[HN Gopher] A KDE Plasma theme that aims to replicate the look a...
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A KDE Plasma theme that aims to replicate the look and feel of
Windows 7
Author : unleaded
Score : 147 points
Date : 2023-12-20 17:18 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (gitgud.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (gitgud.io)
| whalesalad wrote:
| A lot of these copycat themes end up getting like 80% of the way
| there with an uncanny valley vibe but this is spot on
| jadbox wrote:
| It had me until I saw the file explorer. Oh God, the design
| hurts me in so many ways.
| accrual wrote:
| On the plus side it has tabs, which is one of the main
| redeeming features of Windows 11 for me. It kind of looks
| like one of those alternate Explorer-replacement tools that
| were popular for a while. A little ugly, but more functional.
| Voultapher wrote:
| QtTabbar has been great for me, used it on Windows 7 and
| 10. I'm waiting for the respect the user EU version of 11
| before switching.
| stonogo wrote:
| Could you explore this more? Except for the tab bar, I can't
| even identify differences. It's been a while since I used
| this version of Windows.
| whalesalad wrote:
| this is like being unhappy about the particular shade of
| lipstick that a pig is wearing
| Fabricio20 wrote:
| I think this one in particular, like many others before it,
| always fail at replicating the Explorer look. This is probably
| a limitation in Dolphin and other linux file browsers, but it
| just doesn't look like Windows Explorer at all to me, it just
| looks like a ugly vista skinned dolphin.
|
| That's one other thing too (also probably a limitation on a few
| widgets) like the calendar and system tray, which look more
| Vista than WinAero/7.
| skrause wrote:
| It still has an uncanny valley vibe because of the worse Linux
| font rendering which makes it look a bit weird.
| whalesalad wrote:
| That's an essential part of the charm. Windows font rendering
| looks terrible, especially period correct 1080p
| pizzalife wrote:
| Death's dynamic shroud? Whoever made this has seriously good
| taste in music.
| dingusdew wrote:
| Also Blank Banshee, I mean damn.
| itishappy wrote:
| Macross 82-99 caught my eye, so I came here to say the same
| thing.
| I_Am_Nous wrote:
| Don't suffer in silence!
| Tao3300 wrote:
| 2010 will be the year of Linux on the Desktop.
| whynotmaybe wrote:
| All my friends on google plus agree!
| I_Am_Nous wrote:
| Or they would if they ever actually interacted with my
| posts...
| sergiomattei wrote:
| Wow, that is an impressive recreation of Aero.
|
| I wonder if the taskbar animations are similar? I remember that
| on Windows 7, a cool animation was that the shine on the taskbar
| item would follow your cursor.
| unleaded wrote:
| Yep
| https://gitgud.io/wackyideas/aerothemeplasma/-/raw/master/Sc...
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| Honestly, I find that as long as the DE keeps the "desktop"
| metaphor, it's not too difficult to jump ship. Windows 7 was the
| last version of Windows I used in anger, and I had no trouble
| switching to Cinnamon DE. Mate would've worked just fine, too.
| It's GNOME 3 and its ilk that I find frustrating, and keep having
| to apply tweaks to make it usable for me.
|
| The couple of times I tried Plasma, I loved all the
| customisability of it; it's awesome that I can apply one theme
| and now it feels like Windows 7, or a different theme and now
| it's Unity. But the "default" feel of Plasma just feels
| overwhelming, and even though I could drill down into fifty
| levels of settings to get what I want, it still turned me off
| because what I really wanted was just better defaults...
| IAmLiterallyAB wrote:
| I know there's been improvements to the defaults in Plasma 6
| which is set to release in February. Stuff like double click
| instead of single click for opening folders. I plan to try it
| once it releases.
| _benj wrote:
| I hear you there. After getting frustrated enough with gnome 3
| to jump to plasma I quickly came to discover that tweaking
| whatever you want on the desktop is way easier than what I
| thought. Literally just right click on the thing and disable
| stuff away!
|
| The settings for plasma are certainly overwhelming, but if
| there are too many tools on the file browser, right clink on
| the icons and hide what you don't want. Taskbar too crowded?
| Right click it and get rid of stuff. Konsole is showing the
| menu bar and wrong fonts? Right click the thing and fix it!
| sonicanatidae wrote:
| This looks fantastic. Well done!
| winter_blue wrote:
| I actually love the Aero theme of Windows 7. Honestly, I would
| prefer some sort of derivative of this without Windows/MS logos
| or trademark, that does not necessarily adhere super-closely to
| Windows 7, but just does what makes most sense; taking the best
| parts of Aero and combining with the best aspects of other DEs
| and themes (including KDE Plasma's Breeze and/or the older
| Oxygen).
