alt Hacker NewsIs it just me or does anyone else notice all the little inconsistencies on these "windows ui clones" that show up on linux? I like the idea but looking at the pictures I can't get past the lock screen (font size feels wrong, the borders missing on the input field, the size.. it just all feels wrong somehow I can't explain. That On-Screen-Keyboard squeezed into a tiny square??). On the "start menu" picture the two font sizes near the battery icon, how all the linux apps on display have weird coloring and blues-that-dont-quite-match, the bright greens with white text, etc..
Not to diss the UI attempt at all, I just always seem to spot all these little things/polish every time one of these come up (I've seen so many XP clones where the minimize/maximize/close buttons look out of place and badly shaped, etc..). I genuinely wonder if it's because I spent so much time on these OSes back in the day or if all the DEs being used have some inherent limitations that cause these design inconsistencies.
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I think these things tend to be somebody’s fun little mini project, so polish is not a high priority. Realistically a big community of contributors isn’t going to grow around cloning a UI that Linux users intentionally left behind.
The beautiful thing about Free software is that people can do whatever they want! In a way is is quite impressive that somebody can get into the uncanny valley with this sort of project, right?
It's because it's a tremendous amount of time and work and effort and QA to get UIs to look really really well-designed. (Even then, the design can still suck, like modern Windows or appleOS 26.x.)
I don't think people realize just what an insane amount of labor it is to get these things implemented, even if you're handed a perfect design spec up front.
Maybe LLMs will close this gap once they get better at seeing things.
You need tons of effort, plenty of experience in the field and a single unified direction to get them done well, and unfortunately the Linus Torvalds of Design currently does not exist.
Many underestimate just how much is behind everyday basic UIs.
Even the biggest native Linux desktop projects suffer from this. KDE is typical death by a thousand papercuts, GNOME tried but their amateurism is clearly visible.