Elementary OS


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KDE is too glossy to be a Mac clone. If anything, they'll rip off Windows 7 since a lot of the wanna-be Aero work is already there. If you're going

to copy someone else's design, might as well make it easy on yourself!

I kid, I kid.

It was rumored that Windows 7 was a rip off of KDE.

As for the distro, I will pass. It is not something I would pay for.

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To me its just a new theme if its based on something else.

You just summed up the vast majority of Linux distributions. Kudos!

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Mac called - they want their UI back.

BSD called - they want Apple to kill themselves.

Seriously though, Apple needs to make their own OS without BSD.

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Funny you should say that btw, because for some reason these things in the Linux landscape have a tendency to "evolve on their own" only after Apple introduced it to the public.

You do know how Mac OS came about in the first place, right?

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BSD called - they want Apple to kill themselves.

Seriously though, Apple needs to make their own OS without BSD.

The people who wrote the BSD code base wanted companies like NeXT/Apple to do what they did.

  • Take "good code" rather than poorly re-inventing the wheel
  • Contribute changes and bug fixes back to the original project (this is optional, but it's always appreciated)
  • Leave in 'advertising' promoting BSD in comments.

They never particularly cared about somebody using BSD code to turn a profit or bundling up their code with some new stuff and calling it a new product.

If they didn't want that to happen they could have made a license that prohibited for-profit derivative work, mandated that any linked code be opensource as well, or demanded that any changes be made public (Apple does this already, but it isn't required).

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im shocked to see that this new distro wants to charge

I swear some people can't read. Or are too lazy to do so. They don't charge, you can simply preorder the CD, which is just a nice way of them to thank you for donating to the project.

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That's actually the first decent Linux email client I've ever seen. Other than that, I'm not really a fan of OSX skins, but if the OS is stable and feels great to use, I might give it a try.

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You do know how Mac OS came about in the first place, right?

Apple bought and licensed things over time while developing their own applications, frameworks and interface on top of that? Beyond that they currently make use of BSD code and share their improvements with the open source community.

Linux devs just crack me up lately. Apple introduced iOS-like scroll bars that disappear when not in use in the first Mac OS X Lion Developer Preview. Within three weeks Ubuntu suddenly has something similar as well in their beta. Implemented not quite as nicely of course. I'm guessing that too "evolved on its own" and we can yet again write it off as pure coincidence it was introduced after Apple did the same thing.

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Honestly? I like it.

Better a okay rip-off than a lacking own GUI. :D

GNOME and KDE are both far from ideal GUIs.

I use Linux on a daily basis for months now and I gotta say I adore working with linux every time, it's just that the GUI is always flawy at the most initial and obvious places.

It's sad that so little effort is put into propper GUIs from the community and few big corporations try to break free from old traditions, trying to innovate proper and easy as well as focussing GUIs.

Yes, I'm a Mac fan, hence I might like the copywork, but really: Better an approach to good copying than to just let it slide.

Sure, Canonical is doing some excellent work trying to put new things to GNOME and I like their approaches, but it's still rough.

Let's hope good things develop from here...

Glassed Silver:win

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@Neo: Yeah, and Mac ripped off the App Store idea because Ubuntu had the Software Center back in mid 2009, and package manager years earlier. Mac also ripped off the "launchpad" (ironically, Canonical owns the trademark on that name), because that sort of view existed in Unity since mid 2010... /sarcasm

So? My personal opinion is that the scrollbars are a coincidence, but who cares? I'm not defending Elementary, because they shamelessly "tweak" and mash the interface of OS X and iOS and add an unnecessary layer on top of Ubuntu, but Ubuntu generally tends to have an idea of where to go with the ideas they borrow. Sure they changed the layout of the buttons to the left, and at that moment it seemed like desperately copying OS X, but what they did is that they made the move make sense, unlike OS X, with the current maximized window behavior (along with another idea they took from OS X, global menu, which is also slightly tweaked). So, yeah. I'll admit that generally Linux developers tend to have sub par free versions of what already exists in the proprietary world, but what's exactly wrong with that alone? Not to mention that Ubuntu is slowly starting to build something of its own.

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@Neo: Yeah, and Mac ripped off the App Store idea because Ubuntu had the Software Center back in mid 2009, and package manager years earlier. Mac also ripped off the "launchpad" (ironically, Canonical owns the trademark on that name), because that sort of view existed in Unity since mid 2010... /sarcasm

Yeah, except Launchpad comes from iOS released in 2007. An online software store hasn't been anything original for years.

So? My personal opinion is that the scrollbars are a coincidence, but who cares? I'm not defending Elementary, because they shamelessly "tweak" and mash the interface of OS X and iOS and add an unnecessary layer on top of Ubuntu, but Ubuntu generally tends to have an idea of where to go with the ideas they borrow. Sure they changed the layout of the buttons to the left, and at that moment it seemed like desperately copying OS X, but what they did is that they made the move make sense, unlike OS X, with the current maximized window behavior (along with another idea they took from OS X, global menu, which is also slightly tweaked). So, yeah. I'll admit that generally Linux developers tend to have sub par free versions of what already exists in the proprietary world, but what's exactly wrong with that alone? Not to mention that Ubuntu is slowly starting to build something of its own.

