13 ms·

Blue95: a desktop for your childhood home's computer room

• esafak 2y ago
  I'm trying to forget that horror show and you want to put it under a spotlight! If I never see a bsod or windows registry again it'll be too soon.
  • stavros 2y ago
    Well, at least buttons looked like buttons.
• rbanffy 2y ago
  How cute… imagine my childhood home would have a computer with a graphical desktop… I feel so old now…
  • cmrdporcupine 2y ago
    Yeah as far as GUIs go, Win95 isn't in the "nostalgia" category for me, I was already well into adulthood. I kind of get the appeal, but it's also unnecessarily skeumorphic/fake-3d and there were some UX things that made little sense especially lumping all the window controls all together (including the destructive "close" X) where MacOS smartly separated them.
    • fallsoffbikes 2y ago
      Though Apple has forgotten or ignored this in products like the Apple tv where restart and factory reset are right next to each other.
      • pwython 2y ago
        Especially when you're using that tiny trackpad remote. Overall, Apple TV works, but most of the apps UX suck, and that's not Apple's fault.
    • abraxas 2y ago
      The fake 3d is actually very useful in communicating what is a button or another interactive piece of the interface and what's not. The modern clean uis where everything is a thin rectangle or just text that you are supposed to click are a nightmare.
      • alabastervlog 2y ago
        Old screen caps of UIs with depth feel so relaxing to look at, and I don’t think it’s just a nostalgia effect. It’s like there’s always just a little extra brain power and attention being used by modern flat UIs, and you get to shut that off when you look at a depth-enhanced UI.
        • rbanffy 2y ago
          The most important part is that controls are consistent across applications. In that regard, tools and libraries that implement some look and feel rather than deferring it to the underlying environment are a disservice to users. Windows, for instance, has dozens of ways to do that, and you can find parts of Windows that use an archeological version of the controls. Nobody, it seems, bothered to reimplement the older APIs on top of the new ones.
      • rbanffy 2y ago
        I agree. Early Macs had to give buttons a 2D distinctive look. A good thing was that the look and feel were part of the OS and not the application, so everything would be consistent.
    • mrweasel 2y ago
      > where MacOS smartly separated them. Interesting that modern macOS now have them next to each other, like Windows. You'd be hard pressed to call the Window 95 UI pretty, but it is really functional. I'm still a firm believe that the majority of the work we do with computers today could be done within the Windows 95 shell. We need 64bit, more memory, faster CPUs, GPUs all that, but the modern UI aren't really "better", if anything many of them are more confusing. I think a lot of office works would be happy to just have kept the Window 95 era UI for Windows and Office.
      • rbanffy 2y ago
        > You'd be hard pressed to call the Window 95 UI pretty, but it is really functional. Ironically, the Windows 95 look seems a lot like a copy of the NeXT look, which is the OS all modern Macs are kind of running.
        • cmrdporcupine 2y ago
          Yeah frankly I'd take the NeXT UI over any of them, including Mac OS X, which felt like a huge step backwards to me compared to NeXTstep EDIT: Sun's OpenLook is the other one from that era that was fantastic
        • chuckadams 2y ago
          The window decorations in Win95 are in fact pixel-for-pixel copies of the ones in NeXTSTEP.
          • cmrdporcupine 2y ago
            Note that NeXTstep actually did the right thing with window controls -- close is on opposite side of the window from the others, so you can't accidentally hit it. Windows3 and Motif hid this stuff under a menu, so wasn't a huge concern. But then Windows95, and then (oddly) MacOS through this away in favour of throwing them all together. Awareness of spatial patterns / frequency of use seems to have been higher among early UX/UI designers than after. I guess maybe because mice became more accurate?
