[HN Gopher] I Still Use Windows 95 (2008)
___________________________________________________________________
I Still Use Windows 95 (2008)
Author : zdw
Score : 154 points
Date : 2023-05-16 18:35 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (web.archive.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (web.archive.org)
| diego_moita wrote:
| Besides from DOS games (perhaps), all the reasons he gives to
| stick with Windows 95 are even better reasons to pick up a light
| Linux distribution.
|
| Well, maybe what he really, really wants is just to brag on the
| internet about it. No one would care if he was using Linux.
| marcodiego wrote:
| Except for performance, a light linux distro with DOSBox is
| much better than windows 95. If it is possible to run DOSEmu
| then the performance penalty may be smaller but also would be
| compatibility.
| guestbest wrote:
| Windows 98 SE was probably the most stable 'light' version of
| Microsoft Windows ever made. I Microsoft got rid of the DOS
| underpinnings in Win 2k the systems started requiring much more
| ram just to run. When combined with VS6 and at least a gig of hd
| space, it was a very capable machine for development.
| bombcar wrote:
| Windows 98 SE was the best for gaming for quite awhile, and I
| used that until I finally moved ... to 2000 with XP drivers
| hehehe.
| npteljes wrote:
| Not on my machine. After Win 3.1, Win XP Sp1 was the first
| system that was stable, otherwise I needed to reinstall them
| constantly.
| sjm wrote:
| 98SE for gaming was perfect. 2000 was "ok" when you had to
| eventually switch. Everything after that was pretty terrible.
| sn_master wrote:
| What was wrong with XP? (besides the default "bubbly" UI)
| guestbest wrote:
| This was around 2003-4.
|
| I had a Libretto 50ct (pentium 75mhz, 32 meg ram) running
| 95 and 98 perfectly, but on upgrading it to win 2k, not
| only was it extremely slow, but it also was limited to 16
| colors (no drivers for video). There was no retro community
| in those days, so the recommendation to get a usb or Wi-Fi
| connection to the internet was to upgrade to win98 as I
| don't remember win95 having any support for Wi-Fi or usb.
| Since win98 was already old at that point, a user such as
| myself might as well use win98se. I remember it being rock
| solid
|
| Linux with the 2.4 kernel ram just as slow as windows 2k in
| the basic bash terminal mode and x windows was very slow.
| The terminal was also sadly very slow given the limited bus
| capacity for the hard drive which ran at 5200rpm. The Linux
| 2.2 kernel ran much faster, but everything was too old in
| the debian software archive to support usb over pcmcia.
|
| Also listening to MP3's and doing anything else caused a
| slow down in the gui and skipping in the mp3 except in
| windows and older Linux kernels
| jansan wrote:
| I am still using Paint Shop Pro 7.04 anniversary edition from
| 2001, and I am using it almost every day.
|
| Edit: Here is a wonderful writeup why I am using that specific
| version:
| https://www.theregister.com/2007/12/20/verity_stob_software_...
| ProAm wrote:
| This is great, I havent heard PSP in a very long time!
| exeldapp wrote:
| I had similar thoughts when I was messing with Mac OS 7 and 8 a
| few months ago. I was astounded at how featureful most software
| was. Microsoft Word version 5 had every feature I possibly needed
| and was extremely fast, way faster than modern Word. It makes me
| wonder what has modern software added to justify making it so
| slow? Because it's obviously, at least to me, not new features.
|
| If I could I would be just like Andrew here but my work, and love
| for playing video games (modern and classic alike) prevents me.
| danielvaughn wrote:
| My first computer was a 95 Packard Bell. I loved it. Maybe I have
| nostalgia goggles, but I distinctly remember the UI being
| extremely responsive. Even the mouse was extremely fast.
| JEDI-HACKER wrote:
| [dead]
| nkotov wrote:
| I setup a Windows 98 SE VM back in 2020 that I spin up every
| couple of weeks to play games from my childhood. It's almost like
| a nostalgia shrine for me. It makes me feel cozy inside when I
| hear the startup sound or listening to AoE:RoR soundtrack.
| crunkykd wrote:
| I still use Palm Desktop (c1996)
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| Windows 95 was developed over several years with a lot of
| research and user studies. The primary objective of all this work
| was so that a person without prior exposure to computers could
| figure out how to use it. The software was designed to help the
| user accomplish the tasks they have set out to do before sitting
| down at the computer.
|
| Today, both the audience and the objectives have changed. The
| overwhelming majority of the audience is now computer-literate
| and can be counted on to figure out how to use the basic features
| regardless of how poorly designed or inefficient they may be. And
| the priorities for many interfaces have changed, with the user's
| tasks relegated to a side quest.
|
| Another factor is that Windows 95 was developed for "install it
| and leave it" operation, with the next upgrade coming in a year
| or two. Giving more attention to detail was unavoidable because
| you could not patch a bug a week after release. And Microsoft was
| offering phone support for its products, so every UI flaw would
| increase support costs.
|
| Also, one of the design requirements was to fully support only-
| keyboard operation as a first-class access method, and a lot of
| QA effort went into ensuring this was true. This parallel access
| method resulted in a UI which was much more thoroughly evaluated
| for its efficiency.
|
| Finally, I think a higher portion of people in the UI field were
| there for personal and passion reasons, and would have been
| embarrassed to have anything to do with the type of blundering
| buffoon of an interface that is common in today's computing.
|
| https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/05/24/strategy-letter-ii...
|
| https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/07/31/hard-assed-bug-fix...
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35932340
| ranger_danger wrote:
| > The overwhelming majority of the audience is now computer-
| literate and can be counted on
|
| HIGHLY disagree. From what I have seen in the professional
| world and in school systems, just being able to type on a
| regular keyboard and use a mouse seems to be premium features
| to ask of a human, let alone navigate completely alien user
| interfaces and concepts they were never taught like files and
| folders, or what the hell the save icon is even depicting (or
| what it means).
|
| https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/02/a-quarter-of-adults-c...
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| To be fair to Microsoft, that's still mostly true for the
| Windows server editions.
|
| The pared down version without the GUI even runs fine on 512MB
| of memory. Though still a far cry from the 64 MB that XP
| needed, which included the GUI.
| Clamchop wrote:
| 95 needed at least 4MB, ideally 8MB or more of memory. Which
| means it will fit in the cache of modern CPUs many times
| over, though I may be ignoring some swap stuff.
|
| 512MB isn't a lot today so might as well use it, at least for
| things that are useful, but it's nevertheless impressive how
| puny these old operating systems were, despite having user-
| facing functionality that would still feel familiar and
| natural to today's users.
| hulitu wrote:
| > Today, both the audience and the objectives have changed. The
| overwhelming majority of the audience is now computer-literate
| and can be counted on to figure out how to use the basic
| features regardless of how poorly designed or inefficient they
| may be
|
| Except that the majority of the audience has no idea how a
| computer works, what is a directory/folder and that the USB
| stick has a filesystem on it.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| Linking to joelonsoftware is the reference equivalent of "I
| still use Windows Vista".
| stereolambda wrote:
| > Today, both the audience and the objectives have changed. The
| overwhelming majority of the audience is now computer-literate
| and can be counted on to figure out how to use the basic
| features regardless of how poorly designed or inefficient they
| may be.
|
| Not sure if I agree, and anyway this doesn't seem to be the
| assumption of mainstream modern UI design. Rather we have
| extreme simplification justified by the need not to overwhelm
| the users and isolate them from (arbitrarily) "less needed"
| features and technical considerations. I don't know if UI
| departments base this on research and studies, but anecdotally
| both for me and non-technical people I know smartphones have
| become black boxes due to this. We often discover features by
| accident, not sure how we even triggered them. Many simple
| tasks have to be googled, because there seems to be little
| logic in where they're hidden. Maybe very young people are
| better at this - though on the other hand we hear about them
| being less PC platform-literate - and this knowledge still
| feels like a random collection of incantations rather than a
| system you could master.
|
| Maybe I wouldn't hold up Windows registry, Office 2000 etc. as
| paragons of mental tractability, but I would posit that 1. the
| filing cabinet mental model was useful in learning
| generalizable, organized knowledge of using computers, 2. it
| has been destroyed by tech corporations for the mass audience.
| I don't believe that we are fundamentally dumber compared to
| 1990s, we could figure this out if given a chance.
| Ruq wrote:
| > both the audience and the objectives have changed...
|
| This idea has been disastrous for modern software.
| afavour wrote:
| Interestingly the author still blogs:
|
| http://www.andrewturnbull.net
|
| I wonder what they're using these days?
| lbrito wrote:
| >for a variety of reasons I have a major aversion to Microsoft
| Internet Explorer 4.0 and higher: I do not want to use it and I
| do not want it present in any form on any computer I own.
|
| I'm always at awe when I see these kinds of Stallman-y
| statements. This unrelenting, uncompromising, passionate defense
| of something that I personally just don't give a shit about is
| fascinating.
| bombcar wrote:
| I love them; they almost always stem from something real, and
| it can be quite the adventure discovering just what it is (like
| in this case, losing the actual file explorer as a separate
| program).
