17 ms·
Screenshots from developers and Unix people taken in 2002 (2015)
- samdung 7y agoI seem to be falling in love with the data density of the old layouts. Nowadays i need to scroll endlessly to see little information.
- moreira 7y agoOld designs used to fit more data in 1024x768 (or 800x600) than we get now in high-res, high-DPI widescreen displays. There's a personal finance app I use that was recently modernised, and it went from being able to show me 50 transactions on a 1920x1080 screen to barely being able to display little over 10 transactions at a time. No improvement, just... padding.
- bluedino 7y agoViewable on mobile now.
- VLM 7y agoThe padding is for future advertisements
- toyg 7y agoOr even present, we nerds just don’t see it because adblocking.
- anticensor 7y agoImproperly working adblock that can only partially remove the ad.
- UweSchmidt 7y agoIt's probably just the original people leaving and less competent people taking over the project /the UI who need to change things around. Questionable analytics probably show more engagement (scrolling) with the new layout.
- martin-adams 7y agoI suspect a driving factor in this is touch interface which needs a larger surface area to interact with while in a desktop view.
- jodrellblank 7y agohttps://idlewords.com/talks/website_obesity.htm https://idlewords.com/talks/website_obesity.htm this calendar widget. [..] My gripe with this design aesthetic is the loss of information density. I'm an adult human being sitting at a large display, with a mouse and keyboard. I deserve better. Not every interface should be designed for someone surfing the web from their toilet. Here's what the PayPal site used to look like. I never fell to my knees to thank God for giving me the gift of sight so that I might behold the beauty of the old PayPal interface. But it got the job done. Here's the PayPal website as it looks today. The biggest element on the page is an icon chastising me that I haven't told PayPal what I look like. Next to that is a useless offer to 'download the app', and then an offer for a credit card. I can no longer control the sort order, there are no filter tools, and you see there are far fewer entries visible without scrolling.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago> If you're only displaying five sentences of text, use vanilla HTML. Hell, serve a textfile! I like this author. Current size of my entire personal site is just under 900k, including all downloads, the blog, and images. You could read it on a TI-83 with the right software, a modem, and a dialup account. Could probably even display the images since they're 1bpp bitmaps.
- Shorel 7y ago> If present trends continue, there is the real chance that articles warning about page bloat could exceed 5 megabytes in size by 2020. This totally reminds me of Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett. :D
- dev_dull 7y agoMint alternative? What app?
- livebsd 7y agoI used to run flashy DEs years ago. Enlightenment for all those who remember, with all the bells and whistles turned on. As years went by, I started to remove everything. I now use an automatic tiling window manager with no borders. I actively disable all animations, and I use colors much more thoughtfully (color yes, but only where it is needed), so that by default my laptop looks a lot more like those old screenshots than a today colorful tablet. I'm now quite pedantic on how text should be rendered the way _I_ want, and it should be the same _everywhere_. So in a sense, I see why the current look is attractive and my younger-self would approve, but in retrospective the bland-but-consistent look is what I eventually moved on to by choice for a lot of reasons. The current UI trend in my mind is considerably worse from an UI perspective than what Windows 3.1/95 (and same-era DEs) would offer.
- Shorel 7y agoI used to use Lucida Console for that reason. It looks good and the distance between lines seems to be smaller than many other monospaced fonts.
- darshanime 7y agoPeople say Russ Cox was inspired to use acme after looking at Ritchie's desktop. Probably even this picture.
- nabla9 7y agoWhat? No screenshot from Donald Knuth's desktop! here: https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/screen.jpeg https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/screen.jpeg And here is the config file: https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/programs/.fvwm2rc https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/programs/.fvwm2rc
- Retr0spectrum 7y agoIt would be really interesting to see a follow-up 17(!) years later.
- darshanime 7y agoeveryone running chrome on macs
- fb03 7y agothis is so sad, yet probably so friggin accurate. I used linux in 2002 and the sentiment i get is that the whole desktop environment thingy is getting all bloated and padded. heck, those kde screenshots show so much stuff on such a small screen, right? And it was all really snappy on a p166mmx with a meager 64megs of ram.
- vortico 7y agoHere it was 15 years later. https://anders.unix.se/2015/12/10/screenshots-from-developers--2002-vs.-2015/ https://anders.unix.se/2015/12/10/screenshots-from-developer...
- geggam 7y agoHeh... This one makes laugh. A port maintainer has his desktop config in Salt 'screenshot as code', I maintain my desktop configuration through saltstack: https://github.com/TTimo/linux-salted/commits/master https://github.com/TTimo/linux-salted/commits/master
- mikedelfino 7y agoThere's a 2015 edition as well: https://anders.unix.se/2015/12/10/screenshots-from-developers--2002-vs.-2015/ https://anders.unix.se/2015/12/10/screenshots-from-developer...
- dpau 7y ago"Still just a browser window and a ton of terminals hiding behind them." -Rasmus Lerdorf Yep :)
- smudgymcscmudge 7y agoThe biggest difference is I added git status to my shell prompt sometime between 2002 and 2015.