  • spacedcowboy 2y ago
    Yeah. My first computer I soldered the chips/resistors/capacitors/etc to the PCB... It had 1K of RAM, and the screen memory had to come out of that too... Someone wrote chess for it. [aside] It was a Sinclair ZX-81, and I was 11 at the time. My parents bought the kit and a second-hand black & white TV with a dial-tuner (no pushbuttons to change the channel) as an Xmas present ... I loved the TV, it was my TV when we only had one other in the house. I watched everything on that TV (even snooker and swore I could tell which ball was which)... After a couple of months, my dad started to get annoyed I'd not bothered to build the computer, so I was dispatched to the shed to build it. A few days later (hey, I was in school), the thing worked and I was working my way through the (rather excellent) manual that came with it, getting to know it. One of the logic chapters had an example: [P]RINT 1+1=2 (It was tokenised input, so you just pressed P and PRINT would come up in the built-in BASIC). Anyone here can see that the answer would be logical-true because 1+1 does equal 2, and indeed the computer printed "1" on the next line. Anyway, flush with this futuristic knowledge, I set it all up using the family TV in the lounge, and we went through the same thing, just to prove to everyone that it worked... [P]RINT 1+1=2 1 "I knew it. You've buggered it", said my dad in disgust as he got up and walked out the room. I tried to explain the (new to me) concept of logical truth to him and how the computer represented it, but I don't think he ever really believed me... [/aside] Anyway, that Sinclair ZX81 fundamentally changed my life. Computers and computing opened up a whole new world. Some 45 years later I'm about to retire from Apple as one of their most senior engineers, having been here for the last 20 years. Anyone with any Apple device is running some of the software I've written over the years which is kind of cool, but it's time to bow out.
• metadat 2y ago
  This looks nice and easy to use. My hypothesis is today's "modern" OS user interfaces are objectively worse from a usability perspective, obfuscating key functionality behind layers of confusing menus. It reminds me of these "OS popularity since the 70s" time lapse views: https://youtube.com/watch?v=cTKhqtll5cQ https://youtube.com/watch?v=cTKhqtll5cQ The dominance of Windows is crazy, even today, Mac desktops and laptops are comparatively niche
  • voidfunc 2y ago
    I got in an argument with an accessibility engineer about this recently... The whole UI as branding thing has utterly killed usability.
    • pwg 2y ago
      "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/21810-it-is-difficult-to-get-a-man-to-understand-something https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/21810-it-is-difficult-to-ge...
    • hyperbrainer 2y ago
      It's interesting especially because it seems like companies today pour tens of millions into "accessibility", but I never see a thing's usability in terms of simple and easy-to-do-what-I-want UX fall in to the same category.
      • rafram 2y ago
        One is required by law and/or contract terms, the other is just nice to have.
        • layer8 2y ago
          And that is why we can’t have nice things, apparently.
• anthk 2y ago
  It needs the BSOD screensaver from XScreensaver, for sure. And, maybe, DOSBox-X or DOSEmu2. Also: - Pan - Sylpheed - Audacious with the WinAMP theme - Hexchat kinda has a MIRC vibe - Parole looks like WMP from < v9 releases - You can't simulate a dialer, but with trickle you can mimic a 56k/ISDN connection pretty well - SyncTERM for BBS's - ScummVM, with just a bilinear filter, because I played tons of adventures - There's an SDL2 reimplementation of Space Cadet Pinball at github. - Trigger Rally would look like a great shareware game - Pidgin, hands down. Either you were an AOL user in America, or a MSN user in Europe. It has emoticons, not emojis. Add that annoying notification theme with a sound and that would be the very late 90's/early 00's (my early teen years)
  • esafak 2y ago
    Trillian > Pidgin. What's Pan?
    • anthk 2y ago
      A news reader (NNTP). OFC, geek people would use SLRN, but we are mimicking Windows.
  • brandon272 2y ago
    Emoticons! I completely forgot about that term.
• emidln 2y ago
  This looks neat. I remember the various fvwm95 and icewm themes doing a similar number in the late 90s and early 2000s. It would be fun to pair this with Gambas[0], a free VB6 clone that works with GTK. [0] https://gambaswiki.org/website/en/main.html https://gambaswiki.org/website/en/main.html
  • ThinkingGuy 2y ago
    qvwm was another window manager that sought to emulate the look and feel of Windows: https://qvwm.sourceforge.net/index_en.html https://qvwm.sourceforge.net/index_en.html
• bsnnkv 2y ago
  This still remains the absolute pinnacle of cohesive desktop environment design in my books.
