 In the last couple of weeks I've got a lot of requests from viewers of the channel for me to take a look at a Linux distribution called Linux FX. I've been getting messages, hey, DT, you gotta take a look at this thing. It looks just like Windows, except it's not Windows, it's Linux. And I gotta be honest, that sounds interesting to me. So this could be something very cool. So today I'm gonna take a quick look at Linux FX, I'm just gonna take a look in a live environment. I'm gonna boot it up inside a virtual machine and look around. I'm gonna give you my impressions. So here is Linux FX, and I've gotta say my initial impression is well. As far as is this Linux, is this Windows 11, I think most people, unless they really sit down and look at some of the finer details, actually would think that this is Windows 11. I mean, it's got the exact wallpaper, right? It's also got your trash can sitting on the desktop, which most Linux desktops actually usually they don't put icons on the desktop by default. The trash icon especially is kind of a Windows thing. We have trash bins in Linux, but it's usually not a trash can sitting on the desktop. Also, we typically don't ship with Microsoft Edge for our browser. The panel at the bottom, by the way, this is KDE Plasma, the desktop environment. KDE Plasma is very customizable. And I've mentioned this in the past, that if you want new to Linux users, you know, you're coming from Windows over to Linux. If you want them to feel comfortable, Plasma is a good landing spot because you can actually turn Plasma into whatever you want. You can make it look exactly like Windows or Mac OS or Chrome OS or whatever desktop environment operating system you're coming from. Plasma has the ability to transform into that. And this Windows 11 desktop is pretty close to being 100% faithful. I mean, they've got it pretty damn close. Of course, you've got your centered taskbar and centered start menu where in Windows 10, they were on the left. Now, they're centered in the taskbar. I'm not sure I really like that. I'd prefer it to be on the left, to be honest. It's kind of weird being in the center, but I guess you got to do something different, right, with each big release of Windows. They got to change things. Otherwise, they'll get accused of not changing anything. So one thing I don't like, of course, is the fact that this is Linux. So it's GNU slash Linux. It's really supposed to be about free and open source software, right? That is really everything about Linux, why Linux, the kernel, got started, why people choose to work on it and donate so much time and money to work on that thing. It's because of freedom. It's because of the licenses, because of free licensing. And when I see a Linux distribution shipping Microsoft Edge as the default browser, that kind of hurts my heart a little bit. It looks like we don't have to use Microsoft Edge. We can change to a different browser because it looks like they also ship Google Chrome as a browser as well. Let's see what version of Chrome this is. If I go to help and about Google Chrome, this is Chrome 97.0. Of course, Chrome is proprietary, proprietary garbage, just like Microsoft Edge. Let's open up Microsoft Edge and just for sake of completeness, see what version of Edge they are shipping with. By the way, Linux FX is an Ubuntu based distribution. It is based off of Ubuntu 20.04, the LTS version. Let's see if we've got to agree to some licensing information with anything by Microsoft, of course, get rid of all of that. I just want to go to settings and let's go to about Microsoft Edge. And this is Edge 97.0, same version number as Chrome. Of course, Edge is based off of Google Chrome. I also notice we have Linux FX Android here. And I believe that is to give you the ability to run Android apps on this device, if you so choose. And of course, being a Windows clone, you want to be able to run Windows software as best you can. So I'm assuming they probably ship wine, yeah. So we do have wine with a command line, run wine, and we have wine tricks. Wine tricks is interesting because it's kind of a easier way to get into wine, to get a lot of common applications that people like to run in wine up and running, maybe things like, I don't know, Microsoft Office or whatever you're trying to install. I'm actually not going to run through the wine configuration here because I have nothing that I really want to install in it. And let me get back into the menu system here. And by default, you've got these pinned applications in the menu. These were pinned by the Linux FX team. So these were already here. These are not applications I pinned. These are applications they assume most people will probably want to play with such as Microsoft Edge, the browser, you're going to need a browser, right? You're going to need your file