| notRobot wrote:
| You should check out ZorinOS: https://zorin.com/
|
| It does something very similar to your ask. I use it as a daily
| driver OS and it works really well and I love the UI.
| OliveMate wrote:
| God, I hate how every time I see a new Linux Distro I want to
| ditch what I have and try it out.
|
| At some point I'm going to become like the rest of you and
| buy a few hundred extra ThinkPads to satiate my curiosity.
| ashton314 wrote:
| My first introduction to computers was a FreeBSD machine my dad
| kept in the craft room closet--that's where I learned how to use
| bash, Emacs, mutt, and the like. My family had a Mac, and I daily
| drive a Mac. And while I'm not the Apple fanboy I used to be, I
| still like Apple's products for the most part.
|
| Hot dang this theme looks awesome.
|
| As much as I detest Windows and everything non-UNIXy about it,
| Windows 7 looked great. That's the version of Windows that my
| high school ran; none of the computers were _fast_ by any means
| (IIRC it took all night to render the weekly video the press team
| put out on Fridays) so the animations all were a little...
| stiff... but I appreciated that MS actually made an OS that
| looked _good_. I mean, look at that shine! Look at those lighting
| effects! And the OS is still useable!
|
| Anyway... it's also a testament that you can _make_ KDE do this
| kind of trick. Nutso.
| pelagicAustral wrote:
| Looks amazing! I'm slapping this on my work laptop right now, no
| regrets!
| acheong08 wrote:
| Impressive. Anyone know where I might find a gnome version of
| this?
| timeon wrote:
| And I though Windows Vista (which is basically same look as win7)
| was inspired by KDE3.
| nonstopdev wrote:
| Aero was amazing. Windows XP and Windows 7 were big UI
| revolutions.
|
| Even when Windows 7 was active, there were plenty of projects
| trying to bring Windows XP and Aero to Linux GUIs.
| GloriousKoji wrote:
| You have to go through archives to find them now but Microsoft
| used to publish reports on all their usability studies and it
| really gave me the sense of thoughtful and useful design of
| their UI elements. My favorite is the mouse ballistics
| https://web.archive.org/web/20110623221617/http://msdn.micro...
|
| Saddly it seems like the latest trend is just to make things
| new and trendy with junk like rounded corners, low contrast
| flat colors and no delineation or highlighting for distinct
| elements.
| Poudlardo wrote:
| pixel perfect! great job, really
| tapoxi wrote:
| As a recent convert to KDE (from GNOME) any good theme
| recommendations? Breeze is fine but a bit bland.
| porridgeraisin wrote:
| See youtube, pling and r/unixporn there's millions of links to
| some very nice things.
| j1elo wrote:
| I never got over Windows 2000. That old grey theme was ugly, but
| an extremely clear and efficient design language. In wanting to
| keep on with the good and trusted, I would always disable all
| theming on Windows 7, which gave you basically the same style.
| wharvle wrote:
| I forgot Win7 had a theme _other than_ the "classic" one, so
| was briefly taken aback when I clicked the link and saw the
| screenshots.
|
| Classic theme Win7 is peak Windows, aside from the installation
| footprint being incredibly bloated compared to WinXP.
| toasteros wrote:
| Try Reactionary[0] for a W2K-ish like thing for KDE. The same
| author has other themes like Expose[1] which I'm actually using
| for my daily theme.
|
| [0]: https://store.kde.org/p/1252411
|
| [1]: https://store.kde.org/p/1479063/
| smusamashah wrote:
| https://github.com/dremin/RetroBar replicates all old taskbar
| and I have been using it for a long time now. Works perfectly
| on Windows 10.
| runjake wrote:
| Circa Win95 - Win2000 windows always reminded me of NeXTSTEP
| windows, and I wonder if that's where Microsoft got it's
| inspiration.
|
| Edit: Here's a mirror of a document that purports to be from a
| Windows 95 design team member:
| https://socket3.wordpress.com/2018/02/03/designing-windows-9...
|
| Edit2: And a Hanselman podcast episode with Kent Sullivan and
| Derek Hoiem: https://hanselminutes.com/628/a-history-of-the-
| windows-95-st...
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| I did the same, but more for performance reasons than the
| aesthetic or clarity.
| Gud wrote:
| I use XFCE, hasn't changed a bit for as long as I can remember,
| and is just as ugly.
