Uh.. When did imitation become pirating?

"Not that imitators always get away with it: Chinese authorities successfully prosecuted the creators of China's most popular pirated edition of Windows XP, Tomato Garden Windows xp, in 2009. The Tomato-Garden duo got four years in jail and a $147,000 fine."

Maybe that's because they pirated XP? Not made something that happens to look like XP while being something completely different?

Skinning Linux to look like Windows is NOT the same as giving away "free" copies of XP.

I've given it a try

OK. When you go to install, English isn't exactly the first choice, but it's there.

Apart from that, this distro is very competent. It does everything you need it to. Codecs are pre-installed as is "build-essential", it's certainly enough to get most of the major file formats running from the starting blocks. The install is simple and clean and there isn't an excess of configs slowing it down.

As for the XP-esque layout - it ain't perfect, but it is enough to get XP users roving around the system without crying. The CLI is, as always, a "new" feature to most Windows users, but when it comes to getting the job done, a single typed command is a welcome relief to navigating a bunch of icons. Say what you like about the console - the direct approach often works brilliantly.

I like this distro - it's simple, it works and pretends to be XP well enough for XP users to get the hand of it in a few minutes. An awful lot of distro makers should learn a few things from this in making an OS that gets to the point. YLMF does exactly what it says on the outside of the box.

The penguin - in trying to look like Windows, it looks like Linux at it's most brilliant. A tool that works - no matter what that look is like.