- Shorel 7y agoOSX really did look good back in 2002. It still stands out, even among all the current screenshots.
- mullikine 7y agoYay! An old emacs screenshot and an early vim. I'm satisfied. Brian Kernighan's is the most beautiful though. Such purity
- wyclif 7y agoI agree...simplicity reveals the pure beauty of life.
- lruor 7y agoThe glorious days of KDE. Now it feels like a clusterfuck designed for touch interfaces compared to how dense, productive, and serious it felt back in the day.
- Crinus 7y agoI don't think KDE was ever serious, especially considering the mascot was initially some old bearded wizard in blue robes, striped socks and slippers with fishbones in his pockets[0] :-P. But the theme was way more neutral than most themes today that could work to anything from serious applications to games - similarly with Win9x. [0] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c0/Kandalf_wizard_mascot_kde.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c0/Kandalf_...
- nisa 7y agoKDE 3.x was also in some ways more feature rich than a current KDE. 4.x was a huge mess due to some big ego trying to push his ideas on the world but I think the current Plasma releases are on a good path torwards mature and productive - however the applications beyond dolphin are quite lacking. It's also sad that a lot of ressources and energy goes to GNOME...
- emilsedgh 7y agocurrent KDE. 4.x was a huge mess due to some big ego trying to push his ideas on the world That really wasn't the reason for KDE 4.X being a huge mess. I find it annoying that people who contribute a lot of their free time and life to a free software project are treated this way. aseigo was a paid developer on KDE but what he contributed was far more than his paid time. Also he was a contributor before and after his paid development. KDE was a mess because the Qt3 to Q4 change was a humongous change. KDE to decide to stick with Qt3 or move forward with a huge effort to rewrite the whole stack. And all it had was volunteers. You underestimate the complexities of that situation and blame it on a single person and that's an unfair oversimplification of the situation.
- nisa 7y ago
- pavlov 7y agoErgonomics research has shown a long time ago that dark text on light background is easier to read on computer screens for long periods of time. These screenshots demonstrate that developers in 2002 had got the message. Young developers nowadays seem to mostly use dark backgrounds, which to me feels like a weird '70s throwback. I suspect it's primarily an identity signal: it's harder to feel like you're hacking The Matrix if your IDE looks like Word from a distance.
- newsgremlin 7y agoWhat is needed is alternating themes based on the real world day/night cycle. Even though when the sun goes down that arguable should be the time that screen time should be cut anyway.
- pavlov 7y agoFor me, macOS "Night Shift" does the job well enough. It gradually shifts the overall color temperature to warm at the end of the day.
- boomlinde 7y agoIf you are using X11, you can use xcalib to modify gamma/brightness/contrast of the color channels individually. My own quick hack is "xcalib -invert -alter" which simply inverts the colors. This probably breaks subpixel rendering, though, but IMO subpixel rendering looks like crap on low resolution displays and is pointless on high resolution displays.
- thrwayxyz 7y agoLight themes during the nights are murder on the eyes. Give me a nice solarised light theme during the day and a dark one at night.
- paranoidrobot 7y ago> Ergonomics research has shown a long time ago that dark text on light background is easier to read on computer screens for long periods of time. I have to wonder whether that research took into consideration how large and bright modern displays are, and for the duration that modern IT professionals are using them for. I would guess that the majority of these people would have been using 15-19" CRT monitors, and mostly single displays. In pretty much every office that I've seen, most people have two or three 23-27" displays. Modern LCD panels are also extremely bright. Staring at that much screen realestate with primarily light/white colours can be painful for long periods of time. It certainly feels less uncomfortable to use a darker theme.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- zx2c4 7y ago"I don’t know how to make a screenshot, because I normally use my computer in text-mode." --Richard Stallman
- jl6 7y agoI tend to hit print screen randomly every few weeks, and have been for a number of years. It’s like photography for when I’m not outside - it amounts to a near record of my ways of working over the years.
- dev_dull 7y agoI used to do this too. For me they were only interesting until I started my career. Now those screenshots are just the default Mac background with a few apps hidden in the launch bar. The things in person in real life, on the other hand, have become much more interesting!
- bgeeek 7y agoI'm sure there are other sites, but one that I follow: /r/unixporn on reddit.
- rudiv 7y agoSome of those fonts make my head swim. I'm glad the quality of desktop typography has improved so much in the recent past. Also, I will always be scared of the people with strange cursive fonts like CmdrTaco. It's like people who use that comic sans-esque font that comes as a pre-installed option on Samsung phones.
- userbinator 7y agoIt's like people who use that comic sans-esque font that comes as a pre-installed option on Samsung phones. "I want to be different"... just like the millions of others who also choose that font.
- yjftsjthsd-h 7y agoStill less common than the default.
