Linux reviews and views from a point and click user

Thursday, 8 October 2015

Cotton OS Mini Review


Cotton OS Mini Review

First in a series of mini reviews of lesser known Linux distros comes Likemoresoft’s Cotton OS, a windows-lookalike intended to ease the migration from Microsoft.

Cotton is based on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS using the kwin window manager from Kubuntu and the Xfce desktop from Xubuntu. On the test Asus Eeebox underlying CPU & memory usage stood at 3% and 17% (350Mb) respectively rising to 17% and 30% (590Mb) with Firefox running.

The installed software is typical of an xfce distro, Firefox and Thunderbird for web and mail, Parole and Gmusicbrowser for media, Abiword and Gnumeric for office.



The standout feature of CottonOS is its “windows-like” appearance. The default “user” account has traditional M$ icons and the background of Windows 8 complete with a conky displaying the weather in Los Angeles whilst the “root” account is a slightly less offensive monochrome design.



As expected from a xfce distro, CottonOS is FAST. That is the only reason for using it, its speed cannot make up for its abominable appearance and blatant misuse of M$ Windows trademarks. I had this installed for a month and avoided using it like the plague. The only way its makers can possibly avoid legal action is by claiming fair use as a parody. That claim would be immediately believable. 

 

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