I need some further explanation what I'm looking at.

Is this a themed ubuntu with heavy wine integration to provide some windows functionality?

Ugh, not a fan of their demo video. They showcase office compatibility by using the o365 web apps. Thats pretty deceptive imo.

Yes pretty much. Custom theme that you have to pay for eventually (free for 30 days) plus wine integration and some pre installed apps.

So they're ripping wallpapers and icons from Windows, copy the design, and want money for that. Let's see how long this will stay up...

Heck, just trademarks alone would be enough to take this down, both from Canonical and Microsoft.

> Any redistribution of modified versions of Ubuntu must be approved, certified or provided by Canonical if you are going to associate it with the Trademarks. Otherwise you must remove and replace the Trademarks and will need to recompile the source code to create your own binaries

Somehow I have a feeling that this was not approved by Canonical

I think the way you have to pay adds to the realism :P

I am pretty sure the whole point is trolling.

I fail to see the purpose of this.

Call me harsh, but I think this is one of those things that is fun to create but not very useful. Possibly that's the reason it was made.

The reasoning has everything to do with confusion. This will be a de-facto leaky abstraction of an experience. Many windows programs will not work and require debugging. It isn't clear to the user that this is actually Ubuntu, so the system ultimately becomes less usable when something (inevitably) goes wrong as you are now dealing with nuances of two different systems at once.

I can only see this being useful in situations where a user has learned the 'bare minimum' of windows functionality and needs to be presented with a similar UI ('fooled') to be able to function in the OS at a basic level.

EDIT: And they offer a paid version that 500s? This is starting to read like very suspicious software...

I predict the end state of Windows is a user experience like Aqua is on Darwin for Apple.

That is, Wubuntu = Darwin.

If Redmond can't beat Torvalds, and the cost of kernel development continues to get less affordable when Office365, ActiveDirectory and Exchange are where the money is, then why bother?

This is great, but I'm going to wait for service pack 2, hopefully with included invasive telemetry, candy crush and an antimalware scanner that makes every IO 100x slower.

I am really tempted to try this in a VM just to see how far it goes.

I had to check the date, I though it was April 1st.

Feels similar to Lindows - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linspire

Haha, reminds me of the commercial song Common baby run Linspire/Lindows ;)

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IIYtKHnU4mQ

Trademark? Can they just use the term Windows?

No, neither can they use the trademark Ubuntu.

I mean. They really want their Streisand moment. Imagine all the clickbait articles if they get sued

Microsoft be like "Make it until you fake it!"

This is so cursed. I love it.

This almost feels like satire when Linux desktops actually have better UX than Windows nowadays (not you GNOME, I'm looking at KDE).

Don't people remember Lindows and the like? I don't see much of a market

But why

April 1st is merely months away !

Honestly with Microsoft's Windows 11 direction I want to like this, but they took it too far. I don't miss the start menu and control panel, I just want really good WINE integration.

Good luck getting sued! :)

First time, the site didn't load at all. Second time, it couldn't load the CSS and everything looked like plain html. Third time, it gave me a ERRO 500.

Because they charge $35 for this counterfeit windows, I don't think Microsoft will be kind.

"counterfeit windows" -> the term "windows" is generic and shouldn't be a trade mark anyway...

That argument was tried by Lindows: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Corp._v._Lindows.com....

While it looked like it'd hold up in Anglophone countries (and so Microsoft withdrew to avoid losing the trademark officially), others sided with Microsoft.

It’s not only the term "windows". Take a look at the screenshots.

Error 500?

Who is the market for this?

Noname laptop manufactures? Grandma who does not need to learn another UI? OS fanboys who need a laugh?

Contact page has a Brazilian phone number. Expect to see this advertised as “Windows 12” on cheap laptops in back alley electronic stores across BRIC countries.

Classic!

Cant wait to see the box it comes in. 1TB RAM! or terrible LLM branded as Ask Jeeves

basically no-name manufactures can get a free version of Windows

Ah yes, combining two of the worst OSes out there, what a time to be alive...

We pretending there's an OS out there that doesn't suck in it's own particular way? Neat.

Come on baby, run Linspire...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIYtKHnU4mQ

Formerly Lindows, foreshadowing what will happen next.

Yeah, this is not official at all. The site's footer says it was made with Joomla, and the contact page lists Brazilian phone numbers.

that whole page looks very sketchy. Charging for it no less, I see a take down by Microsoft coming.

Forked from: https://www.linuxfx.org/

And they “forked” that whole site, so extra suspicious.