13 ms·

Make Linux look like Windows 95

473 points by iio7 5y ago

dmix 5y ago
I've always liked those briefcase icons but could never figure out what they did.
- shakna 5y ago
  They were early two-way synced folders. [0] Like the idea of Dropbox et all, but for anything Windows supported. FTP, Samba, another physical drive, or just another local location. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Briefcase_(Microsoft_Windows) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Briefcase_(Microsoft_Windows)
- Bluecobra 5y ago
  My first computer had Windows 95 and I had no idea what it did either until now. https://www.howtogeek.com/396628/what-was-the-windows-briefcase-used-for-anyway/amp/ https://www.howtogeek.com/396628/what-was-the-windows-briefc...
SLWW 5y ago
This is really pretty i won't lie. I might just install this on my devbox at home <3
jp0d 5y ago
Can anyone think of a reason why to do this? Apart from personal fun project, of course!
- sigzero 5y ago
  Nostalgia mostly. However, Win95 had very clear UI elements that made it nice to use.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Donald 5y ago
  The 90s were a decade of unbridled American power and optimism. The Soviet union had crumbled and the world was America's oyster. This week's events will cause a resurgence in 90s nostalgia in the West.
  - sys_64738 5y ago
    If the best we could do was Win95 then that explains the decline in American imperialism.
- bigDinosaur 5y ago
  Talking point if out in public (assuming you have this on a laptop or similar) or at a meetup?
- LeoPanthera 5y ago
  Because that desktop is honestly clearer and faster to understand that today's chromeless trends. Buttons look like buttons, and text boxes are obvious.
  - kwertyoowiyop 5y ago
    And there is just enough whitespace. Not waaayyyyy toooooo muuuuccchhh. And there’s consistency. Not eight generations of UI redesigns for each control. And you can actually tell which window has the focus.
    - bqmjjx0kac 5y ago
      Every time our screens get bigger, designers eat the space!
    - forgotmypw17 5y ago
      I use it as my daily driver, and all the answers are here, plus familiarity.
    - polski-g 5y ago
      AWS's recent redesign makes every single UI element have 16px of whitespace. What exactly was the point?
- assttoasstmgr 5y ago
  Because we hit peak desktop right around Windows 2000. Just about everything since then has been a step backwards in speed and usability. The Mac Finder is a hot mess and seems to get worse with every release. The 964 different desktops available for Linux are in general a hodgepodge of slow impossible-to-use disasters. A notable exception is XFCE but it's a bit of a second-class citizen and even things in XFCE don't work well. (Example: network configuration, you need to be logged in as root to use this applet.) Edit: I would like to point out that the Win2k desktop was blazing fast on a machine with 256MB of RAM. I can't get Debian to install on a machine with less than 512MB without complaining.
  - grishka 5y ago
    IMO the last decently desktop version of Windows was 7. After that, it was utterly ruined by the existence of touchscreens and Microsoft's insistence that they're the next big thing in computers. My main issue with current macOS is the combined toolbars and titles, including in finder. There's too much padding but then everything feels unnecessarily cramped. My second issue with modern macOS is their new icon system where literally nothing is aligned to the pixel grid. But there's still a surprising amount of dense UIs — I guess it helps that Apple has a clear separation between touch (iPad) and non-touch (Mac) product lines.
    - bitigchi 5y ago
      It's possible to disable toolbars and use a menu-bar/shortcut oriented workflow like in the Classic Mac OS.
  - LAC-Tech 5y ago
    Speak for yourself, my riced out linux desktop is fast and usable AF
  - aluminum96 5y ago
    > we hit peak desktop right around Windows 2000 I could not disagree more strongly. Win2000 buttons are tiny, drag areas are tiny, basically everything is tiny and unclickable. I strongly prefer the generously-proportioned, touch-inspired interfaces of the last 4-5 years.
- prvc 5y ago
  Both a more efficient use of screen space (at least, compared to the default themes of XFCE, crucially, but also KDE, GNOME, and others), and an aesthetically better visual design. I am surprised to have just written this latter observation, considering this came from Microsoft, but I suppose the era when it was designed demanded it, both as a result of the lower screen resolutions used, and the the contemporary marketing needs for the release of Windows 95.
  - assttoasstmgr 5y ago
    I wouldn't say marketing so much as Microsoft did a lot of usability testing back then where psychologists threw people in a room and took notes while they interact with the UI. I don't think any OSS projects have this luxury (or money needed to throw around for that sort of thing). Raymond Chen vaguely references it here https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20120126-00/?p=8453 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20120126-00/?p=84... Also, back then, you had to make the best with the resources you had. Computers were slow so UIs had to be lightweight out of necessity. Yet here we are in 2022 and GUI applications have become so bloated they take longer to open up then they did in the 90s. And yes I'm looking at you, GTK and Windows 'Modern' apps.
    - userbinator 5y ago
      and GUI applications have become so bloated they take longer to open up then they did in the 90s. ...while somehow being even less graphically complex.
    - tadfisher 5y ago
      The Gnome project performs usability tests pretty often. That's what led to decisions like deprecating the secondary app menu (app menu in the title bar) and the newer horizontal workspace layout, iirc.
      - voidfunc 5y ago
        And the Gnome project consistently gets it wrong because they keep forgetting their primary target users are not rando's that have never used a computer but mostly season Linux vets.
- stjohnswarts 5y ago
  Some people like very simple interfaces, icons and schemes. It's a very utilitarian interface and works fine. I often use lxqt which is pretty barebones on VMs to cut down a bit on the memory footprint.
- toast0 5y ago
  AFAIK, Windows 95 was the last UI design with a published design methodology that includes numerous laboratory test sessions. I'm not sure the original URL, but it was republished [1]. It's listed at ACM [2] as published April 1996, so they were sharing how they did it pretty soon after it was done. I just don't think Microsoft continued to do lab testing of their design, at least they haven't told us that they did, but it feels like a lot of things have gotten harder to do rather than easier to do, which doesn't match their earlier design goals. Windows 95 wasn't the peak, but it was a huge step vs Windows 3.1. IMHO, Apple clearly doesn't care about desktop experience (and anyway, their keyboard shortcuts are wrong, so I'm not using their design), and I don't think any OSS desktop environment is funding user studies (but I'd be happy to see evidence otherwise). Given that situation, I'd rather use the UI that had design goals I like and a design process that allowed developing towards those goals. [1] https://socket3.wordpress.com/2018/02/03/designing-windows-95s-user-interface/ https://socket3.wordpress.com/2018/02/03/designing-windows-9... [2] https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/238386.238611 https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/238386.238611
- ziotom78 5y ago
  I am currently using KDE with the Reactionary theme [1], which gives my desktop a nice Windows95 look. I love it because the meaning of the buttons on the title bars of windows is very clear, and I know exactly which visual elements can be pressed and which one not. (Disclaimer: I started using computers in late '80s and used Windows95/98/2000 a lot before moving to full Linux when Windows XP came out, so I was already pretty used to the interface.) [1] https://store.kde.org/p/1253201/ https://store.kde.org/p/1253201/
- narag 5y ago
  I haven't tried this one, but I will. My reason is that I quit Linux because they took away the two pane, file tree in the left, file explorer from me. I was using lxde and suddenly they decided to "redesign" the explorer (more like redoing it from scratch) and the new one had not the file tree pane. I was using lxde because I didn't like Plasma, another imposed "redesign". Now that was the last straw. 15 or 20 years ago... I can't understand why people think it's OK to shit on my muscle memory and habits.
  - pcdoodle 5y ago
    Some people don't understand the time value of habits. Makes me angry.
jonpalmisc 5y ago
I’ve used this before and it’s quite good; it not only captures the “old Windows” look well, but I find it to be quite functional too. I was frustrated trying to get my Linux box to look “pretty”, since I find that most GTK and DE themes lack attention to detail that is glaringly obvious to a trained eye. My solution was to take the “scorched Earth” approach: make my UI look as primitive as possible rather than aiming for perfection.