  • InsideOutSanta 2y ago
    I think the desktop operating systems of that era were at a sweet spot. They were technically advanced enough to render good-looking, crisp color user interfaces. However, most people were still novices at using computers, so OS designers consciously designed their operating systems to be as clear as possible. Applications tended to be written for each individual platform and to follow its UI guidelines. Windows 95, NT, System 7 and System 8, BeOS, and NextSTEP all had really clear UX. You always knew where to drag a window, what was clickable, where to find settings, etc.
    • cosmic_cheese 2y ago
      An aspect of System 7/Mac OS 8/9 that I find criminally underrated is how flexible it is. For those versions, a good bulk of the “system” isn’t part of the system proper but instead implemented by way of extensions and control panels loaded at startup. The OS itself is extremely minimal, basically just enough to provide a barebones desktop and act as a substrate for apps to run on. Everything else, including “core” functionality like audio and networking, was implemented in an extension. This meant that you could pare back the OS to be extremely lean and only have the exact functionality you personally needed at that precise moment and nothing else, and doing so didn’t require you to recompile a kernel or anything like that — just create an extension set that only loaded what you needed. This was excellent for use cases like games and emulators where you wanted every last ounce of resources to go to those, and nice for single purpose machines too (no point in loading game controller support on a box that only ever runs Photoshop and Illustrator). Of course the way it was implemented is awful by modern standards, but the concept is golden and I think there should be OS projects trying to replicate it.
      • InsideOutSanta 2y ago
        I remember creating different extension sets using the built-in Extension Manager and the third-party tool Conflict Catcher. I had sets for gaming, video editing, and normal usage. It was a simple matter of selecting the correct set and rebooting. Or you could hit shift on startup and start into a minimal system without any extensions. There's a good reason the third-party extension manager was called "Conflict Catcher," but the power and flexibility such a system grants users is unmatched.
• jemurray 2y ago
  My childhood home would need DOS. Maybe deskview for multitasking. :)
  • xtracto 2y ago
    Dosshell ha! Or xtree gold . Great times.
  • esafak 2y ago
    DESQview with a Q for Quarterdeck :)
• OsrsNeedsf2P 2y ago
  Does this project offer anything besides Chicago95's UI pre-installed?
  • fsiefken 2y ago
    would be nice if it would have wine installed so it can run most windows apps for where there is no good linux alternative. xyplorer, sumatra, irfanview perhaps a shell where root is mapped to C:\
• doright 2y ago
  I like themes like this. The only thing that hampers the authenticity for me, and this isn't the fault of the author really, is the super high resolution fonts compared to what was available back then. There's just something charming about low resolution fonts that are readable enough on screen, probably nostalgia. I think any type of pixel font authentic to a couple decades ago won't look good on a 4K monitor, unfortunately. It got to the point where I ordered a 1024x768 monitor just to play old games with a period system.
  • wobfan 2y ago
    I actually would think less of this as a look back into the past but hopefully as a real alternative to the current DEs, which obviously then needs to have high res fonts. That would be nice.
    • selfhoster11 2y ago
      I wouldn't say that's so "obvious". I for one would prefer the original pixel fonts, but size adjusted to fit my screen density. By hand, if required.
      • zozbot234 2y ago
        If we're talking Windows 9x, the "original fonts" could also be TrueType, hence arbitrarily resized. Yes, the original Windows 95 included a pixel font for the UI but then TrueType fonts like Verdana and Tahoma were added soon after that and were commonly used.
        • selfhoster11 2y ago
          But didn't they include handcrafted hinting bytecode models something like that?
  • dfox 2y ago
    Another issue with modern recreations of old UIs is that the dimensions are usually subtly wrong, which for me ruins the feeling. Some of that is related to the fonts having different height, but in many cases it is just that something is one-pixel off and just looks wrong. For the 95-style UI the common issue are control borders (especially the high-light side of "3d" controls), of which there is a huge amount of examples on the screenshot.
• mfro 2y ago
  Is it really necessary to spin up an entirely new distro for an XFCE+GTK theme?
  • grayhatter 2y ago
    > Stop spending time on things I don't care about It's ok for people to waste time building stuff they think is cool. Did it need to be a distro? No but it also didn't need to exist. I'm glad it exists though, I think it really whips the llamas ass!
    • charcircuit 2y ago
      This attitude is why Linux based operating systems have such poor market share on the desktop. Opportunity costs are real. Friction is real. You don't see Windows creating a new OS for a single theme. You don't see macOS do it either.
