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Chinese pirates clone Windows XP, sorta

According to Download Squad, a group of Chinese pirates has moved on from their days of pirating Windows XP itself. Now, they've settled for just the look and feel. Ylmf OS is a version of Ubuntu that will make your head spin. The OS looks very similar to Windows XP, using identical icons and a similar taskbar. It has Wine integration to allow for Windows based programs to run, supports Compiz effects, and comes with a lot of pre-loaded freeware (Firefox, OpenOffice.org, etc.), as you'd expect from a Linux distro.

This sort of distro could be an ideal way to shift a Windows user over to Linux, as the learning curve would be minimized, at least from the UI standpoint. Under the hood, Ylmf OS is still Linux and will not run Windows based applications natively (Wine still doesn't work for everything). For a detailed list of features, you can visit the Detailed Features page of their website.

One of the comments on Download Squad indicates that by using the "sudo locale-gen en-US" command after installation, he was able to change the language to English (which would explain why the picture below has English in it). If you're a Linux enthusiast or are interested in giving it a whirl, please do. Be sure to let us know how it goes in the comments. Download Squad also mentions some possible legal issues over the design, though many think that it won't be much of an problem, as the OS still runs a pure Linux kernel (not to mention that China's copyright laws are pretty non-existent).


Image courtesy of mark on Download Squad. Thanks!

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