- cookiengineer 5y ago
  Did you try the arc-dark theme? It's quite popular among archlinux users, and I think it looks pretty polished. [1] I'm no design expert, so I got nothing to say in terms of UI/UX. But it's the theme I've grown most comfortable with to use over the years. I agree with your sentiment that most themes lack attention to detail, where everything looks just more cluttered than anything else (especially when taking a look at icons, fonts etc). [1] https://github.com/horst3180/arc-theme https://github.com/horst3180/arc-theme
  - ComradePhil 5y ago
    It seems to have the same icky "material" design look forward which makes me puke in my mouth. I have been wanting to rant on this, so I will do it here. To anyone working in design, the "material" design is not it. Look at this: https://twitter.com/vectaio/status/1018697206776225794?s=21 https://twitter.com/vectaio/status/1018697206776225794?s=21 And compare it to this: http://www.visguy.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/aws-shapes-samples-3-analytics.png http://www.visguy.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/aws-shapes-... What is the purpose of an icon and which of the above serves the purpose better? The purpose of icons is not to look all same, like the material design aims to do. It is to quickly visually distinguish between different things. Material design is terrible for it. I hope more sensible designers fix this and get us out of the "material" nonsense Google has pushed into the world.
    - __del__ 5y ago
      i don't care for the aesthetic of the aws icons you posted, but i agree they serve their purpose much better than the gcloud icons you posted.
deutschewelle 5y ago
Love love these nostalgic takes, reminds me of this Windows 98 demo in a 3D simulation I recently came across. There is a real demand for 90s aesthetics https://twitter.com/PCBANGio/status/1493850712471527426 https://twitter.com/PCBANGio/status/1493850712471527426
- charles_f 5y ago
  Fun enough that reminds me of the smell in the computer room in our house.
  - bqmjjx0kac 5y ago
    Musty carpet?
    - charles_f 5y ago
      Exactly!
- LAC-Tech 5y ago
  I feel like the era of flat panel displays and the error of windows 98 really didn't intersect much. Though it might just be bias because of how broke I was at the time.
- eMPee584 5y ago
  yeah 90s' good stuff's way more good than today's good stuff somehow xD
fmakunbound 5y ago
Man, that’s all I really wanted.
userbinator 5y ago
This with WINE is what I think is the perfect combination of GUI and CLI... but as a long-time Windows user, several things stood out and made it look slightly off: the menu bar and padding around the icon labels is too tall the window borders are slightly too wide (compared to the default) scrollbar buttons shouldn't disable at end of travel sort direction indicator in header control (which first appeared in Win2k) should be a grey triangle, not a black arrow "KiB" and "GiB" font has some weird keming in some places Nonetheless, this is a lot closer lookalike than some of the others I've seen, such as this one: https://kmandla.wordpress.com/projects/lookalike-windows-xp-classic/ https://kmandla.wordpress.com/projects/lookalike-windows-xp-...
- freedomben 5y ago
  This comment makes me so happy. If I read it anywhere else I'd invoke Poe's Law and guess it was a joke. But it being HN I know it's for real, and I love it. Excellence in all we do
  - heleninboodler 5y ago
    I like the meta-joke of complaining about the kerning and calling it "keming"
    - pseudosavant 5y ago
      Thank you for pointing out the joke! My eyes went right past the first time. That is the best keming joke ever!
  - rbanffy 5y ago
    The font in the terminal called my attention. IIRC, the default one was the 8x8 CGA font with the option for it to be “Lucida Console”. Also, the icon for the terminal was the MSDOS 3D logo. All in all, amazing work.
- akx 5y ago
  Not to mention the fonts. That's no MS Sans Serif...
HDMI_Cable 5y ago
I'll be the first to say the unpopular take on HN: I don't think Windows 95 looks that good (compared to today). I personally find more modern (like MacOS 10) styles to look the best, and flat designs to be just as usable as more skeumorphic ones. It seems to me that preference for UI styles is completely personal, probably being influenced by what OS we initially used. As someone (potentially a lot) younger than many of those on HN, I like newer designs, and vice versa holds as well.
- debo_ 5y ago
- mynameismon 5y ago
  Yup, I think we fall in a similar age group, and lack the nostalgia that most HN readers have. At the same time, flat design is objectively worse. Barely any indication as to whether something is a button or a text box or a label. Personally, I really like the path taken by WinUI3, since it addresses the UX concerns with a fresh paint of UI
  - Shared404 5y ago
    > Yup, I think we fall in a similar age group, and lack the nostalgia that most HN readers have. > At the same time, flat design is objectively worse. Gonna jump in this boat as well, though I do actively search out older UI's and OS's to use.
- theandrewbailey 5y ago
  The default Windows 95 didn't look that great, but almost everyone agrees that 98 or 2000 are much better (at least they have gradients). But I'm not 100% old school, and I think that Windows 7 Aero looked good, too. I'm sad that someone decided that glassy transparent windows were an abomination and broke them all :(
  - kitsunesoba 5y ago
    To me the biggest improvement that 2000 makes to the 9x look are the move to a lighter base gray, as well as changing the default desktop color from that funky teal to a much nicer blue. As minor as those two things may seem they made the OS feel more pleasant. But that may just be the classic Mac OS fanboy in me speaking. Mac OS never used particularly dark grays, so the almost-perfectly-middle-gray seen in 95/98 felt almost depressing in comparison.
theandrewbailey 5y ago
I've been using Chicago95 in a VM and on my laptop for a few years. I was so dedicated to the look that I picked through a Windows install DVD to grab its fonts and use those (Microsoft Sans Serif particularly). I throw in a high resolution Bliss wallpaper, too, even though it totally didn't come with 95, and I don't have much fondness for XP.
- forgotmypw17 5y ago
  I thought I was reading my own comment at first. This is my main dev environment.
jmmv 5y ago
This looks so nice. Nostalgia indeed, but I miss consistent UIs across apps. SerenityOS must be mentioned in this context too: Win95-like UI on a Unix-like OS. Check it out if you haven’t yet! Edited to add the link I missed: https://serenityos.org/ https://serenityos.org/
- Aeolun 5y ago
  I really want to rebuild this in a for an existing OS. It’s not the same but it has the perfect feel.
- IYasha 5y ago
  Wow... just, wow! It's really not just GUI, but an OS!
  - gigglesupstairs 5y ago
    You should come here more often :) there are lots of wonderful discussions, in recent past even, on SerenityOS.
mbg721 5y ago
It won't convincingly look like Windows 95 to me without a ton of Invalid Page Faults in kernel32.dll. (Can somebody give me a basic explanation of what that was??)
- ronsor 5y ago
  The best guess I have is buggy programs passing invalid pointers to kernel32 functions (e.g. OpenFile/WriteFile).
- pleb_nz 5y ago
  invalid page faults
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  Install the BSOD x11-screensaver hack. (I used this for a while in rotation with others ... cow-orkers would occasionally tell my my laptop had crashed. I'd enter my password and continue working...)
- toast0 5y ago
  Ok, so a page fault is when you try to access a memory address that's not mapped by the MMU, or a write to a memory address that's mapped as read only. The MMU works in pages though, not individual addresses, on x86, standard pages are 4096 bytes, although larger pages are available. A valid page fault is when the OS has allocated that page in the current context, but not actually mapped it; it could be a not yet mapped in page from a memory-mapped file, or a page that was swapped to disk, or a page that was allocated but not yet used (not sure if win95 does that), or a write to a page that is allocated as read-write but is currently mapped as read-only and needs copy-on-write (COW) processing now. An invalid page fault is a read or a write to a page that the MMU doesn't have a mapping for and the OS also doesn't have a mapping for. These errors can be caused by many things; often a programming error leads to pointers being overwritten with unrelated data, when they're dereferenced it could access the wrong data or it could cause an invalid page fault. Hardware errors can also result in bad addresses in a pointer. Sometimes it's unintended interactions between running software or software and hardware.
- flomo 5y ago
vector1337 5y ago
Is there something similar for mac?
markus_zhang 5y ago
Ah I need to teach my Win10 qt project this look. Tried hard but the best I got was win7 style.
kalel83 5y ago
You had me at Netscape navigator.
