10 ms·

Windows 8 Desktop Environment for Linux

235 points by edent 9mo ago

WillAdams 9mo ago
This could be very nice if it preserves/implements the tablet features.
jasoneckert 9mo ago
The smooth, tile-based interface of Metro/Modern UI of Windows 8 and the Windows Phone are underrated in my opinion. It was simple, fast, and focused on touch. While I didn't have a touch-based Windows 8 laptop or tablet at the time, I had a Windows Phone, and I enjoyed using it more than any other device I've had since.
- jmkni 9mo ago
  I unironically loved my Windows Phone, it was great to develop for too coming from a WPF background at the time
  - electroglyph 9mo ago
    the Nokia hardware was pretty great, too!
    - mghackerlady 9mo ago
      Nokias hardware has always been pretty good. Heck, some of the nokia branded HMD stuff is well built for the price
    - Someone1234 9mo ago
      Nokia's hardware managed to prove to me, that plastic done RIGHT, is just as good if not more practical than the metals we have today. They looked fantastic, legitimately didn't require a case, and held up very well.
      - happymellon 9mo ago
        Some time after Apple discontinued the plastic Macbooks, I took mine in to get the battery replaced. I remember overhearing one of the sales folk having to explain to a woman that they can't sell her the white ones, only metal ones as she preferred the chunky plastic.
      - lou1306 9mo ago
        And on most Lumias, if your phone got scratched, lost its shine, or you just got tired of the color, you could just walk to the store and get a new "shell".
  - tgv 9mo ago
    I liked it too. But it never was great. E.g., I remember that the calculator had date computations, but the year input was a dropdown going from 1900 to 2100 or something like that. Look at all 5 of us reminiscing here...
    - jkestner 9mo ago
      There are dozens of us. Loved the Lumia hardware, loved maybe not that lack of polish in places but the overall UI vision was mostly well executed. Its rigid experience across apps feels quaint now, but if we had this focus now, we wouldn’t be seeing the Light Phone, b/w UI hacks, etc pop up.
  - timpera 9mo ago
    Same here. My Lumia 635 was one of my best purchases ever, it was so capable for the price. It's a shame that they stopped believing in it.
    - derelicta 9mo ago
      The Nokia Lumia 800 remains for me the best phone design I ever experienced. It was flashy, comfortable in hand and felt sturdy
      - Paianni 9mo ago
        If you liked that you would have loved the N9 (same body but with Linux-based OS).
  - wiseowise 9mo ago
    It was amazing. Ran circles around Android on weaker hardware, but because duopoly duo didn’t want to accept competitor it was artificially hamstrung and subsequently killed.
    - whizzter 9mo ago
      No, the death of Windows Phone was 95% the fault of MS/Nokia. Pre-announcing that they were leaving all Winphone 7 customers behind for Winphone 8 meant that every retailer/distributor was left with unsellable stock (because they hadn't gained enough traction to sell out initial shipments). If this was because Nokia made bad/cheap phones that were un-upgradeable or MS being arrogant isn't something I'm remembering anymore but the end-result was pissed retailers and nobody selling WP8.
      - wiseowise 9mo ago
        That was the final nail in the coffin. The reason why they didn't hit adoption in the first place is because Google prohibited their application on MS devices. Mobile YouTube already wasn't good enough, and without the rest of the GSuite (Maps, Gmail, Chrome, Calendar, Translate) it was dead in the water. And no, HERE maps and third-party clients were not good enough to tip the scale.
        toast0 9mo ago
        Google Mail and Calendar was fine; Google had an exchange connector at the time which worked well. (or well enough) But maybe Google would have updated their WinCE apps to WP7 if Microsoft didn't make them throw all their work away.
        IcyWindows 9mo ago
        Google had said they were killing the exchange connector and only changed their mind at the very end after Microsoft had written the workaround.
        tsimionescu 9mo ago
  - rachr 9mo ago
    The Lumia Icon/930 I had was genuinely the best phone I have ever used, from both a hardware quality and software perspective. It made the competing iPhone 5 look like garbage.
  - snoman 9mo ago
    I honestly think that the windows phone development experience is where Microsoft majorly shit the bed. The sheer volume of breaking changes (and the severity of those breaks) meant rewriting a non-trivial amount of your app from version to version. I know multiple developers that just dropped support for windows phone as a result.
  - alfiedotwtf 9mo ago
    I bought a 4G Nokia 3310 yesterday, and to be honest, it’s actually not bad!
  - PeterStuer 9mo ago
    How many abandoned attempts do you feel the Microsoft mobile developer ecosytem could take before losing all faith in yet another MS mobile strategy? In the mobile space, there was no market for just Windows Phone apps. You needed to support native Android and iOS already. WP was just another burden without a clear return. In their desperation they started paying college students for developing apps for the platform, leading to low quality experiences. They pushed WP hard to their channel. Many employees in MS system integrators and managed services got very cheap phones, but outside that group, just nobody bought them before in the end they started dumping them to the masses as cheapest phone in the store, but there ain't no serious market there either.
    - pjmlp 9mo ago
      It was about 10% in Europe when they killed it, many people that could not go for Apple due to their prices where actually going for Windows Phone, because the native code (WinRT/.NET Native/C++/CX), provided a much better experience in low end phones than Dalvik with its lousy JIT was capable of at the time. I was one of them, initially getting a Lumia as second phone even though as ex-Nokia I was kind of pissed off, developing for UAP/UWP grew on me and was much more fun than dealing with Android. Now given how Microsoft has messed up the whole UWP, Project Reunion and WinUI/WinAppSDK I would assert there is no faith left.
  - pjmlp 9mo ago
    Spont on, I always considered WinRT, .NET Native, C++/CX is what COM evolution should have been back in 2001, instead of the J++ reboot. However the way Microsoft has messed it all up, no one is left besides Windows team and some hardcode believers, to care about WinRT/WinUI any longer than what is only available via WinAppSDK.
  - EB-Barrington 9mo ago
    [dead]
- lifetimerubyist 9mo ago
  I had an Android phone and my friend had a Windows Phone. I wanted to get a Windows phone but by the time I came around to needing a new device it was already killed off. Too bad.
- xattt 9mo ago
  This. The “mobile-ization” of desktop interfaces is a bane on current computing. The metaphors of work between desktop and mobile devices are wildly different. Obligatory car analogy: a mechanic working in his shop has a completely different set of tools available than if he was going into the field to fix a car.
  - mghackerlady 9mo ago
    I really think GNOME is good at making an interface that works well on both, so is KDE to some extent with kirigami
    - Zak 9mo ago
      I dislike Gnome on a pure desktop or non-touch laptop, in part because of UI decisions I think are meant to work better on a touchscreen. It's really good on a touchscreen though aside from the horrid onscreen keyboard.
    - lproven 9mo ago
      > I really think GNOME is good at making an interface that works well on both, I agree with the comment from @zak on this. I have to disagree. I have used GNOME (both GNOME Mobile and Phosh) on phones, and it makes more sense there, but it's still a bit clunky and fiddly. Example: you only get half the tiny screen for your app launcher. So it fills up fast. So, you put apps in groups. BUT you can't pin groups to the fast-launch bar thing. On the desktop, IMHO it does not work well. It works minimally, in a way that's only acceptable if you don't know your way around a more full-featured desktop. It feels like trying to use a computer with one hand tied behind my back. Yes, it's there, it's usable, but it breaks lots of assumptions and is missing commonplace core features. Simple features: desktop icons are handy. GNOME: ew, how ugly and untidy! We're taking them off you. Obvious but complex features: menu bars go back to the 1970s and by the mid-1980s were standardised, with standard shortcut keys, with standardised entries in standardised places. They work well with a mouse, they work well with a keyboard, they work well with screenreaders for people with vision disabilities. GNOME: Yeah, screw all those guys. Rips them out. Non-obvious but core features: for over 30 years in Linux GUIs, you could middle-click on a title bar to send it to the back of the window stack. GNOME: screw those guys. Eliminates title bars. No, GNOME does not work _well_ on both. It is sort of minimally usable. On both, it's minimally functional if you are not fussy, don't want to customise, don't have ingrained habits, and don't use keyboards and keyboard shortcuts much.
- einpoklum 9mo ago