      • immibis 2y ago
        You don't see Windows themes at all.
      • keyringlight 2y ago
        I see it as one of the consequences of freedom, but perhaps also a gap in packaging where they can't bundle up their changes in a form to be applied onto another base. That 'base' is one issue I've been thinking about with linux, I have similar concerns about the cost of everyone being able to make their own distro for their own slight variation on something else. It's not that I think it's a bad thing to pathfind in new areas, but the replication in building/supporting it all, getting users to pick between 4 similar variants of the same thing, and accounting for "you're using KustomLinux, which is 2 steps removed from CommonLinux" and all the little differences between them. It's an interesting contrast against standardization, but I can't help wondering how it would change the approachability of linux if the starting point was limited to one of the big distros and then variants are layered on top of that.
• bitbasher 2y ago
  It's not complete until you have a comet cursor and several IE toolbars that were somehow installed.
  • hybrid_study 2y ago
    Or Microsoft Bob somewhere
• vardump 2y ago
  My childhood home's computer said 38911 BYTES FREE.
  • myself248 2y ago
    SYS 64738
  • jhbadger 2y ago
    And mine just said ]▩ as it waited for you to type an Applesoft command. It is always weird when people say something is from "your childhood" as opposed to theirs. I remember the 1990s, sure, but I was already an adult.
  • ipcress_file 2y ago
    Was that a C64? My VIC-20 had about a tenth of that!
  • WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
    Computers from my childhood wouldn't fit in my bedroom but I did bring punchcards home.
  • probably_wrong 2y ago
    Mine said C:\>, because I was cool enough to have a 34MB hard drive.
• herrherrmann 2y ago
  This looks great with some apps that have matching themes, but I wonder if it quickly falls apart once you rely on apps with very non-consistent UIs (audio/video software, Discord, Spotify, Slack, and basically all other Electron-based apps). Although I guess there might be some matching CSS injection hacks available for the Electron ones?
• haunter 2y ago
  A better modern middle ground imo is the KD3 continuation project https://www.trinitydesktop.org/ https://www.trinitydesktop.org/
  • haunter 2y ago
    *KDE3
• ranger_danger 2y ago
  Why are recreations of old UIs always differently wrong? Is pixel-perfection too much to ask for?
  • rikthevik 2y ago
    Well, it is difficult and a lot of work. Maybe _you_ can help.
    • ranger_danger 2y ago
      I have made pixel-perfect renditions before, but I would be worried to release them for fear of legal problems.
      • shrx 2y ago
        I guess you self-answered your question then.
        • wvbdmp 2y ago
          Not really, cause these guys don’t seem to be afraid to use the Windows logo, so why not use historically accurate fonts, icons etc.?
• qwertox 2y ago
  `/var/home/afidel/` There are some pretty good desktop environments for Linux which emulate the Windows desktop, so that old Windows users would feel at home immediately. But I've never seen them emulate the filesystem, which is what took most old Windows users the biggest effort to understand. And the Linux filesystem raises it to a new level of complexity, which makes every old Windows users want to go back to Windows immediately. With "old" users I don't mean experienced users. Is there some kind of overlay which does all this `C:\User\afidel\Desktop` mapping for those users?
  • account42 2y ago
    Surely you mean C:\Documents and Settings\afidel\Desktop Or maybe it's not actually a real problem for users if these paths change.
    • qwertox 2y ago
      My Windows 11 C:\ no longer has a `Documents and Settings`. It still works, though. Windows 8 has it as a hidden junction targeting C:\Users, so it was already deprecated there.
• nostrademons 2y ago
  My childhood computer was a Mac. Anyone have a theme that emulates System 6.08?
  • theandrewbailey 2y ago
    Not System 6, but 9: https://github.com/grassmunk/Platinum9 https://github.com/grassmunk/Platinum9
• MarkusWandel 2y ago
  Three modern desktop environments that I use: - Windows 10/11. Especially in 11, it's easiest just to type the start of an app's name into the search box. As opposed to the two clicks it takes to get to the "traditional" menu where you still have to scroll to find it. - Gnome (only on fresh Linux installs, usually replaced with Mate pretty soon). Has a smartphone-style app grid, but here, too, its quickest just to type the start of the app's name. - Mate: Modern, but still has the Windows 95 paradigm (easy enough to collapse the two toolbars into just one bottom one). Still my favourite desktop environment. Not all fancy graphic stuff is good. And don't even get me started on how hard it is to drag an app window to another screen these days - on Windows. You really have to find the 2% or so of the top bar that's still draggable and not cluttered up by other stuff.
