8 ms·

SerenityOS is a love letter to '90s user interfaces

184 points by doener 2y ago

raxxorraxor 2y ago
Peak usability in my opinion. Space efficient and simple. Not my favorite design and color scheme, but certainly better than what modern Windows looks like. That has no direction and doesn't even look modern. And the line of text with "Windows Update is committed to helping reduce carbon emissions" is as superfluous as many other controls as well. I mean nice for MS, but it really doesn't belong there.
- gjvc 2y ago
  somewhere, "simplicity is a feature" got lost in the everyday computer experience
  - no_wizard 2y ago
    It seems sometimes the past is better than the future that came after. In my opinion, peak usability for platforms I use: - iOS 6 - Windows 7 - Snow Leopard - Windows Phone 10 (may actually have been the best mobile OS user experience I ever had)
    - Zambyte 2y ago
      Can you elaborate on what you enjoyed about the Windows Phone? I've heard people say they liked it, but I've never really dug into why before.
      - no_wizard 2y ago
        In my opinion it’s this: The interface was incredibly fast and intuitive. It was slick and easy to understand but felt modern at the same time. The font felt timeless, it had the best camera app for the time, which was a time where amazing mobile phone cameras were just starting to become a thing (Nokia famously made a 42 megapixel camera for their flagship windows phone and the pics were gorgeous) The first party software was really fast and stable. They were also some of the first phones I ever used with proper OLED screens If you ever get a chance to use one it’s worth it even if it’s only for a day. Really changes one’s perspective on what’s possible with mobile devices. IMO nothing has captured that magic again
        skydhash 2y ago
        And it really felt like a professional device. Very minimalist but on point. A tablet version of it (not Win8 mismatch) would have been great!
        mrweasel 2y ago
        > proper OLED screens I had the Nokia Lumia 920, which wasn't an OLED screen, but an IPS, if I recall correctly. Even that screen looked beautiful. I think part of it was the font rendering and the UI design just being perfectly suited to the platform. In any case it just looked amazing.
      - doubled112 2y ago
        Windows Phone was really snappy even on the low end devices. Android at the time had significant lag issues. The UI was fairly consistent. There was no guessing what was a button, what an accidental drag would do, etc. The live squares on the homepage, in my opinion, are still better than anything iOS has come up with.
      - sunaookami 2y ago
        Not OP but I also had a Windows Phone (8). It had a consistent design in every app and it just "felt" good to use. The inboxed apps were great (surprisingly!) and the phones themselves were quite cheap. Windows Phone was optimized for low RAM phones so it ran smooth there. I also miss the keyboard, I rarely mistyped which happens constantly with GBoard. Haven't found a replacement that doesn't suck yet... It's hard to put into words because you have had to use it to understand! I despise Windows 10 Mobile though - it killed the whole platform and made the OS unbearably slow. It was full of bugs and it was clear that it was the beginning of the end for Microsoft's mobile amibitions. I use Android now but it's a mess. Google can't decide on a consistent UI + UX and everything is all over the place.
      - nguyenkien 2y ago
        Everything feel smooth, on par with iOS. Unfortunate there no quality apps for it. If you want a detox phone (like light phone) just get an old WP, it's cheaper.
      - mrweasel 2y ago
        The UI was very good. The tiles didn't work on the desktop (Windows 8) but it make a lot of sense on the phone. Every touchable element was large enough that you'd never miss. The UI itself ensured a very consistent experience. I assume that you could do more custom apps, but most apps I used conformed to the general look an feel of the operating system. One thing I don't think enough people mentions is the messaging app. It integrated with Facebook, before Facebook Messenger. This might not be a big thing today, with people leaving Facebook, but it was absolutely brilliant back then. Basically like iMessage, but with Facebook as the non-SMS protocol. I think it may also have integrated with LinkedIn, I don't recall, but it was suppose to just merge all your contacts into one messaging app. As much as I dislike Windows on the desktop, Windows Phone made perfect sense. The UI was completely tailored to the touchscreen and was so easy it use and navigate. It's a real shame it didn't take of. In some sense Microsoft should have treated it more like Windows on the desktop and aggressively offered it to OEMs.
    - cosmic_cheese 2y ago
      Snow Leopard is pretty good, but personally I’ve found that Mavericks (10.9) edges it out for the little bits of polish it has that SL doesn’t, as well as its brighter more cheery color scheme. The only big downside of Mavericks for me is that it’s missing Snow Leopard’s 2D grid of virtual desktops and instead only has the linear arrangement found in modern versions. I really miss the 2D grid.
      - TheAmazingRace 2y ago
        Mavericks is also the last HiDPI release of Mac OS X that used the Leopard-era icon pack. After that, it went to these garish looking flat icons that I couldn't stand to look at.
        detectd 2y ago
        I was never a fan of the skeuomorphic icons (and design in general), personally. I think there's a place for flat design and it isn't all bad, in particular peripheral UI elements, like the top menu bar, dock icons, etc. It is interactive elements that should be the ones to stand out, not everything. If the homogeny of flat design makes the main interactive elements less salient, then everything designed to look 3D with glossy surfaces and brushed metal outlines does the same, just with noise. I think there should be a combination of both, which I think is why many find the older interfaces from the 90s and early 2000s much more usable. That's a long way of saying that I prefer the flat application icons and dock on current macOS. The dock stays in the peripheral and the icons identify the application all while not drawing my attention until I purposefully go to it.
