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86 Comments
- geoken, on 07/14/2008, -1/+94Considering the fact that the articles main focus is the gOS's appearance, you'd think the author would include a couple of pics.
- ZutroyZuuts, on 07/15/2008, -0/+33Was going to try it, but the MySpace thing soured the deal for me.
I need an OS that blocks MySpace. My ideal OS is JohnConnorOS. Not only does it have a nicer GUI, but it also rounds up soldiers that go back in time through a portal and kill Tom just as he's sat on the toilet about to come up with his lame idea. - munikho, on 07/14/2008, -0/+32some screenshots
http://www.flickr.com/photos/25318428@N06/sets/721 ... - inactive, on 07/15/2008, -4/+34dug down for retarded blog with an even more retarded poll on the bottom.
- colincornaby, on 07/15/2008, -1/+28Why is it every Linux OS that implements a dock suddenly thinks they are "OS X like"? If you took away the dock, nothing about that OS would look at all like OS X, and I spend 95% of my time in OS X in other places than the dock.
- GMMStraider, on 07/15/2008, -5/+29Oh, an OS X like system... so it has all the APIs which make integrating my Software with the OS a breeze. And it has other APIs which make me use the System-resources (Core-API) etc. And it has a (at least most of the time) very good quality control... and and and... oh wait... it uses a few GUI-Object of OS X... mhm... jep..
people really should try to understand that Mac OS X isn't just flashy graphics... - dn11, on 07/15/2008, -3/+20WOW stacks! the most useless feature from Leopard, now on your Linux desktop! awesome
- dn11, on 07/15/2008, -0/+14sudo apt nope_its_still_linux
- inactive, on 07/15/2008, -5/+19Oh... so you mean BSD.
Does anyone else find it ironic that this is copying the stacks concept as well as most of the interface features. It's like OSX....without refinement and quality control - TechCF, on 07/15/2008, -0/+12Does it use disk images and drag/drop to install/uninstall apps? Thats one of the features I love most in OSX.
- Protoss, on 07/15/2008, -2/+13I can't stand Enlightenment. Maybe it's just me but it looks so...outdated. Sure it has the effects, but it's missing the polish on those effects. It's basically the effects from OSX combined with the blandness of Windows 98.
- Dermah, on 07/15/2008, -0/+11Oh dear, I was liking what they said on the gOS website until they started to really emphasis the MySpace aspects.
'Linux meets MySpace'? Seriously, does anyone at all want that? - NikkiA, on 07/15/2008, -0/+9Oddly, if you go to gOS's website, they have a lot of text about appearance, and look and feel, but only a couple of very poor (non-clickable/non-expandable, rotated and shadow/mirrored in 3D) images too.
It's like its some kind of vast conspiracy to pump up the reputation of it being a distribution that's focused on appearance, but without any means to find out how, other than downloading it.
Oh. - Spuy767, on 07/15/2008, -1/+10Thank you. People fail to see the benefits of a more structured design. Apple really struck a nice mid-range chord with an open-source core, but a closed-source top end. It's as cose to the best of both worlds as you can get. You don't have the schizophrenic design choices of some purely open source operating systems, and you avoid the twenty years of kernel bloat that beguiles purely closed source operating systems.
- cgomez, on 07/15/2008, -9/+17So, because it's a crappy knock-off of OS X eye-candy, it's suddenly an Mac OS X competitor? If there's anything we know already is that the open-source community couldn't design a usable interface to save their lives.
- Dracusis, on 07/15/2008, -0/+8Apart from the fun fact that saying "gOS" sounds like the old "GEOS" environment (fun days), this looks formidably lame.
- etruscan, on 07/15/2008, -0/+8What if you're really, really, really, ridiculously good looking?
- inactive, on 07/15/2008, -5/+11They completely ripped off OSX.
- inactive, on 07/15/2008, -0/+6Yea, but it's small, fast and you can customize the ***** out of it. Look at what they're doing with it on gOS, it looks as pretty as any gnome or kde setup IMO. Yea, out of the box Enlightenment does look like *****.