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| I'm sad that Windows doesn't look like this anymore. I've never
| liked KDE, but I might not mind using this. There's lots of
| caveats in that README; enough to make me think that Chicago95
| works better.
| ikealampe200 wrote:
| The "Aero" look of Windows can be categorized into an esthetics
| era called "Frutiger Aero".
| (https://aesthetics.fandom.com/wiki/Frutiger_Aero)
| skavi wrote:
| The "Aero" in "Frutiger Aero" is Windows Aero. And Microsoft's
| Segoe is practically Frutiger.
|
| So more than being part of the era, I think it's fair to say
| Windows Aero defined the aesthetic.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| Aero is cool, and i'ma let you finish, but Windows 2000 was the
| best look ever.
| netsharc wrote:
| Is there much difference from the Windows 2000 UI from Windows
| NT 4.0? Which also looks very close to Windows 95. Win95 was
| released in 1995, WinNT 4.0 in 1996, and I would guess they
| were developed in parallel.
| estebank wrote:
| It was the last iteration of refinement on the UI that was
| designed for 95. NT was meant to have its own shell, but that
| didn't pan out so the 95 shell was ported over.
| jwells89 wrote:
| I love that this exists and in fact in many ways prefer how it
| looks to the stock KDE theme, but it's unfortunate that
| modification of KDE itself was necessary to achieve this level of
| accuracy.
|
| It underscores a more general frustration of mine of Linux DE
| theming in that it's less flexible and capable than Kaleidoscope
| for classic Mac OS was, as a result of theming being somewhat
| tacked on even for DEs that pride themselves on flexibility (like
| KDE). Ideally, there'd be little that themes couldn't be able to
| change about one's desktop environment without invasive
| modifications.
| beebeepka wrote:
| Great job. Maybe the best effort yet?
|
| That said, I liked the windows 8 look and feel better though. Not
| a huge fan of shiny glass aero effects. Grouping was quite the
| innovation back then. I wonder what happened to the (woman) who
| created it.
|
| I think Gnome can, easily, be turned into an amazing GUI but its
| creators, for whatever reason, insist on ruining the out-of-box
| experience. It's 99% there and better than almost anything
| Windows and macOS have to offer. How come only apple offers cool
| stuff such as reopen apps after reboot.
|
| sorry for the rant
| alexey-salmin wrote:
| Just bring back the Keramic, I'm not asking for much
| drewzero1 wrote:
| I always jumped back and forth between Keramik and Plastik.
| I've tried a few times but haven't been able to get back into
| KDE since the KDE3 days.
| UncleSlacky wrote:
| There's always Trinity: https://trinitydesktop.org/
| indymike wrote:
| As a KDE4 user, I had been using a UI KDE4 for two years when
| Windows 7 came out in 2009. I thought Windows 7 felt a lot like
| KDE4 and maybe was inspiration for MS. Also, KDE4 was a one step
| back two steps forward release, and so it kind of felt good to
| see MS intentionally or unintentionally assimilating KDE's UI.
| narag wrote:
| Nice. But (unpopular opinion) my favourite is Expose that clones
| Windows XP's Luna.
|
| The included analog clock is from Windows 7 though.
|
| They say Luna is plasticky and teletubbies land. But it just
| makes me happy :)
|
| What I miss is files tree pane in the file manager. Dolphin has
| this dir/files mixed tree in the right pane, but it's just not
| the same.
|
| Still very satisfied with my recent switch to Linux/KDE. Almost
| everything worked out of the box, with very minor annoyances.
| Refreshing compared with my recent Windows experience.
| tamimio wrote:
| Nice but if I could replicate KDE into windows I would, or other
| popular DE, except gnome.
| timetraveller26 wrote:
| For those who prefer Windows XP: https://store.kde.org/p/1885548
| chrsw wrote:
| Not bad. But what about replicating the KDE 1 classic desktop?
| SuperNinKenDo wrote:
| Absolutely gorgeous. While I'm more of a Windows 9x guy these
| days, for a glossy, modern, transparent UI the peak is
| undoubtedly Windows 7. Just gorgeous. The last time Microsoft
| fully cared about releasing a finished product with an actual
| coherent philosophy of design underpinning it.
| pxc wrote:
| I was already running KDE/Plasma for years by the time Windows 7
| came out, so for me Aero's emotional associations are negative.
| It was the user interface of the janky, annoying side of my
| computer that I would occasionally boot in college in order to
| play trendy Windows games with my friends, and eventually
| abandoned because I hated having to deal with it. I can't help
| but be a bit repulsed looking at that UI (or the original Aero
| theme for Windows).
|
| It's funny how those associations can color perception in such an
| immediate way. The 'pure' aesthetics are harder, if not
| impossible, to access.
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| I prefer Windows 11 look and feel - Windows 7 kind reminds me
| Aqua (that lickable metric) - dated and ugly.
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