this post was submitted on 06 Dec 2024
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If you're trying to figure out who this is for, the answer is "My clients."
We deploy systems that have to run as servers, but need a UI because the people maintaining them are brain dead idiots. Windows Server isn't an option because each system sells at a fairly low price point; adding on the cost of a server license would kill our margins. So we need an OS that runs like Linux, but looks like Windows.
Now you might be thinking "Just use KDE? It's got a start menu, everything is still in basically the same places, and the only software anyone runs is a web browser." And you would be vastly underestimating the degree to which moving any component of the UI even the slightest bit causes the average user to shit their pants in terror and freeze up like a deer in the headlights. You'll point to the start menu and they move the mouse towards it like you just instructed them to defuse a bomb. Eyes closed, they'll instinctively lean back from the screen in sheer terror as they click.
These Windows alikes are useless for any Linux user, but incredibly helpful for people like me who have to turn Windows users into Linux users.
I feel this so much it hurts.
Some people are TERRIFIED of devices.
They look at the UI like it's the cockpit of a fighter plane, with a thousand buttons, some of which make things explode.
Unless they know exactly what to do, they won't even try anything.
Nevermind that UIs are usually designed to allow a user to figure them out by just prodding at everything and seeing what it does.
I remember once seeing an explanation of how us tech people magically know what to do with any program that was like "We don't. We just look for something that seems vaguely familiar and try clicking it." Three bars in a hamburger shape? That's a menu. Oh, look, a cog, that always means settings, what we want is probably a setting. Etc.
https://xkcd.com/627/
Y'know, it probably was that, now that I think about it.