nebula8804 5y ago
I have used themes like this on Linux and also some to make it look like MacOS. What I really want on Linux are tools that are written to be exactly like Windows, no more no less. Why? Well in addition to the numerous OS related problems I seem to encounter every time I go back and do a clean install of a distro like Ubuntu I am also annoyed by how poorly designed many of the basic tools like the calculator is. The Windows calculator is so simple that it makes it super easy to hop in, do a quick calculation via the numpad and jump out. Just copy it exactly. To this day there is still no default Paint program as good as MSPaint. MSPaint is great for pasting screenshots, quickly cropping/cutting and then saving. On linux you gotta install some other junk like Gimp/Krita/whatever else the typical forum dwellers recommend this month. Just please give me MSPaint on Linux. Nothing more, Nothing Less.
- CrazedGeek 5y ago
  FYI, there's a port of the Windows calculator to Linux (and a bunch of other platforms): https://github.com/unoplatform/calculator https://github.com/unoplatform/calculator
  - nebula8804 5y ago
    Darn, its the new calculator. I actually delete this on a fresh Windows 10 install and if you search, there is an installer floating around that re-adds the Windows 7 calculator. It takes much longer for this new calculator to boot up and you can feel the bloat when using it.
- stjohnswarts 5y ago
  Have you tried the gnome app "drawing" or the kde apt "kolourpaint" ?
  - _zooted 5y ago
    Kolour Paint is really good - basically a much improved version of MS Paint in terms of interface and simplicity. I run a GNOME system but I still use the Klour Paint flatpak since it's so good.
surajs 5y ago
hestefisk 5y ago
I remember that installing RH 5.2 (Hedwig? Apollo?) in 1999 and getting FVWM95 installed using rpm. It closely resembled Windows 95. From memory, icewm also had a similar theme. I miss the simplicity of the gui from this era, not Windows 95, but Windows NT 4.0. The dark blue boot screen was quite nice and the system was fast and quite stable around SP6a.
necrotic_comp 5y ago
icewm is a bit different, but it has a "windows95" type theme that, while it doesn't look nearly as good, is insanely functional. I've found it to be a window manager that is easy to script, easy to use, and gets out of the way for the most part. I spent a lot of time looking for a good window manager, trying all the usual ones (gnome, kde, xmonad (stayed there for a while!), dwm, etc.), but I've found this one to be the best and least obtrusive of any of them. Definitely worth a look if you're still in the hunt and not necessarily keen on making something look pretty. https://ice-wm.org/ https://ice-wm.org/
qbasic_forever 5y ago
I really like the Chicago95 theme here, it's great with XFCE/xubuntu on low spec devices. I also like installing the Window Maker and OpenBox WMs with a bunch of retro unix backgrounds--they kind of have the feel of CDE and old Solaris systems. I haven't used it but apparently someone is working on a more modern retro feel CDE-inspired thing here: https://github.com/NsCDE/NsCDE https://github.com/NsCDE/NsCDE Depending on my mood I can log in to a retro Windows or Unix experience. I haven't looked deeply into it but I think saw a Mac System 7 inspired WM theme out there too. IMHO retro modern computing environments are quirky fun that should be a bigger thing. :) It's not canon to Windows 95, but XScreenSaver pairs nicely to go with the overall late 90s retro feel too: https://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/ https://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/ These screensavers are exactly the kind of thing workstations of the era would have been blasting in computer labs nearly 24/7.
- Falkon1313 5y ago
  Just a tip, JWZ doesn't like direct links from here to his site. Copy and paste the link into a new tab for it to work. I don't even remember why, but it's been tradition for years now.
windows2020 5y ago
I can't express how excited I am for consistent and metaphorical UI to be rediscovered by the 'designers' of today.
- epistasis 5y ago
  Wait, you simply let users know what's a button by the visual decorations and differentiated edges? And you let them know the status of toggle buttons without forcing them to toggle multiple times and guess based on which colors what might mean what? Blasphemy! Next you'll be letting web pages readers know what is and is not a link by using a consistent underline scheme. Which would be a completely unacceptable level of interpretability.
  - gigglesupstairs 5y ago
    Remember when buttons, when pressed, looked pressed? I remember!
    - smilespray 5y ago
      The UX & UI design department of Pepperidge farm members, too.
    - zamadatix 5y ago
      Wow I've somehow completely missed the gradual disappearance of this. So many buttons now only have the hover effect.
- ido 5y ago
  It’s not about “today”, it’s about Linux vs Win/Mac. The former is a lot less consistent than the latter and this was just as true in 1995 as it is today.
  - II2II 5y ago
    At least with respect to Linux and Windows, both suffer from similar problems with consistency. Both have suffered from a great deal of churn over the years. Both have a variety of toolkits that vary in both appearance and functionality. If you compare current software on both platforms, it is difficult to claim that one is much better than the other. (Though I will agree that Linux was incredibly inconsistent in 1995.)
kaetemi 5y ago
The vertical text alignment is all wrong. :(
jcadam 5y ago
Very nice. Someone needs to do Windows 3.1 :)
- agumonkey 5y ago
  I'd support this.
  - HeckFeck 5y ago
    https://github.com/jcs/progman https://github.com/jcs/progman Someone already has.
    - agumonkey 5y ago
      very nice
      - visiblink 5y ago
        With the hotdog stand theme, no less! The only crack in the spell is the program launcher. Apparently, it's a left-click on the desktop to get a menu, like in the old Stiletto program for WIN31: http://www.technofileonline.com/texts/tec092098.html http://www.technofileonline.com/texts/tec092098.html
    - stuaxo 5y ago
      This properly looks good.
    - anthk 5y ago
      From JCS I suggest reading it's timeline on Mac OS System 6 C programming too.
sb057 5y ago
But does it support thumbnails in the file picker?
prvc 5y ago
The Office theme is off, somehow. Also, Word 97 has a much nicer, cleaner layout than 95 (assuming Clippy has been totally disabled, of course). Not sure if the icons are any different, though. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4a/Office_97_on_Windows_NT_4.0.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4a/Office_97_on_...
oefrha 5y ago
Now someone should make a browser theme to give me back the three rows of Ask Toolbar and other goodies. (I know, that’s the XP era, not 95.)
sunflowerdeath 5y ago
Now I regret a little bit that I have switched from linux to a macbook
voidfunc 5y ago
I still fucking love that Win95/Win98/Win2K look and feel. Its no nonsense and perfect in my opinion.
IYasha 5y ago
I thought my dream came true, but... There's one thing he isn't showing - the infamous GTK's "Cancel-OK" message box combination. As much as I respect Lunduke's work, it's GTK-based. And my Linux environment is completely 95% Qt5 (it'll be 100% if I figure out how to migrate to Qt-based browser). The main advantage of OS/2 or Win9x-like UI is its speed and consistency. And it soesn't allocate/read/render 9 PNG files per element (like button). Works using Line()s and FillRect()s. If modern KDE could do that, I'd have no complains...
- lewispollard 5y ago
  I know it doesn't do it efficiently, but there are a whole bunch of plasma themes, window decorations, cursor sets and so on that emulate win 95/98/xp (and even vista) in KDE Plasma, and you can install them right from the system settings.
  - IYasha 5y ago
    Thanks! I tried. But at that time there were lots of inconsistencies. I tried going full-95, but couldn't find exact controls. And in most themes there were bitmap or vector images to mimic control appearance. It's nothing like disabling effects on Win7 brings back natively-drawn imageless UI. Generally, I tried even making my own theme, but it looked odd. ) Especially when the start menu ignored all the theme colors and lived on its own. I've heard they've fixed it in newer Plasma releases though.
JimDabell 5y ago
It was actually fairly popular at the end of the 90s to run FVWM95, which was basically FVWM 2 skinned to look like Windows 95. It looked pretty similar to this project, for obvious reasons. http://fvwm95.sourceforge.net http://fvwm95.sourceforge.net
- _abox 5y ago
  Yeah I remember we used to run it as a joke.. On our HP-UX systems with VUE at the time. The sysadmins hated it when we made our terminals look like what they viewed as an inferior system (which to be honest it was, at the time with its DOS underpinnings)
- pjmlp 5y ago
  It makes me feel rather old when only your comment and another one are the only references to fvwm95 among 92 comments. It really shows how much current generations have lost from Linux early days, or how old some of us are.