  • teamonkey 2y ago
    How do you get Windows to launch an installed app after you type the first few letters, instead of searching the web with Edge and Bing?
    • hn92726819 2y ago
      You can download openshell and it will replace the start menu from the start menu from whatever era you want (XP, 7, 8, I think 10 too). It's open source as well
    • MarkusWandel 2y ago
      Type into the search box and when the app icon comes up, click on it.
      • arcmechanica 2y ago
        "I searched bing for you and here's the link to Word on the web"
        • MarkusWandel 2y ago
          Dunno. On the relatively clean Windows 11 on my laptop, on which I'd never run Teams before, I typed "tea" into the search box (no ENTER) and while it also offered to look up on the web about "Tea" it did show "Microsoft Teams (personal) (app) at the top right with a large, clickable icon.
• geor9e 2y ago
  I remember a couple kids with Windows 95 PCs at home. They seemed like such richie rich's. We'd all play Wolfenstein when we'd sleep over at their houses. My childhood computer was a WebTV, hacked to get dialup internet for free, on a 100 lb CRT TV from Goodwill. I finally scraped up the money for an actual PC some time in highschool.
• brundolf 2y ago
  Based on the description I was hoping it would include some classic DOS and Windows games to play via wine :)
• jwitchel 2y ago
  Usually the observation that “a widely used thing is objectively bad” is strong market signal for entrepreneurial opportunity in a big tam. I for one would welcome a set of deeply integrated ui improvements in a Mac that included a better file manager, better window management, better desktop search, a contact manager just that worked, a messaging client that just worked, audio and camera controls that just worked, a calculator that didn’t suck, etc. I’d pay at least $100 a year for that tool set.
• deadbabe 2y ago
  This looks neat, but the problem with all these nostalgia fueled projects is that if you use it seriously you’re basically LARPing being in a kinder past. Eventually it just gives an empty feeling, and you long for days when interfaces didn’t just look like this for fun, it’s because that’s what they simply were, and this was the state of the art. But you can never go back to those days.
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• aantix 2y ago
  This looks wonderful to use. Is there video playback? I’ve been thinking lots about the YouTube algorithm, how it’s based on engagement, not educational value, and how it’s such a huge missed opportunity for our kids. So I’ve been building my own YouTube exploration app, for my own kids. Email me if you’re interested in testing. jim.jones1@gmail.com
• flas9sd 2y ago
  seen the win32 aesthetic used for higher-order reasons: separating "work mode" from playtime. An extra user to do so on the same machine helps. Connect the dots reading https://www.marginalia.nu/log/99_context/ https://www.marginalia.nu/log/99_context/ and seeing the ui change in old vs new screencasts https://www.youtube.com/@ViktorLofgren/videos https://www.youtube.com/@ViktorLofgren/videos
  • fc417fc802 2y ago
    > I get significantly more work done when I unplug my computer from the Internet. I tried this, but documentation is often a huge problem. Increasing amounts of it are primarily online and not particularly straightforward to mirror locally.
    • flas9sd 2y ago
      you could try Zealdocs - it was a reason to go reading more of the projects own documentation pages. There are converters for whatever-doc/ssg-framework a project uses to Docset, the packaged format it relies on. Though ignoring that, how approachable the docs are to different levels of experience is another thing. I learned heaps from treating a REPL as an (offline) escape room, in terms of how to get inline help, variable introspection and debugging tricks. Not every language offers a convenient one though.
• haswell 2y ago
  Lately I've been strongly considering helping migrate my parents to Linux. Their needs are primarily web-based with some basic productivity tools mixed in, and Windows has just been getting more and more hostile. On top of this, they're at an age where they're now more susceptible than ever to various scams/attacks, and shutting down an entire category of problems by removing Windows from the picture is increasingly attractive. I had forgotten that Chicago95 exists, but this might be exactly the right thing. They'd immediately find it familiar, and while the theme isn't the whole story, this would go a long way in easing the transition I think. I miss this era of computing.