- inactive, on 07/15/2008, -1/+6not wrong, KDE and Gnome are both terrible examples. they have a LONG way to be considered usable.
- inactive, on 07/15/2008, -2/+7'Spaces' aka virtual desktops have been around for a long time. I remember using them personally with Windows 95 and the Litestep shell (replacement for Explorer), and you can find [additional] 3rd party programs to do this on any OS. Features found in spotlight are available from 3rd parties for every OS. Same for the features in Time machine, and Quicksilver.
But since OS X doesn't support ANSI standards for keyboard input/shortcuts, and trying to make it do so is an exercise in futility.... The ease of use isn't there. Examples: Home and End(in mac terms: cmd+left and cmd+right). Awkward Cmd-centric shortcuts (aforementioned, to start, then the terminal/prompt functions differently, and uses control as usual, mostly... I don't like the inconsistency).
Still feels like OS X is designed for a single button mouse(but the cursors are handsome). Lacking context menus in areas where it'd be nice.
The graphic system touted as 'most elegant' has the worst font rendering I've ever seen. And has aesthetic bugs, open up something and type a character that has a lot of 'depth', like g or j.... Then put your cursor at the start of the line, and delete(not backspace). You'll leave trails on the bottom(happens on Leopard, in Mac Mail, for instance). And the font kerning is horrible (lacks blank space much too often for small fonts making characters hard to decipher). The font anti-aliasing(blurring is more accurate) is poor, and aliased text(my preference, regardless of monitor type) is pretty much unusable(highly unsupported, there's little to no thought put into this).
Then the 'phantom' tool tips... yea, you either get it or you don't. A tooltips doesn't completely form, the text doesn't render... probably ANOTHER bug in the text rendering system... but stays on-top. So you see a rectangle with a shadow(sometimes not). And it doesn't go away until you locate the program that created it and get another tooltip to appear, finally making the phantom vanish(or starting the process over)....
And the GUI is overly simple, yet overly candied... like take off the shadows and let me resize a window from any corner or edge. Or have another option for the minimize button (like doing the equivalent of: cmd+h.. instead of just different ways to waste cpu/gpu cycles). Or making the + button actually do something useful. Or like making double-click to a window's title(the entire horizontal top part of the window... where the 'street light' buttons I'm talking about are) do an intelligent action... I would say a double-click should do what the + button does... but the + button is useless(and especially so if you COULD RESIZE A WINDOW FROM ANY CORNER OR EDGE!).
And I don't think a lot of Mac users realize that an application doesn't close when you close out all the windows in it.. but you have to explicitly: cmd-q it or goto the menu's Quit option. - fugazied, on 07/15/2008, -1/+6Stacks aren't half as good as spaces. The things I enjoy most about OS X are time machine + spaces + quicksilver + leopard's spotlight + ease of installation. If a distro gets those features I'd install it on all of my PCs.
- ecologisto, on 07/15/2008, -1/+5I am working on Linux, and I can say only one thing : you are wrong.
sorry, but maintaining a system is a nightmare made of never ending dependencies cycles and uncompatible versions on top of multiple architectures and distributions. - Galaxylander, on 07/15/2008, -1/+5Take the tampon out of your ass and use it to swab the sand out of your vagina. Holy *****.
- salmonmoose, on 07/15/2008, -0/+4Gnome Do is closer to quicksilver.
I don't know of anything like time-machine - although there are several dozen version control systems that whilst, not as pretty are far more versatile.
as for spotlight, Ubuntu comes with one enabled out of the box, there are many more available, some letting you access other machine's indexes. - rideagain, on 07/15/2008, -0/+4Good point. Every linux distro I tried has some equivalent of spaces. I believe that ubuntu now has something somewhat similar to quicksilver, called "launch bar" (or was it "launchbar"?). I don't know about time machine and spotlight, though, maybe someone else here will know?
