from the good-artists-copy-great-artists-infringe-design-patents dept.
Windows 11 Look Inspired by KDE Plasma and GNOME?
The images of the upcoming Windows 11 Operating system from Microsoft resemble a mixture of our beloved KDE Plasma and GNOME. How much they are similar? We try to find out.
There's a saying which I remember – 'Good artists copy. Great artists steal'. I don't know the design team behind Windows 11, but it seems they are pretty good inspired by the Linux desktops. If you look at the Windows OS look over the years – from Windows XP to 7 to 10 – there is not much changed in terms of look and feel. Until now.
Windows OS have typically 5 to 7 years of life iterations with a new release. If you think about the options of customization Windows gives you, that remained the same over the years. Even the overall desktop experience in terms of Start Menu position, width, color – all remained constant.
But with the new look of Windows 11 – this is changing. Let me walk you through some of the screenshots I had a look at and how cunningly it is similar to the popular Linux desktop environments such as KDE Plasma and GNOME.
If Windows 11 really looks like KDE Plasma and GNOME, is this to have a more uniform UI when Windows Subsystem for Linux offers Linux GUI apps with an integrated seamless way for users to install Linux GUI apps?
Related Stories
Microsoft's Windows 11 Release Event: TLDR Version
Windows 11 features and significant changes
- Centered Taskbar and Start Menu.
- Taskbar is fixed to the bottom and can't be moved elsewhere (we are hoping this changes as the development process progresses).
- An improved File Explorer design (nothing radical).
- OS features glassy transitions, new animations, and rounded corners.
- New Microsoft Store, which will also go live for Windows 10.
- Android apps are finally here!
- The company says Windows 11 is built for gaming: DirectX 12 Ultimate, Direct Storage, and Auto HDR are all coming.
- Xbox Game Pass is being integrated into the OS.
- New Chat app powered by Microsoft Teams.
- Teams is integrated into the Windows 11 Taskbar.
- Snap Layouts: Windows 11 allows you to quickly snap apps into different modes.
- Widgets get a prime spot.
- Improved touch gestures for a better 2-in-1 experience.
- Quick Actions are now Quick Settings.
- New out of box experience (OOBE).
For the first time, Windows will be 64-bit only, supporting dual-core CPUs with 4 GB of RAM at a minimum. A 64 GB drive is required, probably to avoid the messy update process that Windows 10 often required on machines with only 32 GB. Recent builds require a TPM 2.0 but the official release will only require TPM 1.2. Windows 11 will be released sometime in Fall 2021 as a free update for Windows 10 users (who meet the minimum requirements).
See also: Most Modern PCs Will Have No Issues Running Windows 11 – AMD & Intel CPUs With A Minimum of TPM 1.2 Required, TPM 2.0 Recommended
Windows 11 is much more than a new theme slapped onto Windows 10
DirectStorage on Windows 11: Next-gen gaming performance, with PC requirements
Previously: Windows 11 Build Leaks Ahead of Launch
Windows 11 Look Inspired by KDE Plasma and GNOME?
This story presents a roundup of a selection of Microsoft Windows 11 prerelease story submissions. Included are the following:
- Windows 11 To Only Support One Intel 7th Gen CPU, No AMD Zen CPUs
- Why Windows 11 Has Such Strict Hardware Requirements, According to Microsoft
- Microsoft Won't Stop You Installing Windows 11 on Older PCs
- Start or Please Stop? Power users mourn features lost in Windows 11 'simplification'
If Windows isn't your cup of tea, then please feel free to skip this story; another story will appear presently. Otherwise, please see the rest of the story below the fold:
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 18 2021, @09:27PM (9 children)
Window decorations are gross and animations are for kids.
(Score: 5, Informative) by PinkyGigglebrain on Friday June 18 2021, @11:22PM (7 children)
Amen to that.
I like anime but hate animations in my GUI, and the less said about Windows's "widgets" the better. One of the first things i do with every GUI I install is turn them off as much animated crap as I can. With Windows the difference is very noticeable, I'm always surprised by how much more responsive the GUI and applications become once the eye candy is gone.