        zozbot234 2y ago
        > I think there's a place for flat design and it isn't all bad, in particular peripheral UI elements, like the top menu bar, dock icons Funnily enough, these are precisely the elements that are flat in the Windows 9x look. (Windows 9x does not have a "dock" but it does have a quick launch bar and a system tray, and these show flat icons.)
        2y ago
    - bee_rider 2y ago
      Are those the systems you learned as a teenager/young adult? I felt the same way about XP, despite it being generally regarded as a UI abomination. I think it was just familiar. Anyway, I eventually shook lose of that nostalgia, and for me the best usability has been more recent. The wmii/i3/sway family of window managers are have been just great: simple, to the point, and automatic. I dunno. There are pretty clearly some bad trends in computing generally and mainstream UX specifically, but improvements are still bouncing around in the margins.
      - int_19h 2y ago
        I learned Win3.1 as a kid, but I still consider Win7 the best UX that Windows had to date.
    - lurk2 2y ago
      The thing that gets me about iOS is that they tanked responsiveness in exchange for such a small number of features that don’t even work well.
    - NoSalt 2y ago
      It's funny that you mentioned "Snow Leopard", as Apple moving on from that OS version was my reason for going Linux 100% of the time, and I haven't regretted the switch at all.
      - dijit 2y ago
        why? Snow Leopard was widely regarded as an excellent release. Mavericks to Yosemite I would understand, but Snow Leopard felt like a strict improvement to me. What did it do wrong?
        arcanemachiner 2y ago
        Pretty sure they're agreeing with you. Apple moved on from Snow Leopard, so they moved on to Linux.
        dijit 2y ago
        Ah, sorry, I must have read it wrong.
  - dartharva 2y ago
    Current interfaces are generally a lot more simpler than those ones though? Are you saying those elaborate 90s style window menus are somehow simpler than iPad interfaces?
    - gjvc 2y ago
      Current interfaces are generally a lot more simpler than those ones though? Are you saying those elaborate 90s style window menus are somehow simpler than iPad interfaces? "simpler" == "easier to find the feature you need", not "fewer gui items to click" Also, do you realise you attempting an apples to pears comparison?
      - dartharva 2y ago
        > Also, do you realise you attempting an apples to pears comparison? Compare with current-gen GNOME then. > "simpler" == "easier to find the feature you need", not "fewer gui items to click" The tabbed ribbon design of post-07 Microsoft Office apps is a LOT simpler by that definition than the traditional menu based one before it, and so are a lot of modern interfaces across various applications and OS's. Neat tabs and toolbars > oblong menus, anytime.
        trinix912 2y ago
        > The tabbed ribbon design of post-07 Microsoft Office apps is a LOT simpler by that definition than the traditional menu based one before it, and so are a lot of modern interfaces across various applications and OS's. Neat tabs and toolbars > oblong menus, anytime. Not when the menus were 15-20 entires with occasional icons and the ribbon is 50+ icons of various sizes (and hidden functionalities - the little group corner arrows). "Easier" also implies easy visual parsing.
        gjvc 2y ago
        The tabbed ribbon design of post-07 Microsoft Office apps is a LOT simpler by that definition than the traditional menu based one before it, and so are a lot of modern interfaces across various applications and OS's. Neat tabs and toolbars > oblong menus, anytime. GUI gaslighting.
- klabb3 2y ago
  > Peak usability in my opinion. Space efficient and simple. Disagree. Aside from nostalgia, there are numerous visual clutter issues that affect the ability to overview. Not to mention the aliased text rendering. Then you have double click to open files/dirs which might feel normal, but both younger and older people struggle with (like long press on iOS) + knowing what can be double clicked. My mom always asks me if she’s supposed to double or single click. But she can use a smartphone UI without my help. That said, the one thing I like compared to modern designs is the very clear layering (with awful fake bevel 3d but nevertheless it does the job). This makes it very clear what toggle state a button has, and also which things are on top of other things.
  - mixmastamyk 2y ago
    Single-click was implemented possibly by 2k but definitely by XP. Think it had to do with IE—yes, details below.
    - zozbot234 2y ago
      You could single-click to open files in Windows 98 already. You could also hover your mouse pointer on a file icon and it would become selected.
      - trinix912 2y ago
        It was the Internet Explorer shell integration that brought us this feature. The idea was to blend the desktop and web user interfaces. If you installed IE4 on Windows 95, you'd get that option there too.
        kapitar 2y ago
        Yes, it was called Active Desktop if memory serves.
  - dijit 2y ago
    double click vs single click is interesting, seems nobody knows how to handle an object needing to be interacted with more than a single way. Maybe the right idea is to just pick one arbitrarily and stick to it consistently. I’m only mildly joking, UX guidelines are basically just this. There is no way to make people implicitly know how to do things (skeuomorphism was a solid attempt). In society it’s only things like hammers that have a universal/innate understood use.
- dartharva 2y ago
  Horrible accessibility. I couldn't make out jack without my glasses on those UIs, unlike current interfaces and fonts.
  - zozbot234 2y ago
    The original 1990s version could be scaled by just picking different pixel sizes for the UI elements. And the tiny 16px icons and labels would actually look quite nice in a basic 640x480 resolution.
    - cesarb 2y ago
