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I absolutely agree. For at least 10 years now, my dream has been to essentially recreate the Windows 2000/XP UX as a Linux desktop environment. That said, doin

by jchw 3y ago

I absolutely agree. For at least 10 years now, my dream has been to essentially recreate the Windows 2000/XP UX as a Linux desktop environment. That said, doing so would basically require creating everything from the ground up, because merely theming some existing toolkit and window manager to look like XP is not at all the point. And frankly, there HAVE been SOME useful UI/UX improvements in the past couple decades, like, FTA, minimaps. But can you imagine a much more conservative desktop, with highly integrated apps, based on the "good old days" of desktop design with just a touch of modern elements when they improve on things? ... Truth told, the closest thing in existence is probably SerenityOS... but it really would be more practical if there was a Linux desktop for this. Every so often I fantasize about how I might start such a project. It's been like that forever now.

cwillu 3y ago
If you haven't already, look at xfce.
- jchw 3y ago
  I did like XFCE at one point, but it never really did quite nail the UX for me. A lot of the problem is more on GTK+2 than it was anything else. (Obligatory mention of no thumbnails in file dialog; I used to patch GTK by hand for this!) Now with newer versions of GTK, this problem has unfortunately gotten worse for me, and I don't really prefer XFCE very much. Worseyet, I've gotten used to wlroots giving me good support for things that never really worked well in X11, and XFCE's plan regarding X11 and Wayland going into the future is still somewhat unclear. I also tried LXDE and LXQt as well. I actually thought LXQt might be the one for me, but it was a bit buggy and lacked a lot of much-needed maintenance. Also, although I'm glad Linux developers don't always make a habit of just simply throwing out ideas and code that works fine, it does bother me how antiquated some things have gotten. DBus is the best desktop IPC option on Linux, and that's not really a great thing in my opinion. Likewise, it sucks that most file archivers still work by popening some command and parsing its output, occasionally breaking on edge cases, usually having limited support for the kinds of advanced functionality you'd get in Windows archive tools. I do understand that making actually-good applications takes time, but over the course of the past couple decades it doesn't feel like much progress has been made here. I mean hell, speaking of archive tools... FreeBSD has been working on libarchive for ages and it'll likely be integrated with fucking Windows before it's integrated with common Linux desktops, which will probably mostly farm out to CLI tools like unar and zip directly. This is the same approach, with the same exact problems, that I remember being used as far back as when I started using Linux, in programs like Xfe. Needless to say... my feelings are complicated.
- marcus_holmes 3y ago
  using KDE Plasma, which isn't bad, and is configurable enough :)
jwrallie 3y ago
I believe the biggest obstacle is dealing with different toolkits, since gtk3 and later are constantly breaking theme compatibility with new versions, and nobody have the time to maintain good alternative themes in these conditions. XFCE with Chicago95 already exists (and so does Q4OS with XPQ4) as proof of concept that the window manager and toolbar side can be replicated. The problem is that important pieces of software are not relying on any toolkit directly, but implementing their own version, so even if you support qt, gtk2 and gtk3+ applications with 3 different themes, there will be software running under electron or implementing their own client side decorations and breaking all the rules. I think the easiest way to start would be to simply collect and maintain existing themes with a unified look and make a distro based on Ubuntu LTS or even RHEL to avoid breaking changes at maximum. This distro would have pre-selected software that behaves well with the selected themes, and need to have at absolute minimum a working browser with extensions following that theme. If implementing from the bottom up, then something similar to helloSystem could also be a way, but I do not see it working in practice due to the time it would take.
- bluGill 3y ago
  You can find well maintained applications for almost everything in either qt or gtk3. So you can select one toolkit to support. KDE might even accept your theme if you did enough work on it to make it work - and this is something that is feasible for one person. The hard part is those few exceptions, if you need one GTK3 app because KDE doesn't have a good alternative (or one qt app because GTK3 doesn't) then you have twice as much work and it is probably beyond what one person can do. Making that missing app for qt/gtk3 probably needs a large team and a few years and so is beyond you (unless you are rich and can afford to hire someone to fulfill your vision) - and there are many missing applications, not to mention existing ones which are just barely acceptable
  - pseudalopex 3y ago
    Most maintained GTK 3 apps replaced menu bars with hamburger menus.
gnyman 3y ago
Have you looked at Q4OS with the windows theme pack? https://q4os.org/ https://q4os.org/ and https://xpq4.sourceforge.io/ https://xpq4.sourceforge.io/ It's does not seem well known but it looks and works very closely to old Windows. I have a side project plan to take this, combine it with a decent laptop, pre install libreoffice and a browser and sell it as "Stable OS" with a long term "no-change" policy to anyone who just needs a basic computer where not everything changes at the whim of someone looking for a item on their resume.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

by jchw 3y ago

cwillu 3y ago

If you haven't already, look at xfce.