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| I'd still use Windows 7 (or honestly, even Windows 2000) if I
| could. Everything since has been a step in the wrong direction.
| alkonaut wrote:
| There is a huge number of minor annoyances (People tend to
| complain about start menus ads performance regressions, poor
| context menu in Win11 etc - and I agree with all of them).
|
| But there is also a massive number of small things added and
| improve. Just between base Win10 and more recent Win10 there is
| a huge number of features added regarding for example how apps
| DPI scale, especially when moving across multiple screens with
| different DPI for example. Or WSL. So I wouldn't agree
| "everything" is going in the wrong direction. Something as
| simple as Win+Shift+S is an amazing improvement which required
| a third party tool under Win7 but no more since 2010CU. The new
| terminal... the list goes on and on.
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| Yes, hyperbole.
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| No need for cycling, a real terminal, powerfully. Windows
| improved dramatically
| Macha wrote:
| > Something as simple as Win+Shift+S is an amazing
| improvement which required a third party tool under Win7 but
| no more since 2010CU
|
| Snipping tool has been built in for a while now
| actionfromafar wrote:
| WSL is not fundamentally different to me than a PC emulator.
| I'd still take Windows 2000 over Win 11 if I could run modern
| apps like browsers and IDEs on it.
|
| It's been on my mind lately that Windows really hasn't done
| much lately except improving upon the way it's an Azure and
| Ads vehicle. That's the real "innovation".
|
| The OS is no longer the product, it's just an appendage to
| the cloud. The mushroom, if you will. The mycelium it's
| connected to is much larger.
| alkonaut wrote:
| WSL was just one exemple. There are literally thousands of
| other improvements. Not all are revolutionary but at least
| some matter in a big way to most people. Any gamer would
| say DirectX 12 is enough to upgrade from Win7 to Win10.
| Anyone with two screens of different DPI should say the
| same. Anyone with a Wifi6 router would want to upgrade. The
| list goes on. I also liked the fast and simple Win2000, or
| Win7. But I do remember how terrible the screenshot
| functionality was, how bad the terminal was and how crappy
| the dpi scaling was. Nostalgic glasses are some times too
| rosy.
|
| > The OS is no longer the product
|
| It used to be that the product was office, sql server,
| exchange and windows was the vehicle to deliver it. It's
| really not so different that the products are OneDrive or
| AppInsights or GitHub.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Most of that could have been fixed with minimal changes
| to the OS and UI.
| drbawb wrote:
| >Something as simple as Win+Shift+S is an amazing improvement
|
| Just now I hit that chord once to try the feature out , it
| came up but I hit "escape" to cancel the interaction. Now,
| typing the chord a second time, Windows no longer brings up
| the snipping UI. If I can find a show-stopping bug in an
| "amazing improvement" in five seconds then, I'm sorry, but
| it's not an improvement.
|
| Ditto with the new Windows Terminal: occasionally connecting
| via SSH to a box already running `tmux` will just crash the
| renderer. Of course crashing the renderer (a fairly fatal
| error for a terminal emulator) doesn't tear down the program
| (!?!) so the renderer continues to crash once per frame
| drawn, every time you say OK to dismiss the error, until you
| terminate the program.
|
| I cannot even think of something new in Windows 10 or 11 that
| has not, at some point, given me grief. The new task manager
| refresh, maybe, but I still have to dive into Resource
| Monitor (Vista) multiple times weekly, so even that
| improvement is not _so good_ that it displaces its
| predecessors.
|
| This is software that costs 100s (Windows, Office) or 1000s
| (VS) of dollars, and they can't even get it right. I
| generally like surreal humor, but we are way beyond absurd at
| this point.
| alkonaut wrote:
| Yup. Every single feature has bugs. But without nostalgic
| glasses they also did in Win2000 and Win7.
| wsc981 wrote:
| I've been a Mac user for most of my life, but professionally
| also used Windows 2000 a long time, many years ago.
|
| It was a solid, speedy OS. Now at a new job I use Windows 11
| and it's a bit of a pain.
|
| Would use Windows 2000 instead if still useful today, but I
| doubt I could run all the software I need for my job, sadly.
| sitzkrieg wrote:
| i remember making a slip stream install of windows 2000 x64
| edition. it was a bit unicorn finding drivers/hardware but
| that is still the fastest desktop experience ive ever seen in
| 30 years
| IntelMiner wrote:
| No x64 (AMD64) version of Windows 2000 ever existed. AMD64
| CPU's didn't debut until 2003 and XP x64 was based off the
| work done on 64-bit Server 2003 for Intel's 64-bit Itanium
| chips
|
| There _was_ a brief period of Alpha machines that ran
| 64-bit CPU 's that had early "Whistler" builds but nothing
| ever released to the public
| cat_plus_plus wrote:
| That's rookie numbers, I still use a Citizen watch which is solar
| powered but is otherwise identical to an 18th century mechanical
| watch, with a single crown to set date and time. Beats charging a
| smartwatch daily or fumbling with button combos to change
| timezone while traveling.
|
| Now it's true that I got a hardware update, but the author would
| presumably like a new desktop/laptop if it didn't force unwanted
| UI changes from what works for him. It's a sign that computer
| tech has not matured yet. You can easily get a car, or watch or a
| TV with the same controls that worked for you your whole life.
| There is no reason laptops or smartphones should be different,
| especially since software can easily support multiple themes for
| different tastes.
| seanhunter wrote:
| Cars, old school watches and (unconnected) TVs are things don't
| change because they aren't updated. If you disable updates many
| laptops and smartphones won't have any UI changes.
| onetokeoverthe wrote:
| [dead]
| jollyllama wrote:
| >You can easily get a car, or watch or a TV with the same
| controls that worked for you your whole life.
|
| Is this still true, say, if you are 40 years old and "get" is
| interpreted as "buy new from a store/dealer"? I don't think it
| is, and that's a shame.
| murdoze wrote:
| Windows NT 3.51 still the best
| [deleted]
| retrocryptid wrote:
| Meh. 95 was crap for reliability, but I preferred it's UI to the
| Mac or X or NeXTStep. Unfortunately not all of the #a11y hooks
| worked as well as 98 or W2K... But those OSes incorporated
| "weird" UI abstractions that weren't present in 95.
|
| Just my $0.02.
| mnd999 wrote:
| NT4 had the same UX as 95 didn't it? It was certainly way more
| reliable.
| hulitu wrote:
| Yeah, but no DirectX.
| gtk40 wrote:
| I was playing around with Windows 95 in a VM a few years ago (I
| think 2020 when we all felt we had too much time on our hands). I
| was curious how modern of a web browser I could get and I found
| RetroZilla: https://rn10950.github.io/RetroZillaWeb/
|
| It essentially backported some newer Gecko features and SSL certs
| to older version of Windows. I was able to use many common
| websites perfectly fine on this browser.
|
| RetroZilla hasn't received an update since 2019 so it may not
| work as well now three years later. It looks like there may be a
| current build of K-Meleon for Windows 95 though so I may give
| that a whirl sometime.
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| As far as TLS goes, Crypto Ancienne[1] can be useful in this
| context. (Don't use it to bank or download blasphemous books,
| needless to say.)
|
| [1] http://oldvcr.blogspot.com/2023/04/crypto-ancienne-22-now-
| su...
| chungy wrote:
| "Download blasphemous books"? That sounds like a highly
| specific use case, one I've never sought out. Why would it be
| inherently dangerous on Windows 95?
|
| I think there's some context or euphemism I'm missing.
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| No, I'm being literal, it's just the environment I'm
| suddenly finding myself in in recent months :) I simply
| meant that the security of the TLS library (port) is
| founded more on good wishes and optimism than on testing or
| expertise (which the authors freely admit), so don't use it
| as a daily driver.
| chungy wrote:
| So more of a political situation. I live in the United
| States and there is no such similar concern.
|
| There is Tor if you do live in a country that practices
| censorship.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| > I live in the United States and there is no such
| similar concern.
|
| The "blasphemous books" the parent was referencing could
| very well be any book that acknowledges the existence and
| humanity of trans people. See Florida, as well as a
| couple other states are particularly bad
| Aloha wrote:
| He's still blogging too - http://www.andrewturnbull.net
| pt_PT_guy wrote:
| spent some time there. fun!
| netbioserror wrote:
| To his point, even in the Linux world, DEs have accumulated the
| bloat of features, animations, complex compositing, front-to-back
| theming, and other frivolities that have made them large and
| slow. Not to mention that "flat" theming has somehow consumed
| everything. Try using an older stacking WM. It is shocking how
| fast they are and how few resources they use. Their problem is
| that they're not maintained.
|
| Is there a WM out there that can do the basic quality-of-life
| functions of today's DEs? I'd love a simple, opinionated WM that
| takes the features we know are useful today (workspaces, expo
| mode, sensible file manager layouts, system trays) and gives them
| a color-adjustable window theme inspired by 90's aesthetics, with
| minimal compositing that can run fast on hardware as minimal as a
| prototype RISC-V board. Or really, what we need is a truly
| minimal DE. Something that doesn't care about GTK or Qt or
| Kvantum, and stays lean.
|
| Edit: I've already tried tiling WMs and I don't like them. I want
| a primarily mouse-driven UI. I'm sort of in agreement with the
| NeXT philosophy there. I primarily use Mint and Cinnamon these
| days.
|
| I also understand that applications are bloated, but they can be
| bloated in their own little sandbox instead of creeping out to
| the rest of the system.
| manaskarekar wrote:
| I was the biggest fan of LXDE for ten years, then they
| abandoned all the polish and maturity for the brand new LXQt.
| They lost me due to the bugginess and relative bloat.
