Q4OS is a Linux distribution built to offer a similar experience to Windows XP. It's been around for a long time and now the developers have released yet another update for the operating system.

There are many ways to make a Linux system look like its Windows counterpart. It's usually done with the help of themes and icons, and most of the times the resemblance is uncanny, but it's still not all that far away from the original base.

The Q4OS developers have gone a little bit further and they have made the entire interface, functions, and even installation dialogs very similar with the ones found on Windows.

You might think that this is mere unfortunate coincidence, but it's not. This is the developers’ exact goal although it's still a Linux system at its core.

That means that any resemblance with Windows is only skin deep and all the other problems, like running Windows apps, are still there and they are dealt in the same way. Nothing really changed in this regard.

Q4OS is perfect for people who want something like Windows, but safer

The distribution makes use of a desktop environment called Trinity DE, which was forked a long time ago from KDE 3.x. A few years ago KDE looked a lot like Windows, but things have changed dramatically since then.

The KDE solution has evolved, but some people like the old look. This is one of the reasons Trinity DE is still around, even all of these years.

"New Q4OS version 0.5.21 focus on password management and handling, fixes annoying glitches related to sudo command and gui applications running with elevated root privileges. In addition new gui themes has been added for GTK applications to accurately follow Q4OS design. Several bugs has been fixed as usual."

"Shrinking of full-offline installation ISO images continues and it has not yet stopped the size of incredible 309Mbytes for x64, respectively 331MBytes for i386 architecture. Feel free to download and explore fast and powerful Q4OS desktop," reads the developers' announcement.

We put together a screenshot tour for your enjoyment. This is especially important because Q4OS doesn't have a Live CD version, so you need to install it order to see it in action.

The good news is that it works quite well in VirtualBox, so there is no need to delete you current OS in order to test it.

You can download Q4OS 0.5.21 right now from Softpedia and you can find more details about this new version of the operating system in the official announcement.