[HN Gopher] Make Linux look like Windows 95
___________________________________________________________________
Make Linux look like Windows 95
Author : iio7
Score : 431 points
Date : 2022-02-26 02:08 UTC (20 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (lunduke.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (lunduke.substack.com)
| padde wrote:
| Haha, the memories :D nicely done.
| desktopninja wrote:
| For a while now I've thoroughly enjoyed using with the q4os
| w/Trinity DE: https://q4os.org/
|
| I hope MS gives us Lindows (anyone remember that catch song
| Lindows Rocks lol) ... Linux + Win2k DE ...
| vector1337 wrote:
| Is there something similar for mac?
| jcadam wrote:
| Very nice. Someone needs to do Windows 3.1 :)
| agumonkey wrote:
| I'd support this.
| HeckFeck wrote:
| https://github.com/jcs/progman
|
| Someone already has.
| agumonkey wrote:
| very nice
| visiblink wrote:
| With the hotdog stand theme, no less!
|
| The only crack in the spell is the program launcher.
| Apparently, it's a left-click on the desktop to get a
| menu, like in the old Stiletto program for WIN31:
| http://www.technofileonline.com/texts/tec092098.html
| stuaxo wrote:
| This properly looks good.
| anthk wrote:
| From JCS I suggest reading it's timeline on Mac OS System 6
| C programming too.
| jonpalmisc wrote:
| I've used this before and it's quite good; it not only captures
| the "old Windows" look well, but I find it to be quite functional
| too.
|
| I was frustrated trying to get my Linux box to look "pretty",
| since I find that most GTK and DE themes lack attention to detail
| that is glaringly obvious to a trained eye. My solution was to
| take the "scorched Earth" approach: make my UI look as primitive
| as possible rather than aiming for perfection.
| cookiengineer wrote:
| Did you try the arc-dark theme? It's quite popular among
| archlinux users, and I think it looks pretty polished. [1]
|
| I'm no design expert, so I got nothing to say in terms of
| UI/UX. But it's the theme I've grown most comfortable with to
| use over the years. I agree with your sentiment that most
| themes lack attention to detail, where everything looks just
| more cluttered than anything else (especially when taking a
| look at icons, fonts etc).
|
| [1] https://github.com/horst3180/arc-theme
| seanw444 wrote:
| My favorite GTK theme so far is Orchis.
| ComradePhil wrote:
| It seems to have the same icky "material" design look forward
| which makes me puke in my mouth.
|
| I have been wanting to rant on this, so I will do it here.
|
| To anyone working in design, the "material" design is not it.
|
| Look at this:
| https://twitter.com/vectaio/status/1018697206776225794?s=21
|
| And compare it to this: http://www.visguy.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2018/01/aws-shapes-...
|
| What is the purpose of an icon and which of the above serves
| the purpose better?
|
| The purpose of icons is not to look all same, like the
| material design aims to do. It is to quickly visually
| distinguish between different things. Material design is
| terrible for it. I hope more sensible designers fix this and
| get us out of the "material" nonsense Google has pushed into
| the world.
| __del__ wrote:
| i don't care for the aesthetic of the aws icons you posted,
| but i agree they serve their purpose much better than the
| gcloud icons you posted.
| ComradePhil wrote:
| Oh I'm not very pleased with the AWS icons much either
| but they have one property of the real materials: depth.
|
| The most frustrating thing about "material" icons is its
| name; real materials have depth and colors... and so
| should functional icons; material icons are monocolor and
| flat.
| oefnak wrote:
| The AWS icons are better, but still pretty bad, using only
| 1 colour.
| arendtio wrote:
| I find it funny that you use AWS as the better example,
| because I find native cloud product ranges notoriously hard
| to understand. Everybody tries to find some weird name for
| things we had for a while. EC2, S3, Route 53... Why not
| simply call it Virtual Machines, File Storage and DNS. It
| would make it so much easier to start. Even the somewhat
| better icons don't help, if you have to learn what the
| fancy names stands for first.
| ComradePhil wrote:
| I have faced the opposite problem. When talking to
| people, even when we were using GCS or Azure, I find
| myself refering to those services using AWS terms (when
| applicable). And that is not because I have used AWS the
| most but because their names are much easier to refer to
| then saying Cloud Storage (Google Cloud) or Storage
| Account Blob Container (Azure)... and most people I talk
| to are familiar with AWS terms.
|
| That's for the same reason I want to refer to my cousin
| by his first name, and not "My fathers second brothers
| oldest son", unless I am introducing him to people who
| don't know him and need to know that detail about him.
|
| Once you know S3, you know what S3 is... and when you
| don't you can look it up until you do. After that, that
| makes communication much easier.
|
| Of course, you need to keep in mind who you are talking
| to and refer to those services by what it means to your
| audience... or introduce those terms if you have to, to
| your audience. But for most people, this is rather rare,
| so why optimise for this rare communication?
|
| Most of the time, we are talking to people who know the
| names and it becomes so much eaiser to communicate. We
| skip the description of description of what we are
| talking about every time we mention it. Having short
| names optimises the names for the conversations that
| happen the most, which is the great design.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| > make my UI look as primitive as possible rather than aiming
| for perfection.
|
| Yeah i like i3 too :)
| sb057 wrote:
| But does it support thumbnails in the file picker?
| periheli0n wrote:
| If the first thing that comes to mind is fvwm95, does that mean
| I'm old?
| IYasha wrote:
| I thought my dream came true, but... There's one thing he isn't
| showing - the infamous GTK's "Cancel-OK" message box combination.
| As much as I respect Lunduke's work, it's GTK-based. And my Linux
| environment is completely 95% Qt5 (it'll be 100% if I figure out
| how to migrate to Qt-based browser). The main advantage of OS/2
| or Win9x-like UI is its speed and consistency. And it soesn't
| allocate/read/render 9 PNG files per element (like button). Works
| using Line()s and FillRect()s. If modern KDE could do that, I'd
| have no complains...
| lewispollard wrote:
| I know it doesn't do it efficiently, but there are a whole
| bunch of plasma themes, window decorations, cursor sets and so
| on that emulate win 95/98/xp (and even vista) in KDE Plasma,
| and you can install them right from the system settings.
| IYasha wrote:
| Thanks! I tried. But at that time there were lots of
| inconsistencies. I tried going full-95, but couldn't find
| exact controls. And in most themes there were bitmap or
| vector images to mimic control appearance. It's nothing like
| disabling effects on Win7 brings back natively-drawn
| imageless UI. Generally, I tried even making my own theme,
| but it looked odd. ) Especially when the start menu ignored
| all the theme colors and lived on its own. I've heard they've
| fixed it in newer Plasma releases though.
| ChiefOBrien wrote:
| 26 years since the release of Win95 and Linux still cannot make a
| pixel perfect copy of the GUI with proper alignment and padding.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Ah I need to teach my Win10 qt project this look. Tried hard but
| the best I got was win7 style.