      > And the tiny 16px icons and labels would actually look quite nice in a basic 640x480 resolution. For those who didn't live through these days: the physical size of common computer monitors wasn't very different from what we have now (other than being more square, bulky, and really heavy), but the resolution was much lower; 640x480 was not just a "basic resolution", it was the standard display resolution everybody used (a higher 800x600 resolution became common later). Icons, labels, fonts, etc, were designed to be readable and look good on a typical-sized CRT monitor at 640x480 resolution. The whole user interface was designed to work well at 640x480 resolution.
      - int_19h 2y ago
        > the physical size of common computer monitors wasn't very different from what we have now At the time when 640x480 was a common resolution, the most common computer monitor was a 15" CRT, and 21" was for rich designers.
  - mixmastamyk 2y ago
    “Large fonts” was a setting back then.
- lurk2 2y ago
  > And the line of text with "Windows Update is committed to helping reduce carbon emissions" is as superfluous as many other controls as well. I mean nice for MS, but it really doesn't belong there. I agree with you wholeheartedly, but would note that this isn’t anything new. I can remember seeing messages like this on HP and DELL machines as early as 2007.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
agos 2y ago
it's basically windows 95, there does not seem to be other influences?
- agumonkey 2y ago
  Windows 96 I'd say
  - HeckFeck 2y ago
    https://windows96.net/ https://windows96.net/ - It's real!
    - mickael-kerjean 2y ago
      and so is windows RG edition: https://demo.filestash.app/login?type=webdav&url=https://webdav.filestash.app/&next=/view/Documents/windows.swf&nav=false https://demo.filestash.app/login?type=webdav&url=https://web...
- mtillman 2y ago
  Serenity is an amazing accomplishment. It’s odd to me though because I always hated the windows interface, even 3.11. It seems a lot of modern Linux desktops (I know serenity isn’t Linux) try to emulate the feel of modern windows but it ends up looking like a meh version of an already bad interface imo. I still prefer the look of enlightenment or motif+4dwm.
  - cmrdporcupine 2y ago
    The classic Unix interface that always seemed nicest to me was Sun's OpenLook.
- secondcoming 2y ago
  I'm concerned MS might enforce copyright over some of those UI icons.
  - 2y ago
dailykoder 2y ago
The UI in terms of space and usability looks great. Two "modern" things I don't want to miss: Good font rendering and a fast application launcher (mod -> type a few characters -> enter). What I dislike the most on modern UI, and maybe absolutely hate, are all those super slow animations. Just gimme the damn thing, I don't need those animations. (Yes I know on most plattforms I can disable them, but this often takes quite a few steps)
- abraxas 2y ago
  Agreed on the animations but that isn't my top of the list because as you observed, those can usually be disabled. The most annoying aspect of modern interfaces is total inconsistency in looks and behaviour across different applications. Even common action icons vary in style, colouring and shape from one application to another. Title bars are hijacked for whatever fanciful ideas the app designers had in mind, scrollbars and other basic widgets are rarely drawn using native desktop components, tab ordering is a dream of the distant past and so on and that's if a given app even responds to the tab key.
  - SirFatty 2y ago
    Personally, I dislike the flatness. It's hard (at times) to distinguish one from another when multiple windows are open.
    - whatevergoes 2y ago
      Window shadows are the solution here in my experience.
  - chairhairair 2y ago
    This will never happen because: 1. Companies will always want to brand their apps with their particular UI styles. 2. In order to prevent the above, the OS would have to deliberately NOT expose the ability for apps to control their own pixels. Doing 2 means you are making it impossible to support many application types (photo editors, games, etc.). NOT doing 2 means that app companies will eventually use the same APIs that the photo editor and game applications use.
breadwinner 2y ago
Win95 UI is a cheap copy of NeXTSTEP. The original is so much nicer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXTSTEP#/media/File:NeXTSTEP_desktop.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXTSTEP#/media/File:NeXTSTEP_...
- TheAmazingRace 2y ago
  If you're referring to the window buttons especially, I can definitely see that. I did hear that Microsoft did acquire several NeXT Computer boxes in the early 90s to study the hardware and the operating system, and I'm absolutely sure it played a role in influencing Windows 95's look and feel.
- lukas099 2y ago
  What do you like better about it?
  - breadwinner 2y ago
    NeXTSTEP was widely regarded as visually striking and innovative for its time, particularly for its clean, minimalist design and advanced graphical capabilities. Key elements contributing to its perceived beauty included: 3D chiseled widgets: Beveled buttons and controls with subtle shading created a dimensional, tactile appearance. Full-color icons: Large, detailed icons (uncommon in late 1980s GUIs) enhanced visual clarity. Consistent typography: System-wide use of Display PostScript enabled professional-quality fonts and anti-aliasing. Transparency and compositing: Advanced graphics handling allowed overlapping windows and semi-transparent elements. Current discussions still praise NeXTSTEP's design as better looking and more usable than Windows 11 and macOS.
    - Suppafly 2y ago
      >NeXTSTEP was widely regarded as visually striking and innovative for its time Widely? You seem like the only one carrying the water for nextstep. I'm sure they had some advances but overall it's a very ugly UI.
poisonborz 2y ago
A "love letter" would be incorporating the best of those ideas and create a modern interpretation with improvements like vector scaling. This is just copying.
- bayindirh 2y ago
  I think there's nothing wrong with starting from a "last known good configuration" and iterating from there.
calgarymicro 2y ago
How's this project doing after it lost its founder and biggest contributor (Andreas Kling)? I see the commit history is still reasonably active, so it's not dead at least . . .
INTPenis 2y ago
They only show the good part of 90s UIs, the standardized part. They don't show the part where every installer wanted to look unique, weird ICQ clients.
- cryptonym 2y ago