IYasha 5y ago
In early 2000s I've created a few .theme files in Win98, all with different shades of main window color. And, with minimal tweaking, I made it work in EVERY version of Windows from 95 to 7! That's what I liked about backwards-compatibility. (and, most likely, I won't be using Windows after 7 anymore).
padde 5y ago
Haha, the memories :D nicely done.
desktopninja 5y ago
For a while now I've thoroughly enjoyed using with the q4os w/Trinity DE: https://q4os.org/ https://q4os.org/ I hope MS gives us Lindows (anyone remember that catch song Lindows Rocks lol) ... Linux + Win2k DE ...
beebeepka 5y ago
Remember, win95 GUI allow us to place the taskbar wherever we want without causing issues. Gnome 2 did, too, except it was almost unusable in that mode because they used to have a repeated "1px by I don't remember how much" for a taskbar background. Even Windows 11 only lets people have the thing on the bottom
alexklark 5y ago
It is 2022, and Windows 95 still have better font rendering.
ChiefOBrien 5y ago
26 years since the release of Win95 and Linux still cannot make a pixel perfect copy of the GUI with proper alignment and padding.
emptyparadise 5y ago
Sadly 99% of these modifications are surface level and don't go far enough in terms of actual usability. It's always the little things that break the spell, stuff like being able to open tree views using the keyboard.
bmn__ 5y ago
https://archive.org/details/winfiles_cmfriend_202005 https://archive.org/details/winfiles_cmfriend_202005 Ah, so that is what the semi-popular cyan-greyish colour theme is. Random encounter: <http://hallofshame.gp.co.at/tabs.htm http://hallofshame.gp.co.at/tabs.htm> I've been looking for the origin for twenty years.
- hyakosm 5y ago
  I like it, it's relaxing for the eyes, like the blue tints of Sun Solaris with CDE: http://toastytech.com/guis/sol.html http://toastytech.com/guis/sol.html
  - marcodiego 5y ago
    Note that CDE is open source since a few years ago. I personally compiled and run it on Debian 10. Getting it similar to screenshots you linked is not too much of a work.
- chungy 5y ago
  I feel like that's just a slight variant (with the font, mainly) of the built-in Rainy Day theme.
obxw 5y ago
Why?
- jacobmischka 5y ago
  Why not?
Snortibartfast 5y ago
I actually didn't like (and still don't) Windows in any form, but the one thing I did/do like is the Windows 95/98/2000 UI. I came from an Amiga background, and even though I think of Amiga with fond memories, I thought the UI was a bit too spartan and clumsy (MUI was a step in the right direction though). Nowadays I use Memphis-98 [0] as GUI theme (not desktop and window decorations). It's is kinda like Chicago95, but feels a bit more modern, not just a straight copy of Windows. There are some layout bugs, and some apps looks overall bad, like Firefox, Thunderbird and BDeaver. I had to manually turn off theming of DBeaver because it's basically useless with the Memphis theme. For Qt I use the built in Windows look. [0] https://gitlab.com/hadrosoft/memphis-98 https://gitlab.com/hadrosoft/memphis-98
cpach 5y ago
I really like this pixel-based layout. But how well would it work on a high-DPI “retina” display? Has anyone tried?
GekkePrutser 5y ago
Isn't this what fvwm95 did all the way back in 1995? :)
periheli0n 5y ago
If the first thing that comes to mind is fvwm95, does that mean I’m old?
vmception 5y ago
A long time ago I noticed that Internet cafe/computer lab users did not conceptualize things like “which operating system is being used” and simply looked for “familiar way to open a browser” So any home screen+icon+square application representation was fine for them at a certain point Ubuntu with just a browser icon reduced user error and friction
MaxBarraclough 5y ago
The Fox Toolkit [0] always looks like Windows 95, and is still getting updates. Its lack of themeability is presumably one of the reasons it's so fast and lightweight. [0] http://fox-toolkit.org/ http://fox-toolkit.org/
stuaxo 5y ago
It's good, though like things that have done this since the end of the 90s, the details are quite there which leads to it not looking like Windows 95. Especially, the spacing around the text labels on icons, the spacing on text around menu controls. With a bit more work on details this could be really hard to tell the difference.
spansoa 5y ago
> Is this ridiculous? Is this blasphemy? Is this… wonderful? I was thinking of a use-case here, and blending in at the Starbucks wifi whilst you do your clandestine Linux activities is one good use-case. Reminds me of Kali Linux's Windows 10 theme that you can enable if you don't want to be judged as a 'hacker type' in public areas (or arouse suspicion).
dusted 5y ago
Now, that's cozy! I very much prefer the "physical" design of windows 9x to the more graphic one of XP and whatever the shit you want to call that horribly ugly clusterfuck of a mess that is 10.
- fredley 5y ago
  Totally agree. I'm ready for the tides of fashion to turn once more and skeuomorphism to be the way again.
  - unfocussed_mike 5y ago
    Only if we can skip right past Windows 95 and have XView/OpenWindows back, thank you in advance.
- tasha0663 5y ago
  Heh, the nice thing about XP was that I didn't feel obligated to force my Linux desktop into cross-toolkit consistency anymore. I seem to recall Outlook pulling from the XP widgets for the Inbox scrollbar and the 9x widgets for the Preview scrollbar. At first, disgust; followed by relief.
dukeofdoom 5y ago
desktop Linux always looked like windows 95 to me
IncRnd 5y ago
Compared to my main desktop running Windows 3.11 [1], I have to say, this 95 thing is quite the looker - extremely visually appealing. 3.11 is starting to feel a bit dated, now that my wife is showing off her TRS80.[2] Her machine is actually a portable that can be placed on a desk anywhere and plugged into any outlet! This 95 seems a fine upgrade path to newer hardware! [1] https://winworldpc.com/product/windows-3/311 https://winworldpc.com/product/windows-3/311 [2] http://www.trs-80.org/model-1/ http://www.trs-80.org/model-1/
bacchusracine 5y ago
Wouldn't QVWM work better with some configuration? https://www.ahinea.com/projects/qvwm/ https://www.ahinea.com/projects/qvwm/
saralily 5y ago
This is what Red Hat 5 looked like out of the box. (More or less.)
charles_f 5y ago
For a more complete experience it should remove sound drivers and alsa from kernel and force you to find a binary copy on a floppy that you pray still works to make the speakers function .
Mikeb85 5y ago
Fun project, but I don't miss old Windows (I don't miss Windows at all really).
nayuki 5y ago
> Make Linux look exactly like Windows 95... I mean *exactly*. Good try, but if you're going to emphasize the exactness, I'm going to nitpick. In the top picture ( https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F114af9f2-58a3-4051-96e8-84bcb83b34cf_800x600.png https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_p... ), the menu bar has too much vertical padding and lacks mnemonic (underlined) letters. The amount of padding on the desktop icon text also looks off. A good example is https://socket3.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/w95ptoys-1.png https://socket3.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/w95ptoys-1.png . In the second picture ( https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5f5d1264-a888-4b57-b5cb-5ec9721a9cbb_800x600.png https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_p... ), Calculator just looks completely off. The Taskbar has too much space between the icon and window title. The tray icons should go in the same box as the clock, not outside. Good examples: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/27/fc/05/27fc05d3f826760c7fd00dc4334af1e6.png https://i.pinimg.com/originals/27/fc/05/27fc05d3f826760c7fd0... ; https://www.cultofmac.com/ezoimgfmt/cdn.cultofmac.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/win95startmenu.png?ezimgfmt=ng:webp/ngcb21 https://www.cultofmac.com/ezoimgfmt/cdn.cultofmac.com/wp-con... And this isn't even going as far as to nitpick the exact font-rendering algorithm down to the pixel.
pym4n 5y ago
Why would I want this? Windows 95 is ugly af.
typon 5y ago
Even though I love the overall GUI feel of Windows 95/98, I absolutely hate the command prompt. Linux terminals are so much more ergonomic
sprayk 5y ago
I wish I could get windows 10/11 to look like that. Seems like the last version of windows that would let you use that style of window decorations was Windows Server 2008.
grae_QED 5y ago
Very cool! I've actually been looking for something like this recently
eMPee584 5y ago
.. this is an easter egg in the bootmenu of our distro, c.f. https://github.com/fsfw-dresden/usb-live-linux/tree/master/features/total_conversion_chicago95 https://github.com/fsfw-dresden/usb-live-linux/tree/master/f... After booting into 'windows mode' and a delay, the hidden cloud intro from the win95cd (youtube:MaU5ED3LyXM) is being autoplayed fullscreen. There's also a qemu icon on the desktop that boots a random 50MiB win95 image I found on archive.org : D
rullelito 5y ago
Can it also make Linux as good for gaming as Windows 95?