And as KDE Plasma and Gnome, meh. I've been using the Trinity Desktop Environment [trinitydesktop.org] on my Linux systems for almost a decade, ever since KDE EOLd 3,5 and I was faced with upgrading to KDE 4. TDE doesn't have much eye candy to begin with so once the animations are turned off I get the best performance out of my systems.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday June 19 2021, @02:26AM (2 children)
What distro are you using under Trinity? I like the XP-ness of Trinity, and how I can make it look exactly as I wish, but last I used it, it wasn't stable enough to stick with me. Agreed it has awesome performance, even on minimal hardware.
...presently using PCLinuxOS with KDE, themed to more or less resemble a nice dark Win7ish.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Informative) by PinkyGigglebrain on Saturday June 19 2021, @08:24AM (1 child)
PCLinuxOS is supported, there is even a liveCD based on it.
I currently have it running on Devuan ASCII and Buster on my two desktop systems. But before that it was on various Debian installs until they went with systemd. I have had TDE crash on me a few times in the last decade, usually because of edge case failures of third party software that ended up taking the DE down with it, usually it took the OS out too. Since I upgraded to the latest 14.0.x release last year I've had zero issues, even when I am working with the same software that used to cause problems before.
Hers the full list of supported OSs [trinitydesktop.org]
And some Live CDs [trinitydesktop.org] to test out the latest version
Good luck.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday June 19 2021, @02:05PM
Ah, good, I'm glad Trinity's stability issues have gone away; I'll have to give it another long look, as overall I really like it. When I was using it, the problem wasn't edge software, it was the desktop itself that would get clogged up and fall over. But it's been a couple years, and several major updates ago; just haven't been motivated to mess with it (as my KDE setup never gives me any grief).
One of our PCLinusOS guys maintains a really nice kitchen-sink Trinity edition, and per our tests on the forum it can get by on 300mb RAM, so it's a good choice for an older laptop (tho our KDE flagship edition only needs 600mb... we're not a greedy distro :) We're rolling so upgrades are easy enough. In fact our guy demonstrated that PCLOS can update all the way from the oldest that will run at all (2010ish) clear to the present with only 3 minor excursions to the command line. This makes me happy, since reinstalling is against my religion.
Just think... if Win10's interface hadn't been such a steaming pile, I wouldn't have gone back to trawling linux distros hoping to find an alternative, and I might even be looking forward to Win11. As it is... meh, my custom PCLOS install takes five minutes. (Six on really old hardware.)
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by bart9h on Saturday June 19 2021, @03:11AM
Interesting.. I wasn't aware of Trinity until now.
It seems to fill the same niche as MATE [mate-desktop.org] (which is a continuation of GNOME 2, while Trinity is a continuation of KDE 3.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by turgid on Saturday June 19 2021, @11:16AM (2 children)
Indeed. I find GUI animations very distracting. About 20 years ago, I settled on WindowMaker for my window manage and haven't changed (I used AfterStep before, but it jumped the shark).
Unfortunately I have to use Windows 10 for work nowadays, and it's ugly and awkward. I hate all the patronising little animations in the applications, such as Excel, when you move from cell to cell.
I do my proper work in a Linux VM (Ubuntu), and even that has an awkward GUI. It's not as bad as Windows, but it's too much like a mobile phone.
I tend to work in xterm and vim most of the time. I have some very small shell scripts for automating things in xterms. I never need to use a GUI file manager or anything like that. I don't even use an IDE unless I really have to. They slow me down. Unfortunately I haven't had time yet to figure out how to replace the window manager on Ubuntu with WindowMaker. I suppose I should make time.
By the way, Slackware 15 (-current) is looking really good now. No systemd!
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Reziac on Saturday June 19 2021, @02:09PM
First thing I do with Win10 is turn off all the damned animations.
First thing I do with KDE is turn off all the damned animations.