  > The ... UI of Windows 8 and the Windows Phone... underrated in my opinion. It was ... focused on touch. That's why it was rated low. Most people were using this interface on PC's and laptops, without a touchscreen, where a touch-focused interface does not make sense. Maybe it was good choice for Windows Phone or Windows Tablet, but people were not rating it based on that experience. The very idea of using a single UI for both a touchscreen-oriented and no-touchscreen, kbd-and-mouse computers is the most problematic aspect of it. > It was simple No, it wasn't simple. There was the simple part, but things not integrated into the simple part were a hodge-podge of previous Windows versions' UI. Now, I like some of the previous Windows versions' UI, but putting a simple veneer on something does not make it simple; if anything, a little more complex. > It was fast The fact that an OS UI in the 2010s or 2020s need to be commended for being fast is kind of sad. Plus - I don't believe it was that fast. Did you try running it on, say, a 15yro machine relative to the Win8 launch time? i.e. 1998? Even with a 10yro machine I believe it was kind of sluggish.
- wombat-man 9mo ago
  Yeah I agree. It was a little weird without a touch screen, but at that point I was not navigating the start menu visually with a mouse anymore anyway. Windows phone was great. I think I got it when Android was still growing up. I liked the focus and the speed for sure. Microsoft's bread and butter is no longer OSes, I think, and it's unfortunately starting to show.
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
- meinersbur 9mo ago
  Live tiles are nearly universally praised in retrospect, but it might be a case of hindsight bias [1]. The video [2] brings up some problems of the concept and why no other company copied the concept. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosy_retrospection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosy_retrospection [2] https://youtu.be/OgXlNaYXRu4 https://youtu.be/OgXlNaYXRu4
  - normalaccess 9mo ago
    I'm sure there was some meeting where at the end of the pitch deck was some one said: "...and after people acclimate to them, we'll put ads there! Advertising Directly in the UI!"
  - bee_rider 9mo ago
    Are live tiles universally praised? I see them mentioned positively occasionally, but I suspect they are getting some benefit… like, they are the Windows 8 feature that isn’t immediately obnoxious. Windows 8’s UI just didn’t have any redeeming features, so the element that is merely bad gets brought up as a sort of “see I’m not a relentlessly negative hater, I’m objective” thing, I bet. Is there a name for this trope?
    - keyringlight 9mo ago
      The way I see live tiles is that it was MS abandoning widgets that existed since vista (although they were removed later for security reasons) and coming up with a new thing to start all over with, and didn't backporting it so the only way you'd get them is on the (less popular) new version of the OS. Also they were tied into the start screen/menu, you couldn't drop on on your desktop.
  - WorldMaker 9mo ago
    I think if Microsoft had made an easier bridge, faster from Win32 to things like Live Tiles (and the Charms, too) there would have been a lot more people praising the Live Tiles today (and maybe even the Charms). Live Tiles really made their case on Windows Phone 8 where nearly every app supported them (relatively well), that was the only "Notification Center" for missed notifications, and its glanceability became very obvious. Charms are somewhat similar, too. On iPhone almost every app needs a Share button somewhere and almost every app still has it in a different place today. On Windows Phone 8 it was much more obvious why a dedicated OS-level Share button accessible just about anywhere in any app was pretty great. On Desktop it wasn't seen as helpful as almost no apps supported it (either as shareable things or as apps that could be shared to) because there was no easy Win32 bridge and Microsoft also didn't think to try to integrate with clipboard operations until too late in Windows 8.1 (and then never quite delivered it because most everyone had already written off the Charms by then), as what could have been a potentially easy path to use the existing Windows "share paradigm" to bootstrap. (You can make cases for the other 4 Charms as well beyond the Share charm, but the Share charm is the most obvious where Windows Phone proved it was a good idea but the Desktop didn't have enough supporting apps to also prove it there.)
- fidotron 9mo ago
  The problem MS created was WP7 was a technical dead end: a feature phone OS with a Silverlight UI, which was almost impossible to bypass, hurting third party support a lot. WP8 was a far "better" OS, but it came with higher system requirements more comparable with Android. Google never got enough crap on for their stunts with youtube in that era though.
  - whizzter 9mo ago
    Not to mention that WP7 customers couldn't upgrade to WP8, meant that both customers and resellers had devices they couldn't do shit with.
    - WorldMaker 9mo ago
      It's hard to fault Microsoft for doing what they did with WP7, though. They needed to make a statement that they were still committed to phones since WinCE was truly dead. So they made an MVP "Preview" of what the next Phone OS would be. WP7 was sold to me in more like that language of "this is a quick MVP on the way to the next phone". It was exciting at that time in that way, seeing it as the hail mary pass of "What if we replaced WinCE with all the things we learned from the Zune? How quickly can we do a version of that which will give the right impression and set us up for the next 'real' version?" Unfortunately yes, it wasn't sold to everyone with that perspective. I think Microsoft may have counted on developer enthusiasm a bit more to get the word across. Also to be fair, that was still the era where "everyone" bought the new iPhone at launch and iOS compatibility was seen as somewhat equally spotty that if you didn't have the latest hardware you didn't expect the next iOS version to run well and you'd expect to get left behind on apps. It was also the era where Android was often non-upgradeable between versions on hardware (because carriers wouldn't "certify it") and you generally assumed an Android device was version locked to whatever OS version you bought it with. Microsoft may have felt somewhat safe needing a hardware jump between WP7 and WP8 exactly because that was de facto the case with iPhone and directly the case with Android at the time.
      - cyberax 9mo ago
- johnvanommen 9mo ago
  If it wasn't for the T-Mobile Sidekick, Microsoft probably wouldn't have had to buy Nokia. Here's the story: I worked on the infrastructre for the predecessor to Android, the Danger Hiptop, AKA "The T-Mobile Sidekick." (This is my real name, you can see when I worked on it on LinkedIn.) The "Danger Device" as everyone called it, had cloud storage and a full web browser before Android and before iPhone. In fact, the first Android basically looks like the successor to the T-Mobile sidekick, because many of the people that worked on Android, including the founder, were from Danger. *Here's the funny part:* This is hearsay, so please do not sue me Microsoft. I once saw an article online that confirmed the following story, but the article is long gone (this was more than 20 years ago.) Again: Don't sue me Microsoft. I am telling a story here, that I heard through the grapevine: *Microsoft blew up the entire "Sidekick" project.* But they didn't blow it up intentionally. Basically, Danger ran on Sun Solaris, and when Microsoft bought them, a great deal of the infrastructure was trucked over to Microsoft. As I understand it, nothing was ported, they basically just plugged the gear in. At some point, the backups failed. Keep in mind: ALL THE USERS DATA WAS IN THE CLOUD. Nobody was doing this at the time, not Android, not Apple. Just Danger - and then Microsoft. While restoring from backups, someone was feeling the heat for the mobile devices being down for so long. It takes a long time to do a restore. One thing led to another, a decision was made... and they lost all the data. *poof* Gone forever. The death of the Sidekick has been documented in various articles, but there was only ONE that got the story correct, and it was nuked over a decade ago. Here's one of the (partially correct) details: https://abcnews.go.com/Business/sidekick-disaster-shows-datas-safe-cloud/story?id=8840420 https://abcnews.go.com/Business/sidekick-disaster-shows-data... I've got a story about the first big celebrity hack too, that was the Sidekick also. (And likely was possible because of the Sidekick's cloud storage.)
  - xhevahir 9mo ago
    Wasn't the Sidekick the phone in the Paris Hilton hack? Man, that was a long time ago.
    - johnvanommen 9mo ago
      Yep. My boss came over to me that morning, asked if I'd seen the news, and basically said that if it turned out that I built the servers wrong, it would be firing time. I kept my job. It turned out that the reason that Paris Hilton and so many celebrities got hacked was: * the password to her cloud storage account was the name of her dog * once the hackers had access to her cloud storage, they could use that to get authentic phone numbers for half of the entertainment industry, because Paris Hilton was so well-connected socially. AFAIK, nobody ever managed to get access to the servers illegitimately. The demise of the service was a failed back up of the Hitachi SAN.
- klglrksbjkt 9mo ago
  Touch-optimized UI on phone/tablet: Perfect. Touch-optimized UI on desktops: One step away from where it belongs. Touch-optimized UI on servers: Very very out of touch. Firing sinofsky for it: Good.
