It's in the middle?!?
Well, that would be the first thing I'd turn off if I had a machine that did that sort of stupidity...
GNOME can look like Windows – and Flashback can do it without extensions
A new GNOME extension called Simple-taskbar does a pretty good job of giving GNOME 50 a taskbar and start menu very much like the ones from Windows 11. It's so new that it's still not listed on the GNOME Extensions website – at the time of writing, it's still under review. We built it and installed it, and it works. This single …
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Wednesday 22nd July 2026 15:09 GMT Liam Proven
Re: It's in the middle?!?
> It's in the middle?!?
Standard for Win11.
As people pointed out back when OS X moved the wastebin into a dynamically-self-resizing Dock, this destroys the ability to form muscle memory. When the Start button was always bottom left, you can just whack the mouse to bottom left and click, and it _will work_. This is an application of what's called "Fitt's Law" -- a target that does not require you to aim is effecitively infinitely large. Classic MacOS's old Apple Menu was the same: aim up and left and you _will_ hit it, _without aiming_.
Put the target in something that moves and you must aim. This requires skilful pointer control. Not a problem on touchscreens, so long as you _have_ fingers and your nervous systems work. If you have Parkinson's: well, doesn't matter if we screw you, you were already screwed.
This affect Windows' in-window menu bars. Windows users deny this, but it is not subjective, it's a fact. It is objectively, measurably, demonstrably, ergonomically inferior.
They were only put there because Apple sued DR over GEM having the menu bar at the top of the screen, same as MacOS.
AmigaOS put them at the top too -- but they were invisible because you need to right click for them to appear. Looking different in screenshots is enough: that's all lawyers and judges see.
My impression is that these days, UI engineering is done by looking at screenshots and making things that look different from before, without considering functional rules like this.
Well, it was: soon, it'll be vomited by an LLM bot. Scribble a UI in some crappy web-based drawing tool that needs a gig of SSD to run, and bots will make something that looks similar and sort of runs... needing a gig for a plain text editor.
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Wednesday 22nd July 2026 15:11 GMT Liam Proven
> No thank you.
Well, me too, but I can see a "sales" pitch:
1. Company has "old" computers with "old" Windows
2. Manager sees shiny new computers with Win11. Centred buttons are one of the few visible features.
3. Friendly neighbourhood neckbeard offers Linux instead – and shows this desktop that looks the same.
4. Sold!
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Wednesday 22nd July 2026 16:25 GMT David 132
I see things like this more as a ploy for the home user market - specifically, those elderly-or-technologically-clueless relatives that we've all had to support at one time or another.
If Dear Old Mum spends her entire time in the web browser, it shouldn't matter whether the OS around it is Windows, Linux, Mac, or whatever - but small visual differences can confuse such people (I speak from experience), and so the more the Linux box can be themed to look like Windows, the better. All the familiarity of Windows 11, but no Windows Updates or Patch Tuesday with the associated borkage... win/win.
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Thursday 30th July 2026 06:26 GMT Anonymous Coward
Better off looking like Windows 10.
To ease a transition from 10 to 11 I requested a policy to align the taskbar to the left.
There were no complaints about the system being changed (from several hundred people). Obviously there have been a lot since, about the stability, but that is a different story.
So I think Mint has the best idea.
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Wednesday 22nd July 2026 20:02 GMT blu3b3rry
GNOME + extensions is surprisngly pleasant to usee
Until recently one of the newest portable machines in my little fleet was a very late model intel macbook pro, running Fedora KDE. The constant updates in Fedora were getting a bit much, and I couldn't get KDE's panel quite how I wanted it (no obvious way to get a small vertical left hand panel with separate labelled window buttons). Unfortunately due to the absurdly high resolution 13.3" screen, X11 desktop environments don't play well on it so Wayland it is I guess.
Ended up trying Debian 13 GNOME, and added a few of the Zorin extensions. Dash to Panel and ArcMenu have made for a very, very usable desktop, plus GNOME tweaks to get maximise/minimise buttons back on windows.
Putting the panel vertically works perfectly and I even get separated window buttons with titles if I choose. Likewise ArcMenu is pleasingly customisable and allows different layouts. As I understand it, Debian 13 will stay "locked" on GNOME 48 for the foreseeable future so shouldn't suffer any breaking changes to the extensions.
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Thursday 23rd July 2026 14:22 GMT Liam Proven
> Gnome needs to out of the box have a Windows theme and MacOs theme.