manager, Dolphin, Discover is the software center. They imagine that a lot of people are going to need Microsoft PowerShell as well. But again, it's kind of geared toward the Windows user, basically somebody that wants Windows, but I guess for some reason they want Windows with a Linux shell around it, like a Linux skin. This is strange. Like I don't understand, like if you really are disinvested in Microsoft software and Windows stuff, why wouldn't you just run Windows? And I'm asking that in a sincere fashion. Like I really am not sure about this, the system settings here. I'm assuming just Plasma's system settings control center here. Let me see what kind of theming options we have. So I guess I can't do anything with the wallpaper. It just shows me what the wallpaper is. But we have a light theme, which is the default. Then we have a dark theme with a light theme. So this is a mixture of your dark panel, dark menu system, but your windows are still light. Okay. Well, it was just a common thing most people actually kind of like. They like dark panels, but they prefer their application windows to be light. Yeah. So that's kind of cool. Me, I just prefer all dark. So I want dark panels, dark menus, and a dark Plasma theme for the windows themselves. So I'm going to choose the last theme here. Yeah, that looks pretty good. Let me open up the Dolphin file manager. Yeah, I really like it. I mean, it is attractive, right? It's a sexy desktop. I like the icon theme. Let me right click on the desktop. Is there anything I can do to change the wallpaper? Configure desktop and wallpaper. Okay. So we do have some wallpaper packs here. Some of them are very windows like. Here's a dark wallpaper, similar to the default, but it's, yeah, it's got some, some darkness to it. I actually, yeah, I like the dark wallpaper, but I think I'd prefer the light theme to go with it. So I'd probably set that back to the light theme if I wanted to use the dark wallpaper, but since I'm using a dark theme, we really should choose a light wallpaper. So I'm going to go back to the default. If I can find it, let me change back to the default wallpaper and getting back into the menu system and going to all apps other than all of the great free and open source software that ships with this thing, which is all the KDE applications, the KDE suite of software, all of it, free and open source software, yay, freedom. But then I noticed they have things like any desk, any desk is a remote desktop application and it is proprietary software, right? Enter a license key, yeah, it's proprietary garbage. And there's no reason not on Linux. You don't need this on Linux. Like there's so many free and open source remote desktop applications. There's just no need. There's no need to ship with proprietary web browsers. There's no need to ship with Chrome or Edge when we literally have dozens of free and open source browsers available on Linux. And I know not everybody cares about free and open source software or they haven't heard that message, but I'm assuming whoever created this Linux distribution, they know about free and open source software. They know why it's important. And I don't get why they are stuffing this thing with so much proprietary poo. We've got Helloa here. Now, if this is what I think it is, oh my God, it is. So it's voice assistants. So this is Cortana basically on Linux. Helloa I believe uses Google technology, but it's asking for permission to connect to my microphone. It needs to connect to my microphone so it can listen to my voice commands. But it's not just listening to my voice commands. It's listening all the time, right? 24, 7, 365. I'm basically giving my computer permission to bug me, right? To wire tap me to listen to me all the time. This is not okay. This may be okay to some people that run proprietary software or people that don't know about free and open source software. But to Linux users, we don't want that. Again, I just don't understand why all of this stuff is here. Looking through some of the other applications. We have, of course, a lot of Microsoft software. You've got Outlook, OneDrive was here somewhere. I saw it earlier. There's Teams. There is some Office stuff. Of course, we've already seen the PowerShell. They also have OnlyOffice. So there is a free and open source Office suite as well. So that's good. I believe OnlyOffice. OnlyOffice is licensed under the GPL. So it's definitely free software. And then Steam, of course, is proprietary software. Yeah, like I don't, I mean, did you really need? There's OneDrive. And you don't need a proprietary cloud syncing service. I guess if your work uses it, I guess if your job is heavily invested in Microsoft products, I could see a case for something like this. But if your job is heavily invested in Microsoft products, again, I don't know why you're