- VTimofeenko 9mo ago
  I really liked the idea of what they did with the start menu of win8. Whenever I opened the start menu, my intent was to focus on look for something in the start menu, not multitask, so live tiles were perfect. IIRC I even wrote a couple of toy apps with those tiles. Win8.1(blue?) was much more polished experience though, original 8 had a lot of rough edges. I had an original Lenovo yoga and boy the desktop touch experience was bad. Hardware wise it wasn't winning any prizes either. The cooler died a couple of times and replacements were a pain to procure.
wiseowise 9mo ago
Win 8 UI was way ahead of its time.
- silon42 9mo ago
  I still prefer the time of Win 2K (or max Win 7)
  - reddalo 9mo ago
    Windows 2000 was peak usability. Windows XP was also good, especially with the Classic or Standard themes.
    - okokwhatever 9mo ago
      Windows 2000... I loved it so much...
- anthk 9mo ago
  Windows 8's UI was not new by any means. Shareware with that style already existed in early 2000's.
- kasabali 9mo ago
  the time that's never came lol
techsystems 9mo ago
I want this for everything, including my phone, tablet, and tele! I which distro this is being tested on.
keyle 9mo ago
It probably works better than windows 8 ever has... Seeing it might have something called "common sense" over "org driven design".
- petcat 9mo ago
  I doubt it actually works better. In my experience hobby FOSS is exceptional at building tools and servers, but abysmal at building GUIs and anything that requires some semblance of non-tech-user UX.
themicahshell 9mo ago
"Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should". /jk Probably nice on a tablet.
nelblu 9mo ago
As much as the UI was fluid, smooth and probably best for a touch interface, I distinctly remember I hated it and frantically wanted my Start button back on my PC. It is kinda funny reading all the comments about its nostalgia, when all I could think was how annoying it was. I guess to each their own :-).
- rjzzleep 9mo ago
  I remember that as well, and in the enterprise they added one of those start menu plugins. But boy, compared to a react based startmenu in 2025...
- lloeki 9mo ago
  On "regular computers" I think it was flawed in two fatal ways: - there was already an extremely heavy expectation that clicking the start button or pressing the windows key would bring up a menu, not a full screen takeover where all contextual sense of place (that you had in the past experience) was lost. - the UI being a full-screen takeover on a phone (Windows Phone) or a tablet (10"-ish tops at the time) was OK but on a 21~27" desktop it's absurdly overwhelming.
  - HPsquared 9mo ago
    Especially with such a low information density. It was clearly just a massive amount of wasted screen space on desktop.
    - WorldMaker 9mo ago
      If you had good Live Tiles there was a ton of information density. You could have the weather, your calendar, recent emails, recent tweets, recent photos, interesting news, etc all on one at-a-glance screen (versus the phone form factor where you'd need at least some scrolling). It felt like wasted space on the desktop because it was originally hard for desktop apps to opt-in to Live Tiles and send Live Tile updates and not enough people were using the sorts of multi-platform apps that had great Live Tiles.
Imustaskforhelp 9mo ago
I was asking for something like this but for windows 7 sometime ago. A little bit surprised that someone made something so strikingly similar to what I requested. I hope that somebody creates something like this for windows 7 as well. One can only hope as Windows 7 nostalgia hits hard
- anthk 9mo ago
  Windows 7 it's easy. Plastik was like that before Windows 7 itself. Just set that theme under Plasma 6 and you are done. Also, QTCurve.
  - Imustaskforhelp 9mo ago
    One can argue that Windows 8 is easy as well but here we are (https://github.com/kavinunethsara/tiledscreen https://github.com/kavinunethsara/tiledscreen) Sure one can try to patch our way and this is what people suggest but if we are already having windows 8, Please lets just have windows 7 as well, there is no harm in it. I hope that the author of the project or its community about the win 8 DE could look at resurrecting/creating win 7 DE ootb as well.
- SpikedCola 9mo ago
  +1 for a Windows 7 clone. I have not seen a theme that comes close to copying Win7.
arkensaw 9mo ago
So nice to see this. I really loved Windows Phone for the simple UI it had which shared a lot of concepts with this. And I felt like Microsoft could have made something really great from the Win8 UI if they had iterated a few more times before dropping it. I hope you take on that initiative and make the improvements that they didn't
pjmlp 9mo ago
If it doesn't come with a XAML WinRT based framework stack, it is only half way there.
Fiveplus 9mo ago
Talking about the design, the further we get from 2012, the more obvious it becomes that windows 8 was kinda like the bauhaus movement for an operating system that wanted to be on touch screens but was made to work on traditional mouse-keyboard interface. It was technically correct, aesthetically pure but socially rejected because it was too stark for the general public (my opinion). This implementation gets one thing most Metro clones miss, i.e the typography as structure paradigm. In Win8, there were no divider lines or heavy drop shadows to denote hierarchy. The hierarchy was defined strictly by the weight and size of the font. We spent the last decade drifting back into glassmorphism and mica materials (win11) because people missed the comfort of texture but from a pure information density and rendering performance perspective - the flat, monochromatic 2D plane of windows 8 is a nice tangent. It removed the cognitive load of decoding the UI chrome for touch users. ps: I'm impressed by the constraint of using native Qt/C++ here instead of taking the easy route with electron or QML/javascript bindings for everything.
- anthk 9mo ago
  The cognitive load it's trying to guess where the button lies in the interface for flat screens. Not an issue under GTK2/3/4 with Zukitre (and QT5/6 reusing it with qt5ct/qt6ct or with an environment variable setting QT_STYLE_OVERRIDE to "gtk2" or similar.
  - ffsm8 9mo ago
    I didn't remember having issues finding buttons on windows 8. While they were certainly flat, they were always clearly signaled from my memory - did other people have this issue? To be clear, when it was released I was one of the people hating on it, but it grew on me over time - and after I installed startisback, which essentially just scaled down the start screen/Metro ui to a slightly larger start menu ... It was a decent UX again, to me.
    - gmueckl 9mo ago
      I remember running into issues with link-style clickable text in some parts of the UI that was almost unidentifiable as clickable because it stood alone with no similar text in non-link style nearby for reference. There were other issues that I clearly remember. There was some remarkable jank when moving the mouse cursor across screen borders in a multi-monitor setup. If you were moving towards the edge of the current screen, Windows would under certain circumstances trap the cursor there instead of moving it across the border. I believe this was done to give "hot corners" a bigger mouse target, but that feature was almost completely DoA on desktop.
pmarreck 9mo ago
Apple guy here who actually liked Metro. Party of one, for sure, LOL Glad to see an attempt to revive it on Linux
teekert 9mo ago
Nice. I'm an open source guy, but being disappointed with Android's openness (years ago) I got a Nokia Lumia 800 with Windows 10 Mobile (or whatever it was called). Loved that OS. Fast, well integrated. Can't help but keep thinking it would have gone somewhere if they'd kept at it (in the form of Android app compatibility or "the defacto MS365 OS" or something). Then they'd call it Copilot OS in 2026 and mess it up anyway. So perhaps it's good that it died ;)
haolez 9mo ago
The design looks cool, but it surfaces the app launchers as the protagonists of my workflow. I feel that it would be better if it was more about open windows or something in this direction.
rubymamis 9mo ago
Nice to see it uses Qt C++ and QML (:
- grougnax 9mo ago
  No, not nice. It should use TypeScript or Rust. C++/QML is unsafe.
  - rubymamis 9mo ago
    TypeScript transpile to Javascript - do you really want your operating system's shell written in slow ass Javascript? Modern C++ with hardening rules for the compiler[1] is pretty safe. [1] https://best.openssf.org/Compiler-Hardening-Guides/Compiler-Options-Hardening-Guide-for-C-and-C++.html https://best.openssf.org/Compiler-Hardening-Guides/Compiler-...
    - lproven 9mo ago
      > do you really want your operating system's shell written in slow ass Javascript? What, like GNOME Shell you mean?
  - array_key_first 9mo ago
    TypeScript is way, way too slow to use for desktop applications. People try and, surprise surprise, those applications are slow as shit. Qt has a C++ backend, so C++ is used. Qt is relatively safe and well designed.
    - NateEag 9mo ago
      Qt uses "slow as shit" JavaScript in its UI markup language: https://doc.qt.io/qt-6/qtqml-javascript-expressions.html https://doc.qt.io/qt-6/qtqml-javascript-expressions.html Is your complaint with Electron, the "browser as local GUI app" framework that's been popular with SaaS vendors for their "native" apps?
      - 9mo ago
realusername 9mo ago
