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I encouraged a friend to try Ubuntu, but my friend is having some trouble getting used to Ubuntu 16.04 Lts. Is there a way to make this operating system look and feel more like windows xp, the user's favorite operating system?

  1. Make multiple firefox browser windows open more like windows xp. My friend is having a lot of trouble, and admittedly myself too switching to and keep track of 5-8 firefox windows which we often have open. My friend hates tabs.

  2. The clock in the bottom right hand side of the screen rather than the top.

Thanks in advance.

Ubuntu16.04User
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  • I'm not sure yet, I'm still processing the other thread. I'm pretty sure it answers the question, that Ubuntu 16.04 is difficult to make like windows. The other question was about Ubuntu and Windows 7, so this is slightly different. – Ubuntu16.04User Mar 25 '17 at 19:34
  • No, not working, I tried the answer and got this. Cannot add PPA: 'ppa:~noobsla/ubuntu/ppa'. ERROR: '~noobsla' user or team does not exist. – Ubuntu16.04User Mar 25 '17 at 19:54
  • Alright, I've gotten a lot of possible answers, thank you, I have to choose which is the best. Btw, I tried the sudo apt update && sudo apt install windos-10-themes && sudo apt install win-icons and it said it installed correctly, but I don't notice any change. – Ubuntu16.04User Mar 26 '17 at 04:06

2 Answers2

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The easiest way to accomplish a similar experience to Windows XP would probably be installing Xubuntu, which is a community developed version of Ubuntu that comes with the Xfce desktop environment.

Xubuntu has the menu bar on the top by default but you can move it to the bottom, similar to Windows XP.

JauntyDoe
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    I took this advise of using Xubuntu. I tried installing gnome 3 which made my screen flicker a lot for awhile. I had to power down by holding the power button if I remember correctly, then when I un-installed gnome 3 the os froze and I had to format the hard drive. Sorry I couldn't respond sooner, because then I lost my account info and had to merge delete accounts. Xubuntu is the best answer in my opinion to making Ubuntu look like windows Xp. – Ubuntu16.04User Mar 31 '17 at 19:41
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Yeah that does happen with new users. So there are 2 ways of accomplishing this.

One

Instead of installing the usual Ubuntu, I'd suggest that you introduce to this user the other derivatives of linux. Any new OS, users will definitely encounter a slight learning curve. This cannot be brushed aside. But the other derivatives of linux will still amaze anybody.

  1. Deepin - https://www.deepin.org/en/ - This OS, is absolutely fantastic. I've tried it myself, and being a developer and entrepreneur, my netting standards are quite high. I would suggest you try this out. There was however one issue regarding that OS when I tried it around 2 years back. I don't remember what it was, but I'd still suggest you try it.
  2. Linux Mint - linuxmint.com - This is a bit more like Windows XP. It's also a fantastic distribution, and has quite a long track record.
  3. Elementary OS - elementary.io - This too is beautiful. I tried it out properly just a few days back. And it's great. It's more of a MacOS replacement, although the official claim stands out as a "A fast and open replacement for Windows and macOS". *Type in a $0 as payment, and the Purchase button will change to a Download button.

There's many, many more linux distributions out there. The above few distributions are what I would recommend for a new user, switching through from any Windows or Mac OS, although I personally prefer the standard Ubuntu from Canonical. And even for new users, I would still suggest the standard. Once they get used to the realestate screen space, I doubt they'd not enjoy it.

Check out more distributions here: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=best+linux+distributions+2017

Two

The other easy method of doing this to an already existing installation, is to install the Gnome interface over your Ubuntu installation. You can use these two commands in the terminal:

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-gnome-desktop
sudo service gdm restart

Once that's done, logout, and login by selecting the interface at the time of logging in Then simply tweak the Gnome interface, and get the bar on the bottom of the screen. Here's a tute on that: How can I move the top panel to the bottom in Gnome 3?

All in all, any user who steps into the world of Linux, has stepped into a more secure, a definitely beautiful, and absolutely fantastic world. There's always something more to know; More to love. That's Linux.

Community
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Ihsan
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  • Trying gnome 3, not liking it, how do I revert back to before I had gnome 3? Thanks in advance. – Ubuntu16.04User Mar 26 '17 at 04:15
  • Yeah sure thats possible, here's something that should help you out: http://askubuntu.com/questions/452411/revert-from-gnome-3-to-unity – Ihsan Mar 26 '17 at 04:20