Featured Comments: Week of 2012 January 1

There were two posts that got a couple comments, so I'll repost most of those.

Featured Comments: Week of 2011 December 25

Reader Antonio Jones said, "i'm an old gnome-fan who wants to try KDE style. After a horrible experiences on KDE oriented distros like Mandriva, a not so bad install of Chakra and a not so good experiences with distros like Pardus i arrived to Mageia. Mageia it's the best distro on KDE desktop that i tried. All works ok, including kde desktop efects, not working on any distro in my computer. Easy to install, easy to customize, easy to work with. And is only the first revision. In 2012 i'm sure Mageia can excel."

Comparison Test: Pear OS 3.0 "Panther" vs. Zorin OS 5.2 Core

An anonymous commenter said, "Nice article. I tried both distros before (even had Zorin on my mail laptop a year ago) and came to the same conclusion. Zorin is more polished and professional, but PearOS is a nice try anyway.. =:^)"

Thanks to all those who commented on this past week's posts. This coming week, I hope to have another review out at least. In any case, if you like what I write, please continue subscribing and commenting!

Comparison Test: Pear OS 3.0 "Panther" vs. Zorin OS 5.2 Core

Pear OS: Main Screen

There's been a new distribution making small waves lately called Pear OS. It aims to replicate the experience of Apple's Mac OS X, and upon first appearances, it seems to do so pretty well. I'm comparing it to Zorin OS, which similarly tries to replicate the experience of Microsoft Windows, to see which one does its job better.

Pear OS takes no shame in aping absolutely every part of Apple's Mac OS X. Its slogan is "Think Totally Different", which is an obvious rip off of Apple's slogan, "Think Different". Its logo is a pear into which someone has taken a small bite. It shows box art that clearly apes that of Apple's Mac OS X. Even the version name is "Panther", which is actually a past release of Apple's Mac OS X ( The list goes on, but it's clear what the developers are aiming at.
By contrast, Zorin OS is quite a bit more subtle about its goals. It explicitly states that it aims to bring Linux to Microsoft Windows users, but its website is a bit more generic in that it simply states the advantages and features of Zorin OS without directly referencing Microsoft Windows too many times.

Zorin OS: Main Screen + GnoMenu
(Microsoft Windows 7 look)

I tested both using a multiboot live USB made with MultiSystem. Please bear in mind that as both distributions are based on Ubuntu, and as I have found time and again that my laptop's hardware works just fine on Ubuntu and so do applications like Skype and Google Talk, this comparison is going to seem pretty shallow. I'm basically just going to discuss appearances, deeper aspects of the interface, and included applications, without doing my usual other testing. Follow the jump to see what each is like.