473 points by iio7 5y ago

dmix 5y ago

I've always liked those briefcase icons but could never figure out what they did.

shakna 5y ago
They were early two-way synced folders. [0] Like the idea of Dropbox et all, but for anything Windows supported. FTP, Samba, another physical drive, or just another local location. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Briefcase_(Microsoft_Windows) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Briefcase_(Microsoft_Windows)
Bluecobra 5y ago
My first computer had Windows 95 and I had no idea what it did either until now. https://www.howtogeek.com/396628/what-was-the-windows-briefcase-used-for-anyway/amp/ https://www.howtogeek.com/396628/what-was-the-windows-briefc...

SLWW 5y ago

This is really pretty i won't lie. I might just install this on my devbox at home <3

jp0d 5y ago

Can anyone think of a reason why to do this? Apart from personal fun project, of course!

sigzero 5y ago
Nostalgia mostly. However, Win95 had very clear UI elements that made it nice to use.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Donald 5y ago
The 90s were a decade of unbridled American power and optimism. The Soviet union had crumbled and the world was America's oyster. This week's events will cause a resurgence in 90s nostalgia in the West.
- sys_64738 5y ago
  If the best we could do was Win95 then that explains the decline in American imperialism.
bigDinosaur 5y ago
Talking point if out in public (assuming you have this on a laptop or similar) or at a meetup?
LeoPanthera 5y ago
Because that desktop is honestly clearer and faster to understand that today's chromeless trends. Buttons look like buttons, and text boxes are obvious.
- kwertyoowiyop 5y ago
  And there is just enough whitespace. Not waaayyyyy toooooo muuuuccchhh. And there’s consistency. Not eight generations of UI redesigns for each control. And you can actually tell which window has the focus.
  - bqmjjx0kac 5y ago
    Every time our screens get bigger, designers eat the space!
  - forgotmypw17 5y ago
    I use it as my daily driver, and all the answers are here, plus familiarity.
  - polski-g 5y ago
    AWS's recent redesign makes every single UI element have 16px of whitespace. What exactly was the point?
assttoasstmgr 5y ago
Because we hit peak desktop right around Windows 2000. Just about everything since then has been a step backwards in speed and usability. The Mac Finder is a hot mess and seems to get worse with every release. The 964 different desktops available for Linux are in general a hodgepodge of slow impossible-to-use disasters. A notable exception is XFCE but it's a bit of a second-class citizen and even things in XFCE don't work well. (Example: network configuration, you need to be logged in as root to use this applet.) Edit: I would like to point out that the Win2k desktop was blazing fast on a machine with 256MB of RAM. I can't get Debian to install on a machine with less than 512MB without complaining.
- grishka 5y ago
  IMO the last decently desktop version of Windows was 7. After that, it was utterly ruined by the existence of touchscreens and Microsoft's insistence that they're the next big thing in computers. My main issue with current macOS is the combined toolbars and titles, including in finder. There's too much padding but then everything feels unnecessarily cramped. My second issue with modern macOS is their new icon system where literally nothing is aligned to the pixel grid. But there's still a surprising amount of dense UIs — I guess it helps that Apple has a clear separation between touch (iPad) and non-touch (Mac) product lines.
  - bitigchi 5y ago
    It's possible to disable toolbars and use a menu-bar/shortcut oriented workflow like in the Classic Mac OS.
- LAC-Tech 5y ago
  Speak for yourself, my riced out linux desktop is fast and usable AF
- aluminum96 5y ago
  > we hit peak desktop right around Windows 2000 I could not disagree more strongly. Win2000 buttons are tiny, drag areas are tiny, basically everything is tiny and unclickable. I strongly prefer the generously-proportioned, touch-inspired interfaces of the last 4-5 years.
prvc 5y ago
Both a more efficient use of screen space (at least, compared to the default themes of XFCE, crucially, but also KDE, GNOME, and others), and an aesthetically better visual design. I am surprised to have just written this latter observation, considering this came from Microsoft, but I suppose the era when it was designed demanded it, both as a result of the lower screen resolutions used, and the the contemporary marketing needs for the release of Windows 95.
- assttoasstmgr 5y ago
  I wouldn't say marketing so much as Microsoft did a lot of usability testing back then where psychologists threw people in a room and took notes while they interact with the UI. I don't think any OSS projects have this luxury (or money needed to throw around for that sort of thing). Raymond Chen vaguely references it here https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20120126-00/?p=8453 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20120126-00/?p=84... Also, back then, you had to make the best with the resources you had. Computers were slow so UIs had to be lightweight out of necessity. Yet here we are in 2022 and GUI applications have become so bloated they take longer to open up then they did in the 90s. And yes I'm looking at you, GTK and Windows 'Modern' apps.
  - userbinator 5y ago
    and GUI applications have become so bloated they take longer to open up then they did in the 90s. ...while somehow being even less graphically complex.
  - tadfisher 5y ago
    The Gnome project performs usability tests pretty often. That's what led to decisions like deprecating the secondary app menu (app menu in the title bar) and the newer horizontal workspace layout, iirc.
    - voidfunc 5y ago
      And the Gnome project consistently gets it wrong because they keep forgetting their primary target users are not rando's that have never used a computer but mostly season Linux vets.
stjohnswarts 5y ago
Some people like very simple interfaces, icons and schemes. It's a very utilitarian interface and works fine. I often use lxqt which is pretty barebones on VMs to cut down a bit on the memory footprint.
toast0 5y ago
AFAIK, Windows 95 was the last UI design with a published design methodology that includes numerous laboratory test sessions. I'm not sure the original URL, but it was republished [1]. It's listed at ACM [2] as published April 1996, so they were sharing how they did it pretty soon after it was done. I just don't think Microsoft continued to do lab testing of their design, at least they haven't told us that they did, but it feels like a lot of things have gotten harder to do rather than easier to do, which doesn't match their earlier design goals. Windows 95 wasn't the peak, but it was a huge step vs Windows 3.1. IMHO, Apple clearly doesn't care about desktop experience (and anyway, their keyboard shortcuts are wrong, so I'm not using their design), and I don't think any OSS desktop environment is funding user studies (but I'd be happy to see evidence otherwise). Given that situation, I'd rather use the UI that had design goals I like and a design process that allowed developing towards those goals. [1] https://socket3.wordpress.com/2018/02/03/designing-windows-95s-user-interface/ https://socket3.wordpress.com/2018/02/03/designing-windows-9... [2] https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/238386.238611 https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/238386.238611
ziotom78 5y ago
I am currently using KDE with the Reactionary theme [1], which gives my desktop a nice Windows95 look. I love it because the meaning of the buttons on the title bars of windows is very clear, and I know exactly which visual elements can be pressed and which one not. (Disclaimer: I started using computers in late '80s and used Windows95/98/2000 a lot before moving to full Linux when Windows XP came out, so I was already pretty used to the interface.) [1] https://store.kde.org/p/1253201/ https://store.kde.org/p/1253201/
narag 5y ago
I haven't tried this one, but I will. My reason is that I quit Linux because they took away the two pane, file tree in the left, file explorer from me. I was using lxde and suddenly they decided to "redesign" the explorer (more like redoing it from scratch) and the new one had not the file tree pane. I was using lxde because I didn't like Plasma, another imposed "redesign". Now that was the last straw. 15 or 20 years ago... I can't understand why people think it's OK to shit on my muscle memory and habits.
- pcdoodle 5y ago
  Some people don't understand the time value of habits. Makes me angry.

jonpalmisc 5y ago

I’ve used this before and it’s quite good; it not only captures the “old Windows” look well, but I find it to be quite functional too. I was frustrated trying to get my Linux box to look “pretty”, since I find that most GTK and DE themes lack attention to detail that is glaringly obvious to a trained eye. My solution was to take the “scorched Earth” approach: make my UI look as primitive as possible rather than aiming for perfection.