Everything is according to you right? 3D Dock? Coincidence. 2D Dock in Gnome 3D & Ubuntu? Coincidence. Expos? rip-off in Gnome 3? Coincidence. The exact Dashboard close button in Gnome 3? Coincidence. Rounded search box in Gnome 3? Coincidence. Suddenly Mac OS X Lion-like scroll bars in appear in Ubuntu two weeks after Apple released DP1? Coincidence. Icon and symbol concept rip-offs? Coincidence. Suddenly moving the window widgets in the exact same order and location as on Mac? Coincidence. Launchpad rip-off just after Apple demoed Mac OS X Lion's take on it? Coincidence. The list goes on and on. Sure, let's stick with it all being a "coincidence". (Y) :laugh:

I'm not against companies borrowing ideas from each other, giving their own spin to it in the process, everyone does that. However at this point things are just becoming ridiculous. Elementary OS still being a perfect example.

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Basically,

Who cares about another Linux distro anyway? There are so many different distros, eventually they HAD to be copying somebody's stuff!

Does anyone know exactly how many distros there are altogether? Can anyone even count that high?!

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Yeah, except Launchpad comes from iOS released in 2007. An online software store hasn't been anything original for years.

Everything is according to you right? 3D Dock? Coincidence. 2D Dock in Gnome 3D & Ubuntu? Coincidence. Expos? rip-off in Gnome 3? Coincidence. The exact Dashboard close button in Gnome 3? Coincidence. Rounded search box in Gnome 3? Coincidence. Suddenly Mac OS X Lion-like scroll bars in appear in Ubuntu two weeks after Apple released DP1? Coincidence. Icon and symbol concept rip-offs? Coincidence. Suddenly moving the window widgets in the exact same order and location as on Mac? Coincidence. Launchpad rip-off just after Apple demoed Mac OS X Lion's take on it? Coincidence. The list goes on and on. Sure, let's stick with it all being a "coincidence". (Y) :laugh:

I'm not against companies borrowing ideas from each other, giving their own spin to it in the process, everyone does that. However at this point things are just becoming ridiculous. Elementary OS still being a perfect example.

I said scrollbars are coincidence. And using your rhetoric, a dock hasn't been anything original for years :p

Launchpad is unlikely ripped off, because it's been there before Lion showed it (you can go to first netbook remixes for a similar thing), and how innovative is arranging a bunch of icons in a grid anyway? As for window widgets on the left side, it's there for a reason, to remove the clutter in the panel (where they go when windows are maximized) which would occur if they were on the right side next to the notification area. There never was any reason to put them on the left side in OS X that I know of. As for the Gnome 3 stuff, I don't care and I wasn't talking about that anyway.

I just touched upon the scrollbars. If they were able to code them in two weeks, then, wow, holy sh*t, Ubuntu devs are amazing. Things like these are planned in advance. When they moved the buttons to the left, they were clearly paving the way for removing the menubar altogether (which I think is their ultimate goal, right now it's hidden in the panel until you hover it) and integrating the window border with the panel. It makes sense, two months after they moved the buttons, first version of Unity was out, using the panel/window border integration.

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Long story short: It all always makes sense and everything evolves on its own in the Linux landscape. However it never makes any sense or evolve on its own before Apple introduced it in one of their products. That's what we see right? But okay. ;)

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EDIT: Since my reply makes no sense after your last edit. As I sad, a lot of things in Linux world seem like sub par versions of what Windows and Mac have. I don't deny that. I am annoyed that you insist everything came from Mac, like Mac's totally original (hardly the case). Just like Mac took workspaces from other people, polished them up, so are a lot of distros taking some design ideas and trying to do something with them. Those that blatantly copy (Elementary, Gnome 3) will most likely fail, but I consider Ubuntu to be the one that has a chance of doing something on its own. They've already made sense of moving the buttons to the left, and generally they do plan in advance (I think even the scrollbars were tested by regular people, they do similar things all the time).

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EDIT: Since my reply makes no sense after your last edit. As I sad, a lot of things in Linux world seem like sub par versions of what Windows and Mac have. I don't deny that. I am annoyed that you insist everything came from Mac, like Mac's totally original (hardly the case). Just like Mac took workspaces from other people, polished them up, so are a lot of distros taking some design ideas and trying to do something with them. Those that blatantly copy (Elementary, Gnome 3) will most likely fail, but I consider Ubuntu to be the one that has a chance of doing something on its own. They've already made sense of moving the buttons to the left, and generally they do plan in advance (I think even the scrollbars were tested by regular people, they do similar things all the time).

Like I said I don't have an issue with companies borrowing ideas from each other. Microsoft does this, Samsung, LG, Motorola and even Apple is no exception. However there's a big difference with how things go down with Linux. They don't borrow ideas, they try to copy them 1:1. Linux had multi-desktops before Mac OS X, yes, however Spaces looks nothing like the default Linux implementation. It uses its own unique style that fits in with Aqua. Things in Linux distros like the 3D Dock, 2D Dock style, scroll bars, Expos? clones and even icons in some cases are nothing but rip-offs from existing Mac OS X features and quite frankly things have been increasingly becoming worse recently. Hell, Gnome 3 even took resources straight from Mac OS X (see first page). The disappearing scroll bars are an Apple concept. If not tell me why didn't the Ubuntu team introduce these scrollbars before 2007 or even before October 2010? Why do these dings always have a habit of turning up in Linux after they are introduced in an Apple product?

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Long story short: It all always makes sense and everything evolves on its own in the Linux landscape. However it never makes any sense or evolve on its own before Apple introduced it in one of their products. That's what we see right? But okay. ;)

Jeezus. Give it up already. They all copy Apple. I think we get it.

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Oh Christ. The worst thing is that you make me sound like a Linux fanboy :p

So yeah, Linux copies Apple. Let's get on with our lives and get this thread back on topic.

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So yeah, Linux copies Apple. Let's get on with our lives and get this thread back on topic.

Well the thread is basically about a Linux distro that tries to be Mac OS X. So not sure if we ever left the topic? :laugh:

Okay, I'll stop now. :p

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