I would be okay to use this DE on a mobile Linux but I'm afraid the usability on desktop is going to suffer like it did with Windows 8.
notRobot 9mo ago
I use a Windows Metro inspired launcher on Android and it's the best phone UI experience I've ever had: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nfwebdev.launcher10 https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nfwebdev.l...
nacozarina 9mo ago
ugh I still have to administer old w2k12 Metro vms and I hate it
- amlib 9mo ago
  Now you can install it on your linux servers and hate it even more! :)
user3939382 9mo ago
There was nothing wrong with the Windows 2000 UI except that it was “boring”. I get wanting to make things feel new, but doing so requires great skill to achieve without losing the functional imperatives, which is exactly what they did with pretty much every design since Win2k.
yyaakkqq 9mo ago
The only thing worth saving from windows8-10 is the windows border. it is a huge usability win. Clear borders. square (so it's also fast). clear colors showing which window has focus. It's also funny this show up now a day after the top post was the osx windows border radius fiasco. yet no linux WM has a decent windows8-10 window border clone. KDE used to but since the rewrite of the theme from kde5+ they not only killed it, but also removed the option to have sane window border color to show focus. Now it's "accent color" which should be non contrast because they will force that same color on toolbars and such, just like all the bad ideas from office-ribbon era.
- WillAdams 9mo ago
  I am currently running a utility to square off the window borders in Windows 11.
  - yyaakkqq 9mo ago
    on KDE5-6, ironically, to have high-contrast windows and square borders, one must use something written because the author wanted round corners on older versions of kde :) https://github.com/matinlotfali/KDE-Rounded-Corners https://github.com/matinlotfali/KDE-Rounded-Corners
    - WillAdams 9mo ago
      Given the complexities which anything but square corners adds to screen grabs, I've never understood why anyone would want to use such.
- somat 9mo ago
  well there is the default style for openbsd's fvwm. clear borders, grab handles, contrasting fg/bg colors. But I won't go so far as to say it is decent. https://debugpointnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/OpenBSD-desktop-7-fvwm-1024x588.jpg https://debugpointnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/OpenBS... Anyhow it's bold to claim that there are no linux window managers to rival win8, linux is like the paleozoic of desktop interfaces. It has the opposite problem there are too many of the infernal things.
normalaccess 9mo ago
First thought that popped into my mind is the quote from Bennett Foddy for his game Getting Over It. --"I made a game for a certain kind of person. To hurt them."
b00ty4breakfast 9mo ago
win8 is the latest version of windows I've used (for about a week before I installed linux, ironically enough. I'm using that laptop right now lol) and I do not remember it being a good experience. Why you would recreate it is beyond me but I think it's neat that folks are doing stuff like this. Now, if someone wants to recreate win95, I might be interested
- lucasoshiro 9mo ago
  > Now, if someone wants to recreate win95 You can try Chicago95 [1], but it's only a XFCE theme. If you want more than a theme, there's SerenityOS [2] but it isn't suitable for daily use (yet) [1] https://github.com/grassmunk/Chicago95 https://github.com/grassmunk/Chicago95 [2] https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity
  - sneak 9mo ago
    I'd like a DE/theme that aims to do what the Win2k shell did. File explorer, basic window management, app switching, app launching. Back before every single UI widget had to integrate 47 types of OS feature-of-this-year's-product-cycle functionality. Chicago95 isn't far off looks-wise. Something slightly more polished than Xfce, but way less than the behemoth that KDE is. I really feel like the modern basic desktop UI was pretty close to complete in 2002-2005, and the moment we tried to make your contacts list available for use in every single application we fell onto a slippery slope from which we have never recovered.
igmn 9mo ago
It feels like no one in this thread has actually clicked the link or watched the video demo. Do you people only read titles? Purely from a conceptual point of view, sure, it's a cool project, but the actual UI and UX are abysmal compared to what Windows 8 was. Take one look at the lock screen. Not to crap on the dev, but ignoring it is also counter-productive: it feels a bit like seeing one of those iPhone 4 clones that ran on J2ME trying to parody iOS - impressive attempt at making a dumb phone look less like a dumb phone, but it was miserable to use or even look at. I see this all the time around Linux UIs, no one has standards and no one wants to point the lack of them out.
- user205738 9mo ago
  You read the title and go to discuss about it in the comments. No one has time to follow the links and watch something there.
alexpadula 9mo ago
Oh helllllllll no. I’ll stick with my Linux. Cool project but Windows is just crap nowadays, even the UI. Best was XP.
leke 9mo ago
This would be nice for a Linux phone.
Fabricio20 9mo ago
Is it just me or does anyone else notice all the little inconsistencies on these "windows ui clones" that show up on linux? I like the idea but looking at the pictures I can't get past the lock screen (font size feels wrong, the borders missing on the input field, the size.. it just all feels wrong somehow I can't explain. That On-Screen-Keyboard squeezed into a tiny square??). On the "start menu" picture the two font sizes near the battery icon, how all the linux apps on display have weird coloring and blues-that-dont-quite-match, the bright greens with white text, etc.. Not to diss the UI attempt at all, I just always seem to spot all these little things/polish every time one of these come up (I've seen so many XP clones where the minimize/maximize/close buttons look out of place and badly shaped, etc..). I genuinely wonder if it's because I spent so much time on these OSes back in the day or if all the DEs being used have some inherent limitations that cause these design inconsistencies.
- sneak 9mo ago
  It's because it's a tremendous amount of time and work and effort and QA to get UIs to look really really well-designed. (Even then, the design can still suck, like modern Windows or appleOS 26.x.) I don't think people realize just what an insane amount of labor it is to get these things implemented, even if you're handed a perfect design spec up front. Maybe LLMs will close this gap once they get better at seeing things.
- bee_rider 9mo ago
  I think these things tend to be somebody’s fun little mini project, so polish is not a high priority. Realistically a big community of contributors isn’t going to grow around cloning a UI that Linux users intentionally left behind. The beautiful thing about Free software is that people can do whatever they want! In a way is is quite impressive that somebody can get into the uncanny valley with this sort of project, right?
- lunar_rover 9mo ago
  You need tons of effort, plenty of experience in the field and a single unified direction to get them done well, and unfortunately the Linus Torvalds of Design currently does not exist. Many underestimate just how much is behind everyday basic UIs. Even the biggest native Linux desktop projects suffer from this. KDE is typical death by a thousand papercuts, GNOME tried but their amateurism is clearly visible.
ferguess_k 9mo ago
Is there a Windows 98 SP2 Env for Linux? The peak of personal (non-sysadmin) computing experience. There were fewer BSOD than Windows 95, and all DOS games still worked unlike Windows 2000/XP where most DOS games worked.
- sneak 9mo ago
  My fond memory is of XP (with the child's toy color scheme changed to the Win2000 one) or simply Win2000 - it actually had preemptive multitasking and protected memory, unlike 95/89. Everything you need, nothing you don't. The OS/DE stayed in its lane.
  - ferguess_k 9mo ago
    2000 and XP both gave me fond memories too. 3.1 and 95/98 were the starter though, like one always have fond memory with the first love :D
- forgotmypw17 9mo ago
  Well, there's this, for XFCE: https://github.com/grassmunk/Chicago95 https://github.com/grassmunk/Chicago95
  - jeroenhd 9mo ago
    I've tried it for fun, but it quickly falls apart. The consistency and attention to detail that made the Windows 95 user interface good just isn't there when reskinning an entirely different piece of UI.
evanjrowley 9mo ago