I sense a theme.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 19 2021, @03:07PM
I'll second that comment about Slackware 15 (-current). I've been running it for months now with latest and greatest XFCE. Fast, stable, secure - just how I like 'em.
Long live Pat!
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 19 2021, @01:09AM
Ohh but feel the fucking BUZZZ. Everyone's talking about the W11. See, it's gone virrrrral!!
(Score: 5, Interesting) by looorg on Friday June 18 2021, @09:27PM (4 children)
I doubt it is so Microsoft can help prepare or transition their user base to Linux. Just wait some time and watch how the MS lawyers will claim prior art of the UI and sue all that infringe, including Gnome and KDE.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 18 2021, @09:47PM
Though you might be right, it's probably equally plausible that nobody needs to make such innovations now that the entire tech industry is one big circle-jerk coded and guided by Jewish trannies.
Makes perfect sense that a demographic known for spending all their time bitching about pronouns and perceived slights rather than innovation would homogenize rather than differentiate their respective brands. To use real-life analogies, it's like when Jewish property owners buy out multiple small apartment complexes or perhaps a few pubs on the same beach, keeps the names, but remodels them all so that they look exactly the same. It's why every pub on the beach has the exact same steel 'n' barrel aesthetic, or why every small apartment complex is painted the same color with the same wood paneling on the gates -- all with the same ghastly "Property managed by Goldstein and Levy" plaques that look every bit belonging as the bolts sticking out of Frankenstein's neck.
Though Windows will still be a safe business bet as long as they don't do anything stupid like move window controls to the left side, or embrace purple themes. Or, worse, have their latest desktop art look like a fat hairy bitch floating tits-up on the water. [comovertodogratis.com]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by driverless on Saturday June 19 2021, @03:06AM (2 children)
It's not even that. The only "innovation" Microsoft has done in desktop Windows in at least ten years is rearrange the UI deckchairs every few months. If you make enough random changes to the UI then at some point the random drift is going to bring it close to someone else's UI. If multiple UIs are randomly drifting then the chances are increased. So this perceived similarity in a few aspects is just due to brownian motion. Wait a few weeks and they'll have drifted apart again.
(Score: 2, Informative) by shrewdsheep on Saturday June 19 2021, @11:44AM (1 child)
To nitpick: if two Browinian motions drift against each other, the chance of a match stays the same. Switch to the difference process which is Brownian again. The thing that changes is the variance of the difference process which is twice the variance of a single Brownian process.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Saturday June 19 2021, @11:50AM
Ah yeah, good point.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 18 2021, @09:39PM (7 children)
Microsoft's UX wizards have topped themselves. Moving the taskbar to the center of the screen to celebrate emancipation day is a brilliant show of solidarity with our formerly-oppressed minorities.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 18 2021, @10:59PM
Oh you poor, oppressed majority!
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 18 2021, @11:02PM (2 children)
Just look on the bright side. After the laws are passed for reparations to be paid out then that issue will finally be resolved once and for all.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 18 2021, @11:17PM (1 child)
As soon as they announce reparations, I'm investing in KFC.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 19 2021, @06:05PM
I don't get it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 19 2021, @11:02AM (2 children)
Thanks for reminding us that racism is alive and well in America. And why America is ready to cut off its nose to spite the face.
The only reason why China is not leader of the world by now is their pure ineptitude on the world stage.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 19 2021, @06:08PM
That, and their rampant racism that dwarfs the US. It's easy to criticize the US because there is open discussion about it.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 20 2021, @05:14PM
There's nothing wrong with racism. It's only a dirty word when it's pro white. You've been brainwashed by the Jews.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 18 2021, @09:43PM
XEROX PARC, apple, KDE, GNOME, the list goes on and on and on...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 18 2021, @10:37PM
It's always Apple.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 18 2021, @10:38PM (4 children)
Someone obviously never saw Windows 3x or Windows 8.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 19 2021, @12:00AM (3 children)
wn3.1 was the peak of gui in windows. it still sat on top of dos, not the other way around, plus you could change all the dimensions and colours individually without themes and such, or with simple .ini parameters.