| Snortibartfast wrote:
| I actually didn't like (and still don't) Windows in any form, but
| the one thing I did/do like is the Windows 95/98/2000 UI. I came
| from an Amiga background, and even though I think of Amiga with
| fond memories, I thought the UI was a bit too spartan and clumsy
| (MUI was a step in the right direction though).
|
| Nowadays I use Memphis-98 [0] as GUI theme (not desktop and
| window decorations). It's is kinda like Chicago95, but feels a
| bit more modern, not just a straight copy of Windows. There are
| some layout bugs, and some apps looks overall bad, like Firefox,
| Thunderbird and BDeaver. I had to manually turn off theming of
| DBeaver because it's basically useless with the Memphis theme.
|
| For Qt I use the built in Windows look.
|
| [0] https://gitlab.com/hadrosoft/memphis-98
| kalel83 wrote:
| You had me at Netscape navigator.
| vmception wrote:
| A long time ago I noticed that Internet cafe/computer lab users
| did not conceptualize things like "which operating system is
| being used" and simply looked for "familiar way to open a
| browser"
|
| So any home screen+icon+square application representation was
| fine for them
|
| at a certain point Ubuntu with just a browser icon reduced user
| error and friction
| JimDabell wrote:
| It was actually fairly popular at the end of the 90s to run
| FVWM95, which was basically FVWM 2 skinned to look like Windows
| 95. It looked pretty similar to this project, for obvious
| reasons.
|
| http://fvwm95.sourceforge.net
| pjmlp wrote:
| It makes me feel rather old when only your comment and another
| one are the only references to fvwm95 among 92 comments.
|
| It really shows how much current generations have lost from
| Linux early days, or how old some of us are.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Yeah I remember we used to run it as a joke.. On our HP-UX
| systems with VUE at the time.
|
| The sysadmins hated it when we made our terminals look like
| what they viewed as an inferior system (which to be honest it
| was, at the time with its DOS underpinnings)
| nayuki wrote:
| > Make Linux look exactly like Windows 95... I mean *exactly*.
|
| Good try, but if you're going to emphasize the exactness, I'm
| going to nitpick.
|
| In the top picture (
| https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_p...
| ), the menu bar has too much vertical padding and lacks mnemonic
| (underlined) letters. The amount of padding on the desktop icon
| text also looks off. A good example is
| https://socket3.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/w95ptoys-1.png .
|
| In the second picture (
| https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_p...
| ), Calculator just looks completely off. The Taskbar has too much
| space between the icon and window title. The tray icons should go
| in the same box as the clock, not outside. Good examples:
| https://i.pinimg.com/originals/27/fc/05/27fc05d3f826760c7fd0... ;
| https://www.cultofmac.com/ezoimgfmt/cdn.cultofmac.com/wp-con...
|
| And this isn't even going as far as to nitpick the _exact_ font-
| rendering algorithm down to the pixel.
| IYasha wrote:
| In early 2000s I've created a few .theme files in Win98, all with
| different shades of main window color. And, with minimal
| tweaking, I made it work in EVERY version of Windows from 95 to
| 7! That's what I liked about backwards-compatibility. (and, most
| likely, I won't be using Windows after 7 anymore).
| nebula8804 wrote:
| I have used themes like this on Linux and also some to make it
| look like MacOS. What I really want on Linux are tools that are
| written to be exactly like Windows, no more no less. Why? Well in
| addition to the numerous OS related problems I seem to encounter
| every time I go back and do a clean install of a distro like
| Ubuntu I am also annoyed by how poorly designed many of the basic
| tools like the calculator is. The Windows calculator is so simple
| that it makes it super easy to hop in, do a quick calculation via
| the numpad and jump out. Just copy it exactly. To this day there
| is still no default Paint program as good as MSPaint. MSPaint is
| great for pasting screenshots, quickly cropping/cutting and then
| saving. On linux you gotta install some other junk like
| Gimp/Krita/whatever else the typical forum dwellers recommend
| this month. Just please give me MSPaint on Linux. Nothing more,
| Nothing Less.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Have you tried the gnome app "drawing" or the kde apt
| "kolourpaint" ?
| _zooted wrote:
| Kolour Paint is really good - basically a much improved
| version of MS Paint in terms of interface and simplicity. I
| run a GNOME system but I still use the Klour Paint flatpak
| since it's so good.
| userbinator wrote:
| How about WINE?
| CrazedGeek wrote:
| FYI, there's a port of the Windows calculator to Linux (and a
| bunch of other platforms):
| https://github.com/unoplatform/calculator
| nebula8804 wrote:
| Darn, its the new calculator. I actually delete this on a
| fresh Windows 10 install and if you search, there is an
| installer floating around that re-adds the Windows 7
| calculator. It takes much longer for this new calculator to
| boot up and you can feel the bloat when using it.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| From a typical "forum dweller" this seems like an argument to
| familiarity not quality.
|
| Lets give an example what does Krita call itself? It says
|
| > Krita is a professional FREE and open source painting
| program. It is made by artists that want to see affordable art
| tools for everyone. concept art
| texture and matte painters illustrations and comics
|
| Doesn't sound like what one would use to crop and share
| screenshots.
|
| Gimp looks more favorable. It is comparatively slow to start
| 3.7 seconds here. Lets look how challenging it is to make that
| work. Well there is a crop tool on the main tool box. Mousing
| over it helpfully notes you can press Shift+c if you want to do
| it slightly easier. If you don't like the split between export
| and save and just want it to save and shut up I recommend an
| addon called save-export-clean and a handy binding in my case
| just alt+x.
|
| If you find yourself creating a series of screenshots for
| example for an article or howto or some such instead of taking
| a screenshot, then opening it in gimp you can from gimp take a
| screenshot of a window, part of a window, or the entire screen
| and immediately edit it in gimp. Seems this is pretty suitable.
|
| Maybe you don't actually need any of the things gimp does? Well
| Kolourpaint is basically a better mspaint and opens in 400ms.
| It has an obvious selection tool. Select what you like and hit
| control+t to crop to selection. Control+s to save and your
| done.
|
| Maybe there is a way to do this with less steps yet? Enter
| flameshot. Click an icon or hit printscreen and click and drag
| what you would like to screenshot to the correct size. While
| you are at it You can do light annotations and optionally open
| it in an actual editor. You can even with a button share it to
| imgur if you just want a quick way to show someone something.
| Want the old behavior of just hitting printscreen saving the
| screen contents to clipboard no problem bind flameshot full -c
|
| Want the full windows experience bind flameshot full -c to
| print and open up kolourpaint and hit control+v
| graphpercolator wrote:
| Not Plasma? https://i0.wp.com/9to5linux.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2021/08/k...
|
| The idea of using Windows 95 instead of Plasma is just absurd
| to me.
|
| Windows 95 Explorer vs Dolphin? What?
| zozbot234 wrote:
| xpaint is the MS-Paint lookalike, much lighter than Gimp or
| Krita.
| surajs wrote:
| dmix wrote:
| I've always liked those briefcase icons but could never figure
| out what they did.
| shakna wrote:
| They were early two-way synced folders. [0] Like the idea of
| Dropbox et all, but for anything Windows supported. FTP, Samba,
| another physical drive, or just another local location.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Briefcase_(Microsoft_Windows)
| Bluecobra wrote:
| My first computer had Windows 95 and I had no idea what it did
| either until now.
|
| https://www.howtogeek.com/396628/what-was-the-windows-briefc...
| deutschewelle wrote:
| Love love these nostalgic takes, reminds me of this Windows 98
| demo in a 3D simulation I recently came across. There is a real
| demand for 90s aesthetics
|
| https://twitter.com/PCBANGio/status/1493850712471527426
| charles_f wrote:
| Fun enough that reminds me of the smell in the computer room in
| our house.
| bqmjjx0kac wrote:
| Musty carpet?
| charles_f wrote:
| Exactly!