Glad to see someone was inspired to do this! I believe the Windows 8 UI was good - one of my unpopular opinions explained below. I never personally owned a Windows 8 computer, but I used some at work. I logged in to Windows Server 2012 and 2012 R2 on a daily bases for several years - these had the same type of start menu. Prior to this experience on Windows, I was a Mac OS X "power user" enjoying Quicksilver[0][1] on Snow Leopard (10.6) through (Mavericks 10.9). It's mode of interaction[2] was very similar to Spotlight[3] built-in to modern macOS. I also learned to touch type on that very same *MacBook while waiting for a plane in an airport terminal. All this is to say that the concept of hitting a key and typing to launch an application felt very natural to me when I first encountered the Windows 8 UI. I never felt the need to use a traditional start menu, despite having clocked lots of hours on Windows 7, Server 2008 R2, and older versions. in the office. When Windows 10 brought back the traditional start menu, I only ever searched through it like I would have on a Windows 8 or MacOS system. Recent benchmark testing[4] showed Windows 8.1 to be faster in many ways compared to Windows 10 and Windows 11. I was surprised someone actually did this, but not surprised at the results! Perhaps one of the reasons why I preferred it more than Windows 10 and Winows 11 is the Control Panel was still very usable in Windows 8. As someone who worked on Server versions of Windows, the Control Panel was very much embedded in my muscle memory. The erosion of it in subsequent versions of Windows is the source of my growing pains. That, plus all of the popular reasons why Microsoft/Windows gets backlash today. * The 2010 MacBook was advertized with a 10 hour battery life. Many years would pass before Apple would again advertize such a long battery lifetime. I had upgraded the RAM and swapped the optical drive for a second 2.5 hard disk, then re-installed Mac OS X in software RAID1 mode. It was extremely stable for many years until the day I decided to decomission it (ran 'sudo rm -rf /' at the Terminal). I.e., the type of stuff that would give Tim Cook indegestion. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quicksilver_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quicksilver_(software) [1] https://github.com/quicksilver/Quicksilver https://github.com/quicksilver/Quicksilver [2] https://images.sftcdn.net/images/t_app-cover-s,f_auto/p/7e76387e-9b26-11e6-b84a-00163ec9f5fa/3663276022/quicksilver-screenshot.png https://images.sftcdn.net/images/t_app-cover-s,f_auto/p/7e76... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotlight_(Apple) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotlight_(Apple) [4] https://meterpreter.org/the-20-year-showdown-why-windows-8-1-just-beat-windows-11-in-a-massive-speed-test/ https://meterpreter.org/the-20-year-showdown-why-windows-8-1...
GuB-42 9mo ago
Funny how almost everybody hated the Windows 8 desktop environment. And to this day, Windows 8 is still seen as one of the worst versions of Windows for that reason, even if it was pretty decent under the hood. Projects like this show that it has its fans. It feels like authors being successful only after their death. I still think of the Windows 8 UI as terrible overall, but now that the hate has passed, people are not afraid to give it some redeeming qualities. It was pretty good on mobile though, which is the root of the problem I think. They tried to unify what shouldn't be unified.
mring33621 9mo ago
No one ever uses/used our windows 8 laptop because it was so horrible. Total waste of money.
stuaxo 9mo ago
As a gnome user I remember thinking I could probably get used to the start screen.
petterroea 9mo ago
"look, they ported the worst part of Windows' history to Linux" Regardless of whether or not this was done for fun or due to actually missing Windows 8(as the author does), it's impressive. I remember reading some time ago that the windows 8 UI lead got fired but I can't find proof of that now. Maybe it was just satire lol
- phoronixrly 9mo ago
  Can't wait for the 'Show HN: MacOS Tahoe Desktop Environment for Linux' post
  - lproven 9mo ago
    Here you go: https://pearos.xyz/ https://pearos.xyz/ "Liquid glass" and all.
    - phoronixrly 9mo ago
      Thank you! My Firefox started lagging even before I downloaded the distro and wiped my entire disk (it's seemingly a feature!)
      - lproven 9mo ago
        :-D
- mock-possum 9mo ago
  Wow they ported Windows Millennium Edition to Linux??
  - petterroea 9mo ago
    Don't jinx it, someone may just do it
  - red-iron-pine 9mo ago
    back then we called it Windows Mistake Edition
thiht 9mo ago
Oh god why
asveikau 9mo ago
I guess nobody here reminiscing about Windows 8 will mention that the executive in charge of it was texting and emailing with Jeffrey Epstein.
vondur 9mo ago
Oh boy. No one wanted this on Windows back when it was released. I’m sure it’ll be a hit with Linux users everywhere.
grougnax 9mo ago
Please permanently delete this repo forever. I am having nightmares right now.
kopollo 9mo ago
The best UX ui was in Windows XP.
- grougnax 9mo ago
  No. Nothing good has come from Microsoft.
ayi 9mo ago
If you want to read some confessions from the guy who is responsible for Windows 8 (Steven Sinofsky) read this blog post: https://hardcoresoftware.learningbyshipping.com/p/108-epilogue https://hardcoresoftware.learningbyshipping.com/p/108-epilog... Whole blog is about his time at Microsoft but this particular post mentions windows 8
Jigsy 9mo ago
The only thing I miss about Windows 8.1 is when I hovered my mouse over an application in my taskbar, it showed a little tab preview of what it's doing. I certainly don't miss that desktop environment, though.
tempaccsoz5 9mo ago
This is missing the best part of windows 8/metro - the glow around the cursor. I found it really fun playing with how the glow highlighted smooth sections of tile borders as well as illuminating the whole tile. IIRC it also affected window borders, etc. Very fun to play with.
arjie 9mo ago
Boy I could not stand Windows 8. Unfortunately, many of their techniques were copied into Linux distribution views and it made my life worse. The new start menu was perhaps the worst. It created this massive doorway effect where I'd hit Start and the whole screen would whiz and spin and then there'd be all these moving tiles and I'll forget what I hit Start for. Frequently I'd then hit Esc, remember, and Start again. This was compounded by the fact that if you started typing after hitting start it wouldn't just filter to the applications. God knows what it would actually do but not that. I was one of the people who enjoyed Windows Vista (which introduced sudo to Windows users) and Windows 7 and even Windows 10 after which the i7-4790k machine I had to do the Windows was no longer eligible for Windows 11 so I have no idea what that looks like. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event_perception#Relation_to_episodic_memory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event_perception#Relation_to_e...
- realusername 9mo ago
  I also loved Windows Vista, the system itself was quite buggy and slow but the UI was absolutely amazing and clear.
  - ale42 9mo ago
    Windows 7 was better IMHO: clear interface, and less buggy than Vista.
    - chithanh 9mo ago
      Windows Vista SP2 was basically identical to Windows 7 RTM, with mostly cosmetic differences. What changed is that by Windows 7 launch, PC specs had caught up with system requirements and WDDM drivers had matured and were no longer crashing all the time. So the first impression was very different.
  - Fnoord 9mo ago
    In that case, may I suggest macOS Tahoe and i(Pad)OS 26? I hated that UI so much, I'm glad I barely had to use it (that it was slow was due to underperforming hardware, esp. laptops, for which it arguably wasn't meant to run on). In the meantime, I'll migrate away from anything Apple, for two reasons: 1) I don't want to be dependent on a US company for my OSes, and 2) thank you very much Apple for this design choice making #1 a lot easier. But what I cannot say is 3) it is slow and buggy. I mean, the design itself is bad if you ask me, but the OSes aren't slow. The hardware can deal with it.
unexpectedtrap 9mo ago
It’s funny to see that even nowadays just a few people understand Windows 8’s UI, while the majority in these comments just blindly shits at it. Not surprising, though, since there are so many happy users of crap UI’s like KDE around. Sadly, this clone looks very‐very bad, just like millions of WP8‐like launchers compared to the actual WP8.
PeterStuer 9mo ago
Windows 7 was the last Windows gui optiized for keyboard and mouse users. Anything after that was sacrificed to Microsoft's desperate attempts to compete in the mobile space chasing that sweet 30% store tax.
- Terr_ 9mo ago
  If I had the option, I would Windows-7-ize the interface for everything on any later version. Is that crochety nostalgia, or the innate peak of the interface design? Hard to say. But I liked buttons that are distinct from the background, a judicious use of color, evoked depth and texture—especially for things that were supposed to pop "in" and "out" of the page, scrollbars I could always find, and things generally being keyboard-navigable in a pinch...
- chao- 9mo ago
  There used to be a competent theme for the Cinnamon DE that replicated Windows 7 fairly well from the "boomerang project" group. May still exist, but it's been a while since I've used it or checked on whether it's been updated.
Avlin67 9mo ago
is it the same font rendering ? if not it makes quite an akward feeling
okokwhatever 9mo ago
I still think the OS must feel boring and oriented to productivity. The consumer culture brought the worst usability to satisfy the media consumers, not the creators.
RRRA 9mo ago
Might be away to switch some countries administration's away from Windows and minimize resistance...
0xmattf 9mo ago
I couldn't believe my eyes the first time I opened up a laptop with Windows 8 installed. I had just gotten rid of a Windows smartphone because I hated it. Boom, now it's on my laptop! That made me switch to Linux full-time for the next ~8 years. If my employer didn't use Windows, I probably never would have used it again. But yeah... why would I want the worst part of Windows 8 on any *nix system?
ComputerGuru 9mo ago
I hated Windows 8 but this would make a nice kid-friendly OS.

