As a retro enthusiast, I’ve been following this project for a while and it’s been great seeing all the improvements over the years. I recommend checking out this video on its current state: youtube.com/watch?v=nWjAxNHXd_8
Equally, or possibly more interesting, is their Ladybird browser, which is cross-platform. Its been making great progress as well, and I sincerely hope that it can compete with the big two some day - would be nice to have a major browser/engine that’s not based on Webkit or Gecko.
I wish 90s interfaces would make a comeback, I really miss the aesthetics of that era. Luckily there are some excellent themes out there that scratch that itch, like Chicago95 for XFCE - and here’s bonus a screenshot of it running on my Galaxy Fold 4:
It would be a signal that MS is throwing in the towel as far as Windows as a separate OS. However, I suspect they already have some kind of Windows compatibility layer of their own that they’ve been working on. It would probably have some sort of limited source availability, as opposed to a full open source FOSS licence. If that is the case, it could actually undermine WINE. If MS could save face somehow and fully embrace Linux, they might do it, but I doubt it will happen. Who knows.
It’s a mix of some aliases from across several distros, some from as far back as 4DOS and a part for Cygwin, a somewhat complex prompt colorizer that highlights remote/local and root/user shells, and some other stuff that’s piled up over the years.
My guess, based on Proprietary Codebases I Have Seen and the apparent general philosophy of Windows development, is that people would react to the now-open-sourced Windows code with either hilarity or horror (or both at once). There would be critical articles in the tech press. Then a small select group would mine it for low-level interoperability, but none of the code itself would be retained. Emulation layers such as WINE would end up being able to reproduce Windows’ quirks more thoroughly, but finding the important bits in a mess of Someone Else’s Code would slow down development as much as having an exemplar would speed it up. This all assumes that the code was released with an acceptable license.
On the Linux side, mostly a wash beyond some small interoperability gains, in other words. What would happen on the Windows side, I wouldn’t venture a guess on.
Open source Windows is an interesting premise, but Windows-focused Linux is already a thing going on. Not only has Microsoft basically adopted Ubuntu, but most of their recent projects have been open source. They are actually one of the most numerous contributors to the Linux kernel and it’s mostly to make Ubuntu run better on Azure hardware and to make Windows Subsystem for Linux more effective.
FWIW, my (non tech-savvy) mum and dad have been running Zorin for years (and Xubuntu prior to that), without any issues. The only times I’ve had to intervene is for doing an OS upgrade, which was a manual process, but Zorin now includes a GUI upgrader which should make things even more easier.
Folks who claim Linux is too unstable or complicated for home users, and think you need to use the commandline for every small thing, should check out Zorin (or talk to my mum and dad!).
I tend to gravitate towards Ubuntu simply because it’s so big and well supported by most things. I’ve run Arch in the past but I’ve gotten too old and lazy for that if I’d be completely honest. I have played with manjaro and endeavour though… and opensuse tumbleweed, rolling is kind of nice.
Are you me? Did you also use BlackArch for a while, and still use Rainmeter? :P
I had everything set up the way I wanted it in Ubuntu the other day… but something still itched a bit so now I’m on Tumbleweed and feeling better. :D
Though Diablo 4 tends to crash after playing it for a while… not sure if I’d have the same issue in Ubuntu or not, might have to triple boot for a bit just to try it out. I really do want to stay here in chameleon land though so it would probably be better to just try to find the cause of the crashing.
I do think this is a pretty common thing among us linux geeks though, never really feeling content and just wanting to try everything. :)
Never did try BlackArch or Rainmeter though!
I’ve played around with plenty of distros though… Slackware, Redhat, Gentoo, Arch, *buntu, SuSE (before they split into openSUSE), openSUSE, Manjaro, Endeavour OS and probably a bunch more that I can’t even remember but those are probably the ones I’ve played around with the most.
i love the versatility it offers, but it’s very much so DIY. it has great documentation. anyone who considers themselves a “linux enthusiast” should try an install in a VM at some point or another, if nothing else it’s a great learning experience.
for gaming in particular: flatpak steam / lutris / bottles. it’s great because it’s completely distro agnostic. i can take the $USER/.var directory and put it on any distro with flatpak installed and it’ll just work.
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