  That was every installer looking unique now it's every app wanting to look unique.
- throitallaway 2y ago
  I don't do much with Windows nowadays, but I do touch it from time to time and I don't think much has changed in this regard. Off the top of my head: driver installers for Intel, Nvidia, and Brother printers all look unique. Same with the installers for Firefox, Chrome, etc. The MSI format has brought some standardization, but it's a fairly rigid framework that leads projects to building their own installers.
averageRoyalty 2y ago
This is a very cool art project. Is there a practical daily driver Linux that has this feel and vibe? Can I do this cleanly with GNOME/Debian or XFCE/Manjaro, or a bespoke OS with an underlying package manager?
- thawkth 2y ago
  The closest I know of is Blue95. I have only run the live environment but it worked pretty well and was impressive. "Blue95 is a modern and lightweight desktop experience that is reminiscent of a bygone era of computing. Based on Fedora Atomic Xfce with the Chicago95 theme." https://github.com/winblues/blue95 https://github.com/winblues/blue95 Depending on your chosen desktop and era, there are also things like TDE (trinity desktop environment) a fork (or spiritual successor) of the KDE 3.x environment: https://www.trinitydesktop.org/media/screenshots/large/tde3.png https://www.trinitydesktop.org/media/screenshots/large/tde3.... And if you like Gnome 2.x, there's MATE: https://mate-desktop.org/ https://mate-desktop.org/
- zozbot234 2y ago
  https://github.com/grassmunk/Chicago95 https://github.com/grassmunk/Chicago95 and https://github.com/B00merang-Project/Windows-95 https://github.com/B00merang-Project/Windows-95 get quite close if you use them together. The B00merang one has presets for the GNOME/Cinnamon/MATE desktop and a GTK+4 theme (which adds terrible padding compared to the usual GTK+3 one, but at least it has visible and properly 3d-shaded widgets).
- thesuitonym 2y ago
  Most window managers will have a theme that looks like the old 90s. They're commonly named things like "Chicago," or "Redmond."
- astro1138 2y ago
  fvwm95, or newer: https://github.com/jcs/progman https://github.com/jcs/progman I'd love a similar compositor for Wayland.
jklinger410 2y ago
Would be cool if they could spin this out into a DE for other distros.
bee_rider 2y ago
Oh wow, that looks a whole lot like windows 98, haha. How’s SerenityOS feel as a daily driver at this point? Would it be much harder to use than, say, Linux 15 years ago?
andrea76 2y ago
The former maintainer published a video summary every month on YouTube about SerenityOS progress. And now it seems that anyone does it
guerrilla 2y ago
It's honestly just straight up relaxing to look at, same with BeOS/Haiku. I need to escape GNOME and get a real UI like that.
- zekica 2y ago
  KDE is that. The two things I don't like about it are: KIO integration with GTK apps even with kio-fuse installed, and not having dbus based configuration system like gsettings/dconf.
  - guerrilla 2y ago
    > KIO integration with GTK apps even with kio-fuse installed What do you mean? What's the problem?
  - aidenn0 2y ago
    Not sure if it's a NixOS bug, but even other KDE apps have hit-or-miss KIO integration for me; e.g. Krusader cannot open my MTP devices, while Dolphin can.
greenavocado 2y ago
If the font rendering seems bad in the screenshot right click on the image and open it in a new tab.
- SnazzyUncle 2y ago
  I think the screenshots are a bit squashed. When he was doing Andreas was doing streams the fonts looked fine they just wasn't using hinting/cleartype.
zabzonk 2y ago
Let's go the whole way - TempleOS. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TempleOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TempleOS
raffael_de 2y ago
The appeal of this UI can be boiled down to: form follows function + vintage rendering. Minus the vintage design it's basically isomorph to most common Linux window managers. Be it Cinnamon, xfce, KDE, mate ... https://imgur.com/a/A3VfeSk https://imgur.com/a/A3VfeSk But if there was a good Windows 95 theme I'd probably use it.
- lnkl 2y ago
  Would you consider Chicago95 a good theme? https://github.com/grassmunk/Chicago95 https://github.com/grassmunk/Chicago95
chrsw 2y ago
Neat. Reminds me of the KDE Classic interface. KDE 1.
- sombragris 2y ago
  I'm using a good replacement with my Plasma 6: Reactionary KDE1 window decoration, Reactionary theme, and MS Windows 9x Qt widget style.
adamgordonbell 2y ago
It's a super cool project that boots up surprisingly fast. You can just grab the git repo and and `Meta/serenity.sh run` and its starts up in qemu on my mac. I interviewed Andreas about it some time ago: https://corecursive.com/serenity-os-with-andreas-kling/ https://corecursive.com/serenity-os-with-andreas-kling/
- signa11 2y ago
  oh i listened to this podcast couple of days ago. lovely stuff, and i _really_ like the human side of it. a lot actually. your podcasts are really great from that perspective. thank you !
  - adamgordonbell 2y ago
    Thanks!
Analemma_ 2y ago
I enjoy this as an art project, but it does frustrate me as a reaction against the chickenshit minimalism of UI today, because I think it's the wrong reaction. I don't want a "love letter to 90s UI", I want a UI that takes full advantage of the hardware we have now. Graphics processing is a million times more powerful than it was in the 90s, and I now have a monitor with 220 ppi and 5K of horizontal resolution, which was the stuff of science fiction then. Surely the best UI for such hardware is neither the shitty low-density Jony Ive suckoff of today nor a carbon copy of the world as it existed 30 years ago just for nostalgia's sake. (This is ranty but isn't really directed at the SerenityOS devs, they've delivered exactly what they promised and done a good job at it. I just wish someone, somewhere was interested in functional UI design for the current era)
sixothree 2y ago
Do I really need to set up a build environment to get this? Is there a release somewhere?
paradox460 2y ago
No, it's a love letter to windows and CDE. It's missing out on the features that made NeXT, BeOS, and other 90s operating systems interesting Heck it doesn't even have windows shade mode, that Mac systems had
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