- kokoshka, on 07/15/2008, -0/+4I remember when gOS was integrated with google apps. What a great concept. I also remember checking their site to find that gOS had become integrated with myspace. My laughter turned sour when I figured out they were serious. What a horrible idea.
- MacParrot, on 07/15/2008, -2/+6This could be huge!
Linux meets MySpace! That's just like OS X meets train wreck!
Skinning Linux to look like other OS's is hardly new. But what Linux need isn't making it look like something else. Innovate. Experiment with new ideas, new ways to interact with information, not putting something familiar on it to try and get people to use it.
This was my problem with all the iPhone killer stories as well. Instead of making phones LIKE the iPhone try something different, but still easy to use. This is the problem with tech today. Someone comes out with a hot product and instead of competing, they copy. - Kelmon, on 07/15/2008, -1/+5Translated: this looks a bit like OS X but it's not really.
I don't understand the point of this. If you wanted OS X then you'd just buy it so that you get the complete package rather than wasting your time with something like this. A Mac is the combination of the hardware, OS and software that runs on top of it. This is clearly not going to be providing that. Given this I don't understand what the obsession is with skinning Linux to look like another OS. Let it do it's own thing, do it well, and let's have some real competition rather than attempting a "me too", which is degrading to all concerned. - inactive, on 07/15/2008, -0/+4yeah you say that like OS X doesn't have access to GNU projects, despite the fact that Mac OS X is Certified UNIX, whereas linux is not.
- darthjure, on 07/15/2008, -1/+5Why include pictures when you can describe it really, really, really well?
- alexforcefive, on 07/15/2008, -1/+4Synaptic (etc) makes everything a lot better than compiling things from source, but the os x method is just perfect. Drag the icon to your applications folder; done.
In saying that, I prefer almost everything else about linux - Armitage2k, on 07/15/2008, -0/+3Yep... it is expensive too.
- Brutusfly, on 07/15/2008, -0/+3Your arguments have no faults, except the fault of omission.
I would counter that Cmd-centric shortcuts are infinitely preferable simply by the manner in which they fall under the left hand without having to move it.
The font rendering is a trade off that will hopefully show it's strength when monitors get high resolutions like 150 to 300 dpi. (Since OS X renders the typeface to screen with character parts positioned as if it were a high-res print.) The current problem is more about 72dpi monitors and Apple not wanting to fudge the characters around to line up to the grid. For now, it's in the eye of the beholder.
And, as far as your last point, you are absolutely right, but I wouldn't want it any other way. I'll quit the app when I want to, not when the document is closed. BAM! "Cmd+Q" and I don't even have to move my hand : ) But good points overall FireXtol. - Xsecrets, on 07/15/2008, -0/+3eco sounds like you are on a rpm based system you really should try a debian based system like ubuntu. Forget dependencies they are worked out for you.
- Kelmon, on 07/15/2008, -0/+3I'd go out on a limb and suggest that a Mac is not for you. However, you'd have to prize mine from my dead hands because I like the way that the Mac OS works compared to Windows. The + button, for example, works as expected for me, whereas the old maximise button in Windows annoyed me by having a window take over my entire screen when it doesn't need all that space (a legacy, I suspect, of low resolution standards).
- diecastbeatdown, on 07/15/2008, -0/+3for some of us enlightenment is a nostalgic thing from our early linux GUI experiences. they brought a lot of eye candy to the table with incredible themes. there was a lot of build up to e17, but it is what it is.
- inactive, on 07/15/2008, -2/+5Wrong! They just create *too many*(KDE and GNOME, you will probably hear the most bickering between/about) entirely usable interfaces with little regard to other interfaces that OTHER people are using... or might actually care to use. It's a very do-it-yourself environment, and as such... ego-centric. And sadly this usually means: Standards? ***** them(though not always purposefully)!
