Hello, nice to meet another Korean (still wake at 4AM) on HN! :-)
> The result was criticism that is was just a pathetic clone of MintOS(linux distro).
I’m pretty sure you’re mixing up Harmonica with Tmax — Harmonica is based on Linux Mint (and is a pretty well operated open source project) while Tmax uses the Linux kernel, some BSD components and a custom desktop environment that features a rip-off interface of Windows.
There wasn't any english stuff for Tmax distro that I could find...
idk why they don't just adopt Debian + Gnome for their desktop stuff with some Korean development work on top of that. It's a great looking UI/UX and would be perfect especially if most of the software is via the browser/SaaS anyway. Or some occasional wine translations where needed.
But I guess that's just how governments work and their constant obsessions with the sunk cost fallacy.
Edit: Harmonica seems to be doing the right thing already, from the review:
> However, it is, at it's core, just Linux Minux with two special PPAs for Koreans on top.
This isn't something to shame them for, this is how it should be done.
> dk why they don't just adopt Debian + Gnome for their desktop stuff with some Korean development work on top of that. It's a great looking UI/UX and would be perfect especially if most of the software is via the browser/SaaS anyway. Or some occasional wine translations where needed.
Well, (as you mentioned in the edit) it doesn’t create something totally new — AFAIK it uses the cinnamon DE. Also, you mentioned about being ‘perfect’... but you will be surprised in the level of CJK support on any open source software. Even the big ones don’t support CJK well, unless the software uses the OS toolkit & operating system gives you for free — and Linux doesn’t. Software like Firefox’s CJK input is frequently broken in macOS (they don’t use Cocoa), and on most Linux distributions everything is just terrible (including Ubuntu). That’s the reason for using a local distribution.
> This isn't something to shame them for, this is how it should be done.
It could be great if we could just use Linux Mint or Ubuntu and call it a day; Linux people, please stop considering input managers and other UTF-8 stuff as bloat... or you will never get meaningful adoption to ordinary users in the CJK.
> Even the big ones don’t support CJK well, unless the software uses the OS toolkit & operating system gives you for free — and Linux doesn’t.
What specific CJK support is lacking on Linux? I only have experience with CJ on Ubuntu, where I didn't really find anything lacking. Noto fonts give sufficient Unicode coverage, everything speaks UTF-8 and fcitx is an adequate input method engine, even if its text prediction isn't Google-level smart.
> The result was criticism that is was just a pathetic clone of MintOS(linux distro).
I’m pretty sure you’re mixing up Harmonica with Tmax — Harmonica is based on Linux Mint (and is a pretty well operated open source project) while Tmax uses the Linux kernel, some BSD components and a custom desktop environment that features a rip-off interface of Windows.