184 points by doener 2y ago

Peak usability in my opinion. Space efficient and simple. Not my favorite design and color scheme, but certainly better than what modern Windows looks like. That has no direction and doesn't even look modern. And the line of text with "Windows Update is committed to helping reduce carbon emissions" is as superfluous as many other controls as well. I mean nice for MS, but it really doesn't belong there.

gjvc 2y ago
somewhere, "simplicity is a feature" got lost in the everyday computer experience
- no_wizard 2y ago
  It seems sometimes the past is better than the future that came after. In my opinion, peak usability for platforms I use: - iOS 6 - Windows 7 - Snow Leopard - Windows Phone 10 (may actually have been the best mobile OS user experience I ever had)
  - Zambyte 2y ago
    Can you elaborate on what you enjoyed about the Windows Phone? I've heard people say they liked it, but I've never really dug into why before.
    - no_wizard 2y ago
      In my opinion it’s this: The interface was incredibly fast and intuitive. It was slick and easy to understand but felt modern at the same time. The font felt timeless, it had the best camera app for the time, which was a time where amazing mobile phone cameras were just starting to become a thing (Nokia famously made a 42 megapixel camera for their flagship windows phone and the pics were gorgeous) The first party software was really fast and stable. They were also some of the first phones I ever used with proper OLED screens If you ever get a chance to use one it’s worth it even if it’s only for a day. Really changes one’s perspective on what’s possible with mobile devices. IMO nothing has captured that magic again
      - skydhash 2y ago
        And it really felt like a professional device. Very minimalist but on point. A tablet version of it (not Win8 mismatch) would have been great!
      - mrweasel 2y ago
        > proper OLED screens I had the Nokia Lumia 920, which wasn't an OLED screen, but an IPS, if I recall correctly. Even that screen looked beautiful. I think part of it was the font rendering and the UI design just being perfectly suited to the platform. In any case it just looked amazing.
    - doubled112 2y ago
      Windows Phone was really snappy even on the low end devices. Android at the time had significant lag issues. The UI was fairly consistent. There was no guessing what was a button, what an accidental drag would do, etc. The live squares on the homepage, in my opinion, are still better than anything iOS has come up with.
    - sunaookami 2y ago
      Not OP but I also had a Windows Phone (8). It had a consistent design in every app and it just "felt" good to use. The inboxed apps were great (surprisingly!) and the phones themselves were quite cheap. Windows Phone was optimized for low RAM phones so it ran smooth there. I also miss the keyboard, I rarely mistyped which happens constantly with GBoard. Haven't found a replacement that doesn't suck yet... It's hard to put into words because you have had to use it to understand! I despise Windows 10 Mobile though - it killed the whole platform and made the OS unbearably slow. It was full of bugs and it was clear that it was the beginning of the end for Microsoft's mobile amibitions. I use Android now but it's a mess. Google can't decide on a consistent UI + UX and everything is all over the place.
    - nguyenkien 2y ago
      Everything feel smooth, on par with iOS. Unfortunate there no quality apps for it. If you want a detox phone (like light phone) just get an old WP, it's cheaper.
    - mrweasel 2y ago
      The UI was very good. The tiles didn't work on the desktop (Windows 8) but it make a lot of sense on the phone. Every touchable element was large enough that you'd never miss. The UI itself ensured a very consistent experience. I assume that you could do more custom apps, but most apps I used conformed to the general look an feel of the operating system. One thing I don't think enough people mentions is the messaging app. It integrated with Facebook, before Facebook Messenger. This might not be a big thing today, with people leaving Facebook, but it was absolutely brilliant back then. Basically like iMessage, but with Facebook as the non-SMS protocol. I think it may also have integrated with LinkedIn, I don't recall, but it was suppose to just merge all your contacts into one messaging app. As much as I dislike Windows on the desktop, Windows Phone made perfect sense. The UI was completely tailored to the touchscreen and was so easy it use and navigate. It's a real shame it didn't take of. In some sense Microsoft should have treated it more like Windows on the desktop and aggressively offered it to OEMs.
  - cosmic_cheese 2y ago
    Snow Leopard is pretty good, but personally I’ve found that Mavericks (10.9) edges it out for the little bits of polish it has that SL doesn’t, as well as its brighter more cheery color scheme. The only big downside of Mavericks for me is that it’s missing Snow Leopard’s 2D grid of virtual desktops and instead only has the linear arrangement found in modern versions. I really miss the 2D grid.
    - TheAmazingRace 2y ago
      Mavericks is also the last HiDPI release of Mac OS X that used the Leopard-era icon pack. After that, it went to these garish looking flat icons that I couldn't stand to look at.
      - detectd 2y ago
        I was never a fan of the skeuomorphic icons (and design in general), personally. I think there's a place for flat design and it isn't all bad, in particular peripheral UI elements, like the top menu bar, dock icons, etc. It is interactive elements that should be the ones to stand out, not everything. If the homogeny of flat design makes the main interactive elements less salient, then everything designed to look 3D with glossy surfaces and brushed metal outlines does the same, just with noise. I think there should be a combination of both, which I think is why many find the older interfaces from the 90s and early 2000s much more usable. That's a long way of saying that I prefer the flat application icons and dock on current macOS. The dock stays in the peripheral and the icons identify the application all while not drawing my attention until I purposefully go to it.
        zozbot234 2y ago
        > I think there's a place for flat design and it isn't all bad, in particular peripheral UI elements, like the top menu bar, dock icons Funnily enough, these are precisely the elements that are flat in the Windows 9x look. (Windows 9x does not have a "dock" but it does have a quick launch bar and a system tray, and these show flat icons.)
        2y ago
  - bee_rider 2y ago