using Linux. Just use Windows, right? I mean, if you have to use proprietary software, you have to use proprietary software. I don't know why you would use Linux because you can put all the theming and wallpaper up and everything. This is still going to be Linux. Fundamentally, it's not going to be Windows. It's not going to be 100% compatible with all of your Windows stuff. So if you want the best experience to run Windows software, just run Windows, right? We've got some Linux FX stuff, like the Linux FX Store. I haven't opened that. This is the Software Center, which is just Discover. KDE's Discover. Really nothing to see there. There was some other Linux FX related applications, their own custom applications, I'm assuming. For example, Linux FX Register. Please tell me that isn't what I think it is. I've got a notification behind my head here. As soon as I clicked on it, it said the Linux FX key. And then shortly after, of course, we get enter a product key by a license. I don't mind buying a license. I don't mind paying for software. Let me rephrase that. If it's free and open source software and you want to charge for it, great. I'll buy all the free and open source software you can give me, but buy a license. Let's click on it. I'm assuming it's going to go to their website. Let's see what we're actually getting with this license. We're getting a friendly interface, Microsoft applications, personal assistant. Like, we're getting stuff. Again, most Linux users are not going to want. They're anti that stuff. So why would they want it? And much less, why would they pay for it? Let me go to software licenses here. Let's actually read the licensing information here. It's not in English, but that's okay. I just want to see. It says, control panel, OneDrive, hello assistant, login, log out, active directory, system, device manager, and other tools cloned from Microsoft Windows 10 or software developed by Linux FX. So some of those applications, even the ones, I guess that wasn't really OneDrive. That wasn't the Microsoft OneDrive. That was Linux FX software. That's interesting. Anyway, these tools are proprietary. So even though they're not Microsoft tools, it was developed by Linux FX, this Linux distribution team. Their tools are all proprietary software. They're licensing everything under proprietary licensing. The source code is not available. Well, that was my quick look at Linux FX. I really don't need to see any more for myself. Just personally, yeah, this serves no purpose. It has no business being a part of the Linux ecosystem. For those of you that do find this interesting, because some of you obviously do, that's why you've asked me to take a look at it, I strongly urge you guys not to go this route. There's no reason to install a Linux distribution that's going to run all this proprietary software, all the Microsoft software and everything. Just run Microsoft Windows, because you're not gaining anything. You're trying to run Linux as an operating system, running all the proprietary evil stuff on top of it. Again, what are you gaining? You're really gaining nothing. Just run Microsoft Windows, it's okay. Even in my opinion, if you have to run proprietary software for your job or for your school, that's okay. Just do it, just accept the fact that you have to do that and be okay with it. Doing this, I think this is a travesty. Like I think this makes me angry. Like this is one of the worst distributions I've ever taken a look at from just a philosophy and ideological perspective. I don't like anything that this particular Linux distribution stands for. I'm not going to get a ton of hate in the comments, but honestly guys, if you need to run Windows software, just run Windows and that's me saying that, write a free software, zell it, just run Windows if you need to run Windows software. Now, before I go, I need to thank a few special people. I need to thank the producers of this episode. Devon Gabe James, Matt, Michael, Mitchell, Paul, Scott, Wes, Alan, Chuck, Commander, Ingrid, Diochai, Dylan, George, Lee, Linux, Ninja, Maxim, Mike, Erion, Alexander, Peace, Arch, and Midori, Polytech, Rip, Prophet, Stephen, Willie, these guys. They're my highest tiered patrons over on Patreon without these guys. This quick look at Linux FX would not have been possible. The show is also brought to you by each and every one of these ladies and gentlemen as well. All these names you're seeing on the screen right now. These are all my supporters over on Patreon because I don't have any corporate sponsors. I'm just sponsored by you guys, the community. So you'll want to see more videos on Linux and free and open source software, not proprietary software. Subscribe to DistroTube over on Patreon. All right guys, peace. Choosing between Edge and Chrome is like asking, do you want to be shot or stabbed?