(Score: 4, Informative) by turgid on Saturday June 19 2021, @11:10AM (1 child)
The Windows 3.1 GUI was rotten. It didn't even have the concept of folders. It had groups (for icons) and you couldn't nest them. The file manager was atrocious. In fact, it was a step backwards from Windows 3.0. Anyone who had used GEM, a Mac or an Amiga (or later an Acorn Archimedes) was astounded at how bad the Windows GUI was.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday June 21 2021, @07:07AM
And I was using GEM, MacOS, and windows 3.0, before windows 3.1, and thought 3.1's file manager was the best of the lot.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Saturday June 19 2021, @04:59PM
You should really check out Windows 95/NT 4 (prior to the "everything is a web page, so IE is an OS component, really!" craze.) Although not perfect, a lot of actual research and testing went in to the user interface. It gave Windows users the desktop icons that Mac users had for ages, a consistency that enabled one to easily talk others through the UI, had a fairly formal appearance, few animations, and hardly anything that was in-your-face or advertising at you.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by pe1rxq on Friday June 18 2021, @11:15PM (2 children)
This just means that after years of dumbing down the interfaces of both KDE and GNOME we are now at a point that they are indistinguishable from Microsoft crapware.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 19 2021, @01:18PM
Yeah, pretty much this. It's mostly general trends in UI design infecting all of them, for the worse. Everything is going lowest-common-denominator, just in case you want to run your word processor and video editing software on your cellphone.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 20 2021, @05:24PM
KDE has always been Windows-esque to me. Gnome is now controlled by bolshevik whores and they have been very busy ruining Gnome.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by FuzzyTheBear on Friday June 18 2021, @11:32PM
Imitating in this case is not a bad idea , if that's what it is .. that means that a) we won .. b) they recognise we done a super job with the desktops and c) why fight linux ?
See.. past 20 years we seen Linux become top dog on the supercomputers. Desktops ? try linux-mint mate .. or another variant. it just freaking works.
The OS has matured to the point MS is adopting it piece by piece. Yes there's apps for Win that arent available for Linux yet .. but here's the writing on the wall :
Linux has become the technologically superior OS and that's it. No single company can compete with millions of coders hard at work having fun solving problems.
So .. if windows embrace linux's desktops and imitates them .. that should simply tell you that we got it right.
Sorry if the previous paragraph bruised some egos .. hey .. sucks to be stuck with Windows .
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Cyrix6x86 on Saturday June 19 2021, @01:38AM
Operating systems influence and inspire one another. They make major UI changes pretty much in lockstep. Windows 11 looks more like macOS 11 more than, say, Windows Vista. Gnome 40 had more in common with macOS 11 than it does with Gnome 2.32, which looks like Windows 2000. The Kickoff menu that KDE has used for 15 years was directly inspired by the Windows Vista beta.
Its the sane thing with cars. A modern Mustang looks more like a modern Camaro than a Foxbody.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 19 2021, @06:31PM
n/t
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 19 2021, @06:34PM
comp¡z for the win!
anything that makes a desktop bigger is a good thing.
my "hot edges" are top-right, which hit with the mouse pointer, makes the desktop zoom out and shows me overview of all virtual desktops (i have 4 configured). i can thus run 4 programs full screen and switch via "mouse pointer crashes into top right corner.
the second " hot edge" (more like a whole side) is left side of monitor. if the mouse pointer "crashes" into the left side, all open windows get minimized. a second crash de-minimizes (former state and location) again.
the 3rd but less used is, moving the mouse pointer along top side of screen and crashing into left corner. this gives me a "album" of all windows, which i can scroll thru with mouse-wheel.
and there you go ...
(wonders when the patent for "remembering placement and size of previously same window was on renewed launch" will expire. that is i can stop having to move and resize firefox window on each launch and have the windows manager remember former location and size of a specific window... (this is a perfect example of a ev1l idiot software patent)