The _whole point_ of the GNOME 3 total redesign was that it was _unlike Windows_ so RH wouldn't get sued.
https://www.theregister.com/software/2013/06/03/how-microsoft-shattered-gnomes-unity-with-windows-95/547999
(The formatting has gone weird; try Readability mode.)
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Wednesday 29th July 2026 07:13 GMT Benegesserict Cumbersomberbatch
The _whole point_ of the GNOME 3 total redesign was that it was _unlike Windows_ so RH wouldn't get sued.
Ironically, Windows' ossification is thus constraining open source software. Any of the modern Linux DEs (KDE, LXQT, GNOME, MATE...) give so much power to the user, they may make the desktop look and work any way they damn well please. But if one of the window managers incorporates a feature that makes it possible to coincide with one of Windows, macOS or whatever the focus group has decided this year's gloss / matt / rounded / square / beveled / flat / plain / skeuomorphic corporate image is going to be, OSS authors get sued??
The writer of a desktop manager should have complete defence against such bollockry by saying "user's choice". I know that idea is alien to many in Micros~1 and Apple, but the world was past "look and feel" lawsuits thirty years ago.
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Wednesday 29th July 2026 07:22 GMT Anonymous Coward
The Gnome redesign was after the release of Windows 8, and was to make Gnome more like Windows 8 - designed for touch screen tablets.
There is no Universe where Windows 95 patents are still in force so computers can't have a Start Menu and Task bar. Let alone concepts from the original 1983 Apple Mac.
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Thursday 23rd July 2026 13:51 GMT Anonymous Coward
For the record, there are two versions of Windows desktop that I don't want want any of my computers to look like.
Win 8 being one. Win 11 being the other. I have trialled both at various times and binned both very quickly.
Now if there was Linux look alike for Win 7 or 10.... oh, wait my Mint desktop is already sufficiently like my W10 desktop including taskbar on the left.
I quite like W10 start menu so if there was a Mint version of it I might well use it so I could more or less synchronise my start menus.
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Friday 24th July 2026 00:36 GMT hayzoos
Not my cuppa tea
I prefer the flexibility to configure the DE to my workflow. If my workflow changes, I want to be able to change the DE as well. I am using XFCE and it fits the bill, it seems very flexible. I think I could emulate a Windows like DE close enough in XFCE, if I were so inclined. I prefer as a user that I make the design choices, instead of the developers. My 2 cents.
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Friday 24th July 2026 08:52 GMT Liam Proven
Re: Not my cuppa tea
> I think I could emulate a Windows like DE close enough in XFCE, if I were so inclined.
You absolutely can.
Take a look at this:
https://github.com/grassmunk/Chicago95/blob/master/INSTALL.md
> I prefer as a user that I make the design choices, instead of the developers.
Me too.
A small side-project is trying to shape Xfce into something close to Ubuntu Unity, since Unity is not seeing much development any more. I have it _nearly_ there but not quite.
Several have tried making it more Mac-like, but as is often the case, they focus on the form and not the function. I don't want stolen Apple icons: I want a working dock, a working global menu, and so on.
Igor had a go:
https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/xfce-dock-global-menu.html
This is how desktops should be, IMHO.
Currently, the best "like GNOME but customisable" desktop is COSMIC. I do not daily-drive it, and it is not pretty, but it works and it's fast.
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Friday 24th July 2026 14:57 GMT Henry Wertz 1
Re: can I make windows look like ubuntu?
Don't know if you're serious or not (I really despise the out of the box UI on current Ubuntu versions...) but Windows' shell can be replaced, there's things like SeelenUI with plus theme and icon pack that can apparently look pretty close. I swirched to Linux in 1993 though, so I only tried an alternate shell in the XP era, on a install I booted into.a few timea a month at first, then didn't boot into at eventually.
But AFAIK you can still replace the shell and (surprisingly given how spaghetti-code windows seems to be, i.e, how tied together components are) apparently the shell maintains it's seperation and switching it out is a smooth and trouble-free process.
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Friday 24th July 2026 14:45 GMT Henry Wertz 1
I use KDE myself, but my dad uses gnome flashback. He was used to Windows, then to the ~Ubuntu 12 (2012-era) desktop. Flashback looks just the same. He COULD learn a new desktop, but there's literally no reason to. There's something to be said about being able to use the latest and greatest apps without having your UI change on you every couple years.
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