Ideas for improvement

[thomasl]

supplying wine is an interesting idea, but wine is so specific to the apps being utilized, and the fact that the wine bottles sit in the home folder, makes it complicated to deploy generally at best, and for minimal gain. zorin does things like that, and they are welcome to it. I much prefer to provide linux native applications, and to encourage open source applications in general.

Well... yes and no. I agree that an install option for this is not a good idea. OTOH, a separate MX tool (MX-Cellar?) that can install some apps would perhaps not be daft. Even if such a tool starts with just a few of the stalwarts (foobar2000 and IrfanView come to mind), it would enable some users to a) get some stuff up and running quickly and b) might make it easier for them to install their own stuff, not least because they see that it does work and also can study how it works.

I switched my PCs to MX some six or seven years ago and yet even nowadays I use a couple of Windows apps every day, and another four or five every now and then (though not via Wine but in a Windows 7 VM which also allows me to chkdsk /f a borked NTFS/FAT USB stick or HD).

[Nokkaelaein]

Why exactly? Simply partition the drive in such a way that it automatically migrates specified NTFS directories to ext4, btrfs, or whatever the choice. Partition a large enough part of the drive for the chosen NTFS directories, and base Linux necessities, then the rest when that's done.

There's that word, "simply", again :). It simply isn't as simple as you think. It's not sufficient just to shuffle files around, you actually need to make the installed applications work under wine after their existing installation has been moved like that. At what point would the wine prefix be created, and how would that be implemented? You are forgetting that so, so many applications in Windows need to store something in the registry, for example. You would need to access the Windows registry, find application specific data for the programs you wish to include and migrate over, then create an appropriate setup under wine, handling the correct Windows versioning, other possible configuration file locations, devices that the applications are set up to work with, blablablabla. Transferring already installed stuff like this is _not trivial_ ! It would need case by case considerations and a team of people tackling one application at a time to test the migration procedure. It's just a tremendous amount of development time for, as dolphin_oracle put it, minimal gain.

[siamhie]

Another thing would be a "mask", mimicking the Windows directory system for beginning users, cause not knowing where's what also is a serious deterrent for the beginning Linux adept.

Users can simply learn how the directory structure works in Linux. Linux Directory Structure Explained for Beginners

[Adrian]

Wine might not be the best solution, in most of the cases especially for games it's better to use something like Proton from Steam.

Most of the user should just install Steam from MX PackageInstaller...

[FullScale4Me]

In Windows, each app has a unique (to it) installer that has NO repair option in GUI.

In MX Linux, the MX Package Installer (user app Software Manager), a GUI, has several buttons:

• Install and Uninstall appear and when one app is checked,

• If an app is already installed and a newer version is available, Reinstall and Upgrade is offered.

• MX Fix GPG keys is an app that checks and installs missing apt GPG keys. A GUI for what otherwise would be a terminal typing task.

Windows programs only offer a part of the above in their installer app. The programs that didn't join the Windows branding have installers that vary widely in what they offer and look like.

One of the features of MX Linux that sets it apart from the other Linuxes is the collection of GUI apps that preclude the users from having to use the command line. The 33 plus MX Tools are as follows:

Live - Live USB maker and Snapshot.

Maintenance - Chroot Rescue Scan, Boot Options, Boot Repair, Cleanup, Disk Manager, Job Scheduler, User Manager and Samba Config.

Setup - About MX Linux, Bash Config, Nvidia driver installer, Conky, Date & Time, Locale, Network Assistant, Select Sound, System Sounds, Tour, Brightness Systray, Tweak, Welcome, Papirus Folder Colors, System Keyboard, System Locales and User Installed Packages.

Software - MX Updater, Deb Installer, Fix GPG keys, Package Installer, Repo Manager and UEFI Manager.

Utilities - Quick System Info and Format USB.

A few tools exist in special cases. Live-USB Kernel Updater and Remaster Control Center are standalone tools. Eject USB is a standalone tool in Fluxbox and Xfce.

MX Tweak is a GUI collection of many settings that were too few for their own app but needed in GUI for new to Linux users. This app has options tailored to the edition - Xfce, KDE or Fluxbox.



Folders In the user's home folder the directory structure is similar: Desktop, Documents, Downloads, Music, Pictures, Public, Templates, and Videos. If missing the My prefixing of each is too foreign they should stay on Windows!

Wine was addressed by another post in this thread. My experiences in the past still make me twitch. Seek the Linux equivalents of the Windows apps. In more than a few cases they are superior in function and disk space usage.

[DukeComposed]

This is easy stuff any live distro can do

Can you provide a functional example of this?

[AlexKidd]

If all these things can be done manually, from a live CD distro, then why can't they be automated, for honestly who knows how many potential future Linux users, who at the present point barely managed to master some obligatory Windows office software their employers absolutely demanded? I admit, I'm just a computer enthusiast, but not a computer geek like you guys. I see the Linux terminal, by the third attempt at getting anything fixed through it, I'm done! And the exact same thing is with the other 95+% PC users, simply don't having the patience needed here. Wine is exactly already bending to MS Windows, and if you want more Linux users, simply let people use the software they wish to use, as easily as possible, cause the more easy it's gonna be, the more morons like me you'll have using Linux. Nobody wants to use Windows, they just want to use the software they mastered with really a whole ton of effort, cause as I've mentioned, 95+% PC users simply aren't computer geeks. If you want users, your cookie jar has to have their favorite cookies.

This is a topic dedicated to ideas, and that's exactly just that. Nobody's pulling anybody's leg to do anything they don't want here. MX is still my most favorite distro, above even OpenSUSE, which too has a feature that makes it a lot better than the rest, YaST, just still could be even better. If you're not interested in these ideas, you guys should think about an internet traffic controller, just like in P2P software, cause just like with P2P software, you sometimes still wanna have reasonable internet access, while in this case updating the system, or having the system download something else. This would be really helpful in developing regions, where internet speed is a problem.

[AlexKidd]

This is easy stuff any live distro can do

Can you provide a functional example of this?

How else can you get rid of such garbage like Avast, AVG, or Avira, if not through direct access from, let's say, a Fedora live CD/pendrive?! Maybe things managed to change, but some time ago, good luck with gutting that crap out of Windows any other way!

[Nokkaelaein]

why can't they be automated

For the reasons already stated above. Like DukeComposed asked, can you provide examples? Where and how (exactly, in no uncertain terms) is this trivial to achieve? It's easy to say it is easy, but how? I've got a Windows machine pretty extensively set up with various software tools, what can transfer that into a Linux environment in the way you describe, and how?

[DukeComposed]

Can you provide a functional example of this?

How else can you get rid of such garbage like Avast, AVG, or Avira, if not through direct access from, let's say, a Fedora live CD/pendrive?!

That means no, you can't.