- nurettin 7y agoI love how some of them used Phoenix (earlier name of the firefox project). It was a fresh breath after netscape and explorer. Even the earliest versions supported multiple tabs, advanced CSS and adobe flash containers. https://website-archive.mozilla.org/www.mozilla.org/firefox_releasenotes/en-US/firefox/releases/0.5.html https://website-archive.mozilla.org/www.mozilla.org/firefox_...
- cowmix 7y agoMost are using the Mozilla browser it seems (like Luke Mewburn).
- yegortimoshenko 7y agoHuh, 5 out of 15 interviewed developers referred to their desktop as "boring".
- scandox 7y agoYes the consensus is "pretty boring"
- pbhjpbhj 7y agoSurely that's right, a desktop should just keep out the way and let you work. The more boring the better?
- JoeAltmaier 7y agoYes, I don't even customize mine. I leave the OS, tools in default configurations. I do my work in the cloud. If my computer is hit by lightening, I toss it in the dumpster and get another one. Back to work within an hour. My toaster is also boring, and my pipe wrench, and my floor jack. Just tools.
- kingofpandora 7y ago> Rasmus Lerdorf (creator of PHP) I assume that is a picture of PHP while it is being designed.
- hestefisk 7y agoI wish I could move desktop back in time to Gnome 1, gkrellm and Linux. So simple, yet so neat.
- geggam 7y agoXFCE4 still runs like that. Personally I prefer a well configured Fluxbox
- tambourine_man 7y ago“Unix people” sounds like an archeological term to me, like the Clovis people.
- AdmiralAsshat 7y ago>Richard Stallman: >I don’t know how to make a screenshot, because I normally use my computer in text-mode. I have X and GNOME installed, but I use them only occasionally. I find it weird that the man is such a visionary in concept, but such a Luddite in actual day-to-day. Elsewhere, I've seen him explain that he still "views" most webpages by cURL'ing them and printing them to paper.
- wipseabusbus 7y agoAnd also icecat with tor https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y agoThe older I get and the more I see how complicated and full of bullshit computing has become, the more I think he may have the right idea.
- bunderbunder 7y agoYeah, about the only bit there that gets me is the printing. But I'd be a happy camper if more webpages could be effectively used with `curl <url> | less`. I also realize that it's difficult to make the kinds of social media inspired experiences™ that most consumers expect nowadays without some curl-breaking beast like React or Vue, and that most websites nowadays see themselves as an entertainment medium more often than they do a simple conduit for the transfer of information. I am beginning to think that that, too, speaks to what RMS is on about.
- pradn 7y agoI was recently setting up my machine and figured I'd try 'mutt', the terminal mail reader. It's a pain to install and isn't great for HTML emails, but it sure is blazing fast and allows me to create custom macros that are really useful. Maybe if I stick with it, it'll be faster than GMail. But then again, after I set up some filters, my volume of email to look at in GMail was pretty low, so the performance advantages of 'mutt' are not as important now. It feels super cool though. We can't underestimate the aesthetic value of cool terminals.
- DannyB2 7y agoIt is interesting how many of those screenshots include an open web browser.
- catacombs 7y agoHow is that interesting?
- VectorLock 7y agoI'm amused that jkh is browsing Jerkcity in his screenshot.
- joezydeco 7y agoGotta wonder... We know Rands worked at Apple, and so did Hubbard. Is Hubbard the person behind Spigot?
- sehugg 7y agoThe only IDE I see is TTimo from id using Anjunta: http://anjuta.org/ http://anjuta.org/
- dba7dba 7y agoAhh. I was told by a CS student in 2005 or so that knowing just some Unix commands would get me a good job. I even took an introductory class based on this. But I never pursued it that diligently. And now 20 years later, I am learning Linux and plus many other related stuff. Should've listened to the recommendation 20 years earlier.
- jlv2 7y agoJon Hall's desktop shows exmh running. I did a bunch of work on that long ago (90s). His two screenshots highlight two of my contributions (both of which live on today). I wrote the folder display in the upper pane (I'm really proud of this result). I also worked on the abomination of a 'pick' interface.
- catacombs 7y agoWeird flex but OK.
- jedberg 7y agoMine would look like Jordan Hubbard's, because by 2002 I'd replaced my Slack linux running fvwm with MacOS (on a Mac desktop I'd picked up for free from the e-waste bin at Berkeley!)
- pradn 7y agoFor screenshots of current *nix desktops from enthusiasts: https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn
- neilv 7y agoI did all sorts of desktop and window manager things over the years, but the last few years, I'm very happy with a tweaked tiling window manager with workspaces (currently based around XMonad). All screen real estate is used for window content, except for a few pixels for borders. Currently no persistent panel or status display of any kind. I already known what workspace I'm on, based on the windows there, and I know what workspaces I've been using. When I need to see the clock, I've rigged a keypress to display it. I occasionally miss having system loadavg info displayed all the time, but I prefer using that screen real estate for an extra lines of code or text. I've made a bunch of keybindings that start an application or switch focus to it if it's already running.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]