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| I feel like the era of flat panel displays and the error of
| windows 98 really didn't intersect much. Though it might just
| be bias because of how broke I was at the time.
| fmakunbound wrote:
| Man, that's all I really wanted.
| cpach wrote:
| I really like this pixel-based layout.
|
| But how well would it work on a high-DPI "retina" display?
|
| Has anyone tried?
| hestefisk wrote:
| I remember that installing RH 5.2 (Hedwig? Apollo?) in 1999 and
| getting FVWM95 installed using rpm. It closely resembled Windows
| 95. From memory, icewm also had a similar theme. I miss the
| simplicity of the gui from this era, not Windows 95, but Windows
| NT 4.0. The dark blue boot screen was quite nice and the system
| was fast and quite stable around SP6a.
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| The Fox Toolkit [0] always looks like Windows 95, and is still
| getting updates.
|
| Its lack of themeability is presumably one of the reasons it's so
| fast and lightweight.
|
| [0] http://fox-toolkit.org/
| userbinator wrote:
| This with WINE is what I think is the perfect combination of GUI
| and CLI... but as a long-time Windows user, several things stood
| out and made it look slightly off: the menu bar
| and padding around the icon labels is too tall the window
| borders are slightly too wide (compared to the default)
| scrollbar buttons shouldn't disable at end of travel sort
| direction indicator in header control (which first appeared in
| Win2k) should be a grey triangle, not a black arrow "KiB"
| and "GiB" font has some weird keming in some places
|
| Nonetheless, this is a lot closer lookalike than some of the
| others I've seen, such as this one:
|
| https://kmandla.wordpress.com/projects/lookalike-windows-xp-...
| lostgame wrote:
| It's the fonts in general, for me; though I also noticed that
| the menus and icons labels had too much padding.
| anthk wrote:
| That and Inconsolation was my preferred blog for years.
| [deleted]
| akx wrote:
| Not to mention the fonts.
|
| That's no MS Sans Serif...
| Alan_Dillman wrote:
| To be fair, its also no moon.
| moron4hire wrote:
| Is "keming" a graphical pun on "kerning"?
| tasha0663 wrote:
| I didn't notice that at first glance. It's beautiful.
| vic-traill wrote:
| I thought so when I saw it, as well. It's pretty funny - bad
| kerning == keming [0]. It's a keeper, I'd say.
|
| [0] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/keming
| freedomben wrote:
| This comment makes me so happy. If I read it anywhere else I'd
| invoke Poe's Law and guess it was a joke. But it being HN I
| know it's for real, and I love it. Excellence in all we do
| rbanffy wrote:
| The font in the terminal called my attention. IIRC, the
| default one was the 8x8 CGA font with the option for it to be
| "Lucida Console". Also, the icon for the terminal was the
| MSDOS 3D logo.
|
| All in all, amazing work.
| heleninboodler wrote:
| I like the meta-joke of complaining about the kerning and
| calling it "keming"
| pseudosavant wrote:
| Thank you for pointing out the joke! My eyes went right
| past the first time. That is the best keming joke ever!
| beebeepka wrote:
| Remember, win95 GUI allow us to place the taskbar wherever we
| want without causing issues.
|
| Gnome 2 did, too, except it was almost unusable in that mode
| because they used to have a repeated "1px by I don't remember how
| much" for a taskbar background. Even Windows 11 only lets people
| have the thing on the bottom
| necrotic_comp wrote:
| icewm is a bit different, but it has a "windows95" type theme
| that, while it doesn't look nearly as good, is insanely
| functional.
|
| I've found it to be a window manager that is easy to script, easy
| to use, and gets out of the way for the most part. I spent a lot
| of time looking for a good window manager, trying all the usual
| ones (gnome, kde, xmonad (stayed there for a while!), dwm, etc.),
| but I've found this one to be the best and least obtrusive of any
| of them.
|
| Definitely worth a look if you're still in the hunt and not
| necessarily keen on making something look pretty.
|
| https://ice-wm.org/
| prvc wrote:
| The Office theme is off, somehow. Also, Word 97 has a much nicer,
| cleaner layout than 95 (assuming Clippy has been totally
| disabled, of course). Not sure if the icons are any different,
| though.
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4a/Office_97_on_...
| alexklark wrote:
| It is 2022, and Windows 95 still have better font rendering.
| emptyparadise wrote:
| Sadly 99% of these modifications are surface level and don't go
| far enough in terms of actual usability. It's always the little
| things that break the spell, stuff like being able to open tree
| views using the keyboard.
| charles_f wrote:
| For a more complete experience it should remove sound drivers and
| alsa from kernel and force you to find a binary copy on a floppy
| that you pray still works to make the speakers function .
| IncRnd wrote:
| Compared to my main desktop running Windows 3.11 [1], I have to
| say, this 95 thing is quite the looker - extremely visually
| appealing.
|
| 3.11 is starting to feel a bit dated, now that my wife is showing
| off her TRS80.[2] Her machine is actually a portable that can be
| placed on a desk anywhere and plugged into any outlet! This 95
| seems a fine upgrade path to newer hardware!
|
| [1] https://winworldpc.com/product/windows-3/311
|
| [2] http://www.trs-80.org/model-1/
| HDMI_Cable wrote:
| I'll be the first to say the unpopular take on HN: I don't think
| Windows 95 looks that good (compared to today).
|
| I personally find more modern (like MacOS 10) styles to look the
| best, and flat designs to be just as usable as more skeumorphic
| ones.
|
| It seems to me that preference for UI styles is completely
| personal, probably being influenced by what OS we initially used.
| As someone (potentially a lot) younger than many of those on HN,
| I like newer designs, and vice versa holds as well.
| mrweasel wrote:
| > I don't think Windows 95 looks that good (compared to today).
|
| Not doubt about it, the Windows 95 UI was never pretty, but I
| also don't believe that's why people like it... well, hate it
| less perhaps.
|
| As someone how got started with Windows 95, looking back at my
| options over the past 25 years, functionally Windows 95 was
| less terrible than some of the current options. Sure, macOS is
| pretty (and I do prefer that UI), but the Windows 95 UI was
| simpler, it had to be.