jchw 3y ago
I did like XFCE at one point, but it never really did quite nail the UX for me. A lot of the problem is more on GTK+2 than it was anything else. (Obligatory mention of no thumbnails in file dialog; I used to patch GTK by hand for this!) Now with newer versions of GTK, this problem has unfortunately gotten worse for me, and I don't really prefer XFCE very much. Worseyet, I've gotten used to wlroots giving me good support for things that never really worked well in X11, and XFCE's plan regarding X11 and Wayland going into the future is still somewhat unclear. I also tried LXDE and LXQt as well. I actually thought LXQt might be the one for me, but it was a bit buggy and lacked a lot of much-needed maintenance. Also, although I'm glad Linux developers don't always make a habit of just simply throwing out ideas and code that works fine, it does bother me how antiquated some things have gotten. DBus is the best desktop IPC option on Linux, and that's not really a great thing in my opinion. Likewise, it sucks that most file archivers still work by popening some command and parsing its output, occasionally breaking on edge cases, usually having limited support for the kinds of advanced functionality you'd get in Windows archive tools. I do understand that making actually-good applications takes time, but over the course of the past couple decades it doesn't feel like much progress has been made here. I mean hell, speaking of archive tools... FreeBSD has been working on libarchive for ages and it'll likely be integrated with fucking Windows before it's integrated with common Linux desktops, which will probably mostly farm out to CLI tools like unar and zip directly. This is the same approach, with the same exact problems, that I remember being used as far back as when I started using Linux, in programs like Xfe. Needless to say... my feelings are complicated.
marcus_holmes 3y ago
using KDE Plasma, which isn't bad, and is configurable enough :)

jwrallie 3y ago

I believe the biggest obstacle is dealing with different toolkits, since gtk3 and later are constantly breaking theme compatibility with new versions, and nobody have the time to maintain good alternative themes in these conditions. XFCE with Chicago95 already exists (and so does Q4OS with XPQ4) as proof of concept that the window manager and toolbar side can be replicated. The problem is that important pieces of software are not relying on any toolkit directly, but implementing their own version, so even if you support qt, gtk2 and gtk3+ applications with 3 different themes, there will be software running under electron or implementing their own client side decorations and breaking all the rules. I think the easiest way to start would be to simply collect and maintain existing themes with a unified look and make a distro based on Ubuntu LTS or even RHEL to avoid breaking changes at maximum. This distro would have pre-selected software that behaves well with the selected themes, and need to have at absolute minimum a working browser with extensions following that theme. If implementing from the bottom up, then something similar to helloSystem could also be a way, but I do not see it working in practice due to the time it would take.

bluGill 3y ago
You can find well maintained applications for almost everything in either qt or gtk3. So you can select one toolkit to support. KDE might even accept your theme if you did enough work on it to make it work - and this is something that is feasible for one person. The hard part is those few exceptions, if you need one GTK3 app because KDE doesn't have a good alternative (or one qt app because GTK3 doesn't) then you have twice as much work and it is probably beyond what one person can do. Making that missing app for qt/gtk3 probably needs a large team and a few years and so is beyond you (unless you are rich and can afford to hire someone to fulfill your vision) - and there are many missing applications, not to mention existing ones which are just barely acceptable
- pseudalopex 3y ago
  Most maintained GTK 3 apps replaced menu bars with hamburger menus.

gnyman 3y ago

Have you looked at Q4OS with the windows theme pack? https://q4os.org/ https://q4os.org/ and https://xpq4.sourceforge.io/ https://xpq4.sourceforge.io/ It's does not seem well known but it looks and works very closely to old Windows. I have a side project plan to take this, combine it with a decent laptop, pre install libreoffice and a browser and sell it as "Stable OS" with a long term "no-change" policy to anyone who just needs a basic computer where not everything changes at the whim of someone looking for a item on their resume.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]