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Comment by baddox | Hacker News Reader

As a huge fan of Linux, I have to say the modern Apple and Microsoft operating systems look significantly better.

As someone using all 3 OS's day to day (Ubuntu is my primary development OS, I have an iMac next to me, and I switch my laptop to Windows 7 for video games in the evenings), Windows 7 is easily my least favorite OS, it's performance is generally crummy compared to OSX and Ubuntu, and it's UI often aggravating.

See I find the opposite is true for me. I don't have much experience with OS X but between ubuntu and Windows 7 I _much_ prefer Win7. I just can't stand how much screen space is eaten up by useless padding, menu bars, sidebars and panels, not to mention the overly large fonts. I realize that everything is customizable, but I don't have the patience. Windows 7 also seems faster and more responsive to me but responsiveness is largely subjective and situational.

To each their own I guess.

Yep, I get excited for all the Ubuntu releases but end up back on Windows a couple weeks later.

You can use virtual machines (e.g. Sun's VirtualBox) to make the transitions easier. You don't even need to reboot then.

I agree. I find the new kubuntu with kde 4.4 much nicer.

http://www.kde.org/announcements/4.4/plasma.php

I agree with you there. I've stuck with the Gnome flavor of Ubuntu, despite my preference for KDE because Kubuntu feels like Ubuntu with KDE duct-taped on top. It seems to be missing quite a bit of the functionality and polish of the Gnome flavor, which is really quite unfortunate.

The engine/mechanics/code in KDE 4.4 are great, but I hate every single KDE theme. Way too much candy, way too cheesy. I personally kind of wish the two projects would merge in just the right way.

very true - take a look at the Klassik theme combined with Skulpture.

I really wish someone would make a better theme - gnome themes look so much better.

I like the way I have set up Gnome. I don't want to have to change it.

I've recently tried Mint Linux, and it's very aesthetically pleasing (screenshot http://i.imgur.com/2OBiH.png). (Disclaimer: Mac user)

Edit: except for the tray icons.

That is almost exactly the Dust theme which is now default in ubuntu, with green icons instead of orange.

That "almost" is where the big difference is. I think this theme is more balanced and pleasing.

One of the main reasons why that screenshot looks good is due to the fonts you're using, which are good fonts (presumably from MS Windows).

Good fonts always make a massive difference in terms of screenshots.

I agree, fonts (and their aliasing) make a big difference. But the UI font is the standard DejaVu Sans. (Only Google's page is in Arial.)

It's a growing process. The point is that it looks better than it did.

I for one like the clean look of my XMonad.

I am new to xmonad and loving it so far

my only issue is how terrible floating windows are, I would love to be able to use xmonad tiling mode for my constant windows, but if I want to bring up skype or a filebrowser for a few minutes just use a normal gnome type window that has the familiar mouse interactions.

* well not my only issue, I would also like to easily hide and restore windows

> * well not my only issue, I would also like to easily hide and restore windows

The usual solution is designating one of your virtual desktops as a `dump' for windows you don't want to have around at the moment. You could also have a look at how the tabbed layout works, and repurpose that.

I use sawfish with the lines theme for roughly the same reason.

screenshot or it didnt happen.

I've heard a lot about XMonad. Could you give a brief rundown of your setup (and what you like about it) and maybe a screenshot or two?

My screenshots are really boring. There's no eye-candy. You know how Emacs looks like, now just imagine it full-screen without the window-decoration and I even removed the menu-bar and scroll-bar from Emacs. My terminals also have the scroll-bar removed.

I use the smart-borders, so that my windows only get 1-pixel borders when they are not in full-screen.

I have focus-follows-mouse and mouse-follows-focus. The left Windows-key acts as the modmask-key, i.e. the main key to activate Xmonad stuff. Alt is the default, but that interferes with Emacs.

I like that there's nothing to distract me while coding, and that I use all of my screen real estate for the task at hand, instead of menus, task-bars and the like. Especially the lack of a task-bar is an advantage in my opinion, as I am not tempted too much by my browser while working on code in Emacs.

Floating windows like print dialogs annoy me sometimes. Especially when they steal focus. I should be less lazy and fix those.

The problem is that Windows will have gone through another design interation by the time Ubuntu has reached the XP/Vista generation look-and-feel.

The gratuitous eye-candy of the XP/Vista look-and-feel was already cliché when it first debuted. Hopefully Ubuntu will leapfrog it. Note that the black "Dust" ubuntu theme seen here was created by a user, not by a designer at Canonical. Compiz is extremely customizable/themeable (unlike Windows or OS X) so it's likely another talented user will go further with the UI design.

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