    Are those the systems you learned as a teenager/young adult? I felt the same way about XP, despite it being generally regarded as a UI abomination. I think it was just familiar. Anyway, I eventually shook lose of that nostalgia, and for me the best usability has been more recent. The wmii/i3/sway family of window managers are have been just great: simple, to the point, and automatic. I dunno. There are pretty clearly some bad trends in computing generally and mainstream UX specifically, but improvements are still bouncing around in the margins.
    - int_19h 2y ago
      I learned Win3.1 as a kid, but I still consider Win7 the best UX that Windows had to date.
  - lurk2 2y ago
    The thing that gets me about iOS is that they tanked responsiveness in exchange for such a small number of features that don’t even work well.
  - NoSalt 2y ago
    It's funny that you mentioned "Snow Leopard", as Apple moving on from that OS version was my reason for going Linux 100% of the time, and I haven't regretted the switch at all.
    - dijit 2y ago
      why? Snow Leopard was widely regarded as an excellent release. Mavericks to Yosemite I would understand, but Snow Leopard felt like a strict improvement to me. What did it do wrong?
      - arcanemachiner 2y ago
        Pretty sure they're agreeing with you. Apple moved on from Snow Leopard, so they moved on to Linux.
        dijit 2y ago
        Ah, sorry, I must have read it wrong.
- dartharva 2y ago
  Current interfaces are generally a lot more simpler than those ones though? Are you saying those elaborate 90s style window menus are somehow simpler than iPad interfaces?
  - gjvc 2y ago
    Current interfaces are generally a lot more simpler than those ones though? Are you saying those elaborate 90s style window menus are somehow simpler than iPad interfaces? "simpler" == "easier to find the feature you need", not "fewer gui items to click" Also, do you realise you attempting an apples to pears comparison?
    - dartharva 2y ago
      > Also, do you realise you attempting an apples to pears comparison? Compare with current-gen GNOME then. > "simpler" == "easier to find the feature you need", not "fewer gui items to click" The tabbed ribbon design of post-07 Microsoft Office apps is a LOT simpler by that definition than the traditional menu based one before it, and so are a lot of modern interfaces across various applications and OS's. Neat tabs and toolbars > oblong menus, anytime.
      - trinix912 2y ago
        > The tabbed ribbon design of post-07 Microsoft Office apps is a LOT simpler by that definition than the traditional menu based one before it, and so are a lot of modern interfaces across various applications and OS's. Neat tabs and toolbars > oblong menus, anytime. Not when the menus were 15-20 entires with occasional icons and the ribbon is 50+ icons of various sizes (and hidden functionalities - the little group corner arrows). "Easier" also implies easy visual parsing.
      - gjvc 2y ago
        The tabbed ribbon design of post-07 Microsoft Office apps is a LOT simpler by that definition than the traditional menu based one before it, and so are a lot of modern interfaces across various applications and OS's. Neat tabs and toolbars > oblong menus, anytime. GUI gaslighting.
klabb3 2y ago
> Peak usability in my opinion. Space efficient and simple. Disagree. Aside from nostalgia, there are numerous visual clutter issues that affect the ability to overview. Not to mention the aliased text rendering. Then you have double click to open files/dirs which might feel normal, but both younger and older people struggle with (like long press on iOS) + knowing what can be double clicked. My mom always asks me if she’s supposed to double or single click. But she can use a smartphone UI without my help. That said, the one thing I like compared to modern designs is the very clear layering (with awful fake bevel 3d but nevertheless it does the job). This makes it very clear what toggle state a button has, and also which things are on top of other things.
- mixmastamyk 2y ago
  Single-click was implemented possibly by 2k but definitely by XP. Think it had to do with IE—yes, details below.
  - zozbot234 2y ago
    You could single-click to open files in Windows 98 already. You could also hover your mouse pointer on a file icon and it would become selected.
    - trinix912 2y ago
      It was the Internet Explorer shell integration that brought us this feature. The idea was to blend the desktop and web user interfaces. If you installed IE4 on Windows 95, you'd get that option there too.
      - kapitar 2y ago
        Yes, it was called Active Desktop if memory serves.
- dijit 2y ago
  double click vs single click is interesting, seems nobody knows how to handle an object needing to be interacted with more than a single way. Maybe the right idea is to just pick one arbitrarily and stick to it consistently. I’m only mildly joking, UX guidelines are basically just this. There is no way to make people implicitly know how to do things (skeuomorphism was a solid attempt). In society it’s only things like hammers that have a universal/innate understood use.
dartharva 2y ago
Horrible accessibility. I couldn't make out jack without my glasses on those UIs, unlike current interfaces and fonts.
- zozbot234 2y ago
  The original 1990s version could be scaled by just picking different pixel sizes for the UI elements. And the tiny 16px icons and labels would actually look quite nice in a basic 640x480 resolution.
  - cesarb 2y ago
    > And the tiny 16px icons and labels would actually look quite nice in a basic 640x480 resolution. For those who didn't live through these days: the physical size of common computer monitors wasn't very different from what we have now (other than being more square, bulky, and really heavy), but the resolution was much lower; 640x480 was not just a "basic resolution", it was the standard display resolution everybody used (a higher 800x600 resolution became common later). Icons, labels, fonts, etc, were designed to be readable and look good on a typical-sized CRT monitor at 640x480 resolution. The whole user interface was designed to work well at 640x480 resolution.
    - int_19h 2y ago
      > the physical size of common computer monitors wasn't very different from what we have now At the time when 640x480 was a common resolution, the most common computer monitor was a 15" CRT, and 21" was for rich designers.
- mixmastamyk 2y ago
  “Large fonts” was a setting back then.
lurk2 2y ago
> And the line of text with "Windows Update is committed to helping reduce carbon emissions" is as superfluous as many other controls as well. I mean nice for MS, but it really doesn't belong there. I agree with you wholeheartedly, but would note that this isn’t anything new. I can remember seeing messages like this on HP and DELL machines as early as 2007.
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agos 2y ago