|
| Before that, it was the same with GNOME 2 to 3.
|
| I'm sure there were good reasons for both of these, but I have
| moved on to XFCE.
| bachmeier wrote:
| Budgie might be worth checking out (I've used it on Manjaro):
| https://github.com/BuddiesOfBudgie/budgie-desktop It was
| extremely responsive on a 2009 laptop.
|
| Otherwise whatever AntiX and Puppy use, which are mouse-driven
| UIs, are probably lower-resource than Budgie.
| badsectoracula wrote:
| > Try using an older stacking WM. It is shocking how fast they
| are and how few resources they use. Their problem is that
| they're not maintained.
|
| Window Maker is still maintained, it even gets new features now
| and then :-).
| GuB-42 wrote:
| That's what I am using, with a few dockapps, including one
| for the system tray. It works fine even with modern apps.
|
| And since GP mentioned NeXT, it should be the perfect match.
| Window Maker is based on the NeXT UI.
| HeckFeck wrote:
| There's also the NEXTSPACE fork for a more complete
| implementation: https://github.com/trunkmaster/nextspace
| maxmalkav wrote:
| I have a soft spot for Window Maker and I have been using
| it until recently , when I moved to Wayland-based
| environments.
|
| I also really like its dockapps (I even wasted some time
| writing one to display and control screen brightness), the
| only weak point for me is the systray dockapps, probably
| because it is a concept "transplanted" from other desktop
| paradigmsthat does not fit great.
| bbojan wrote:
| > Is there a WM out there that can do the basic quality-of-life
| functions of today's DEs? I'd love a simple, opinionated WM
| that takes the features we know are useful today (workspaces,
| expo mode, sensible file manager layouts, system trays) and
| gives them a color-adjustable window theme inspired by 90's
| aesthetics, with minimal compositing that can run fast on
| hardware as minimal as a prototype RISC-V board. Or really,
| what we need is a truly minimal DE. Something that doesn't care
| about GTK or Qt or Kvantum, and stays lean.
|
| Mate desktop environment in my opinion comes closest to the
| simplicity of the Windows 95/GNOME 2 environments of the old:
| https://mate-desktop.org/.
|
| Not sure how hardware-frugal it is since maintaining it under
| GTK 2 was not feasible and it's now developed against GTK 3
| (with still maintaining the look and feel of GNOME 2).
| gspencley wrote:
| xfce is probably closer to what the OP had in mind:
| https://www.xfce.org/
|
| I use MATE, personally, because it gives me the
| configurability that I want without the resource hungriness
| of KDE or cinnamon.
|
| Cinnamon, while more resource hungry than MATE, actually
| isn't bad except that Nemo (its file manager) seems to have
| this bug where if you're doing a lot of batch file operations
| it just gets slower and slower to the point of becoming
| unusable... and it seems like its gone unfixed for ages.
| That's a deal breaker for me since I do photo and video
| editing and have to work with a lot of files. Caja (MATE's
| file manager) never seems to have a problem no matter how
| much I throw at it.
|
| I find that MATE looks pleasing enough to me and is fast
| enough that it never reminds me that I'm slowing down my
| machine with a full-featured DE. That said, I tend to run
| modern hardware even though its by no means a powerful gaming
| rig.
|
| For those who need something similar on older hardware, or
| who want a bare minimal but "nice" DE that will consume
| minimal resources, xfce is likely it.
| ikekkdcjkfke wrote:
| One would think Linux would make sometging clean and
| responsive, instead it's a hot sticky mess. Remember i was
| aleays looking for that clean distro, elementaryOS luna was the
| pinnacle, then came updates and bloat
| karmakurtisaani wrote:
| Who is this Linux you speak of and does he develop everything
| for the OS with the same name him/herself?
|
| Seriously though, if the problems you mentioned are shared by
| enough people, someone will make something like that. Chances
| are though that something fitting your needs already exists
| or they are so niche/specific/nitpicky that you'll never find
| what you're looking for (in any OS).
| nycticorax wrote:
| Seriously, just use KDE Plasma. Sure, it's not 'minimal', but
| on modern hardware it sings. It just works. It's a batteries-
| included desktop. It's built on a toolkit that people actually
| like using (Qt) and they don't change it constantly in
| backwards-incompatible ways just because the mood strikes them.
| It doesn't treat you like an infant with ADHD. They don't
| constantly fix things that aren't broken. Plus if you have a
| problem you have a decent chance of finding the solution via
| Google, unlike with a lot of the 'long tail' WMs/DEs people
| have mentioned.
| netbioserror wrote:
| I've used KDE quite a lot. A like it, I really do. But the
| amount of small issues I have with compositing and caching
| that build up over time, regardless of distro, until after a
| few months I'm plagued by flashing and compositor crashes, or
| menus and file managers hanging for ages...it's just
| untenable. There are too many small bugs in too many nooks
| and crannies, and with KDE's scope (and scope creep), I'm not
| confident they'll ever be fixed.
| harha_ wrote:
| Never even tried KDE, I'm using XFCE4 and it's good enough.
| Is KDE better or is it just a matter of what you're used to?
| johnfonesca wrote:
| As a KDE user i agree with this point of view. KDE is the
| most customizabile DE ever created. You can tweak the crap
| out of it to make it look and behave EXACTLY the way you want
| it. And, from my experience, the performance of the current
| 5.x version (running on Wayland) is very good.
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| And if you turn off composition (something you can't even
| do on most DEs), it runs even better. :D
|
| (Actually, though, I've never used it on Wayland, so I
| limit my statement to X11.)
| laratied wrote:
| I have xfce and KDE plasma installed. If you turn off
| everything in desktop effects for KDE, I can't tell any
| difference between xfce and KDE in terms of performance on an
| old 4 core i5 with 16 gigs of ram.
|
| The only real difference is that KDE is much prettier. I
| almost never boot into xfce.
| happymellon wrote:
| There are modern minimal Wayland stacking window managers if
| that's what you are requesting.
|
| Have you looked at
|
| Labwc https://github.com/labwc/labwc
|
| Or
|
| Hikari https://hub.darcs.net/raichoo/hikari
|
| And nwg-shell to give the no frills panels that you want.
| netbioserror wrote:
| Oh wow. Exactly what I was looking for, these are promising
| projects. Thank you! Looks like FVWM may be a good choice if
| I stick to X11.
| Ninovdmark wrote:
| What you describe sounds an awful lot like SerenityOS, with the
| exception that it's not a VM, but a full-blown Operating
| System. It really does embody that pragmatic sense of no-fluff
| UI design that peaked in the 90s, but applies it to systems
| design as well.
| chrsw wrote:
| The Linux desktop ecosystem still feels more like a playground.
| And that's not a pejorative in the sense that a lot of serious
| work hasn't been done on making powerful software and doing
| professional work on Linux desktops. I mean that in the sense
| that "Linux desktop" isn't very defined, formalized or
| standardized. It comes in all shapes and sizes and people are
| very free to customize it and use it as they see fit. Many
| people think this is a good thing and a benefit of software
| freedom. For example, if I walk up to a random person's Linux
| desktop, I don't know what I'm in for. That's very different
| than walking up to someone's Windows desktop, macOS desktop or
| even Solaris back in the day.
| hulitu wrote:
| Haha, you should take a look at Windows. Even MS does not
| follow the same style.
| zdimension wrote:
| The average Linux desktop has never been fully
| standardized. The average Windows desktop today (let's say,
| W10/11) is descended from W7 which was arguably really
| consistent. Even if they took W7 and bastardized it by
| introducing 10 different design languages (Metro, Modern,
| Fluent, new Fluent, ...) there was something to build on
| top of. On Linux, there are some GNOME guidelines, there
| are some KDE guidelines, nothing really universal. As much
| as I dislike the general macOS experience, Apple got it
| right early on by simply forcing you to adhere to the
| general vibe of the OS
| julianeon wrote:
| Fwiw I use the i3 window manager so whenever I see
| conversations about Gnome vs. KDE vs. whatever - I could
| care less. It's irrelevant to me. So that idea, that
| Linux isn't standardized, really resonates w me.
| hulitu wrote:
| > On Linux, there are some GNOME guidelines, there are
| some KDE guidelines, nothing really universal
|
| Because, although X has (or had) ICCCM, "we" can ignore
| it. Especially if "we" are desktop.org.
| Zanneth wrote:
| You should give GNOME another try one of these days. The
| GNOME team has done some amazing work on standardizing the
| look and feel of GTK apps.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Standardized to crowd the titlebar and eliminate menus--not
| what I asked for!
| loudmax wrote:
| I'd argue that a file manager shouldn't be a function of the
| Desktop Environment. No that a GUI file manager is necessarily
| bloat, but a file manager should be independent of whatever DE
| you're using.
|
| Tiling window managers like i3 (or Sway) are very performant,
| if not really intuitive.
|
| XFCE is still under active development and it behaves the way
| you'd expect a normal desktop to.