cookiengineer 5y ago
Did you try the arc-dark theme? It's quite popular among archlinux users, and I think it looks pretty polished. [1] I'm no design expert, so I got nothing to say in terms of UI/UX. But it's the theme I've grown most comfortable with to use over the years. I agree with your sentiment that most themes lack attention to detail, where everything looks just more cluttered than anything else (especially when taking a look at icons, fonts etc). [1] https://github.com/horst3180/arc-theme https://github.com/horst3180/arc-theme
- ComradePhil 5y ago
  It seems to have the same icky "material" design look forward which makes me puke in my mouth. I have been wanting to rant on this, so I will do it here. To anyone working in design, the "material" design is not it. Look at this: https://twitter.com/vectaio/status/1018697206776225794?s=21 https://twitter.com/vectaio/status/1018697206776225794?s=21 And compare it to this: http://www.visguy.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/aws-shapes-samples-3-analytics.png http://www.visguy.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/aws-shapes-... What is the purpose of an icon and which of the above serves the purpose better? The purpose of icons is not to look all same, like the material design aims to do. It is to quickly visually distinguish between different things. Material design is terrible for it. I hope more sensible designers fix this and get us out of the "material" nonsense Google has pushed into the world.
  - __del__ 5y ago
    i don't care for the aesthetic of the aws icons you posted, but i agree they serve their purpose much better than the gcloud icons you posted.

deutschewelle 5y ago

Love love these nostalgic takes, reminds me of this Windows 98 demo in a 3D simulation I recently came across. There is a real demand for 90s aesthetics https://twitter.com/PCBANGio/status/1493850712471527426 https://twitter.com/PCBANGio/status/1493850712471527426

charles_f 5y ago
Fun enough that reminds me of the smell in the computer room in our house.
- bqmjjx0kac 5y ago
  Musty carpet?
  - charles_f 5y ago
    Exactly!
LAC-Tech 5y ago
I feel like the era of flat panel displays and the error of windows 98 really didn't intersect much. Though it might just be bias because of how broke I was at the time.
eMPee584 5y ago
yeah 90s' good stuff's way more good than today's good stuff somehow xD

fmakunbound 5y ago

Man, that’s all I really wanted.

userbinator 5y ago

This with WINE is what I think is the perfect combination of GUI and CLI... but as a long-time Windows user, several things stood out and made it look slightly off: the menu bar and padding around the icon labels is too tall the window borders are slightly too wide (compared to the default) scrollbar buttons shouldn't disable at end of travel sort direction indicator in header control (which first appeared in Win2k) should be a grey triangle, not a black arrow "KiB" and "GiB" font has some weird keming in some places Nonetheless, this is a lot closer lookalike than some of the others I've seen, such as this one: https://kmandla.wordpress.com/projects/lookalike-windows-xp-classic/ https://kmandla.wordpress.com/projects/lookalike-windows-xp-...

freedomben 5y ago
This comment makes me so happy. If I read it anywhere else I'd invoke Poe's Law and guess it was a joke. But it being HN I know it's for real, and I love it. Excellence in all we do
- heleninboodler 5y ago
  I like the meta-joke of complaining about the kerning and calling it "keming"
  - pseudosavant 5y ago
    Thank you for pointing out the joke! My eyes went right past the first time. That is the best keming joke ever!
- rbanffy 5y ago
  The font in the terminal called my attention. IIRC, the default one was the 8x8 CGA font with the option for it to be “Lucida Console”. Also, the icon for the terminal was the MSDOS 3D logo. All in all, amazing work.
akx 5y ago
Not to mention the fonts. That's no MS Sans Serif...

HDMI_Cable 5y ago

I'll be the first to say the unpopular take on HN: I don't think Windows 95 looks that good (compared to today). I personally find more modern (like MacOS 10) styles to look the best, and flat designs to be just as usable as more skeumorphic ones. It seems to me that preference for UI styles is completely personal, probably being influenced by what OS we initially used. As someone (potentially a lot) younger than many of those on HN, I like newer designs, and vice versa holds as well.

debo_ 5y ago
mynameismon 5y ago
Yup, I think we fall in a similar age group, and lack the nostalgia that most HN readers have. At the same time, flat design is objectively worse. Barely any indication as to whether something is a button or a text box or a label. Personally, I really like the path taken by WinUI3, since it addresses the UX concerns with a fresh paint of UI
- Shared404 5y ago
  > Yup, I think we fall in a similar age group, and lack the nostalgia that most HN readers have. > At the same time, flat design is objectively worse. Gonna jump in this boat as well, though I do actively search out older UI's and OS's to use.
theandrewbailey 5y ago
The default Windows 95 didn't look that great, but almost everyone agrees that 98 or 2000 are much better (at least they have gradients). But I'm not 100% old school, and I think that Windows 7 Aero looked good, too. I'm sad that someone decided that glassy transparent windows were an abomination and broke them all :(
- kitsunesoba 5y ago
  To me the biggest improvement that 2000 makes to the 9x look are the move to a lighter base gray, as well as changing the default desktop color from that funky teal to a much nicer blue. As minor as those two things may seem they made the OS feel more pleasant. But that may just be the classic Mac OS fanboy in me speaking. Mac OS never used particularly dark grays, so the almost-perfectly-middle-gray seen in 95/98 felt almost depressing in comparison.

theandrewbailey 5y ago

I've been using Chicago95 in a VM and on my laptop for a few years. I was so dedicated to the look that I picked through a Windows install DVD to grab its fonts and use those (Microsoft Sans Serif particularly). I throw in a high resolution Bliss wallpaper, too, even though it totally didn't come with 95, and I don't have much fondness for XP.

forgotmypw17 5y ago
I thought I was reading my own comment at first. This is my main dev environment.

jmmv 5y ago

This looks so nice. Nostalgia indeed, but I miss consistent UIs across apps. SerenityOS must be mentioned in this context too: Win95-like UI on a Unix-like OS. Check it out if you haven’t yet! Edited to add the link I missed: https://serenityos.org/ https://serenityos.org/

Aeolun 5y ago
I really want to rebuild this in a for an existing OS. It’s not the same but it has the perfect feel.
IYasha 5y ago
Wow... just, wow! It's really not just GUI, but an OS!
- gigglesupstairs 5y ago
  You should come here more often :) there are lots of wonderful discussions, in recent past even, on SerenityOS.

mbg721 5y ago

It won't convincingly look like Windows 95 to me without a ton of Invalid Page Faults in kernel32.dll. (Can somebody give me a basic explanation of what that was??)

ronsor 5y ago
The best guess I have is buggy programs passing invalid pointers to kernel32 functions (e.g. OpenFile/WriteFile).
pleb_nz 5y ago
invalid page faults
dredmorbius 5y ago
Install the BSOD x11-screensaver hack. (I used this for a while in rotation with others ... cow-orkers would occasionally tell my my laptop had crashed. I'd enter my password and continue working...)
toast0 5y ago
Ok, so a page fault is when you try to access a memory address that's not mapped by the MMU, or a write to a memory address that's mapped as read only. The MMU works in pages though, not individual addresses, on x86, standard pages are 4096 bytes, although larger pages are available. A valid page fault is when the OS has allocated that page in the current context, but not actually mapped it; it could be a not yet mapped in page from a memory-mapped file, or a page that was swapped to disk, or a page that was allocated but not yet used (not sure if win95 does that), or a write to a page that is allocated as read-write but is currently mapped as read-only and needs copy-on-write (COW) processing now. An invalid page fault is a read or a write to a page that the MMU doesn't have a mapping for and the OS also doesn't have a mapping for. These errors can be caused by many things; often a programming error leads to pointers being overwritten with unrelated data, when they're dereferenced it could access the wrong data or it could cause an invalid page fault. Hardware errors can also result in bad addresses in a pointer. Sometimes it's unintended interactions between running software or software and hardware.
flomo 5y ago

vector1337 5y ago

Is there something similar for mac?

markus_zhang 5y ago

Ah I need to teach my Win10 qt project this look. Tried hard but the best I got was win7 style.

kalel83 5y ago

You had me at Netscape navigator.

nebula8804 5y ago

I have used themes like this on Linux and also some to make it look like MacOS. What I really want on Linux are tools that are written to be exactly like Windows, no more no less. Why? Well in addition to the numerous OS related problems I seem to encounter every time I go back and do a clean install of a distro like Ubuntu I am also annoyed by how poorly designed many of the basic tools like the calculator is. The Windows calculator is so simple that it makes it super easy to hop in, do a quick calculation via the numpad and jump out. Just copy it exactly. To this day there is still no default Paint program as good as MSPaint. MSPaint is great for pasting screenshots, quickly cropping/cutting and then saving. On linux you gotta install some other junk like Gimp/Krita/whatever else the typical forum dwellers recommend this month. Just please give me MSPaint on Linux. Nothing more, Nothing Less.

