Hey guys I came across a write up about a new Linux replacement for windows. It looks like windows 11 and I have started testing it in a Virtual Machine on my TrueNAS Scale box. So far its not bad but its only in Beta right now.
Has anyone else started testing this out yet?
I know I know just switch the kids and old computers to ubuntu or something of that sort but we know how schools love there certain programs. Damn photoshop. lol
I have some old computers that wont pass the new windows test because the kids don’t need top of the line stuff until they are going to pay for it. But unfortunately a lot of the school stuff only runs on windows or chrome books. So I needed to find something that would run windows programs.
It has a normal Linux install method and once you boot in for the first time it installs wine and everything to be able to install .exe files. So far as long as the app is windows only they seam to install with out an issue and work great.
The only issues I seam to be having is that the keyboard doesn’t seamed to be mapped correctly so I cant connect to my smb shares which I need for the kids folders.
If you just want the look of Windows11, there are plenty of distros out there with dozens of themes and desktop environment to mimic every windows ever made. I never heard of a beta stage distro though 
But major improvement to Wine is something that is always nice to have.
You can setup your keyboard layout with loadkeys command.
The look I thought was just nifty but the ability to have the OS download everything needed to install EXE programs is kind of awesome. My oldest has started playing with Ubuntu 20 but wine can be a pain sometimes to get to work for a couple programs he likes to use. Testing so far has let me install and run a bunch of the programs I use for video editing that are windows only with no issues. And the ones he uses too.
The only program it doesn’t really like is my security camera program just wont run but that comes from hikvision. But this seams to be normal i have yet to get it to run on Linux no matter how I install it. It will install but just doesn’t like to run.