235 points by edent 9mo ago

This could be very nice if it preserves/implements the tablet features.

The smooth, tile-based interface of Metro/Modern UI of Windows 8 and the Windows Phone are underrated in my opinion. It was simple, fast, and focused on touch. While I didn't have a touch-based Windows 8 laptop or tablet at the time, I had a Windows Phone, and I enjoyed using it more than any other device I've had since.

jmkni 9mo ago
I unironically loved my Windows Phone, it was great to develop for too coming from a WPF background at the time
- electroglyph 9mo ago
  the Nokia hardware was pretty great, too!
  - mghackerlady 9mo ago
    Nokias hardware has always been pretty good. Heck, some of the nokia branded HMD stuff is well built for the price
  - Someone1234 9mo ago
    Nokia's hardware managed to prove to me, that plastic done RIGHT, is just as good if not more practical than the metals we have today. They looked fantastic, legitimately didn't require a case, and held up very well.
    - happymellon 9mo ago
      Some time after Apple discontinued the plastic Macbooks, I took mine in to get the battery replaced. I remember overhearing one of the sales folk having to explain to a woman that they can't sell her the white ones, only metal ones as she preferred the chunky plastic.
    - lou1306 9mo ago
      And on most Lumias, if your phone got scratched, lost its shine, or you just got tired of the color, you could just walk to the store and get a new "shell".
- tgv 9mo ago
  I liked it too. But it never was great. E.g., I remember that the calculator had date computations, but the year input was a dropdown going from 1900 to 2100 or something like that. Look at all 5 of us reminiscing here...
  - jkestner 9mo ago
    There are dozens of us. Loved the Lumia hardware, loved maybe not that lack of polish in places but the overall UI vision was mostly well executed. Its rigid experience across apps feels quaint now, but if we had this focus now, we wouldn’t be seeing the Light Phone, b/w UI hacks, etc pop up.
- timpera 9mo ago
  Same here. My Lumia 635 was one of my best purchases ever, it was so capable for the price. It's a shame that they stopped believing in it.
  - derelicta 9mo ago
    The Nokia Lumia 800 remains for me the best phone design I ever experienced. It was flashy, comfortable in hand and felt sturdy
    - Paianni 9mo ago
      If you liked that you would have loved the N9 (same body but with Linux-based OS).
- wiseowise 9mo ago
  It was amazing. Ran circles around Android on weaker hardware, but because duopoly duo didn’t want to accept competitor it was artificially hamstrung and subsequently killed.
  - whizzter 9mo ago
    No, the death of Windows Phone was 95% the fault of MS/Nokia. Pre-announcing that they were leaving all Winphone 7 customers behind for Winphone 8 meant that every retailer/distributor was left with unsellable stock (because they hadn't gained enough traction to sell out initial shipments). If this was because Nokia made bad/cheap phones that were un-upgradeable or MS being arrogant isn't something I'm remembering anymore but the end-result was pissed retailers and nobody selling WP8.
    - wiseowise 9mo ago
      That was the final nail in the coffin. The reason why they didn't hit adoption in the first place is because Google prohibited their application on MS devices. Mobile YouTube already wasn't good enough, and without the rest of the GSuite (Maps, Gmail, Chrome, Calendar, Translate) it was dead in the water. And no, HERE maps and third-party clients were not good enough to tip the scale.
      - toast0 9mo ago
        Google Mail and Calendar was fine; Google had an exchange connector at the time which worked well. (or well enough) But maybe Google would have updated their WinCE apps to WP7 if Microsoft didn't make them throw all their work away.
        IcyWindows 9mo ago
        Google had said they were killing the exchange connector and only changed their mind at the very end after Microsoft had written the workaround.
        tsimionescu 9mo ago
- rachr 9mo ago
  The Lumia Icon/930 I had was genuinely the best phone I have ever used, from both a hardware quality and software perspective. It made the competing iPhone 5 look like garbage.
- snoman 9mo ago
  I honestly think that the windows phone development experience is where Microsoft majorly shit the bed. The sheer volume of breaking changes (and the severity of those breaks) meant rewriting a non-trivial amount of your app from version to version. I know multiple developers that just dropped support for windows phone as a result.
- alfiedotwtf 9mo ago
  I bought a 4G Nokia 3310 yesterday, and to be honest, it’s actually not bad!
- PeterStuer 9mo ago
  How many abandoned attempts do you feel the Microsoft mobile developer ecosytem could take before losing all faith in yet another MS mobile strategy? In the mobile space, there was no market for just Windows Phone apps. You needed to support native Android and iOS already. WP was just another burden without a clear return. In their desperation they started paying college students for developing apps for the platform, leading to low quality experiences. They pushed WP hard to their channel. Many employees in MS system integrators and managed services got very cheap phones, but outside that group, just nobody bought them before in the end they started dumping them to the masses as cheapest phone in the store, but there ain't no serious market there either.
  - pjmlp 9mo ago
    It was about 10% in Europe when they killed it, many people that could not go for Apple due to their prices where actually going for Windows Phone, because the native code (WinRT/.NET Native/C++/CX), provided a much better experience in low end phones than Dalvik with its lousy JIT was capable of at the time. I was one of them, initially getting a Lumia as second phone even though as ex-Nokia I was kind of pissed off, developing for UAP/UWP grew on me and was much more fun than dealing with Android. Now given how Microsoft has messed up the whole UWP, Project Reunion and WinUI/WinAppSDK I would assert there is no faith left.
- pjmlp 9mo ago
  Spont on, I always considered WinRT, .NET Native, C++/CX is what COM evolution should have been back in 2001, instead of the J++ reboot. However the way Microsoft has messed it all up, no one is left besides Windows team and some hardcode believers, to care about WinRT/WinUI any longer than what is only available via WinAppSDK.
- EB-Barrington 9mo ago
  [dead]
lifetimerubyist 9mo ago
I had an Android phone and my friend had a Windows Phone. I wanted to get a Windows phone but by the time I came around to needing a new device it was already killed off. Too bad.
xattt 9mo ago
This. The “mobile-ization” of desktop interfaces is a bane on current computing. The metaphors of work between desktop and mobile devices are wildly different. Obligatory car analogy: a mechanic working in his shop has a completely different set of tools available than if he was going into the field to fix a car.
- mghackerlady 9mo ago
  I really think GNOME is good at making an interface that works well on both, so is KDE to some extent with kirigami
  - Zak 9mo ago
    I dislike Gnome on a pure desktop or non-touch laptop, in part because of UI decisions I think are meant to work better on a touchscreen. It's really good on a touchscreen though aside from the horrid onscreen keyboard.
  - lproven 9mo ago
    > I really think GNOME is good at making an interface that works well on both, I agree with the comment from @zak on this. I have to disagree. I have used GNOME (both GNOME Mobile and Phosh) on phones, and it makes more sense there, but it's still a bit clunky and fiddly. Example: you only get half the tiny screen for your app launcher. So it fills up fast. So, you put apps in groups. BUT you can't pin groups to the fast-launch bar thing. On the desktop, IMHO it does not work well. It works minimally, in a way that's only acceptable if you don't know your way around a more full-featured desktop. It feels like trying to use a computer with one hand tied behind my back. Yes, it's there, it's usable, but it breaks lots of assumptions and is missing commonplace core features. Simple features: desktop icons are handy. GNOME: ew, how ugly and untidy! We're taking them off you. Obvious but complex features: menu bars go back to the 1970s and by the mid-1980s were standardised, with standard shortcut keys, with standardised entries in standardised places. They work well with a mouse, they work well with a keyboard, they work well with screenreaders for people with vision disabilities. GNOME: Yeah, screw all those guys. Rips them out. Non-obvious but core features: for over 30 years in Linux GUIs, you could middle-click on a title bar to send it to the back of the window stack. GNOME: screw those guys. Eliminates title bars. No, GNOME does not work _well_ on both. It is sort of minimally usable. On both, it's minimally functional if you are not fussy, don't want to customise, don't have ingrained habits, and don't use keyboards and keyboard shortcuts much.
einpoklum 9mo ago
> The ... UI of Windows 8 and the Windows Phone... underrated in my opinion. It was ... focused on touch. That's why it was rated low. Most people were using this interface on PC's and laptops, without a touchscreen, where a touch-focused interface does not make sense. Maybe it was good choice for Windows Phone or Windows Tablet, but people were not rating it based on that experience. The very idea of using a single UI for both a touchscreen-oriented and no-touchscreen, kbd-and-mouse computers is the most problematic aspect of it. > It was simple No, it wasn't simple. There was the simple part, but things not integrated into the simple part were a hodge-podge of previous Windows versions' UI. Now, I like some of the previous Windows versions' UI, but putting a simple veneer on something does not make it simple; if anything, a little more complex. > It was fast The fact that an OS UI in the 2010s or 2020s need to be commended for being fast is kind of sad. Plus - I don't believe it was that fast. Did you try running it on, say, a 15yro machine relative to the Win8 launch time? i.e. 1998? Even with a 10yro machine I believe it was kind of sluggish.