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| The DE independent file manager is ls, cd, mkdir, etc.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| >Something that doesn't care about GTK or Qt or Kvantum, and
| stays lean
|
| Aren't Qt and GTK the building blocks of Linux GUIs? Sure, you
| can ask someone to build a GUI framework from scratch for shits
| and giggles, but to what end? Now every GUI program will need
| to use its framework, or else have Qt or GTK dependencies.
|
| Its like asking for an OS built in rust that compiles all its
| programs from source ala Gentoo and "doesn't care if I have GCC
| or the JVM installed".
| mid-kid wrote:
| You might like IceWM or on wayland maybe Hikari.
| interroboink wrote:
| I have been using fluxbox[1] for many years now, happily. It's
| a very barebones thing (in a good way) while also being highly
| configurable -- customizable keyboard shortcuts, menus,
| scriptability, etc.
|
| It is _not_ a tiling WM. It also doesn 't have desktop icons by
| default. I thought I would miss those, but have found I do not.
| There are options[2] to add that if you want it.
|
| It also has no file manager. I use xfe[3] on the rare occasions
| I want that.
|
| So, my setup is ~8 virtual desktops, with very minimal window
| decoration and task bar. Applications are easily launched via
| either custom shortcuts or the "right click" menu (though I use
| the keyboard to trigger it).
|
| I also have a few keyboard shortcuts to position windows
| manually (eg: WinKey+NumPad key squashes the current window
| into a N,S,E,W -style location onscreen)
|
| Standard X11 window management (eg: alt+drag to move a window)
| work as expected, etc.
|
| [1] http://fluxbox.org/
|
| [2] https://wiki.debian.org/FluxboxIcon
|
| [3] http://roland65.free.fr/xfe/
| jmclnx wrote:
| > To his point, even in the Linux world, DEs have accumulated
| the bloat of features
|
| True, and if you want lean and mean, look at OpenBSD or NetBSD.
| Both are very tight.
|
| > Is there a WM out there that can do the basic quality-of-life
| functions of today's DEs?
|
| fvwm is your friend, it can do just about anything, but for
| things that need root, add entries to sudoers similar to:
|
| YOURID ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: shutdown -h now
|
| or for doas(1):
|
| permit nopass YOURID as root cmd shutdown -h now
|
| Then add a menu pick to exec
|
| sudo|doas shutdown -h now
|
| You may want to add shutdown's path to whatever it is on your
| distro.
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| To be fair, while I remember the Windows 95 shell being quite
| snappy on a 133 MHz 5x86, it's not exactly the epitome of the
| suckless ideal internally--it's centered around COM/OLE2 (with
| Unicode strings!), has a full-blown object browser under the
| guise of Explorer, and to avoid the slowness all of that
| causes, has a restricted _re_ implementation of COM inside[1]
| that through carnal knowledge of Windows internals is capable
| of interoperating with the system one.
|
| One would think displaying seconds[2] would be the least of its
| problems, but apparently not. (Maybe the Unicode-only TrueType
| renderer really hurts that much? Did they not have the time to
| write a eleven-glyph cache?)
|
| [1]
| http://bytepointer.com/resources/old_new_thing/20040705_265_...
|
| [2]
| http://bytepointer.com/resources/old_new_thing/20031010_091_...
| toyg wrote:
| Compromises were made, because of the hardware limitations of
| the time. A "Windows 2095", rebuilt for modern processors and
| security practices while maintaining the essential aesthetic
| of the original, would be blazing fast.
| mysterydip wrote:
| I think serenityOS is heading that direction: "Roughly
| speaking, the goal is a marriage between the aesthetic of
| late-1990s productivity software and the power-user
| accessibility of late-2000s *nix." https://serenityos.org/
| mustacheemperor wrote:
| Anybody interested in Serenity or in OS design in general
| would probably love the youtube channel[0] of Andreas
| Kling, the primary author. He streams videos porting
| games and applications to Serenity, deep dives on
| individual issues, etc. Great content.
| theodric wrote:
| I'd be delighted if something like SerenityOS, or Haiku,
| or hell, even ReactOS could gain enough traction to
| develop into a viable desktop OS during my lifetime. But
| I'm too dumb to do it on my own, too burned-out to become
| less dumb, and too jaded to feel passionate about
| something like that again after being rug-pulled since
| the 1990s. Back when I was richer, I threw money at
| Haiku, but in ~20 years it hasn't really shaped up into
| something that will supplant any of the big boys. Pipe
| dream. Sadly.
| jerf wrote:
| If you put your mind to it a bit, you can approximate this
| on Linux today. There's a lot of options other than Gnome
| and KDE, and the XWindows ecosystem may be a bit "out of
| date" but it's extremely mature and very, very pluggable.
|
| And the result is indeed pretty blazing fast. I tend to run
| pretty close to this now; my world is basically a tiling
| WM, some shells, and a browser.
|
| The biggest compromise overall is that browser. They just
| keep getting bigger and bigger, and I need it to work.
| Props to the people writing them who are doing an amazing
| job making them faster, but, well, as the saying goes "if
| the hardware doubles its speed, software will become three
| times slower" must now apply even harder to the browser,
| which just keeps becoming a more and more amazingly
| performant platform for serving pages with tens of
| megabytes of JS and dozens of layered video ads playing.
| TonyTrapp wrote:
| > it's centered around COM/OLE2 (with Unicode strings!)
|
| While NT was Unicode internally, Windows 9x barely had any
| WinAPI functionality implemented with wide strings, for the
| most part only ANSI versions of the APIs were available
| (unless you were using the much later released UNICOWS
| compatibility layer).
|
| > Did they not have the time to write a eleven-glyph cache?
|
| Come on, the answer is right there in the article you linked:
|
| > saving even 4K of memory had a perceptible impact on
| benchmarks
|
| Granted, you won't need a full 4K of memory for those digits,
| but the point still stands.
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| >> it's centered around COM/OLE2 (with Unicode strings!)
|
| > While NT was Unicode internally, Windows 9x barely had
| any WinAPI functionality implemented with wide strings, for
| the most part only ANSI versions of the APIs were available
| (unless you were using the much later released UNICOWS
| compatibility layer).
|
| True, but does not contradict what I said: OLECHAR was 16
| bits on all Win32 implementations--witness the OLE2ANSI
| shim on old VC++ versions that allowed you to pretend it
| wasn't (it was 8 bits on Win16 and IIRC on the Macintosh
| port). Consequently, Unicode strings were used throughout
| the new COM-based NT4/95+ shell APIs, even on 9x/Me.
|
| I remember reading that the TrueType implementation used
| Unicode everywhere as well, even on non-NT where you could
| only get to it via MessageBoxW and ExtTextOutW.
|
| >> Did they not have the time to write a eleven-glyph
| cache?
|
| > Come on, the answer is right there in the article you
| linked:
|
| >> saving even 4K of memory had a perceptible impact on
| benchmarks
|
| > Granted, you won't need a full 4K of memory for those
| digits, but the point still stands.
|
| I don't think it's all that obvious. On a typical Win95 box
| the taskbar clock is what, probably around 16 pixels or so
| high? With non-antialiased fonts, that's eleven (ten digits
| and a colon) bitmaps of (generously) 16x16 bits, so under
| 400 bytes, a full order of magnitude below 4K. There are
| probably other places in the Windows shell you can shave
| half a resident K off of, even separating hot and cold data
| in the linker is liable to get you that much.
|
| (Keeping the window procedure of the taskbar paged in--also
| mentioned in the article--is probably a bigger issue,
| although doesn't it mean in the intended state the system
| will page when the user wants to interact with the taskbar?
| That doesn't sound pleasant. The whole thing might also
| have come very late in the development cycle--I seem to
| remember there was a registry setting that brought the
| seconds back, so the code wasn't even removed.)
| d_tr wrote:
| User gibspaulding mentioned Openbox and I second giving it a
| look. Robust, compliant, minimal and finished (i.e., do not be
| disappointed by the lack of activity).
| myth2018 wrote:
| I've been using xfce and it's been a good compromise. However I
| think it's impossible to stay 100% away from the bloat. Even if
| your desktop is lean, you will have to use some "modern" app,
| eventually. Especially when it comes to web apps.
| augustk wrote:
| I have been using the Blackbox Window Manager for more than ten
| years now and I'm quite happy with it. I really like it's
| austere looks.
|
| http://www.stokebloke.com/cygwin/blackbox0701.jpg
| 2b3a51 wrote:
| I quite like Fluxbox which is based on blackbox.
|
| If you use network-manager to manage wifi &c the nm-applet
| will display in the Fluxbox panel and I use cbaticon to
| monitor battery. No extra panels or docks.
|
| https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/attachment.php?atta.
| ..
| HeckFeck wrote:
| Fluxbox + PcManFM + automount gives a fairly complete and
| modern-feeling desktop on Linux.
|
| The themes are also opinionated and quite varied, something
| to suit all tastes: http://tenr.de/styles/?i=1
|
| GP should find his fit here.
| augustk wrote:
| If you prefer a freestanding network application, connman-
| gtk is an alternative.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| Hotlink Preventor
|
| The url /hotlink.php cannot be served.
|
| Referrer was https://news.ycombinator.com/
|
| You have tried to link directly to software or images from
| StokeBloke.com. This is not allowed. Please follow the menu
| on the left to find what you were looking for.
|
| My software is accessible from the Software link.
|
| Video software is accessible from the Video downloads link.
|
| Blackbox 0.65.0 tarball for cygwin is accessible from the
| cygwin link.
| celsoazevedo wrote:
| Alt link: https://web.archive.org/web/20160810141012id_/htt
| p://stokebl...
| 2b3a51 wrote:
| Try
|
| https://www.k58.uk/pages/images/blackbox.png [around 11Kb]
|
| [Fun fact: about 15 years ago, 30% of the total bandwidth
| from my vanity home page was produced by a picture that
| some teenager had linked to from a death metal forum. It
| was just a snap of a bit of wall art locally.]