|
| Part of the issue, as I see it, is that we added more and more
| stuff to desktops as years has past us by, but how many of
| those features do I really use? There's absolutely nothing that
| I do my laptop today, that I couldn't do using a Windows 95 UI.
| On top of being much simpler, the Windows 95 UI is also
| consistent, much more so than any current alternatives.
|
| Finally, Windows 95 has useful hints all over, allowing you to
| actually learn how to effectively use the UI. Microsoft had to
| add these hints, because when it was release no one knew who to
| use their new interface. It's very clear that talented UX
| people where involved, most likely the last project ever to
| care about good UX, everything is downhill from 95.
|
| Bundle all that together, simplicity, ease of use and
| consistency, that's why people still care about the Windows 95
| UI. It's not pretty, it was never pretty, but it is incredibly
| well designed, it has just taken some of us 20 year to come to
| that realization.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| I go the other direction: NeXT (WindowMaker), or good old twm.
| anthk wrote:
| Well, Mac OS Tiger and Windows 95 are perfectly usable, but
| anything newer than Snow Leopard looks unusable.
|
| To me Amiga OS looks weird and "chaotic", but Windows 95 it's
| the perfect OS on usability, on par on Mac OS 6 and 7.
| ogogmad wrote:
| What do you think of the shiny, glassy look of Vista and/or
| early MacOS 10? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Vista and
| https://www.techradar.com/reviews/phones/mobile-phones/iphon...
|
| Looked "space age", and less like the drab office building
| which Win 9x/MacOS 9 looked like. Is there any nostalgia for
| that?
| IYasha wrote:
| I find it astonishing how Win/Mac UI divides people with
| different, opposite I'd say, mindsets. Really, way too often I
| see completely different people arguing over some subject who
| turn out to be Apple vs. Android users. Or mac/win users.
| Sometimes it's as vivid as than cultural or religious division.
| I could draw a psychological portrait of a typical
| representatives of these groups but it'll be a bit biased :)
| But the sad part is - they both fall into hands of evil
| corporations, who only pretend to give users a choice...
| debo_ wrote:
| jp0d wrote:
| I completely agree with you. I don't miss Windows and quite
| despise the UI. Even the modern one. I've been using Macs since
| several years and the only thing that comes close to a distant
| second is Gnome. I'm actually quite surprised to see how many
| actually like Windows 95!
| II2II wrote:
| > It seems to me that preference for UI styles is completely
| personal, probably being influenced by what OS we initially
| used. As someone (potentially a lot) younger than many of those
| on HN, I like newer designs, and vice versa holds as well.
|
| I agree that most of the preference is personal. I am not so
| sure on the age thing. I am likely on the old end of the curve
| here, yet mostly prefer the flat appearance. That said, there
| are a few elements of those old designs that I prefer. There
| are a few areas where those old interfaces shone: being able to
| distinguish between UI elements, higher contrast, consistency,
| and exposing functionality. That is to say: buttons don't need
| to be raised and links don't need to be underlined, but it is
| useful to know when you are looking at a button and a link.
| lewiscollard wrote:
| My brain believes two things simultaneously:
|
| * that Windows 95 was the first GUI I used for any extended
| period of time and that I will naturally think it's the best
| one for this reason, for the same reason people tend to think
| things they liked when they were teenagers peaked when they
| were teenagers; and
|
| * that Windows 95 _really did_ rule - to repurpose Hoare, "not
| only an improvement on its predecessors but also on nearly all
| its successors"
|
| ...and those two could fight each other all day.
|
| Taking off the rose-tinted glasses, I might miss the UI, but I
| definitely don't miss how unstable it was. 25 years on I can
| _still_ rattle off a Windows 95 product key off the top of my
| head as a consequence of reinstalling it so often.
| rbanffy wrote:
| > but I definitely don't miss how unstable it was
|
| We had NT4 with that same look and it was much better.
| anthk wrote:
| 2000 was pretty much Windows 95 alike with the classic
| theme and the window colors to an ungradiented one, buch
| much more stable and compatible.
| smilespray wrote:
| As a Mac user, Windows 2000 was the first good non-Apple
| OS to use as a daily driver. I then ran a PC and a Mac
| side by side for several years, until OS X finally got
| into the groove.
| mynameismon wrote:
| Yup, I think we fall in a similar age group, and lack the
| nostalgia that most HN readers have.
|
| At the same time, flat design is objectively worse. Barely any
| indication as to whether something is a button or a text box or
| a label. Personally, I really like the path taken by WinUI3,
| since it addresses the UX concerns with a fresh paint of UI
| Shared404 wrote:
| > Yup, I think we fall in a similar age group, and lack the
| nostalgia that most HN readers have.
|
| > At the same time, flat design is objectively worse.
|
| Gonna jump in this boat as well, though I do actively search
| out older UI's and OS's to use.
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| The default Windows 95 didn't look that great, but almost
| everyone agrees that 98 or 2000 are much better (at least they
| have gradients). But I'm not 100% old school, and I think that
| Windows 7 Aero looked good, too. I'm sad that someone decided
| that glassy transparent windows were an abomination and broke
| them all :(
| anthk wrote:
| I hated gradients on Windows. They looked as if the "stepped
| out" from the GUI. They broke the "3D layering" illusion.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Gradients would have looked bad with 8-bit color, which was
| still very much in use in the 1990s. Solid color was the
| reasonable choice back then.
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| Windows 98 didn't allow gradients on 256 color (8-bit)
| modes. You had to use at least high color (16-bit). (Win
| 95 didn't have gradients.)
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| To me the biggest improvement that 2000 makes to the 9x look
| are the move to a lighter base gray, as well as changing the
| default desktop color from that funky teal to a much nicer
| blue. As minor as those two things may seem they made the OS
| feel more pleasant.
|
| But that may just be the classic Mac OS fanboy in me
| speaking. Mac OS never used particularly dark grays, so the
| almost-perfectly-middle-gray seen in 95/98 felt almost
| depressing in comparison.
| rbanffy wrote:
| 95 copied more the NeXT than the Mac look. The grey is much
| closer, as are the button corners, an explicit rejection of
| the Windows 3 rounded corners. The NeXT greys made sense
| for the original cube, which was limited to black, white
| and two greys.
| DougWebb wrote:
| I _originally_ used a ZX-81. Can 't say I miss the UI.
| II2II wrote:
| I grew up with a Commodore 64, can't say that I miss the UI
| either. That said, I recently learnt that it was possible to
| cursor up to a prior command/statement to edit and re-execute
| it (in other words, the screen was the history buffer).
| That's an awesome feature. It is also an illustration of how
| older user interfaces had some redeeming and forgotten UI
| features.
| madphilosopher wrote:
| I grew up with a Commodore 128, and it had _two_ screen
| buffers---one for 40-column mode and one for 80-column
| mode. I remember listing some code on the 80-column side of
| things so that I could edit it there and insert it into the
| code I had over on the 40-column side. I felt clever that
| day.