CrazedGeek 5y ago
FYI, there's a port of the Windows calculator to Linux (and a bunch of other platforms): https://github.com/unoplatform/calculator https://github.com/unoplatform/calculator
- nebula8804 5y ago
  Darn, its the new calculator. I actually delete this on a fresh Windows 10 install and if you search, there is an installer floating around that re-adds the Windows 7 calculator. It takes much longer for this new calculator to boot up and you can feel the bloat when using it.
stjohnswarts 5y ago
Have you tried the gnome app "drawing" or the kde apt "kolourpaint" ?
- _zooted 5y ago
  Kolour Paint is really good - basically a much improved version of MS Paint in terms of interface and simplicity. I run a GNOME system but I still use the Klour Paint flatpak since it's so good.

surajs 5y ago

hestefisk 5y ago

I remember that installing RH 5.2 (Hedwig? Apollo?) in 1999 and getting FVWM95 installed using rpm. It closely resembled Windows 95. From memory, icewm also had a similar theme. I miss the simplicity of the gui from this era, not Windows 95, but Windows NT 4.0. The dark blue boot screen was quite nice and the system was fast and quite stable around SP6a.

necrotic_comp 5y ago

icewm is a bit different, but it has a "windows95" type theme that, while it doesn't look nearly as good, is insanely functional. I've found it to be a window manager that is easy to script, easy to use, and gets out of the way for the most part. I spent a lot of time looking for a good window manager, trying all the usual ones (gnome, kde, xmonad (stayed there for a while!), dwm, etc.), but I've found this one to be the best and least obtrusive of any of them. Definitely worth a look if you're still in the hunt and not necessarily keen on making something look pretty. https://ice-wm.org/ https://ice-wm.org/

qbasic_forever 5y ago

I really like the Chicago95 theme here, it's great with XFCE/xubuntu on low spec devices. I also like installing the Window Maker and OpenBox WMs with a bunch of retro unix backgrounds--they kind of have the feel of CDE and old Solaris systems. I haven't used it but apparently someone is working on a more modern retro feel CDE-inspired thing here: https://github.com/NsCDE/NsCDE https://github.com/NsCDE/NsCDE Depending on my mood I can log in to a retro Windows or Unix experience. I haven't looked deeply into it but I think saw a Mac System 7 inspired WM theme out there too. IMHO retro modern computing environments are quirky fun that should be a bigger thing. :) It's not canon to Windows 95, but XScreenSaver pairs nicely to go with the overall late 90s retro feel too: https://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/ https://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/ These screensavers are exactly the kind of thing workstations of the era would have been blasting in computer labs nearly 24/7.

Falkon1313 5y ago
Just a tip, JWZ doesn't like direct links from here to his site. Copy and paste the link into a new tab for it to work. I don't even remember why, but it's been tradition for years now.

windows2020 5y ago

I can't express how excited I am for consistent and metaphorical UI to be rediscovered by the 'designers' of today.

epistasis 5y ago
Wait, you simply let users know what's a button by the visual decorations and differentiated edges? And you let them know the status of toggle buttons without forcing them to toggle multiple times and guess based on which colors what might mean what? Blasphemy! Next you'll be letting web pages readers know what is and is not a link by using a consistent underline scheme. Which would be a completely unacceptable level of interpretability.
- gigglesupstairs 5y ago
  Remember when buttons, when pressed, looked pressed? I remember!
  - smilespray 5y ago
    The UX & UI design department of Pepperidge farm members, too.
  - zamadatix 5y ago
    Wow I've somehow completely missed the gradual disappearance of this. So many buttons now only have the hover effect.
ido 5y ago
It’s not about “today”, it’s about Linux vs Win/Mac. The former is a lot less consistent than the latter and this was just as true in 1995 as it is today.
- II2II 5y ago
  At least with respect to Linux and Windows, both suffer from similar problems with consistency. Both have suffered from a great deal of churn over the years. Both have a variety of toolkits that vary in both appearance and functionality. If you compare current software on both platforms, it is difficult to claim that one is much better than the other. (Though I will agree that Linux was incredibly inconsistent in 1995.)

kaetemi 5y ago

The vertical text alignment is all wrong. :(

jcadam 5y ago

Very nice. Someone needs to do Windows 3.1 :)

agumonkey 5y ago
I'd support this.
- HeckFeck 5y ago
  https://github.com/jcs/progman https://github.com/jcs/progman Someone already has.
  - agumonkey 5y ago
    very nice
    - visiblink 5y ago
      With the hotdog stand theme, no less! The only crack in the spell is the program launcher. Apparently, it's a left-click on the desktop to get a menu, like in the old Stiletto program for WIN31: http://www.technofileonline.com/texts/tec092098.html http://www.technofileonline.com/texts/tec092098.html
  - stuaxo 5y ago
    This properly looks good.
  - anthk 5y ago
    From JCS I suggest reading it's timeline on Mac OS System 6 C programming too.

sb057 5y ago

But does it support thumbnails in the file picker?

prvc 5y ago

The Office theme is off, somehow. Also, Word 97 has a much nicer, cleaner layout than 95 (assuming Clippy has been totally disabled, of course). Not sure if the icons are any different, though. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4a/Office_97_on_Windows_NT_4.0.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4a/Office_97_on_...

oefrha 5y ago

Now someone should make a browser theme to give me back the three rows of Ask Toolbar and other goodies. (I know, that’s the XP era, not 95.)

sunflowerdeath 5y ago

Now I regret a little bit that I have switched from linux to a macbook

voidfunc 5y ago

I still fucking love that Win95/Win98/Win2K look and feel. Its no nonsense and perfect in my opinion.

IYasha 5y ago

I thought my dream came true, but... There's one thing he isn't showing - the infamous GTK's "Cancel-OK" message box combination. As much as I respect Lunduke's work, it's GTK-based. And my Linux environment is completely 95% Qt5 (it'll be 100% if I figure out how to migrate to Qt-based browser). The main advantage of OS/2 or Win9x-like UI is its speed and consistency. And it soesn't allocate/read/render 9 PNG files per element (like button). Works using Line()s and FillRect()s. If modern KDE could do that, I'd have no complains...

lewispollard 5y ago
I know it doesn't do it efficiently, but there are a whole bunch of plasma themes, window decorations, cursor sets and so on that emulate win 95/98/xp (and even vista) in KDE Plasma, and you can install them right from the system settings.
- IYasha 5y ago
  Thanks! I tried. But at that time there were lots of inconsistencies. I tried going full-95, but couldn't find exact controls. And in most themes there were bitmap or vector images to mimic control appearance. It's nothing like disabling effects on Win7 brings back natively-drawn imageless UI. Generally, I tried even making my own theme, but it looked odd. ) Especially when the start menu ignored all the theme colors and lived on its own. I've heard they've fixed it in newer Plasma releases though.

JimDabell 5y ago

It was actually fairly popular at the end of the 90s to run FVWM95, which was basically FVWM 2 skinned to look like Windows 95. It looked pretty similar to this project, for obvious reasons. http://fvwm95.sourceforge.net http://fvwm95.sourceforge.net

_abox 5y ago
Yeah I remember we used to run it as a joke.. On our HP-UX systems with VUE at the time. The sysadmins hated it when we made our terminals look like what they viewed as an inferior system (which to be honest it was, at the time with its DOS underpinnings)
pjmlp 5y ago
It makes me feel rather old when only your comment and another one are the only references to fvwm95 among 92 comments. It really shows how much current generations have lost from Linux early days, or how old some of us are.