| augustk wrote:
| Thanks! That's an even better image showing the default
| theme.
| 2b3a51 wrote:
| A default (i.e. full) Slackware install has blackbox,
| fluxbox, fvwm, window-maker and icewm available by
| default along side kde and xfce desktop environments. And
| twm. And hidden away, not available from `xwmconfig` for
| some reason, lurks mwm.
| danjoredd wrote:
| You could try Chicago95 for XFCE. It is a custom theme you have
| to download and install, but it gets the 95 theming down
| EXACTLY.
|
| If you don't care about customizing like crazy and want
| something minimalist by default, the best thing I can point you
| to is GNUstep. Its a bit basic, old, doesn't really care about
| modern features, etc. It is, for lack of a better word, comfy.
| IceWM is also very nice. My biggest problem with these is that
| it takes a bit of config file editing to change the wallpaper.
|
| Now if you want a lightweight WM with more modern features, I
| recommend enlightenment. Changing wallpapers is pretty easy and
| there are a few widgets...but it still feels very old-school.
| 79a6ed87 wrote:
| My favourite WM is awesomewm[1]
|
| It's mainly tiling but it has a floating mode. Also it's very
| customizable using Lua scripts.
|
| I love it because it's the closest thing to a modern back
| ion3/notionwm[2]
|
| But now I think that getting away from X11 is one of my main
| concerns so I'm not using any of these things.
|
| _1: https://awesomewm.org/
|
| _2: https://notionwm.net/
| hulitu wrote:
| > Try using an older stacking WM. It is shocking how fast they
| are and how few resources they use. Their problem is that
| they're not maintained
|
| Fvwm is maintained. Vtwm is maintained. Ctwm is maintained. Mwm
| is maintained. Window Maker seems to be maintained. CDE has
| been resurected. etc.
| npteljes wrote:
| IceWM is also maintained!
| lelanthran wrote:
| Until recently (3/4 years ago?) I had been using Window
| Maker. Since 1998.
|
| My only reason for abandoning it is _because_ it doesn 't
| support workspaces arranged in a matrix, only as an array.
|
| I started using workspaces in a 3x3 grid, with the center one
| the "main" one and each of the compass points from center
| dedicated to a specific project.
|
| Maybe I should see if Window Maker can be modified the way I
| want it to be.
| massysett wrote:
| In FVWM you can configure a workspace grid in whatever
| dimensions you want.
| entropie wrote:
| >To his point, even in the Linux world, DEs have accumulated
| the bloat of features, animations, complex compositing, front-
| to-back theming, and other frivolities that have made them
| large and slow.
|
| I use xmonad for over a decade now on multiple workstations. No
| bloat here.
| paulddraper wrote:
| > Is there a WM out there that can do the basic quality-of-life
| functions...
|
| i3!
|
| > Edit: I've already tried tiling WMs and I don't like them.
|
| :(
| satysin wrote:
| I use a Mac as my main system and what frustrates me is there
| is no way to truly disable _all_ animations in the system. Sure
| you can _reduce_ them which gets you about 80% of the way there
| but there is no supported way to totally disable them all.
|
| It actually surprises me given Apple is very pro accessibility.
| The reduce motion option is after all an accessibility feature.
| It is always why I never understood why Apple don't embrace
| more keyboard shortcuts for simpler app window management
| (snapping) rather than the decade old, half assed
| implementation we have currently.
|
| For me macOS would be perfect with just a few very small
| features for better window management built in along with the
| ability to customise it a bit.
|
| I'm not talking full on tiling window manager level features
| with gaps, master-stack, fib spiral, etc. Basically just
| something like Magnet/Rectangle built into the OS out of the
| box, plus two-window resizing (like we already have with the
| current full screen snapping feature).
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _I use a Mac as my main system and what frustrates me is
| there is no way to truly disable_ all _animations in the
| system._
|
| TinkerTool is a friendly GUI for additional advanced settings
| that Apple doesn't expose via System Settings, including
| animation settings.
|
| https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/14001/how-to-
| turn-...
| gspencley wrote:
| > It actually surprises me given Apple is very pro
| accessibility.
|
| I have a hard time accepting that seeing as there is no way
| to configure system-wide fonts. CMD+scroll-wheel in Chrome
| doesn't even work properly (you can zoom the entire desktop,
| but it doesn't scale just the fonts on the website + remember
| your setting like it does on Linux and Windows machines).
|
| I had to use a Mac for work and found it very difficult on
| the eyes when using an external monitor. To me this was not
| just an accessibility issue but THE accessibility issue. The
| fact that Linux gets this right of all operating systems, but
| Mac doesn't, speaks volumes to how much Apple actually cares
| about accessibility IMO.
| crazygringo wrote:
| On a Mac you just scale the whole display, not fonts.
|
| I've never understood why someone would want to scale just
| fonts rather than all UX elements. What good is it to be
| able to read text but not see checkboxes or click the
| window's close button?
|
| There's also a magnify feature if you need to scale so much
| that things don't fit on the screen anymore.
|
| Yes, Apple is not only pro-accessibility but basically sets
| the standard for it. Nobody else even comes close.
| izolate wrote:
| One aspect that I find particularly vexing is the apparent
| lag when toggling between MacOS Spaces, even when the 'reduce
| motion' setting is enabled.
|
| I utilize Spaces as an alternative to multiple monitors,
| often alternating between a full-screen terminal and a
| browser window in different Spaces. Anticipating the need to
| open a new browser tab, I transition to the browser Space and
| instinctively press 'Cmd+T', only to discover that a new tab
| has instead been created in the terminal window.
|
| AFAIK, there doesn't seem to be a way to achieve
| instantaneous Space-switching devoid of any animation or
| delay.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| > Basically just something like Magnet/Rectangle built into
| the OS out of the box, plus two-window resizing (like we
| already have with the current full screen snapping feature).
|
| On newer versions of macOS, if you hold down Option while
| hovering your cursor over the Zoom button on newer versions
| you'll be given the option to split left/right without
| fullscreen. Not a full replacement for an Aero Snap sort of
| thing but covers its most common use case.
| satysin wrote:
| Yup this has been an option for a while but it isn't a nice
| quick keyboard shortcut :)
|
| Apple managed to make it one of the most awkward features
| to use in macOS IMHO. You have to position the mouse over a
| small UI target, wait a second and also use the keyboard. I
| wish it were just a keyboard shortcut.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| It's true that these don't come with a keyboard shortcut,
| but you can add your own!
|
| Open System Settings > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts >
| App Shortcuts and then add a new shortcut to All
| Applications, with the menu title being "Move Window to
| (Left|Right) Side of Screen". After doing this, in any
| app that's left the system-standard Window menu in tact
| (in my experience, the vast majority), your specified key
| shortcuts will split the frontmost window left or right.
| satysin wrote:
| You're right I should have acknowledged you _can_ make it
| a keyboard shortcut.
|
| That is what is frustrating about macOS window
| management, they could add everything I want as it is
| _sort of_ already present. It is just missing
| customisation and a few additional options.
|
| It seems that since Apple started trying to create
| consistency between macOS and iPadOS features they have
| (purposely) forgotten that people work with macOS quite
| differently to iPadOS :(
| robotresearcher wrote:
| You don't need to hold Option. Just hover over the green
| button. Option doesn't appear to have any effect.
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| > _there is no supported way_
|
| This is why KDE is better than GNOME. Guess who GNOME models
| after? ;)
| talentedcoin wrote:
| Sorry, what? You absolutely can disable animations in the
| GNOME control panel.
| Krssst wrote:
| Note that you also need an extension to remove the alt-
| tab delay even if animations are disabled:
| https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1317/alt-tab-
| switcher...
|
| (though otherwise GNOME is pretty nice to use without
| animations)
| satysin wrote:
| You can disable all the animations in Gnome with the
| following: gsettings set
| org.gnome.desktop.interface enable-animations false
|
| This is exactly what I do on my Fedora system and as far as
| I can tell every animation is disabled. Do you have an
| example of something not disabled with the above setting
| change?
| beached_whale wrote:
| I hate that settings like this are not given a UI.
| bdcravens wrote:
| Can't you add the settings and submit a PR?
|
| Not picking on you, as it seems this is common: treating
| open source software as if it's someone's else's product,
| and treating ourselves as helpless consumers.
| RedShift1 wrote:
| Even if the PR is accepted, in a couple years they'll
| throw everything away again and the option will be gone
| prmoustache wrote:
| Instead of being sarcasting and unhelpful, you all could
| have a look at a settings window and realize that the
| option already exist and there is no PR to do.
| RedShift1 wrote:
| I'm not being sarcastic. They've had 3 "waves" where they
| either threw away a whole bunch of stuff or outright
| started from scratch. Not to mention the ever changing
| libraries (there is no stability). I'm obviously not
| talking about this one feature, but with a history like
| that, why expend the effort, there's basically no
| guarantee how long your contribution is going to last.
| bombcar wrote:
| IIRC Gnome is one of those projects where it can be VERY
| difficult to get a PR submitted because the developers
| have Opinions.
| kube-system wrote:
| Unless you're willing to commit the effort and resources
| necessary to fork, it _is_ someone else 's product.
| beached_whale wrote:
| you are not wrong, I could. But it is there I read
| further in the comments. I've seen this in Gnome in the
| past though too, or settings disappear.