- jmantra, on 07/15/2008, -0/+2I've tried gOS before and I was not that impressed, and besides there are better ways to make your linux desktop look OS Xish:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/mac4lin - Caulfield, on 07/15/2008, -0/+2You're nagging on behaviour that has been in Mac OS since the beginning. Mac OS has always had exactly one place to resize windows from, and has had the handle-like design in the bottom-right for new users to grab on to. Similarly, the + button reflects Mac OS' maximize behaviour in the OS since forever.
As for quitting when all windows are closed, that can be designed by the application. However, again, Mac OS behaviour from way back has taught long-term Mac users that applications shouldn't quit unless specifically told to. That is a feature, not a bug. Maybe I want Mail to run in the background and keep checking my mail without having a window cluttering my desktop or dock.
As for "ANSI standards for keyboard shortcuts"? I've never heard of that. And I imagine Mac's keyboard usages predate any standard (if it exists). Why do home/end not work as in Windows? Well, original Mac keyboards did not have home or end keys. Cmd left/right was the shortcut Apple decided on.
A lot of these behaviours, while weird to switchers, are perfectly ingrained in long-term Mac users. At least on a Mac, keyboard shortcuts are standardized. I don't know how many times I've sworn at Windows (and Linux) apps when simple things like cut/copy/paste have completely different shortcuts between apps.
You have a point about some of the font rendering in Mac OS, though. There are some inconsistencies, and they've made it hard to impossible to get rid of antialiasing for those who wish to. And as for home/end functionality, I'd like to see Windows-like behaviour in Mac OS too. To add my gripes, I'd love to get rid of the effing dock and have an application menu like days of yore. - inactive, on 07/15/2008, -1/+3So there are no pics? Buried.
- makenshi, on 07/15/2008, -0/+2It is my view that the closest thing to Apple's Cocoa is Étoilé (http://www.etoile-project.org/), as it is based on GNUStep, an open-source implementation of the OpenStep specification - the same thing that Cocoa is based on. If gOS really wants to imitate OSX they should swap Enlightenment for Étoilé.
- 3leggedHorse, on 07/15/2008, -0/+2My space yuk. I admit to making my hardy look like OS X with a bit of time and effort you can do quite a good job.
And with full blown compiz running, I'm sure there would be a few things mac heads would like. I just like the clean look of OS X. - lordshank, on 07/15/2008, -0/+2Wow, MySpace and bland software! Sign me up!
I really wish the Linux world would get over its identity crisis. Why not make something original, instead of building godawful GUI's aped off of other OS's. I think that Xfce/Xubuntu (and I have run through a ton of distros) is about the only attempt to do anything different, but still, the software is not there. This stuff is fine for guys that like to tinker, but for end users, things like camera compatibility or getting a media/mp3 player that works with your software. I know there are solutions, I have an iPod with Linux on it, and a hacked Canon, but most end users are not going to have the same dedication to software. ***** like building social networking is just a band-aid to draw traffic, I feel the same way about gOS as I do for spam blogs, it sucks. - jamesdew, on 07/15/2008, -0/+2Well even if you used 1500 words you could aparently give more information with just 2 pictures.
- jasmus, on 07/15/2008, -0/+2Do you all really think that any package manager is easier than OSX?
I use both, and most OSX dmg downloads open up a window with two icons. One the application, and one a link to your applications folder. There's even an arrow graphic there the let you know you can drag it. You drag it about 5cm accross the screen and drop it. installed.
I know people prefer other things, but saying that it's "easier" to sudo apt-get install random_app is just wrong. - etx313, on 07/15/2008, -0/+2Yeah, if it's not BSD + NextStep (or Openstep) it's not even close. That's WHAT makes OS X cool.
- ZephyrNinety, on 07/15/2008, -1/+3Yeah, because having a dock just automatically makes it so similar to OS X.
- tsupersonic, on 07/15/2008, -0/+1gOS is way too simple...Some people may like this (mostly new people to linux) and then some people like me hate it.
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