5 ms·

I’m not sure how anybody considers things like CDE or the the old Windows 9x aesthetically pleasing. Say what you want about MacOS/Gnome/Windows at least they

I’m not sure how anybody considers things like CDE or the the old Windows 9x aesthetically pleasing. Say what you want about MacOS/Gnome/Windows at least they are easy on the eyes

marcodiego 5y ago
Windows 9x aesthetic is good, except for non antialiased fonts. The same can be said about CDE. Take a look a modern lookalike with AA fonts: https://github.com/NsCDE/NsCDE https://github.com/NsCDE/NsCDE . Fonts in nscde still look blurry to me, maybe it is missing kerning or hinting... but looks much better to my eyes.
- edgyquant 5y ago
  Eh. The beige and green just look ugly to me and the boxiness of the UI isn’t pleasing to the eyes. That’s my opinion, sure, but I’d say there’s a reason why Microsoft and Apple have went with the designs they currently have.
  - marcodiego 5y ago
    CDE has some pleasing color options to choose from. The blockiness of the UI is really brutalist but maybe it is a matter of what one is used to. When watching Hollywood movies in the 90's it looked modern, almost sci-fi. Maybe the windows aesthetic was influenced by hardware limitations of the time: smaller screens, lower resolutions and somewhat blurry CRTs. Windows on a modern larger, higher DPI e very sharp LCD will look small and hard to differentiate smaller details; CDE on a large high DPI screen makes it very easy to differ smaller details and the borders "better communicate" limits. I like KDE 1.0 appearance. It's got a good balance of influences from CDE, OS/2 and Windows.
  - Hegel3DReloaded 5y ago
    Why are you judging the whole DE on the basis of default color scheme (replaceable 5 clicks away with 15-20 ready made color schemes after log in)? One can even compose it's own scheme by clicking "modify", name it and save it.
- Hegel3DReloaded 5y ago
  Hi. Author of NsCDE here. Fonts in NsCDE are system XFT fonts. Whatever you install on your Unix/Linux system, and however you configure your XFT library (usually in /etc/fonts/fonts.conf) you will have it. Personally, I prefer the middle ground: sligtly antialiased, but high quality sans family fonts like Bitstream Vera and Bitstream Vera Mono, not default classic serif font which is default for historical reasons, just like "Broica" color scheme.
  - marcodiego 5y ago
    Cool! Nice getting a reply from nscde author! Do you have plans to do anything like application builder?
    - Hegel3DReloaded 5y ago
      Heh! No chance. This will be too huge task to create creator ... FVWM has already FvwmScript module in which most of the NsCDE tools are written.
linguae 5y ago
This is just my opinion, but I actually love the Windows 9x aesthetic and to this day I wish Windows 10/11 had support for the Windows Classic interface; back in the days of Windows XP and 7 I always changed the theme from the default to Windows Classic. While I'm at it, I actually prefer the aesthetic of the classic Mac OS (especially the Platinum theme introduced in Copland and Mac OS 8) to modern versions of macOS, though I am quite fond of the clean, polished Tiger-era Mac OS X aesthetic. I'm also a fan of the NeXT aesthetic and I sometimes use WindowMaker as a lightweight desktop on Linux and FreeBSD installations, though these days I use KDE whenever I need a full-featured desktop for my daily driver (but I'm keeping an eye on helloSystem, a FreeBSD-based operating system that is inspired by Tiger-era Mac OS X: https://hellosystem.github.io/docs/ https://hellosystem.github.io/docs/).
- kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
  A few resource settings in .Xdefaults to strip away the 3D look and you can have a Windows 10 aesthetic. Is that not good enough?
Hegel3DReloaded 5y ago
From early 90-ties until today, when I saw CDE first time, I was impressed with it's outfit resembling something akin to brutalism in architecture. Whatever I used during the ears, privately or at work, I always tried to reconstruct as much as possible that look and partially feel. I love it! So, today I'm typing this in a heavy CSS'ed Firefox which looks how Netscape 4 should look way back ago if somebody bothered to integrate it into CDE. Bottom of the screen is guarded by Front Panel with nice 3D buttons saying "One", "Two", "Three" and "Four". MacOS/Gnome/Windows easy on eyes? Yeah, like a knife.
CRConrad 5y ago
> Say what you want about MacOS/Gnome/Windows at least they are easy on the eyes Windows 8/10? De gustibus... IMO they're hideous.

