Where would Linux be without Windows and Mac OS X to borrow ideas from?

steve-howard · on March 21, 2012

Moreover, much as I love it, most free software usually has a huge gap in usability and QA, because those are the boring parts of writing software.

jjtheblunt · on March 21, 2012

I'd argue Linux is an open source reimplementation of Solaris more than of OSX or Windows.

tikhonj · on March 21, 2012

Probably somewhere more efficient but with less useless (but admittedly cool looking :)) eye-candy.

The main reason common distributions have features similar to Windows and OS X is to make transitioning easier. Really serious people using e.g. Arch with XMonad are more efficient with very little Windows/OS X influence.

And hey, Linux could borrow those features even more easily if Windows or OS X were open source. Windows being open source would be complicated, but Apple is a hardware company and would work well enough with an open source OS at its heart.