wombat-man 9mo ago
Yeah I agree. It was a little weird without a touch screen, but at that point I was not navigating the start menu visually with a mouse anymore anyway. Windows phone was great. I think I got it when Android was still growing up. I liked the focus and the speed for sure. Microsoft's bread and butter is no longer OSes, I think, and it's unfortunately starting to show.
deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
meinersbur 9mo ago
Live tiles are nearly universally praised in retrospect, but it might be a case of hindsight bias [1]. The video [2] brings up some problems of the concept and why no other company copied the concept. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosy_retrospection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosy_retrospection [2] https://youtu.be/OgXlNaYXRu4 https://youtu.be/OgXlNaYXRu4
- normalaccess 9mo ago
  I'm sure there was some meeting where at the end of the pitch deck was some one said: "...and after people acclimate to them, we'll put ads there! Advertising Directly in the UI!"
- bee_rider 9mo ago
  Are live tiles universally praised? I see them mentioned positively occasionally, but I suspect they are getting some benefit… like, they are the Windows 8 feature that isn’t immediately obnoxious. Windows 8’s UI just didn’t have any redeeming features, so the element that is merely bad gets brought up as a sort of “see I’m not a relentlessly negative hater, I’m objective” thing, I bet. Is there a name for this trope?
  - keyringlight 9mo ago
    The way I see live tiles is that it was MS abandoning widgets that existed since vista (although they were removed later for security reasons) and coming up with a new thing to start all over with, and didn't backporting it so the only way you'd get them is on the (less popular) new version of the OS. Also they were tied into the start screen/menu, you couldn't drop on on your desktop.
- WorldMaker 9mo ago
  I think if Microsoft had made an easier bridge, faster from Win32 to things like Live Tiles (and the Charms, too) there would have been a lot more people praising the Live Tiles today (and maybe even the Charms). Live Tiles really made their case on Windows Phone 8 where nearly every app supported them (relatively well), that was the only "Notification Center" for missed notifications, and its glanceability became very obvious. Charms are somewhat similar, too. On iPhone almost every app needs a Share button somewhere and almost every app still has it in a different place today. On Windows Phone 8 it was much more obvious why a dedicated OS-level Share button accessible just about anywhere in any app was pretty great. On Desktop it wasn't seen as helpful as almost no apps supported it (either as shareable things or as apps that could be shared to) because there was no easy Win32 bridge and Microsoft also didn't think to try to integrate with clipboard operations until too late in Windows 8.1 (and then never quite delivered it because most everyone had already written off the Charms by then), as what could have been a potentially easy path to use the existing Windows "share paradigm" to bootstrap. (You can make cases for the other 4 Charms as well beyond the Share charm, but the Share charm is the most obvious where Windows Phone proved it was a good idea but the Desktop didn't have enough supporting apps to also prove it there.)
fidotron 9mo ago
The problem MS created was WP7 was a technical dead end: a feature phone OS with a Silverlight UI, which was almost impossible to bypass, hurting third party support a lot. WP8 was a far "better" OS, but it came with higher system requirements more comparable with Android. Google never got enough crap on for their stunts with youtube in that era though.
- whizzter 9mo ago
  Not to mention that WP7 customers couldn't upgrade to WP8, meant that both customers and resellers had devices they couldn't do shit with.
  - WorldMaker 9mo ago
    It's hard to fault Microsoft for doing what they did with WP7, though. They needed to make a statement that they were still committed to phones since WinCE was truly dead. So they made an MVP "Preview" of what the next Phone OS would be. WP7 was sold to me in more like that language of "this is a quick MVP on the way to the next phone". It was exciting at that time in that way, seeing it as the hail mary pass of "What if we replaced WinCE with all the things we learned from the Zune? How quickly can we do a version of that which will give the right impression and set us up for the next 'real' version?" Unfortunately yes, it wasn't sold to everyone with that perspective. I think Microsoft may have counted on developer enthusiasm a bit more to get the word across. Also to be fair, that was still the era where "everyone" bought the new iPhone at launch and iOS compatibility was seen as somewhat equally spotty that if you didn't have the latest hardware you didn't expect the next iOS version to run well and you'd expect to get left behind on apps. It was also the era where Android was often non-upgradeable between versions on hardware (because carriers wouldn't "certify it") and you generally assumed an Android device was version locked to whatever OS version you bought it with. Microsoft may have felt somewhat safe needing a hardware jump between WP7 and WP8 exactly because that was de facto the case with iPhone and directly the case with Android at the time.
    - cyberax 9mo ago
johnvanommen 9mo ago
If it wasn't for the T-Mobile Sidekick, Microsoft probably wouldn't have had to buy Nokia. Here's the story: I worked on the infrastructre for the predecessor to Android, the Danger Hiptop, AKA "The T-Mobile Sidekick." (This is my real name, you can see when I worked on it on LinkedIn.) The "Danger Device" as everyone called it, had cloud storage and a full web browser before Android and before iPhone. In fact, the first Android basically looks like the successor to the T-Mobile sidekick, because many of the people that worked on Android, including the founder, were from Danger. *Here's the funny part:* This is hearsay, so please do not sue me Microsoft. I once saw an article online that confirmed the following story, but the article is long gone (this was more than 20 years ago.) Again: Don't sue me Microsoft. I am telling a story here, that I heard through the grapevine: *Microsoft blew up the entire "Sidekick" project.* But they didn't blow it up intentionally. Basically, Danger ran on Sun Solaris, and when Microsoft bought them, a great deal of the infrastructure was trucked over to Microsoft. As I understand it, nothing was ported, they basically just plugged the gear in. At some point, the backups failed. Keep in mind: ALL THE USERS DATA WAS IN THE CLOUD. Nobody was doing this at the time, not Android, not Apple. Just Danger - and then Microsoft. While restoring from backups, someone was feeling the heat for the mobile devices being down for so long. It takes a long time to do a restore. One thing led to another, a decision was made... and they lost all the data. *poof* Gone forever. The death of the Sidekick has been documented in various articles, but there was only ONE that got the story correct, and it was nuked over a decade ago. Here's one of the (partially correct) details: https://abcnews.go.com/Business/sidekick-disaster-shows-datas-safe-cloud/story?id=8840420 https://abcnews.go.com/Business/sidekick-disaster-shows-data... I've got a story about the first big celebrity hack too, that was the Sidekick also. (And likely was possible because of the Sidekick's cloud storage.)
- xhevahir 9mo ago
  Wasn't the Sidekick the phone in the Paris Hilton hack? Man, that was a long time ago.
  - johnvanommen 9mo ago
    Yep. My boss came over to me that morning, asked if I'd seen the news, and basically said that if it turned out that I built the servers wrong, it would be firing time. I kept my job. It turned out that the reason that Paris Hilton and so many celebrities got hacked was: * the password to her cloud storage account was the name of her dog * once the hackers had access to her cloud storage, they could use that to get authentic phone numbers for half of the entertainment industry, because Paris Hilton was so well-connected socially. AFAIK, nobody ever managed to get access to the servers illegitimately. The demise of the service was a failed back up of the Hitachi SAN.
klglrksbjkt 9mo ago
Touch-optimized UI on phone/tablet: Perfect. Touch-optimized UI on desktops: One step away from where it belongs. Touch-optimized UI on servers: Very very out of touch. Firing sinofsky for it: Good.
VTimofeenko 9mo ago
I really liked the idea of what they did with the start menu of win8. Whenever I opened the start menu, my intent was to focus on look for something in the start menu, not multitask, so live tiles were perfect. IIRC I even wrote a couple of toy apps with those tiles. Win8.1(blue?) was much more polished experience though, original 8 had a lot of rough edges. I had an original Lenovo yoga and boy the desktop touch experience was bad. Hardware wise it wasn't winning any prizes either. The cooler died a couple of times and replacements were a pain to procure.