it's basically windows 95, there does not seem to be other influences?

agumonkey 2y ago
Windows 96 I'd say
- HeckFeck 2y ago
  https://windows96.net/ https://windows96.net/ - It's real!
  - mickael-kerjean 2y ago
    and so is windows RG edition: https://demo.filestash.app/login?type=webdav&url=https://webdav.filestash.app/&next=/view/Documents/windows.swf&nav=false https://demo.filestash.app/login?type=webdav&url=https://web...
mtillman 2y ago
Serenity is an amazing accomplishment. It’s odd to me though because I always hated the windows interface, even 3.11. It seems a lot of modern Linux desktops (I know serenity isn’t Linux) try to emulate the feel of modern windows but it ends up looking like a meh version of an already bad interface imo. I still prefer the look of enlightenment or motif+4dwm.
- cmrdporcupine 2y ago
  The classic Unix interface that always seemed nicest to me was Sun's OpenLook.
secondcoming 2y ago
I'm concerned MS might enforce copyright over some of those UI icons.
- 2y ago

dailykoder 2y ago

The UI in terms of space and usability looks great. Two "modern" things I don't want to miss: Good font rendering and a fast application launcher (mod -> type a few characters -> enter). What I dislike the most on modern UI, and maybe absolutely hate, are all those super slow animations. Just gimme the damn thing, I don't need those animations. (Yes I know on most plattforms I can disable them, but this often takes quite a few steps)

abraxas 2y ago
Agreed on the animations but that isn't my top of the list because as you observed, those can usually be disabled. The most annoying aspect of modern interfaces is total inconsistency in looks and behaviour across different applications. Even common action icons vary in style, colouring and shape from one application to another. Title bars are hijacked for whatever fanciful ideas the app designers had in mind, scrollbars and other basic widgets are rarely drawn using native desktop components, tab ordering is a dream of the distant past and so on and that's if a given app even responds to the tab key.
- SirFatty 2y ago
  Personally, I dislike the flatness. It's hard (at times) to distinguish one from another when multiple windows are open.
  - whatevergoes 2y ago
    Window shadows are the solution here in my experience.
- chairhairair 2y ago
  This will never happen because: 1. Companies will always want to brand their apps with their particular UI styles. 2. In order to prevent the above, the OS would have to deliberately NOT expose the ability for apps to control their own pixels. Doing 2 means you are making it impossible to support many application types (photo editors, games, etc.). NOT doing 2 means that app companies will eventually use the same APIs that the photo editor and game applications use.

breadwinner 2y ago

Win95 UI is a cheap copy of NeXTSTEP. The original is so much nicer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXTSTEP#/media/File:NeXTSTEP_desktop.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXTSTEP#/media/File:NeXTSTEP_...

TheAmazingRace 2y ago
If you're referring to the window buttons especially, I can definitely see that. I did hear that Microsoft did acquire several NeXT Computer boxes in the early 90s to study the hardware and the operating system, and I'm absolutely sure it played a role in influencing Windows 95's look and feel.
lukas099 2y ago
What do you like better about it?
- breadwinner 2y ago
  NeXTSTEP was widely regarded as visually striking and innovative for its time, particularly for its clean, minimalist design and advanced graphical capabilities. Key elements contributing to its perceived beauty included: 3D chiseled widgets: Beveled buttons and controls with subtle shading created a dimensional, tactile appearance. Full-color icons: Large, detailed icons (uncommon in late 1980s GUIs) enhanced visual clarity. Consistent typography: System-wide use of Display PostScript enabled professional-quality fonts and anti-aliasing. Transparency and compositing: Advanced graphics handling allowed overlapping windows and semi-transparent elements. Current discussions still praise NeXTSTEP's design as better looking and more usable than Windows 11 and macOS.
  - Suppafly 2y ago
    >NeXTSTEP was widely regarded as visually striking and innovative for its time Widely? You seem like the only one carrying the water for nextstep. I'm sure they had some advances but overall it's a very ugly UI.

poisonborz 2y ago

A "love letter" would be incorporating the best of those ideas and create a modern interpretation with improvements like vector scaling. This is just copying.

bayindirh 2y ago
I think there's nothing wrong with starting from a "last known good configuration" and iterating from there.

calgarymicro 2y ago

How's this project doing after it lost its founder and biggest contributor (Andreas Kling)? I see the commit history is still reasonably active, so it's not dead at least . . .