  • arcmechanica 2y ago
    My parents run linux because mom likes coupon websites and I can't repair the thing every week
    • veqq 2y ago
      What are coupon websites / you can get free coupons from them(?)
      • thoughtpalette 2y ago
        retailmenot, etc. There's some pretty dubious ones that come up in search results, e.g. try searching "levis.com coupon codes" or something.
  • ianmcgowan 2y ago
    A chromebox mounted behind the monitor did the trick for me. Haven't had an emergency wipe/reinstall in years. Also, a tablet with keyboard takes some of the pressure off having a "computer" and you can go with iOS or Android depending on what phone they use.
    • haswell 2y ago
      I've been evaluating a Lenovo ThinkCentre m920q tiny I picked up for not very much money on eBay (the m720q models are even cheaper) and they seem like perfect machines for the task. My parents use some tools and hardware that require a full OS so the tablet route isn't an option, but I'm starting to really like the idea of deploying a couple of these micro PCs.
• acyou 2y ago
  What are the benefits/drawbacks of using this vs. actually running Windows 95 or XP? I'm assuming the PC will be mostly used for "educational software" (games), which you would want to run on XP. What benefit is there to running Fedora?
  • ha1zum 2y ago
    Fedora is a modern Linux desktop distribution with active development and support for modern softwares. While using an old OS such as Windows XP is a huge security risk, with very minimal possibilities of running modern softwares. Even major browsers like Firefox and Chrome won't run on XP anymore.
  • mixmastamyk 2y ago
    95 and XP are different in terms of software selection. Linux Benefits: Security patches (safety), software updates (convenience), hardware support, freedom, and privacy. Not to mention a modern browser, terminal, TLS, and filesystems like exfat. Fedora runs Wine as well. Maybe not every 95/XP program will run, but I'd guess a lot of them do. You could also run the others in Virtual Box when needed.
    • acyou 2y ago
      Ok, but you don't need any of that if you're just running 1990s/2000s Windows educational software on an air gapped OS with no Internet access, which is what you would want for this application. Why would you want to mess around trying to get programs to half work on Wine when you can just have the real thing? If you want your kid to have a web browser for educational purposes, I feel like you had probably might as well just hand them the iPad.
      • mixmastamyk 2y ago
        Why tie up a whole machine/desk-space for something so niche? Probably a big 90s/2k sized desktop at that.
        • 2y ago
• rauli_ 2y ago
  That Git GUI got my attention. Does anyone have an idea what it might be? The titlebar says aurora but when I searched for it all I got was an commercial product with AI nonsense stuck into it.
  • hexmiles 2y ago
    From the look i suspect it is gitg: a git frontend for gnome. https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Gitg https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Gitg
    • priteau 2y ago
      Looks like it. The aurora title comes from the Git repository they are viewing: https://github.com/ublue-os/aurora https://github.com/ublue-os/aurora
• trts 2y ago
  anyone remember XPDE? I'm not sure it was ever finished / packaged in any major repo but came across someone doing a walkthrough of it the other week and it looked pretty complete. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFKx8nCl1Vw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFKx8nCl1Vw It is hard for me to distinguish between the functional simplicity of desktop computing in that era, with the overall excitement that the explosion of connectivity brought to the world. The internet was a lot of fun and had so many surprising corners. Practically all of it was personal, niche, or experimental content for awhile. I wonder if Windows 9X was really all that exceptional, or if it was just what people remember driving with as they navigated the new world. The best modern equivalent to that desktop paradigm I've found is LXQt, although when I use it I find I kind of miss some of the accouterments of the modern desktops.
• grimgrin 2y ago
  well this is simply adorable, down to the neocities hosted website this already is my stack, tho I need to get over to the immutable variety. i'm on fedora 41 i3-spin, using chicago95. been using it for years, with the plymouth bit that gives you a proper win95 startup background during boot https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Plymouth https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Plymouth
• DiggyJohnson 2y ago
  Sweet! I have a very similar desktop that I’ve shoehorned support for i3 into as well. Will do likewise with this.
• zeroq 2y ago
  This really resonates with me. Every time I try desktop linux it feels like it's 30 years behind in usability.