I’m not sure how anybody considers things like CDE or the the old Windows 9x aesthetically pleasing. Say what you want about MacOS/Gnome/Windows at least they are easy on the eyes

marcodiego 5y ago

Windows 9x aesthetic is good, except for non antialiased fonts. The same can be said about CDE. Take a look a modern lookalike with AA fonts: https://github.com/NsCDE/NsCDE https://github.com/NsCDE/NsCDE . Fonts in nscde still look blurry to me, maybe it is missing kerning or hinting... but looks much better to my eyes.

edgyquant 5y ago
Eh. The beige and green just look ugly to me and the boxiness of the UI isn’t pleasing to the eyes. That’s my opinion, sure, but I’d say there’s a reason why Microsoft and Apple have went with the designs they currently have.
- marcodiego 5y ago
  CDE has some pleasing color options to choose from. The blockiness of the UI is really brutalist but maybe it is a matter of what one is used to. When watching Hollywood movies in the 90's it looked modern, almost sci-fi. Maybe the windows aesthetic was influenced by hardware limitations of the time: smaller screens, lower resolutions and somewhat blurry CRTs. Windows on a modern larger, higher DPI e very sharp LCD will look small and hard to differentiate smaller details; CDE on a large high DPI screen makes it very easy to differ smaller details and the borders "better communicate" limits. I like KDE 1.0 appearance. It's got a good balance of influences from CDE, OS/2 and Windows.
- Hegel3DReloaded 5y ago
  Why are you judging the whole DE on the basis of default color scheme (replaceable 5 clicks away with 15-20 ready made color schemes after log in)? One can even compose it's own scheme by clicking "modify", name it and save it.
Hegel3DReloaded 5y ago
Hi. Author of NsCDE here. Fonts in NsCDE are system XFT fonts. Whatever you install on your Unix/Linux system, and however you configure your XFT library (usually in /etc/fonts/fonts.conf) you will have it. Personally, I prefer the middle ground: sligtly antialiased, but high quality sans family fonts like Bitstream Vera and Bitstream Vera Mono, not default classic serif font which is default for historical reasons, just like "Broica" color scheme.
- marcodiego 5y ago
  Cool! Nice getting a reply from nscde author! Do you have plans to do anything like application builder?
  - Hegel3DReloaded 5y ago
    Heh! No chance. This will be too huge task to create creator ... FVWM has already FvwmScript module in which most of the NsCDE tools are written.

linguae 5y ago

This is just my opinion, but I actually love the Windows 9x aesthetic and to this day I wish Windows 10/11 had support for the Windows Classic interface; back in the days of Windows XP and 7 I always changed the theme from the default to Windows Classic. While I'm at it, I actually prefer the aesthetic of the classic Mac OS (especially the Platinum theme introduced in Copland and Mac OS 8) to modern versions of macOS, though I am quite fond of the clean, polished Tiger-era Mac OS X aesthetic. I'm also a fan of the NeXT aesthetic and I sometimes use WindowMaker as a lightweight desktop on Linux and FreeBSD installations, though these days I use KDE whenever I need a full-featured desktop for my daily driver (but I'm keeping an eye on helloSystem, a FreeBSD-based operating system that is inspired by Tiger-era Mac OS X: https://hellosystem.github.io/docs/ https://hellosystem.github.io/docs/).

kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
A few resource settings in .Xdefaults to strip away the 3D look and you can have a Windows 10 aesthetic. Is that not good enough?

Hegel3DReloaded 5y ago

From early 90-ties until today, when I saw CDE first time, I was impressed with it's outfit resembling something akin to brutalism in architecture. Whatever I used during the ears, privately or at work, I always tried to reconstruct as much as possible that look and partially feel. I love it! So, today I'm typing this in a heavy CSS'ed Firefox which looks how Netscape 4 should look way back ago if somebody bothered to integrate it into CDE. Bottom of the screen is guarded by Front Panel with nice 3D buttons saying "One", "Two", "Three" and "Four". MacOS/Gnome/Windows easy on eyes? Yeah, like a knife.

CRConrad 5y ago

> Say what you want about MacOS/Gnome/Windows at least they are easy on the eyes Windows 8/10? De gustibus... IMO they're hideous.