| gsich wrote:
| Not that easy, not everyone knows how to code. Also, even
| if you still need to find/add what you need in a
| presumably massive codebase.
| bdcravens wrote:
| I'm not saying it's easy or that everyone is capable.
| Only that it CAN be changed, but the conversations around
| OSS often don't reflect that reality. (We've all seen
| Github issues being abused as a support channel, often
| with a strong odor of entitlement)
| xdavidliu wrote:
| If someone has strong feelings about how a UI is lacking,
| why suppress it in order to be more polite and avoid
| appearing entitled? That's a very useful signal. Imagine
| if nobody expressed their strongly-held opinions about
| UIs; nobody would know what's missing or bad. Why must
| everyone who complains about something also attempt to
| fix it themselves?
| satysin wrote:
| It is available in Settings under
| Accessibility\Seeing\Reduce Animation
|
| If you check the enable-animations value you can see it
| toggles between true and false when you enable/disable
| the Reduce animation setting.
| d_tr wrote:
| You can use dconf Editor to search and change _all_
| available settings for Gnome, GTK apps and shell
| extensions.
|
| It also shows you the gsettings key so you can easily
| shove everything into a script if you want.
| retrocryptid wrote:
| Sure. KDE is great and all, but if they shipped a default
| config that included a Taskbar and a root menu that opened
| a terminal, there would probably be fewer people scratching
| their heads after starting it.
|
| <joke>Besides, everyone knows twm is the window manager of
| the TRUE Unix Haxxor.</joke>
| arbitrage wrote:
| > The reduce motion option is after all an accessibility
| feature.
|
| Thank you for this -- I didn't realize this was an option,
| now.
| jack-torrance wrote:
| you could try i3wm that stacks windows in a tree structure.
|
| people who take it up do it for the purpose of "ricing" their
| desktops, but if you just use the stock default settings, its a
| pretty sweet WM.
|
| https://i3wm.org/screenshots
| eru wrote:
| XMonad still works well for me with ArchLinux. I don't know
| what extra I would want from a desktop environment?
|
| However, XMonad can't do wonders: it doesn't make your browser
| use less memory or speed up your compile times.
| gentleman11 wrote:
| I returned a macbook today.
|
| My previous one, a 2015 mba, runs like garbage now. It's the
| slowest thing you can imagine.
|
| My equally old linux laptop runs just fine though. Not 100% as
| fast as before, but there's so much less cruft that it's still
| good to use.
|
| The mac I returned had 8gb of ram and was meant to be an
| internet box, but the m-series aggressively uses swap memory to
| burn out the SSDs and force you to replace the entire machine
| within a few years. It's nuts. I had 1TB of SSD writes in a
| single day when I downloaded and installed nothing due to all
| the swap being used--7GB. That was just web browsing. The same
| workload on my old 2015 mba uses like 6-7GB of ram and no swap.
|
| At 1TB per day of writes to swap, the lifespan of the machine
| was going to be extremely short
|
| It's so gross.
|
| I don't know what I'm going to do for my next laptop. I wish
| more companies could make good keyboards
| Laaas wrote:
| What's wrong with sway?
| phone8675309 wrote:
| Parent post was looking for non-tiling window managers.
| gibspaulding wrote:
| Its been a while since I distro/desktop hopped around the Linux
| world, but these are definitely still out there.
|
| Bodhi Linux especially comes to mind with their enlightenment
| fork moksha. LXQT or XFCE might also for the bill if you want
| something a bit less foreign. Or Openbox if you want to go all
| the way minimalist. Or i3/sway if you're into tiling WM's.
| Sander_Marechal wrote:
| I love my AwesomeWM
| tmtvl wrote:
| Same, it really nice to be able to say "this tag has
| floating windows, that tag has maximized windows, and that
| other tag tiles in a spiral."
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| > Is there a WM out there that can do the basic quality-of-life
| functions of today's DEs?
|
| For some reason nearly all standalone Wayland WM development is
| tied up in hyperminimal tiling WMs, which is frustrating.
| Boring old floating-first WMs with lightweight tiling options
| might not be trendy but they're what a lot of us work best
| with.
| shreyshnaccount wrote:
| try instantOS (and WM)
| meerita wrote:
| "Second of all, for a variety of reasons I have a major aversion
| to Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 and higher" I remember how
| painfull and ultra-integrated with all the operative system IE
| 4.0 wanted to be back then. The computers were suffering all the
| time, and some widgets cloned on the screen when they've been
| dragged.
| bombcar wrote:
| I remember bypassing so many "school lockdown" tools by opening
| a file browser and then using that to become a web browser and
| versa vice.
| systems_glitch wrote:
| Let's face it, Office 97, or 2000 at the latest, is peak office
| productivity software. Everything since then has been backslide
| and churn for the sake of selling new licenses.
| freeAgent wrote:
| Excel has dramatically improved since then. It's not even
| close. It's much more powerful. I'd also argue that the whole
| OneDrive/SharePoint live syncing/version history/sharing is
| also a huge productivity enhancer, though that's not directly
| related to what the programs themselves can do.
| beefman wrote:
| If you use Windows 7 today, you're longer out of date than this
| chap was in 2008.
| sn_master wrote:
| The difference between Windows XP SP2 in 2008 and Windows 95 is
| much bigger than Windows 7 and Windows 11. By 2008 nothing
| mainstream was supporting Windows 95 at all.
| hulitu wrote:
| Really ? I use it daily for printing, scanning etc. It is much
| more usable than Win 10 which i use daily ,at work.
| superkuh wrote:
| I'm still using Ubuntu 10.04 (2010) to type this here in 2023.
| The newer linux distros just don't have the text to speech
| ecosystem good enough to compare to the Festival 1.96 + Nitech
| HTS voices only available on older distros.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| I find the attitude in the article troubling, as if the author is
| resistant to change.
|
| I can get staying on something because it works, and "if it aint
| broke, don't fix it."
|
| I also will admit that I don't rush out to get the new version of
| Windows / MacOS anymore. I've skipped over a few. (But I really,
| really like Windows 11)
|
| But, in 1990s and early 2000s computing, a big thing you had to
| accept was that the technology you were using was going to be
| outdated soon; and that the new version will be different. Change
| was part of the bargain.
| cuddlyogre wrote:
| Are there truly insurmountable reasons why an ancient os can't be
| used, even a closed source os like Windows, that couldn't be
| worked around by building some kind of compatibility layer, given
| infinite effort and resources?
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| Can't? I'd be surprised.
|
| But the older the OS, the harder it's going to be to get
| anything modern working on it. And people do have finite effort
| and resources.
|
| And frankly, it's just not a great idea anyways. For all the
| complaints, modern Windows is heaps better than its older
| counterparts for usage today. It's much better at utilizing
| modern CPUs, SSDs, GPUs, etc. It has (if imperfect) up to date
| security measures. More or less everything is out-of-the-box
| compatible with it. I can't even remember the last time I had
| something break and it was actually on the Windows end and not
| an application running on top of it that was the problem.
| mynameishere wrote:
| You could probably emulate Windows 11 on a Multics machine if
| you wanted.
| jzb wrote:
| If you really wanted, you should be able to use any old version
| of Windows or whatever in VirtualBox or VMware or under
| Qemu/KVM. Probably have limits around screen resolution - I
| don't think you could coax Windows 3.11 or 95 to do fulscreen
| at 3480x2160 - but if you just want to get it going, you could.
|
| A few years ago I nearly got the first Red Hat Linux release
| going under KVM. I imagine someone who knows it better than I
| could succeed.
| bombcar wrote:
| It seems Win98 supported 1920x1440 at least, and maybe you
| could do something dirty with "multiple monitors" somehow.
| g42gregory wrote:
| I feel that, in the Desktop OS development progression, at some
| point the providers (MSFT, Apple, Lunix distros) simply exhausted
| the list of features that users actually need. I think for
| Microsoft it happened at around Windows XP (and some people think
| it was Win 95). At least for me, past Win XP, the OS simply
| gotten worse though the infinite bloat and making UI "cool and
| looking like Facebook page (the so called Facebook envy at the
| time)".
|
| Desktop Mac OS, which I currently use, has 99% features that I
| don't need and don't like. I don't need to spend every second of
| my life checking latest social media posts, "cool" videos or
| "wonderful" songs. Luckily the UI is still good and kernel is
| still POSIX compliant, although I would strongly prefer straight
| Linux and none of the Apple's command line, storage and memory
| compression "innovations".
|
| Desktop Ubuntu Unity -> everything is a search. Why do I need
| this? What wrong with the straight windowing system coming from
| XEROX PARC? It was designed to be just like the pieces of paper
| on your actual desk. Why would you not want this? It feels like
| innovation for the sake of innovation.
| danjoredd wrote:
| Honestly, respect to him for using it that long. I wonder if he
| is still able to use it, or if security certificates will keep
| him from accessing anything on the internet?
| fsiefken wrote:
| I think Windows9x is not usable anymore with internet unless
| one uses proxies for the ssl and accept not using modern
| javascript pages. There was a similar thread about this a month
| ago or so. XP is more or less usable as there are hacks to use
| a Chrome version from 2022, I was tempted to create a VM with
| it to try it as a daily driver, but I lack the time.
