How much should it look like Windows?

Latest response

Increasingly, RHEL (and others) try to look more like MS Windows.  I hope there can be discussion here of how far RedHat should go or not go in this direction.

 

My own view is that if I wanted my screen to look like Windows, I would run Windows.  My suggestions to the RHEL 7 developers are these:  At install time (or first login for a new user) provide an option for a simple windowing environment vs. a fuller one.  In particular, an environment with no nautilus, a plain colored background, a terminal-opener icon and desktop switcher already installed on the panel, no PLACES on the main menu, but a shutdown and a sleep option on the logoff menu like RedHat 4 always had, etc.  And PLEASE allow the user to edit the main menu.  At present (in 5 and I think 6) there is an applet to allow menu editing, but you can't change anything on the main menu. Provide a way for users to specify where inserted devices (dvd, usbdisk, usb printers) will be mounted--I want cds at /cdrom, not /media/whatever--editing udev rules is too esoteric for ordinary users.  Keep evolution, not thunderbird (or give the choice) as mail client.  From what I have heard of gnome 3.0, it is not what I would want either, so please give a choice in that area also.

 

(I am a scientist, using RHEL on my desktop/laptop within a small lab network.)

George Reeke

GR
Log in to join the conversation

Responses

rh Red Hat Guru 1429 points
2 November 2011 6:22 PM

Hi

 

  Would you please list the issues you currently face with gnome3 ?

 

 

Cheers

 

 

reference:

http://www.gnome.org/gnome-3/

ep Pro 479 points
2 November 2011 7:17 PM

As far as I know the only DE/WM's that defaults to a windows-like look are KDE and LXDE (correct me if there are more).

 

Now, if you want a lightweight environment with a lot of configuration capabilities, I'd go with openbox. Doesnt look like Windows unless you really try to. Or perhaps XFCE. GNOME could be the default "full" environment and Openbox/XFCE could be the "light" environment.

 

However, I don't really understand the desire to specifically make it look not-windows. I don't use windows for anything, but I don't mind a layout that resembles it. A layout is a layout; a poor OS is a poor OS. Just because it looks like Windows doesnt mean I want to deal with the rest of the problems I have with Windows. I used KDE3 and KDE4 for a few years and had no problems with it, but moved to openbox and e17 to improve performance.

 

Mind you this is only at the desktop level; I'd never install a DE/WM on a server unless absolutely necessary (hasn't happened yet).