INTPenis 2y ago

They only show the good part of 90s UIs, the standardized part. They don't show the part where every installer wanted to look unique, weird ICQ clients.

cryptonym 2y ago
That was every installer looking unique now it's every app wanting to look unique.
throitallaway 2y ago
I don't do much with Windows nowadays, but I do touch it from time to time and I don't think much has changed in this regard. Off the top of my head: driver installers for Intel, Nvidia, and Brother printers all look unique. Same with the installers for Firefox, Chrome, etc. The MSI format has brought some standardization, but it's a fairly rigid framework that leads projects to building their own installers.

averageRoyalty 2y ago

This is a very cool art project. Is there a practical daily driver Linux that has this feel and vibe? Can I do this cleanly with GNOME/Debian or XFCE/Manjaro, or a bespoke OS with an underlying package manager?

thawkth 2y ago
The closest I know of is Blue95. I have only run the live environment but it worked pretty well and was impressive. "Blue95 is a modern and lightweight desktop experience that is reminiscent of a bygone era of computing. Based on Fedora Atomic Xfce with the Chicago95 theme." https://github.com/winblues/blue95 https://github.com/winblues/blue95 Depending on your chosen desktop and era, there are also things like TDE (trinity desktop environment) a fork (or spiritual successor) of the KDE 3.x environment: https://www.trinitydesktop.org/media/screenshots/large/tde3.png https://www.trinitydesktop.org/media/screenshots/large/tde3.... And if you like Gnome 2.x, there's MATE: https://mate-desktop.org/ https://mate-desktop.org/
zozbot234 2y ago
https://github.com/grassmunk/Chicago95 https://github.com/grassmunk/Chicago95 and https://github.com/B00merang-Project/Windows-95 https://github.com/B00merang-Project/Windows-95 get quite close if you use them together. The B00merang one has presets for the GNOME/Cinnamon/MATE desktop and a GTK+4 theme (which adds terrible padding compared to the usual GTK+3 one, but at least it has visible and properly 3d-shaded widgets).
thesuitonym 2y ago
Most window managers will have a theme that looks like the old 90s. They're commonly named things like "Chicago," or "Redmond."
astro1138 2y ago
fvwm95, or newer: https://github.com/jcs/progman https://github.com/jcs/progman I'd love a similar compositor for Wayland.

jklinger410 2y ago

Would be cool if they could spin this out into a DE for other distros.

bee_rider 2y ago

Oh wow, that looks a whole lot like windows 98, haha. How’s SerenityOS feel as a daily driver at this point? Would it be much harder to use than, say, Linux 15 years ago?

andrea76 2y ago

The former maintainer published a video summary every month on YouTube about SerenityOS progress. And now it seems that anyone does it

guerrilla 2y ago

It's honestly just straight up relaxing to look at, same with BeOS/Haiku. I need to escape GNOME and get a real UI like that.

zekica 2y ago
KDE is that. The two things I don't like about it are: KIO integration with GTK apps even with kio-fuse installed, and not having dbus based configuration system like gsettings/dconf.
- guerrilla 2y ago
  > KIO integration with GTK apps even with kio-fuse installed What do you mean? What's the problem?
- aidenn0 2y ago
  Not sure if it's a NixOS bug, but even other KDE apps have hit-or-miss KIO integration for me; e.g. Krusader cannot open my MTP devices, while Dolphin can.

greenavocado 2y ago

If the font rendering seems bad in the screenshot right click on the image and open it in a new tab.

SnazzyUncle 2y ago
I think the screenshots are a bit squashed. When he was doing Andreas was doing streams the fonts looked fine they just wasn't using hinting/cleartype.

zabzonk 2y ago

Let's go the whole way - TempleOS. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TempleOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TempleOS

raffael_de 2y ago

The appeal of this UI can be boiled down to: form follows function + vintage rendering. Minus the vintage design it's basically isomorph to most common Linux window managers. Be it Cinnamon, xfce, KDE, mate ... https://imgur.com/a/A3VfeSk https://imgur.com/a/A3VfeSk But if there was a good Windows 95 theme I'd probably use it.

lnkl 2y ago
Would you consider Chicago95 a good theme? https://github.com/grassmunk/Chicago95 https://github.com/grassmunk/Chicago95

chrsw 2y ago

Neat. Reminds me of the KDE Classic interface. KDE 1.

sombragris 2y ago
I'm using a good replacement with my Plasma 6: Reactionary KDE1 window decoration, Reactionary theme, and MS Windows 9x Qt widget style.

adamgordonbell 2y ago

It's a super cool project that boots up surprisingly fast. You can just grab the git repo and and `Meta/serenity.sh run` and its starts up in qemu on my mac. I interviewed Andreas about it some time ago: https://corecursive.com/serenity-os-with-andreas-kling/ https://corecursive.com/serenity-os-with-andreas-kling/

signa11 2y ago
oh i listened to this podcast couple of days ago. lovely stuff, and i _really_ like the human side of it. a lot actually. your podcasts are really great from that perspective. thank you !
- adamgordonbell 2y ago
  Thanks!

Analemma_ 2y ago

I enjoy this as an art project, but it does frustrate me as a reaction against the chickenshit minimalism of UI today, because I think it's the wrong reaction. I don't want a "love letter to 90s UI", I want a UI that takes full advantage of the hardware we have now. Graphics processing is a million times more powerful than it was in the 90s, and I now have a monitor with 220 ppi and 5K of horizontal resolution, which was the stuff of science fiction then. Surely the best UI for such hardware is neither the shitty low-density Jony Ive suckoff of today nor a carbon copy of the world as it existed 30 years ago just for nostalgia's sake. (This is ranty but isn't really directed at the SerenityOS devs, they've delivered exactly what they promised and done a good job at it. I just wish someone, somewhere was interested in functional UI design for the current era)

sixothree 2y ago

Do I really need to set up a build environment to get this? Is there a release somewhere?

paradox460 2y ago

No, it's a love letter to windows and CDE. It's missing out on the features that made NeXT, BeOS, and other 90s operating systems interesting Heck it doesn't even have windows shade mode, that Mac systems had

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