| tracker1 wrote:
| Might be better served with one of the lite10/lite11 type
| windows remixes with most of the fluff removed. Though not
| sure I'd remove UAC or Defender myself.. but would be roughly
| similar to XP in terms of overhead with an arguably nicer
| skin.
| grose wrote:
| I found a more recent (2016) blog post by him about it:
| http://www.andrewturnbull.net/log/index7e39.html?p=716
| cat_plus_plus wrote:
| I love how he wants stability for himself but front page of
| the blog is filled with dunking on conservatives. There is
| some nuance in that one can want Windows 95 for him/herself
| and still allow others to have Windows 11. But having
| "Windows 95 states" and "Windows 11 states" should be at
| least considered as a solution and also, what if people
| forcibly install Windows 11 on your kids laptops and don't
| even bother telling you? Anyway, since he wants to force
| everyone to take COVID vaccines, surely he can't object to
| being forced to install the latest OS that still gets up to
| date security patches?
| troad wrote:
| It's an interesting article. He rejects Linux because he has
| a "day job" and no "time and enthusiasm to tinker with
| computers for their own sake instead of using them
| productively as a means to an end".
|
| I mean... isn't this a little rich for someone who wants to
| devote time to tracking down retro computer parts being sold
| by "two-bit resellers", just so he can keep using Windows XP?
|
| At some point, maybe you should admit you're a retro-
| computing enthusiast (high-five to that!), and none of this
| has anything at all to do with productivity.
| nylonstrung wrote:
| It's not productive because it gets progressively harder as
| time goes on and support/hardware availability gets worse.
| It's the opposite of futureproof
| bombcar wrote:
| It's the difference between keeping your 1948 Dodge Custom
| 6 running (work on it or pay someone to work on it,
| everything else remains the same) and buying an entire new
| car. I can certainly believe it's productivity; Linux
| itself is annoyingly "changing" over time, Windows 95 will
| never change.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| but you could just install whatever random linux
| distribution you wanted, disable all updates, & be done.
| bombcar wrote:
| Sure, and if you were already used to Linux, that would
| be great.
|
| But if you've never used anything but Windows 95, you'd
| have to learn all the idiosyncrasies and differences.
| troad wrote:
| I don't think anyone keeping a 1948 Dodge Custom 6
| deludes themselves into thinking they're being productive
| in doing so, or that they're doing it because they're
| been too gosh darn busy to learn how to operate a new car
| for the last seventy-five years.
|
| People who keep '48 Dodges running (or Windows 95
| running) do so out of love. And I'm totally on board with
| that. I just find it a little silly to pretend otherwise.
| It's not a rational decision to keep a '48 Dodge running,
| or Windows 95 running. There's no productivity gains that
| aren't immediately devoured by the expense and time of
| upkeep.
|
| Thankfully, not everything in life needs to be productive
| or rational. Do what you love, be unproductive, kick
| dirt, boot Amigas!
| bombcar wrote:
| It can be surprisingly easy to keep something running -
| especially when all that can happen is mechanical
| failures.
| Aachen wrote:
| That post also addresses what a lot of people in this thread
| have been saying about why not run Linux
|
| > the complex rituals needed to achieve the functionality
| that goes for granted in Windows
|
| ah, the ballad of a true "I grew up with Windows and don't
| realise I've had three decades of learning the various ins
| and outs in my pocket" user
| idontknowifican wrote:
| he seemed a pragmatist around upgrades for new programs so i'd
| assume he's rocking longhorn (vista pre release) at this point
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| I don't think pragmatist is the word I'd use for him. I can
| empathize with the annoyance of things changing, but a
| pragmatist wouldn't be this inflexible.
|
| Given his other writings and the fact he hits things when
| they anger him, I'd go with curmudgeon. A word harsher than
| I'd like, but it captures the essence. He seems angry at the
| world around him and does not like adapting to it.
|
| This is pretty common but most people don't take it this far.
| :)
| deviantbit wrote:
| If we continue his logic, I would hate to know what other tools
| he still uses from 1995. I would assume his toothbrush hasn't
| changed either.
| [deleted]
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Why I Still Use Windows 95_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=236977 - July 2008 (35
| comments)
| sgjohnson wrote:
| Completely unrelated, but I refuse to run a retail SKU of
| Windows. It's LTSC or bust.
|
| I don't care about all the bloat that comes with retail SKUs. In
| fact, I absolutely hate it. Virtually the only thing I use my
| windows box for is gaming, and still, it's LTSC or bust.
|
| Currently running on Windows Enterprise LTSC 2021 (Build 21H2),
| and I'll upgrade only when the next LTSC version comes out.
| random5245 wrote:
| and in future there will be guy say "I still use windows xp/7/10"
| sangriafria wrote:
| Windows 7 was considered by many to be the last version before
| Microsoft really started screwing things up. I am pretty
| certain there will be people on it for decades
| gfv wrote:
| Windows 95 was released 13 years prior to the article, roughly
| the same time span as between Windows 7 release and today.
| Windows 7 is still installed on a single-digit percentage of
| computers. It is interesting to see that the reasons outlined in
| the article could be used almost word-for-word by someone
| justifying their use of Windows 7.
| hosteur wrote:
| I still use windows 7 in a vm for a legacy program. Works
| really well. Is hugely faster than any modern windows. Even in
| the vm. I have to run an old version of tortoisesvn. Needless
| to say the vm is only connected to a local network.
| gfv wrote:
| Precisely. Compare your comment with these excerpts from the
| article:
|
| >Windows 95 is reasonably fast in performance, and is not
| compromised by the arguably frivolous animation and eye candy
| features in Windows 98 and newer versions.
|
| >I prefer to have as much native compatibility as possible
| with DOS applications such as older games I own.
| RajT88 wrote:
| Some days I want to go back to Windows 2000 or XP.
|
| Back to before they implemented the ability for apps to lock
| your clipboard.
|
| (Ever notice how sometimes you ctrl+c and you end up pasting
| something you thought you copied over? yeah...)
| sitzkrieg wrote:
| windows 7 was the peak of a desktop os that is fast, easy to
| use, out of the way. i miss it.
|
| i really hate this modern trend of every single good desktop os
| telling you what to do, not allowing you to remove stuff,
| banners that ignore settings, ads, terrible uis, etc
| mysterydip wrote:
| One difference is the switch from 95/98 to 2000/XP meant all
| future games and apps would be incompatible with the older OS.
|
| Aside from security patches, I see nothing that prevents 7 from
| being used today. Subsequent OSes added nothing useful that I
| noticed, and a lot of negatives.
|
| Ironically, you may actually be more secure today running 95
| than 7, since any modern exploit would be incompatible with it.
| Conscat wrote:
| Windows 7 didn't have IO rings or Unix domain sockets, which
| will prohibit running an increasing amount of future
| software.
| asveikau wrote:
| Windows NT has had async I/O and named pipes from the
| beginning. The API isn't identical to what you described
| but the concepts are similar enough to port higher level
| primitives.
| magnat wrote:
| > Aside from security patches, I see nothing that prevents 7
| from being used today
|
| Security patches for Windows 7 are still released each month,
| you "just" have to download [1] them manually and convince
| Windows Update service to apply them [2].
|
| [1] https://catalog.s.download.windowsupdate.com/c/msdownload
| /up...
|
| [2] https://www.deskmodder.de/blog/2019/12/07/windows-7-erwei
| ter...
| serf wrote:
| >Aside from security patches, I see nothing that prevents 7
| from being used today. Subsequent OSes added nothing useful
| that I noticed, and a lot of negatives.
|
| Steam is EOLing 7 because Chrome dropped support. No modern
| hardware manufacturer is going to continue churning out
| drivers with 7 support.
|
| You're right that it works ok now, but that's rapidly
| changing.
|
| As for whats better? Who knows. The new MS OSes are
| tremendously painful to use, personally speaking.
|
| >Ironically, you may actually be more secure today running 95
| than 7, since any modern exploit would be incompatible with
| it.
|
| that's an interesting concept. Reminds me of how prepper
| types have recently been into MS-DOS machines -- but is 95
| all that incompatible? I mean, I guess nothing trendy will
| run, but a good old-fashioned malicious assembly executable?
| do they no longer exist in the wild?
| mysterydip wrote:
| Agreed, lots of software is dropping 7 support, but that
| decision (as far as I can tell) is an arbitrary one, not a
| technical one. Is there a reason the latest chrome can't
| run on 7 if it didn't check for it?
| cesarb wrote:
| > Is there a reason the latest chrome can't run on 7 if
| it didn't check for it?
|
| The reason is precisely because it doesn't check for it.
|
| That is: instead of checking for older Windows releases,
| and using fallback code paths for them, it simply assumes
| the presence of newer APIs (or that older buggy APIs now
| work properly). As time goes by, the cost of maintaining
| these fallback code paths only increases (and in some
| cases, having to stay compatible with them prevents
| important enhancements and cleanups), and since they're
| less tested (because they're only used when running on
| older operating system releases), they tend to break. As
| an example from an unrelated project, before they dropped
| Windows XP support, the fallback code for panic!() in
| Rust was broken when running on Windows XP
| (https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/issues/34538).
| pajko wrote:
| The same decision has been made in Python, to use the
| newer APIs blindly, but fortunately there's a fork:
| https://github.com/adang1345/PythonWin7 Hope Chromium
| will get one soon.
|
| EDIT: yep, there's already one:
| https://github.com/Alex313031/chromium-win7
| afavour wrote:
| I imagine over time there will be API differences but
| probably nothing insurmountable.
|
| I suspect the real reason is Microsoft themselves
| dropping support for W7. Once that happens you can't
| really claim Chrome is a "secure browser" because the
| underlying OS might be exploited and never patched.
| tivert wrote:
| > Reminds me of how prepper types have recently been into
| MS-DOS machines
|
| What now?
| bombcar wrote:
| If you are looking for a computer that can do quite a
| bit, but still is reasonably "maintainable" with a
| soldering iron and parts, you can do much worse than an
| MS-DOS machine.
|
| And almost by definition everything that was available,
| was all self-contained, because it was all pre-Internet.
| qsort wrote:
| (obligatory security patches aside) Major OSs are arguably
| almost exactly the same as they were 20 years ago, with some
| random nonsense baked in. Functionally speaking, there's no
| reason I couldn't be on OSX Tiger or Windows 2000. Linux did
| get better in terms of hardware support. Freaking NDISWrapper
| still gives me nightmares.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| > Functionally speaking, there's no reason I couldn't be on
| OSX Tiger or Windows 2000.
|
| On the Mac side I think I'd go up to at least 10.5/10.6 for
| its native virtual desktop implementation (Spaces) that's
| actually better than modern Spaces by way of being a 2D
| grid instead of a single row.