| FpUser wrote:
| >"I personally find more modern (like MacOS 10) styles to look
| the best, and flat designs to be just as usable as more
| skeumorphic ones."
|
| I am not familiar with MacOS styles. But from what I see on
| other platforms my problem with "modern flat" is not that it is
| in any way inferior by design. Problem is that the designers
| make for example clickable elements not any visually different
| than unclickable, make scroll bars that are impossible to
| locate, put light gray text on white background and lots of
| other demented things.
| projektfu wrote:
| Even worse, they're now intentionally using it for dark
| patterns, making buttons grey and disabled looking when
| they're active, using links instead of buttons, making things
| clickable that shouldn't be (and bringing up surprising
| behavior). Note that there's no visual language, all bets are
| off.
| drewzero1 wrote:
| To be slightly obtuse: MacOS 10 is a really broad category,
| encompassing the last 20+ years of desktop Mac UI and including
| probably the peak of skeumorphic design. Personally I think Mac
| OS X hit its prime around 10.5-10.6 Leopard and Snow Leopard.
| But I know that's not everyone's cup of tea. :)
|
| When I was using Windows 95 (and 98) the first thing I would do
| was change the colors to try to make my windows and buttons
| look less like a bunch of sidewalk blocks. When XP came out I
| was excited for the colorful, plasticky theme, but it hasn't
| aged well. Even Vista/7's glassy Aero has grown old, but for me
| Aero is still the best standard Windows theme (honorable
| mention to Royale and Watercolor). I think you're probably 100%
| right about the personal preference being the key here.
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| I'm a greybeard, my first OS was either DOS or some OtherDOS,
| my first GUI environment was System 7 (Mac). The latter was
| mostly flat other than some dithered shading mostly on icons,
| significantly flatter than macOS is today. Even with MacOS 8
| which gained more depth in its design I always found Windows'
| hard bevels through 2k/ME overstated, and when I did use
| Windows I'd do my best to configure it to be as flat as
| possible. So yeah I think early GUI exposure might be a
| contributing factor, probably moreso than age.
| projektfu wrote:
| System 7 added depth to things like title bars, and then
| there were extensions like Greg's Buttons that went all in
| for apps that used the default controls. With system 7,
| finder icons went seriously 3D because it was finally allowed
| to have multiple icons for different color depths. The use of
| color or even grey was one place where System 4.2-6 had
| fallen behind Windows 3.0, even though the graphics hardware
| was more advanced.
|
| https://www.macintoshrepository.org/1644-greg-s-buttons
| flenserboy wrote:
| You're probably on to something with that. My tastes are such
| that I'd love a System 6 version of this project. 7 always
| felt _wrong_ , like they were forcing something the hardware
| wasn't ready to do yet.
| anthk wrote:
| System7 had clear widgets over flat menus.
| periheli0n wrote:
| > I personally find more modern (like MacOS 10) styles to look
| the best, and flat designs to be just as usable as more
| skeumorphic ones.
|
| Shouldn't we separate looks from usability? KDE's
| multifunctional search bar (similar to Spotlight on OSX) was a
| game changer for me. Every time I booted back into Windows (to
| play Anno 1602) I felt crippled.
|
| Never cared much about looks, but functionality like that is
| what separates a great UI from an OK one. For me at least.
| badsectoracula wrote:
| > It seems to me that preference for UI styles is completely
| personal, probably being influenced by what OS we initially
| used.
|
| My first GUI "OS" was Win3.1 and while i do have some bits of
| nostalgia for it, i do not think it is a particularly good UI.
| It _is_ a bit better than Win95 in one element where they tried
| to introduce a consistency where every element that represented
| a command was supposed to have a 3D /bevel look while every
| element that was an input entry was supposed to have a 2D/flat
| look, but ultimately they didn't succeed completely (e.g. menus
| are flat even though they invoke commands) - and was ultimately
| abandoned once the "3d controls" were introduced (and later
| became the default style in Win95).
|
| However i do think that Win95 is among the best styles not
| because it has the most pleasing looks, but because it is the
| most visually neutral while at the same time being among the
| most functional. During the 90s there were even games that used
| regular desktop controls and it felt fine because Win95's style
| didn't really clash with them (well, unless the user customized
| it, but that was up to the user's choice).
| drewzero1 wrote:
| I was always annoyed by the apparent lack of consistency
| between flat and beveled elements in Win3.1, and liked 95
| better for its relative homogeneity across the UI. Now I get
| why they did 3.1 that way! Thanks for explaining this.
| 2143 wrote:
| > I don't think Windows 95 looks that good (compared to today).
|
| Me neither. I dislike anything that reminds me of old Windows.
| Some people are the opposite -- when they move to other
| platforms, they seek out things that look like old Windows so
| that it becomes supposedly easier to use (?).
|
| I like MacOS. I liked the old Unity. I like Gnome 3 except for
| the fact that it's consumes a lot of resources. I shy away from
| KDE even though I hear it's now more efficient because it
| reminds me of Vista from certain angles.
|
| And even though XFCE can be a little bit like old Windows, I
| like it because it's very efficient, and therefore I give it a
| pass :) . The no-bullshit DE.
|
| I've been on Gnome 3 for years now. However, I might switch to
| XFCE eventually because I tend to do memory intensive things.
| tannhaeuser wrote:
| > _I like MacOS. I liked the old Unity. I like Gnome 3 except
| for the fact that it 's consumes a lot of resources. I shy
| away from KDE even though I hear it's now more efficient
| because it reminds me of Vista from certain angles._
|
| Same. Definitely don't like gnome/gnome-shell 3+ dropping the
| global menu, featuring a useless file picker, and overall
| just wasting a lot of space on my favourite notebook sizes of
| 13.3" and 14", though preferring dark themes I could see that
| gnome maybe wanted to get rid of those cheesy non-scaling,
| always-black-on-white icon menus as leftovers from the 90s.
| Regarding KDE (Plasma) though, I've learned you can customize
| the hell out of it to get back most of gnome 2 + Unity [1],
| so that's something I'm going to try next when I get around
| to it.
|
| [1]: https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/plasma-look-like-
| unity.h...
| SLWW wrote:
| This is really pretty i won't lie. I might just install this on
| my devbox at home <3
| stuaxo wrote:
| It's good, though like things that have done this since the end
| of the 90s, the details are _quite_ there which leads to it not
| looking like Windows 95.
|
| Especially, the spacing around the text labels on icons, the
| spacing on text around menu controls.
|
| With a bit more work on details this could be really hard to tell
| the difference.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Isn't this what fvwm95 did all the way back in 1995? :)
| oefrha wrote:
| Now someone should make a browser theme to give me back the three
| rows of Ask Toolbar and other goodies. (I know, that's the XP
| era, not 95.)