  • fc417fc802 2y ago
    That surprises me. The major DEs (KDE and Gnome) have felt reasonably polished to me for quite a few years now, they haven't felt buggy to me for even longer, and they always felt like they catered to power users unlike Windows and Mac that actively get in your way when trying to customize things. Several times they've been ahead of the curve and I've been surprised to learn that Windows or Mac were only just getting a feature that I'd had access to for years or more. Of course at present I only use i3-alikes. I'd characterize those as a return to the sanity of the past.
• eldjee25 2y ago
  Sounds good
• overgard 2y ago
  Neat! It's probably just nostalgia, but I still don't think any modern desktop has been as good as Windows 2000 was. Perfect blend of minimal without hiding things (well, excluding the Office 2000 menu hiding disaster which we will conveniently ignore)
• skissane 2y ago
  A Windows 3.x UI theme would get the childhood nostalgia going much stronger for me than a 95/NT4/98/2000/Me theme does. Occasionally I boot up Windows 3.1 in a VM and play a game of Solitaire, for old time’s sake - I can run Windows 95 in a VM too, but it just doesn’t have the same pull.
  • Gormo 2y ago
    Win3.1 works great in DOSBox, and you can get an even more authentic '80s-'90s IBM-compatible experience using PCEm or 86box, which emulate a wide variety of PC motherboards, graphics cards, and sound cards.
• karunamurti 2y ago
  Nice. I use KDE + Kvantum + Expose theme and various Windows XP themes myself for Windows XP Experience.
• CapsAdmin 2y ago
  I've done something like this with the windows 2000 look from time to time, but something I found frustrating with theming xfwm4 window decorations is the non existent ability to create a horizontal gradient across the top of the window like in Windows 2000. I believe this is the reason you cannot find a proper windows 2000 theme for xfce.
• hattmall 2y ago
  What about the old school Packard Bell OS. With Kidspace and other "areas"
• keyle 2y ago
  How messed up is the current state of play than half the population yearns for the late 90s?
• forgotmypw17 2y ago
  I can testify that Xfce+Chicago95 is great as a daily driver, and one of the most consistent GUIs across different distros (some differences in defaults still exist)
• calvinmorrison 2y ago
  if you're interested in golden era UI computing, check out Trinity Desktop which is a fork of KDE3.5
• 0dayz 2y ago
  While neat, I would love to see a desktop that has similar design to either Windows XP/2000, classic Mac OS, or mac OS x cheetah. Turns out they do have Windows XP: https://github.com/winblues/bluexp https://github.com/winblues/bluexp
• interludead 2y ago
  I love that it's not trying to be a 1:1 clone of Windows 95, but more of a vibe-match
• guest__user 2y ago
  If we could get tabworks I would love that
• mg794613 2y ago
  That's just the chicago theme I'va had for years now on my XFCE, I think it's a bit lame to steal that theme (not from Microsoft but the maker of that xfce theme), put it in a repository, give it a different name, and pose it as your own work? The repo literally adds nothing, just a name change.
  • bobbyraduloff 2y ago
    I think the main difference is that it’s a fully set up installable ISO of Fedora Atomic XFCE with the theme and other tweaks preloaded which is a convenient thing to have, I guess. Also they do credit Chicago95 pretty much at the top of the README.
  • zild3d 2y ago
    > a bit lame to steal that theme Do you mean reuse/copy/redistribute? Which is what the GPL-3.0+/MIT license that the theme uses is meant for? > Based on Fedora Atomic Xfce with the Chicago95 theme. The readme has a direct link out to it in the 2nd sentence, that's pretty clear credit
• qalmakka 2y ago
  This is awesome. IMHO the Windows 2000 UI was the pinnacle of UX, it's still unmatched to this day. I'd love to see the SerenityOS UI ported on Linux+Wayland someday.
• benrutter 2y ago
  I love the niche of enthusiasm that exists for the Windows 95 UI. It's not an original point that aside from nostalgia it's a really clear and usable design; but that leads me to wonder, are there any modern UIs/themes/etc that are inspired by (rather than necessarily directly mimicking) Windows 95? Would be interesting to see what a modern version of Windows 95 would look like, or what general design lessons can be learned from it's niceties.