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| Plus better networking, pulseaudio and a bunch of user
| level services got a lot better. If anyone remembers what a
| nightmare HAL was or that there was a time before dbus
| being used universally
| eru wrote:
| Linux also got faster.
| pajko wrote:
| Not necessarily, at least on my M520-based X201 it got
| slower in media-related workloads with recent kernels
| (last 1.5 year or so). But both KiCad and FreeCad are
| faster than in Win7.
| Aachen wrote:
| Something tells me that a kernel from 1995 would run on
| lower-end hardware than a 2023 kernel with "speed
| improvements" (and an unmentioned million added features)
| Delk wrote:
| Sure, it might. But that doesn't mean things like
| schedulers or I/O handling haven't improved and got
| better in terms of latency or at handling various
| workloads.
|
| Other things that may not be noticeable to most people
| but matter to others may also have improved, such as
| audio latency; I don't know how e.g. Pipewire or
| PulseAudio compares to plain ALSA in terms of that, but
| at least plain ALSA apparently wasn't enough for audio
| work back then because there was Jack, and I'm also under
| the impression that latency and responsivity in general
| have improved a lot on the kernel level as well, and not
| just in terms of audio.
|
| Open source graphics drivers have also improved a _lot_
| over the years. Perhaps the entire graphics stack has, or
| perhaps overhauls of the stack have facilitated some of
| the improvements in the drivers themselves, but I don 't
| have enough expertise to judge that.
|
| Improvements (or degradation) in performance are rarely
| something that happens evenly across the board.
| asveikau wrote:
| Pulse audio is a negative. A lot of times getting rid of
| it makes things better. That's been true for the entire
| life of the daemon.
|
| Linux had the recommended API as OSS, alsa, pulse ... In
| the same time frame FreeBSD just had OSS and it still
| works pretty well.
| skerit wrote:
| > Freaking NDISWrapper still gives me nightmares
|
| Whoa, the memories to NDISWrapper. And 802.11g
| nortonham wrote:
| >NDISWrapper
|
| That's a name I haven't heard in a long long time haha
| systems_glitch wrote:
| One encounter was sufficient to get me to buy hardware
| that Linux directly supported :P
| actuallyalys wrote:
| > Ironically, you may actually be more secure today running
| 95 than 7, since any modern exploit would be incompatible
| with it.
|
| I'd guess a lot of malware is opportunistic and not really
| designed to maximize compatibility, so I imagine you're right
| but I would be curious to hear from someone who actually
| studies malware.
|
| In a similar (also ironic vein), the lack of modern HTTPS
| probably also makes Windows 95 "secure" in that it will be
| inconvenient to use a Windows 95 machine for anything that
| needs securing.
|
| Edit: It does make me wonder how fast computer viruses and
| malware goes "extinct." Probably much faster than biological
| viruses (if that's the right term) since malware doesn't
| evolve like viruses do.
| starik36 wrote:
| I think Windows 7 was the last version of the OS that wasn't
| phoning home every time you clicked a button in the Calculator
| app. That could be a reason.
| jve wrote:
| Well, I didn't know that calc phones home. A power user. A
| developer. A sysadmin. A niche of all windows users. No, that
| can't be the reason.
| starik36 wrote:
| Yep.
|
| https://github.com/Microsoft/calculator/blob/057401f5f2b4bb
| 1...
| fodi wrote:
| Horrifying. That's exactly why simplewall [0] is among
| the first programs I install on Windows. Then I block
| stuff like compattelrunner.exe, devicecensus.exe,
| explorer.exe, the various Intel / Nvidia driver-related
| bullshit background processes the first time they attempt
| to connect to a remote server.
|
| https://github.com/henrypp/simplewall
| flohofwoe wrote:
| The time between 1990 and 2005 saw much more dramatic changes
| in consumer operating systems than the time between 2005 and
| 2020 though. Especially Windows has been on a slow usability
| downward spiral since around Win2k.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Even Windows 2k felt a little frivolous compared to the more
| somber Windows NT. Windows NT 4 looked alright, but Windows
| NT 3.51 (or whatever) was _rock solid_ and felt buttery
| _smooth_.
|
| Yes, there was some tearing when you played several AVI
| videos at once on the desktop, but anything else would have
| been SGI level sourcery and black arts and not expected.
|
| Windows NT 4 felt faster than Windows NT 3, but NT4 felt
| _jittery_. NT 3 never slowed down, it was like cream.
|
| Once I saw Windows NT 3 on a trade-show on Alpha CPUs. That
| felt just like the future arrived, an evil smirking corporate
| future which laughed at whatever I knew about optimization,
| 68k assembler, blitter objects and sound chips.
|
| The future was here, and it was here to tell me that none of
| that arcane juggling mattered anymore. The only thing that
| matters from now on is raw speed, of the core and the bus.
| bombcar wrote:
| Which one was the one where they moved the video driver
| into the kernel?
| actionfromafar wrote:
| NT 4.
| papito wrote:
| I once installed Win 98 SE for funzies in a virtual machine,
| around 2016 - couldn't browse the web because Internet Explorer
| could not do HTTPS.
| MrDresden wrote:
| I know a person who is still sticking with win7, with no plans
| of upgrading.
|
| So the blog post is not so out of the ordinary.
| sieongioetnio wrote:
| Except that, when applied to Windows 7, they would actually
| make sense. There have been no objective improvements since
| Windows 7 that I can think of. The UI is changed all around for
| no reason, the system is less responsive, the hardware
| requirements are higher, and there's a whole lot more built-in
| malware, but that's it. There's a reason Microsoft had to
| deploy every dirty trick in the book to make people upgrade.
|
| Windows 95, on the other hand, was barely usable. My
| installation would go down literally every day. Running DOS
| programs in emulation on a more recent version of Windows is a
| vastly better experience than running them on DOS ever was.
| jborean93 wrote:
| > There have been no objective improvements since Windows 7
| that I can think of
|
| I think this is pretty rude to the many people who have
| contributed to Windows in the years gone by. I won't argue
| that there hasn't been some crappy things added or on the
| advantages/disadvantages of later Windows versions but there
| have been plenty of things added since Windows 7. Some I can
| think off just off the top of my head
|
| * Credential Guard - protection of secrets in the lsass
| process even from kernel access
|
| * gMSA support - Windows 7 could only use standalone MSA
| accounts which weren't as useful
|
| * Windows LAPS - now supports encryption and is builtin to
| the OS
|
| * Schannel improvements - newer cipher suites and TLS
| protocols (cipher suites in Win 7 are right at the edge of
| what people might support these days)
|
| * SMB 3 - encryption, compression, better
| integrity/mitm/downgrade protection over SMB 2
|
| * WSL
|
| * Windows Sandbox
|
| * Windows Terminal - including ConPTY support in the
| underlying APIs
|
| There's plenty more out there but these are pretty important
| features for me to have on Windows. Granted some only make
| sense in a more corporate/domain environment but not all of
| them.
| UweSchmidt wrote:
| Wanting Windows 7 back does not mean there should be no
| further development. By all means update the cipher suites.
|
| I just want the window borders easy to grab on a high
| resolution and a sensitive mouse, and no latency when I
| activate a program in the task bar. I want no ads in the
| start menu and no telemetry. I want an _operating system_
| doing work in the background, and not an anonymous entity
| called "we":
|
| https://www.itmagazine.ch/imgserver/artikel/Illustrationen/
| 2...
|
| Re-reading your list of improvements it doesn't impress me
| either for a decade of work. And I don't think people in
| this thread are particularly 'rude', i.e. they're not
| expressing what they _really_ think about Windows 10+ ...
| hulitu wrote:
| None of those "features" are relevant for the user.
| random5245 wrote:
| there will be guy saying " I still use windows xp" in 5 years
| from now.
| estebank wrote:
| https://woodfromeden.substack.com/p/my-long-goodbye-to-windo...
| bombcar wrote:
| WORDSTAR!!!!!!
|
| https://awritersden.wordpress.com/2018/02/20/george-r-r-mart...
| paulpauper wrote:
| Windows 7 is still good. The last of the 'original' Windows
| before major changes were made with Windows 8.
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