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| desktop Linux always looked like windows 95 to me
| pym4n wrote:
| Why would I want this? Windows 95 is ugly af.
| typon wrote:
| Even though I love the overall GUI feel of Windows 95/98, I
| absolutely hate the command prompt. Linux terminals are so much
| more ergonomic
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| Fun project, but I don't miss old Windows (I don't miss Windows
| at all really).
| sunflowerdeath wrote:
| Now I regret a little bit that I have switched from linux to a
| macbook
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| I really like the Chicago95 theme here, it's great with
| XFCE/xubuntu on low spec devices.
|
| I also like installing the Window Maker and OpenBox WMs with a
| bunch of retro unix backgrounds--they kind of have the feel of
| CDE and old Solaris systems. I haven't used it but apparently
| someone is working on a more modern retro feel CDE-inspired thing
| here: https://github.com/NsCDE/NsCDE
|
| Depending on my mood I can log in to a retro Windows or Unix
| experience. I haven't looked deeply into it but I think saw a Mac
| System 7 inspired WM theme out there too. IMHO retro modern
| computing environments are quirky fun that should be a bigger
| thing. :)
|
| It's not canon to Windows 95, but XScreenSaver pairs nicely to go
| with the overall late 90s retro feel too:
| https://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/ These screensavers are exactly
| the kind of thing workstations of the era would have been
| blasting in computer labs nearly 24/7.
| Falkon1313 wrote:
| Just a tip, JWZ doesn't like direct links from here to his
| site. Copy and paste the link into a new tab for it to work. I
| don't even remember why, but it's been tradition for years now.
| bacchusracine wrote:
| Wouldn't QVWM work better with some configuration?
|
| https://www.ahinea.com/projects/qvwm/
| sprayk wrote:
| I wish I could get windows 10/11 to look like that. Seems like
| the last version of windows that would let you use that style of
| window decorations was Windows Server 2008.
| spansoa wrote:
| > Is this ridiculous? Is this blasphemy? Is this... wonderful?
|
| I was thinking of a use-case here, and blending in at the
| Starbucks wifi whilst you do your clandestine Linux activities is
| one good use-case. Reminds me of Kali Linux's Windows 10 theme
| that you can enable if you don't want to be judged as a 'hacker
| type' in public areas (or arouse suspicion).
| windows2020 wrote:
| I can't express how excited I am for consistent and metaphorical
| UI to be rediscovered by the 'designers' of today.
| ido wrote:
| It's not about "today", it's about Linux vs Win/Mac. The former
| is a lot less consistent than the latter and this was just as
| true in 1995 as it is today.
| II2II wrote:
| At least with respect to Linux and Windows, both suffer from
| similar problems with consistency. Both have suffered from a
| great deal of churn over the years. Both have a variety of
| toolkits that vary in both appearance and functionality. If
| you compare current software on both platforms, it is
| difficult to claim that one is much better than the other.
| (Though I will agree that Linux was incredibly inconsistent
| in 1995.)
| epistasis wrote:
| Wait, you simply let users know what's a button by the visual
| decorations and differentiated edges?
|
| And you let them know the status of toggle buttons without
| forcing them to toggle multiple times and guess based on which
| colors what might mean what?
|
| Blasphemy!
|
| Next you'll be letting web pages readers know what is and is
| not a link by using a consistent underline scheme. Which would
| be a completely unacceptable level of interpretability.
| gigglesupstairs wrote:
| Remember when buttons, when pressed, looked pressed? I
| remember!
| zamadatix wrote:
| Wow I've somehow completely missed the gradual
| disappearance of this. So many buttons now only have the
| hover effect.
| smilespray wrote:
| The UX & UI design department of Pepperidge farm members,
| too.
| nickjj wrote:
| There were still some differences back then too.
|
| I remember in the late 1990s you could usually tell if a
| desktop app was written in VB6 or Delphi based on certain
| hints. For example Delphi apps usually had those cool looking
| OK / Cancel buttons with an icon.
|
| But yeah, nowadays it feels way more different because
| developers have a blank canvas with Electron vs using a
| standard set of controls from a popular UI toolkit.
| grae_QED wrote:
| Very cool! I've actually been looking for something like this
| recently
| bmn__ wrote:
| https://archive.org/details/winfiles_cmfriend_202005
|
| Ah, so _that_ is what the semi-popular cyan-greyish colour theme
| is. Random encounter: <http://hallofshame.gp.co.at/tabs.htm>
| I've been looking for the origin for twenty years.
| hyakosm wrote:
| I like it, it's relaxing for the eyes, like the blue tints of
| Sun Solaris with CDE: http://toastytech.com/guis/sol.html
| marcodiego wrote:
| Note that CDE is open source since a few years ago. I
| personally compiled and run it on Debian 10. Getting it
| similar to screenshots you linked is not too much of a work.
| chungy wrote:
| I feel like that's just a slight variant (with the font,
| mainly) of the built-in Rainy Day theme.
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| I've been using Chicago95 in a VM and on my laptop for a few
| years. I was so dedicated to the look that I picked through a
| Windows install DVD to grab its fonts and use those (Microsoft
| Sans Serif particularly). I throw in a high resolution Bliss
| wallpaper, too, even though it totally didn't come with 95, and I
| don't have much fondness for XP.
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| I thought I was reading my own comment at first. This is my
| main dev environment.
| obxw wrote:
| Why?
| jacobmischka wrote:
| Why not?
| jmmv wrote:
| This looks so nice. Nostalgia indeed, but I miss consistent UIs
| across apps.
|
| SerenityOS must be mentioned in this context too: Win95-like UI
| on a Unix-like OS. Check it out if you haven't yet!
|
| Edited to add the link I missed: https://serenityos.org/
| IYasha wrote:
| Wow... just, wow! It's really not just GUI, but an OS!
| gigglesupstairs wrote:
| You should come here more often :) there are lots of
| wonderful discussions, in recent past even, on SerenityOS.
| Aeolun wrote:
| I really want to rebuild this in a for an existing OS. It's not
| the same but it has the perfect feel.
| voidfunc wrote:
| I still fucking love that Win95/Win98/Win2K look and feel. Its no
| nonsense and perfect in my opinion.
| dusted wrote:
| Now, that's cozy!
|
| I very much prefer the "physical" design of windows 9x to the
| more graphic one of XP and whatever the shit you want to call
| that horribly ugly clusterfuck of a mess that is 10.
| fredley wrote:
| Totally agree. I'm ready for the tides of fashion to turn once
| more and skeuomorphism to be the way again.
| unfocussed_mike wrote:
| Only if we can skip right past Windows 95 and have
| XView/OpenWindows back, thank you in advance.
| tasha0663 wrote:
| Heh, the nice thing about XP was that I didn't feel obligated
| to force my Linux desktop into cross-toolkit consistency
| anymore. I seem to recall Outlook pulling from the XP widgets
| for the Inbox scrollbar and the 9x widgets for the Preview
| scrollbar. At first, disgust; followed by relief.
| jtth wrote:
| This is what Red Hat 5 looked like out of the box. (More or
| less.)
