque 11mo ago
      maybe i'm less smart that your 8 years old, i remember i wanted to switch the bottom bar to the left and the overlay was so cumbersome... i tried a few things and ended up breaking the layout.

debo_ 11mo ago

It's not weird, but it is wrong. I have used zorin as my daily driver for years now, and it's a great, boring Ubuntu distro. I love it.

mhitza 11mo ago

Looks pretty generic to me, in line with modern trends of spaced out, extra padded, pale tones. What it does well compared to websites of the same bunch is that it has good contrast for text. Not the obnoxious light gray on white.

VadimPR 11mo ago

If you know what a distro is, and that distro is most trustworthy when the website looks unappealing, chances are you don't need to be convinced of benefits of Linux!

layer8 11mo ago

It isn't weird. They also don't seem to provide any proper screenshots on the website, or at least I couldn't find them. (By "proper", I mean 1:1 actual pixels, not some photoshopped screen mockup.)