IYasha 5y ago

In early 2000s I've created a few .theme files in Win98, all with different shades of main window color. And, with minimal tweaking, I made it work in EVERY version of Windows from 95 to 7! That's what I liked about backwards-compatibility. (and, most likely, I won't be using Windows after 7 anymore).

padde 5y ago

Haha, the memories :D nicely done.

desktopninja 5y ago

For a while now I've thoroughly enjoyed using with the q4os w/Trinity DE: https://q4os.org/ https://q4os.org/ I hope MS gives us Lindows (anyone remember that catch song Lindows Rocks lol) ... Linux + Win2k DE ...

beebeepka 5y ago

Remember, win95 GUI allow us to place the taskbar wherever we want without causing issues. Gnome 2 did, too, except it was almost unusable in that mode because they used to have a repeated "1px by I don't remember how much" for a taskbar background. Even Windows 11 only lets people have the thing on the bottom

alexklark 5y ago

It is 2022, and Windows 95 still have better font rendering.

ChiefOBrien 5y ago

26 years since the release of Win95 and Linux still cannot make a pixel perfect copy of the GUI with proper alignment and padding.

emptyparadise 5y ago

Sadly 99% of these modifications are surface level and don't go far enough in terms of actual usability. It's always the little things that break the spell, stuff like being able to open tree views using the keyboard.

bmn__ 5y ago

https://archive.org/details/winfiles_cmfriend_202005 https://archive.org/details/winfiles_cmfriend_202005 Ah, so that is what the semi-popular cyan-greyish colour theme is. Random encounter: <http://hallofshame.gp.co.at/tabs.htm http://hallofshame.gp.co.at/tabs.htm> I've been looking for the origin for twenty years.

hyakosm 5y ago
I like it, it's relaxing for the eyes, like the blue tints of Sun Solaris with CDE: http://toastytech.com/guis/sol.html http://toastytech.com/guis/sol.html
- marcodiego 5y ago
  Note that CDE is open source since a few years ago. I personally compiled and run it on Debian 10. Getting it similar to screenshots you linked is not too much of a work.
chungy 5y ago
I feel like that's just a slight variant (with the font, mainly) of the built-in Rainy Day theme.

obxw 5y ago

Why?

jacobmischka 5y ago
Why not?

Snortibartfast 5y ago

I actually didn't like (and still don't) Windows in any form, but the one thing I did/do like is the Windows 95/98/2000 UI. I came from an Amiga background, and even though I think of Amiga with fond memories, I thought the UI was a bit too spartan and clumsy (MUI was a step in the right direction though). Nowadays I use Memphis-98 [0] as GUI theme (not desktop and window decorations). It's is kinda like Chicago95, but feels a bit more modern, not just a straight copy of Windows. There are some layout bugs, and some apps looks overall bad, like Firefox, Thunderbird and BDeaver. I had to manually turn off theming of DBeaver because it's basically useless with the Memphis theme. For Qt I use the built in Windows look. [0] https://gitlab.com/hadrosoft/memphis-98 https://gitlab.com/hadrosoft/memphis-98

cpach 5y ago

I really like this pixel-based layout. But how well would it work on a high-DPI “retina” display? Has anyone tried?

GekkePrutser 5y ago

Isn't this what fvwm95 did all the way back in 1995? :)

periheli0n 5y ago

If the first thing that comes to mind is fvwm95, does that mean I’m old?

vmception 5y ago

A long time ago I noticed that Internet cafe/computer lab users did not conceptualize things like “which operating system is being used” and simply looked for “familiar way to open a browser” So any home screen+icon+square application representation was fine for them at a certain point Ubuntu with just a browser icon reduced user error and friction

MaxBarraclough 5y ago

The Fox Toolkit [0] always looks like Windows 95, and is still getting updates. Its lack of themeability is presumably one of the reasons it's so fast and lightweight. [0] http://fox-toolkit.org/ http://fox-toolkit.org/

stuaxo 5y ago

It's good, though like things that have done this since the end of the 90s, the details are quite there which leads to it not looking like Windows 95. Especially, the spacing around the text labels on icons, the spacing on text around menu controls. With a bit more work on details this could be really hard to tell the difference.

spansoa 5y ago

> Is this ridiculous? Is this blasphemy? Is this… wonderful? I was thinking of a use-case here, and blending in at the Starbucks wifi whilst you do your clandestine Linux activities is one good use-case. Reminds me of Kali Linux's Windows 10 theme that you can enable if you don't want to be judged as a 'hacker type' in public areas (or arouse suspicion).

dusted 5y ago

Now, that's cozy! I very much prefer the "physical" design of windows 9x to the more graphic one of XP and whatever the shit you want to call that horribly ugly clusterfuck of a mess that is 10.

fredley 5y ago
Totally agree. I'm ready for the tides of fashion to turn once more and skeuomorphism to be the way again.
- unfocussed_mike 5y ago
  Only if we can skip right past Windows 95 and have XView/OpenWindows back, thank you in advance.
tasha0663 5y ago
Heh, the nice thing about XP was that I didn't feel obligated to force my Linux desktop into cross-toolkit consistency anymore. I seem to recall Outlook pulling from the XP widgets for the Inbox scrollbar and the 9x widgets for the Preview scrollbar. At first, disgust; followed by relief.

dukeofdoom 5y ago

desktop Linux always looked like windows 95 to me

IncRnd 5y ago

Compared to my main desktop running Windows 3.11 [1], I have to say, this 95 thing is quite the looker - extremely visually appealing. 3.11 is starting to feel a bit dated, now that my wife is showing off her TRS80.[2] Her machine is actually a portable that can be placed on a desk anywhere and plugged into any outlet! This 95 seems a fine upgrade path to newer hardware! [1] https://winworldpc.com/product/windows-3/311 https://winworldpc.com/product/windows-3/311 [2] http://www.trs-80.org/model-1/ http://www.trs-80.org/model-1/

bacchusracine 5y ago

Wouldn't QVWM work better with some configuration? https://www.ahinea.com/projects/qvwm/ https://www.ahinea.com/projects/qvwm/

saralily 5y ago

This is what Red Hat 5 looked like out of the box. (More or less.)

charles_f 5y ago

For a more complete experience it should remove sound drivers and alsa from kernel and force you to find a binary copy on a floppy that you pray still works to make the speakers function .

Mikeb85 5y ago

Fun project, but I don't miss old Windows (I don't miss Windows at all really).

nayuki 5y ago

> Make Linux look exactly like Windows 95... I mean *exactly*. Good try, but if you're going to emphasize the exactness, I'm going to nitpick. In the top picture ( https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F114af9f2-58a3-4051-96e8-84bcb83b34cf_800x600.png https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_p... ), the menu bar has too much vertical padding and lacks mnemonic (underlined) letters. The amount of padding on the desktop icon text also looks off. A good example is https://socket3.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/w95ptoys-1.png https://socket3.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/w95ptoys-1.png . In the second picture ( https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5f5d1264-a888-4b57-b5cb-5ec9721a9cbb_800x600.png https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_p... ), Calculator just looks completely off. The Taskbar has too much space between the icon and window title. The tray icons should go in the same box as the clock, not outside. Good examples: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/27/fc/05/27fc05d3f826760c7fd00dc4334af1e6.png https://i.pinimg.com/originals/27/fc/05/27fc05d3f826760c7fd0... ; https://www.cultofmac.com/ezoimgfmt/cdn.cultofmac.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/win95startmenu.png?ezimgfmt=ng:webp/ngcb21 https://www.cultofmac.com/ezoimgfmt/cdn.cultofmac.com/wp-con... And this isn't even going as far as to nitpick the exact font-rendering algorithm down to the pixel.

pym4n 5y ago

Why would I want this? Windows 95 is ugly af.

typon 5y ago

Even though I love the overall GUI feel of Windows 95/98, I absolutely hate the command prompt. Linux terminals are so much more ergonomic

sprayk 5y ago

I wish I could get windows 10/11 to look like that. Seems like the last version of windows that would let you use that style of window decorations was Windows Server 2008.

grae_QED 5y ago

Very cool! I've actually been looking for something like this recently

eMPee584 5y ago

.. this is an easter egg in the bootmenu of our distro, c.f. https://github.com/fsfw-dresden/usb-live-linux/tree/master/features/total_conversion_chicago95 https://github.com/fsfw-dresden/usb-live-linux/tree/master/f... After booting into 'windows mode' and a delay, the hidden cloud intro from the win95cd (youtube:MaU5ED3LyXM) is being autoplayed fullscreen. There's also a qemu icon on the desktop that boots a random 50MiB win95 image I found on archive.org : D

rullelito 5y ago

Can it also make Linux as good for gaming as Windows 95?