| mbg721 wrote:
| It won't convincingly look like Windows 95 to me without a ton of
| Invalid Page Faults in kernel32.dll. (Can somebody give me a
| basic explanation of what that was??)
| ronsor wrote:
| The best guess I have is buggy programs passing invalid
| pointers to kernel32 functions (e.g. OpenFile/WriteFile).
| pleb_nz wrote:
| invalid page faults
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Install the BSOD x11-screensaver hack.
|
| (I used this for a while in rotation with others ... cow-orkers
| would occasionally tell my my laptop had crashed. I'd enter my
| password and continue working...)
| toast0 wrote:
| Ok, so a page fault is when you try to access a memory address
| that's not mapped by the MMU, or a write to a memory address
| that's mapped as read only. The MMU works in pages though, not
| individual addresses, on x86, standard pages are 4096 bytes,
| although larger pages are available. A valid page fault is when
| the OS has allocated that page in the current context, but not
| actually mapped it; it could be a not yet mapped in page from a
| memory-mapped file, or a page that was swapped to disk, or a
| page that was allocated but not yet used (not sure if win95
| does that), or a write to a page that is allocated as read-
| write but is currently mapped as read-only and needs copy-on-
| write (COW) processing now. An invalid page fault is a read or
| a write to a page that the MMU doesn't have a mapping for and
| the OS also doesn't have a mapping for. These errors can be
| caused by many things; often a programming error leads to
| pointers being overwritten with unrelated data, when they're
| dereferenced it could access the wrong data or it could cause
| an invalid page fault. Hardware errors can also result in bad
| addresses in a pointer. Sometimes it's unintended interactions
| between running software or software and hardware.
| flomo wrote:
| One thing is PC hardware back then was often complete crap. You
| could run diagnostics and get a lot of memory and disk errors,
| but Windows 95 still ran "okay". It was definitely a lot more
| stable if you spent the money on good stuff.
|
| Part of it was low expectations too. The half-life for Windows
| 3.1 crashes was about 4 hours. If your computer stayed up all
| day, that was considered a massive improvement. It took people
| a long time to discover the "49 day bug" that was in both
| Windows and OS/2.
| voidfunc wrote:
| My lasting memory of all Win9x editions will be "The program
| has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down" error
| messages which were rampant back then.
|
| Also I remember people freaking out about those messages.
| jp0d wrote:
| Can anyone think of a reason why to do this? Apart from personal
| fun project, of course!
| [deleted]
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Some people like very simple interfaces, icons and schemes.
| It's a very utilitarian interface and works fine. I often use
| lxqt which is pretty barebones on VMs to cut down a bit on the
| memory footprint.
| sigzero wrote:
| Nostalgia mostly. However, Win95 had very clear UI elements
| that made it nice to use.
| Donald wrote:
| The 90s were a decade of unbridled American power and optimism.
| The Soviet union had crumbled and the world was America's
| oyster.
|
| This week's events will cause a resurgence in 90s nostalgia in
| the West.
| sys_64738 wrote:
| If the best we could do was Win95 then that explains the
| decline in American imperialism.
| bigDinosaur wrote:
| Talking point if out in public (assuming you have this on a
| laptop or similar) or at a meetup?
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| Because that desktop is honestly clearer and faster to
| understand that today's chromeless trends. Buttons look like
| buttons, and text boxes are obvious.
| kwertyoowiyop wrote:
| And there is just enough whitespace. Not waaayyyyy toooooo
| muuuuccchhh.
|
| And there's consistency. Not eight generations of UI
| redesigns for each control.
|
| And you can actually tell which window has the focus.
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| I use it as my daily driver, and all the answers are here,
| plus familiarity.
| polski-g wrote:
| AWS's recent redesign makes every single UI element have
| 16px of whitespace. What exactly was the point?
| bqmjjx0kac wrote:
| Every time our screens get bigger, designers eat the space!
| assttoasstmgr wrote:
| Because we hit peak desktop right around Windows 2000. Just
| about everything since then has been a step backwards in speed
| and usability.
|
| The Mac Finder is a hot mess and seems to get worse with every
| release.
|
| The 964 different desktops available for Linux are in general a
| hodgepodge of slow impossible-to-use disasters. A notable
| exception is XFCE but it's a bit of a second-class citizen and
| even things in XFCE don't work well. (Example: network
| configuration, you need to be _logged in_ as root to use this
| applet.)
|
| Edit: I would like to point out that the Win2k desktop was
| blazing fast on a machine with 256MB of RAM. I can't get Debian
| to install on a machine with less than 512MB without
| complaining.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| > The 964 different desktops available for Linux
|
| 83% of people are using just 4. Hell 65% are using just 2 and
| its the same 2 as in 2003.
|
| https://linux-hardware.org/?view=os_de&colors=30
|
| > slow impossible-to-use disasters
|
| We are actually spoiled for choice if you just omit gnome 3.
| Mostly entirely usable
|
| > even things in XFCE don't work well. (Example: network
| configuration, you need to be logged in as root to use this
| applet.)
|
| This is like someone exclaiming loudly manual transmission
| cars are OK but how is everyone driving while sitting on that
| hard space between seats and reaching between their legs to
| shift. Well we aren't doing that. You don't need to log in as
| root to use the applet to configure your network options your
| system was just misconfigured probably because of something
| interesting you did manually.
|
| Out of the box on basically every distro that isn't entirely
| do it yourself you see a little networking icon you click it
| and you connect to a network just like on windows.
|
| > : I would like to point out that the Win2k desktop was
| blazing fast on a machine with 256MB of RAM. I can't get
| Debian to install on a machine with less than 512MB without
| complaining.
|
| I cannot think of a worse metric of utility than ability to
| run well on amounts of memory that are found only in machines
| older than some people reading this forum. 4GB modules now
| cost as little as $17. Windows 2000 crashed, it leaked
| memory, it developed weird problems for no reason that could
| only be fixed by reinstalling. I don't miss any version of
| windows from this era.
| aluminum96 wrote:
| > we hit peak desktop right around Windows 2000
|
| I could not disagree more strongly. Win2000 buttons are tiny,
| drag areas are tiny, basically everything is tiny and
| unclickable. I strongly prefer the generously-proportioned,
| touch-inspired interfaces of the last 4-5 years.
| anthk wrote:
| Please, go install Windows 2000 under Qemu at 1024x768
| resolution, then press ctrl-alt-f to set the Window to a
| scaled fullscreen desktop. Do you feel it as tiny? That's
| how we saw Windows 2000 back in the day on a CRT monitor.
| cbozeman wrote:
| People who have to actually get work done on a computer are
| almost always good with using a mouse and keyboard, so we
| understand how to move with precision and speed.
| benibela wrote:
| They are not tiny if you run it on a 800x600 screen
| hajile wrote:
| I'd argue that we hit peak desktop with OSX Snow Leopard.
| jp0d wrote:
| I get that it's easier to run on low RAM systems. I just
| don't think Windows95 was the pinnacle of UI design and was
| minimalistic only because resources were scarce. These days
| it's actually a lot harder to get low RAM machines. Unless
| you're working in the embedded space, and a UI like this is
| pointless there too.
|
| I haven't been using Linux (or Windows) much since several
| years now. But a stripped down version of Gnome or KDE or
| MATE are prefect as they were. The Windows UI in its current
| form or old (95, 98 or 2000) is hardly the best UI choice.
| The reason I can think of is nostalgic fun experiment. And
| there is nothing wrong with that. Not everything has to have
| a practical function. :)
| grishka wrote:
| IMO the last decently desktop version of Windows was 7. After
| that, it was utterly ruined by the existence of touchscreens
| and Microsoft's insistence that they're the next big thing in
| computers.
|
| My main issue with current macOS is the combined toolbars and
| titles, including in finder. There's too much padding but
| then everything feels unnecessarily cramped. My second issue
| with modern macOS is their new icon system where literally
| nothing is aligned to the pixel grid. But there's still a
| surprising amount of dense UIs -- I guess it helps that Apple
| has a clear separation between touch (iPad) and non-touch
| (Mac) product lines.
| bitigchi wrote:
| It's possible to disable toolbars and use a menu-
| bar/shortcut oriented workflow like in the Classic Mac OS.
| bitcharmer wrote:
| No. I love my 2022 Gnome look and looking at old Windows UI
| makes me nauseous. I'm over 40 so yes, I did use Windows
| extensively and hate everything about its UI maybe with the
| exception of Windows XP.
|
| I never had any issues recognising what is a button and what
| isn't with Gnome. Never understood HN's fetish for these old
| UIs.
| assttoasstmgr wrote:
| > _I never had any issues recognising what is a button and
| what isn 't with Gnome_
|
| That's easy to say when there's only a single hamburger
| button...
|
| All kidding aside, this scourge has made its way to
| Windows. One of the new anti-features in Windows 11 is the
| truncated (right click) context menus. Where most options
| are now hidden under a 'show more options' entry, requiring
| a separate mouse click.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| Speak for yourself, my riced out linux desktop is fast and
| usable AF
| mise_en_place wrote:
| What's even worse is Debian running on 256 MB environment,
| you'll need swap or pip will be killed by the OOM reaper.
|
| Linux used to be embedded first but nowadays most Linux
| distros are strangely oriented toward desktop and don't work
| correctly on low memory environments without heavy
| customization.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Linux was NEVER embedded first. Linux was unix for 386s PCs
| a very expensive machine.
|
| Not sure how desktop orientation is at all strange as any
| linux distro you are likely to install on your PC has been
| specifically prepared to install on a PC. If its
| anticipated to also be used as as server it also provides a
| minimal install which will almost certainly be less useful.
| prmoustache wrote:
| My linux and freeBSD desktops at the time were faster/more
| responsive than my win2k one and I have plenty of choice for
| apps that would use less memory.
|
| It is silly to compare to todays requirement. Nowadays system
| use more memory because we have more available.
| narag wrote:
| I haven't tried this one, but I will. My reason is that I quit
| Linux because they took away the two pane, file tree in the
| left, file explorer from me.
|
| I was using lxde and suddenly they decided to "redesign" the
| explorer (more like redoing it from scratch) and the new one
| had not the file tree pane. I was using lxde because I didn't
| like Plasma, another imposed "redesign". Now that was the last
| straw.
|
| 15 or 20 years ago... I can't understand why people think it's
| OK to shit on my muscle memory and habits.
| pcdoodle wrote:
| Some people don't understand the time value of habits. Makes
| me angry.
| toast0 wrote:
| AFAIK, Windows 95 was the last UI design with a published
| design methodology that includes numerous laboratory test
| sessions. I'm not sure the original URL, but it was republished
| [1]. It's listed at ACM [2] as published April 1996, so they
| were sharing how they did it pretty soon after it was done.
|
| I just don't think Microsoft continued to do lab testing of
| their design, at least they haven't told us that they did, but
| it feels like a lot of things have gotten harder to do rather
| than easier to do, which doesn't match their earlier design
| goals. Windows 95 wasn't the peak, but it was a huge step vs
| Windows 3.1. IMHO, Apple clearly doesn't care about desktop
| experience (and anyway, their keyboard shortcuts are wrong, so
| I'm not using their design), and I don't think any OSS desktop
| environment is funding user studies (but I'd be happy to see
| evidence otherwise). Given that situation, I'd rather use the
| UI that had design goals I like and a design process that
| allowed developing towards those goals.
|
| [1] https://socket3.wordpress.com/2018/02/03/designing-
| windows-9...
|
| [2] https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/238386.238611
| prvc wrote:
| Both a more efficient use of screen space (at least, compared
| to the default themes of XFCE, crucially, but also KDE, GNOME,
| and others), and an aesthetically better visual design. I am
| surprised to have just written this latter observation,
| considering this came from Microsoft, but I suppose the era
| when it was designed demanded it, both as a result of the lower
| screen resolutions used, and the the contemporary marketing
| needs for the release of Windows 95.
| assttoasstmgr wrote:
| I wouldn't say marketing so much as Microsoft did a lot of
| usability testing back then where psychologists threw people
| in a room and took notes while they interact with the UI. I
| don't think any OSS projects have this luxury (or money
| needed to throw around for that sort of thing).
|
| Raymond Chen vaguely references it here https://devblogs.micr
| osoft.com/oldnewthing/20120126-00/?p=84...
|
| Also, back then, you had to make the best with the resources
| you had. Computers were slow so UIs had to be lightweight out
| of necessity. Yet here we are in 2022 and GUI applications
| have become so bloated they take longer to open up then they
| did in the 90s. And yes I'm looking at you, GTK and Windows
| 'Modern' apps.
| userbinator wrote:
| _and GUI applications have become so bloated they take
| longer to open up then they did in the 90s._
|
| ...while somehow being even _less_ graphically complex.
| tadfisher wrote:
| The Gnome project performs usability tests pretty often.
| That's what led to decisions like deprecating the secondary
| app menu (app menu in the title bar) and the newer
| horizontal workspace layout, iirc.
| voidfunc wrote:
| And the Gnome project consistently gets it wrong because
| they keep forgetting their primary target users are not
| rando's that have never used a computer but mostly season
| Linux vets.
| ziotom78 wrote:
| I am currently using KDE with the Reactionary theme [1], which
| gives my desktop a nice Windows95 look. I love it because the
| meaning of the buttons on the title bars of windows is very
| clear, and I know exactly which visual elements can be pressed
| and which one not.
|
| (Disclaimer: I started using computers in late '80s and used
| Windows95/98/2000 a lot before moving to full Linux when
| Windows XP came out, so I was already pretty used to the
| interface.)
|
| [1] https://store.kde.org/p/1253201/
| kaetemi wrote:
| The vertical text alignment is all wrong. :(
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