wiseowise 9mo ago

Win 8 UI was way ahead of its time.

silon42 9mo ago
I still prefer the time of Win 2K (or max Win 7)
- reddalo 9mo ago
  Windows 2000 was peak usability. Windows XP was also good, especially with the Classic or Standard themes.
  - okokwhatever 9mo ago
    Windows 2000... I loved it so much...
anthk 9mo ago
Windows 8's UI was not new by any means. Shareware with that style already existed in early 2000's.
kasabali 9mo ago
the time that's never came lol

techsystems 9mo ago

I want this for everything, including my phone, tablet, and tele! I which distro this is being tested on.

keyle 9mo ago

It probably works better than windows 8 ever has... Seeing it might have something called "common sense" over "org driven design".

petcat 9mo ago
I doubt it actually works better. In my experience hobby FOSS is exceptional at building tools and servers, but abysmal at building GUIs and anything that requires some semblance of non-tech-user UX.

themicahshell 9mo ago

"Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should". /jk Probably nice on a tablet.

nelblu 9mo ago

As much as the UI was fluid, smooth and probably best for a touch interface, I distinctly remember I hated it and frantically wanted my Start button back on my PC. It is kinda funny reading all the comments about its nostalgia, when all I could think was how annoying it was. I guess to each their own :-).

rjzzleep 9mo ago
I remember that as well, and in the enterprise they added one of those start menu plugins. But boy, compared to a react based startmenu in 2025...
lloeki 9mo ago
On "regular computers" I think it was flawed in two fatal ways: - there was already an extremely heavy expectation that clicking the start button or pressing the windows key would bring up a menu, not a full screen takeover where all contextual sense of place (that you had in the past experience) was lost. - the UI being a full-screen takeover on a phone (Windows Phone) or a tablet (10"-ish tops at the time) was OK but on a 21~27" desktop it's absurdly overwhelming.
- HPsquared 9mo ago
  Especially with such a low information density. It was clearly just a massive amount of wasted screen space on desktop.
  - WorldMaker 9mo ago
    If you had good Live Tiles there was a ton of information density. You could have the weather, your calendar, recent emails, recent tweets, recent photos, interesting news, etc all on one at-a-glance screen (versus the phone form factor where you'd need at least some scrolling). It felt like wasted space on the desktop because it was originally hard for desktop apps to opt-in to Live Tiles and send Live Tile updates and not enough people were using the sorts of multi-platform apps that had great Live Tiles.

Imustaskforhelp 9mo ago

I was asking for something like this but for windows 7 sometime ago. A little bit surprised that someone made something so strikingly similar to what I requested. I hope that somebody creates something like this for windows 7 as well. One can only hope as Windows 7 nostalgia hits hard

anthk 9mo ago
Windows 7 it's easy. Plastik was like that before Windows 7 itself. Just set that theme under Plasma 6 and you are done. Also, QTCurve.
- Imustaskforhelp 9mo ago
  One can argue that Windows 8 is easy as well but here we are (https://github.com/kavinunethsara/tiledscreen https://github.com/kavinunethsara/tiledscreen) Sure one can try to patch our way and this is what people suggest but if we are already having windows 8, Please lets just have windows 7 as well, there is no harm in it. I hope that the author of the project or its community about the win 8 DE could look at resurrecting/creating win 7 DE ootb as well.
SpikedCola 9mo ago
+1 for a Windows 7 clone. I have not seen a theme that comes close to copying Win7.

arkensaw 9mo ago

So nice to see this. I really loved Windows Phone for the simple UI it had which shared a lot of concepts with this. And I felt like Microsoft could have made something really great from the Win8 UI if they had iterated a few more times before dropping it. I hope you take on that initiative and make the improvements that they didn't

pjmlp 9mo ago

If it doesn't come with a XAML WinRT based framework stack, it is only half way there.

Fiveplus 9mo ago

Talking about the design, the further we get from 2012, the more obvious it becomes that windows 8 was kinda like the bauhaus movement for an operating system that wanted to be on touch screens but was made to work on traditional mouse-keyboard interface. It was technically correct, aesthetically pure but socially rejected because it was too stark for the general public (my opinion). This implementation gets one thing most Metro clones miss, i.e the typography as structure paradigm. In Win8, there were no divider lines or heavy drop shadows to denote hierarchy. The hierarchy was defined strictly by the weight and size of the font. We spent the last decade drifting back into glassmorphism and mica materials (win11) because people missed the comfort of texture but from a pure information density and rendering performance perspective - the flat, monochromatic 2D plane of windows 8 is a nice tangent. It removed the cognitive load of decoding the UI chrome for touch users. ps: I'm impressed by the constraint of using native Qt/C++ here instead of taking the easy route with electron or QML/javascript bindings for everything.

anthk 9mo ago
The cognitive load it's trying to guess where the button lies in the interface for flat screens. Not an issue under GTK2/3/4 with Zukitre (and QT5/6 reusing it with qt5ct/qt6ct or with an environment variable setting QT_STYLE_OVERRIDE to "gtk2" or similar.
- ffsm8 9mo ago
  I didn't remember having issues finding buttons on windows 8. While they were certainly flat, they were always clearly signaled from my memory - did other people have this issue? To be clear, when it was released I was one of the people hating on it, but it grew on me over time - and after I installed startisback, which essentially just scaled down the start screen/Metro ui to a slightly larger start menu ... It was a decent UX again, to me.
  - gmueckl 9mo ago
    I remember running into issues with link-style clickable text in some parts of the UI that was almost unidentifiable as clickable because it stood alone with no similar text in non-link style nearby for reference. There were other issues that I clearly remember. There was some remarkable jank when moving the mouse cursor across screen borders in a multi-monitor setup. If you were moving towards the edge of the current screen, Windows would under certain circumstances trap the cursor there instead of moving it across the border. I believe this was done to give "hot corners" a bigger mouse target, but that feature was almost completely DoA on desktop.

pmarreck 9mo ago

Apple guy here who actually liked Metro. Party of one, for sure, LOL Glad to see an attempt to revive it on Linux

teekert 9mo ago

Nice. I'm an open source guy, but being disappointed with Android's openness (years ago) I got a Nokia Lumia 800 with Windows 10 Mobile (or whatever it was called). Loved that OS. Fast, well integrated. Can't help but keep thinking it would have gone somewhere if they'd kept at it (in the form of Android app compatibility or "the defacto MS365 OS" or something). Then they'd call it Copilot OS in 2026 and mess it up anyway. So perhaps it's good that it died ;)

haolez 9mo ago

The design looks cool, but it surfaces the app launchers as the protagonists of my workflow. I feel that it would be better if it was more about open windows or something in this direction.

rubymamis 9mo ago

Nice to see it uses Qt C++ and QML (:

grougnax 9mo ago
No, not nice. It should use TypeScript or Rust. C++/QML is unsafe.
- rubymamis 9mo ago
  TypeScript transpile to Javascript - do you really want your operating system's shell written in slow ass Javascript? Modern C++ with hardening rules for the compiler[1] is pretty safe. [1] https://best.openssf.org/Compiler-Hardening-Guides/Compiler-Options-Hardening-Guide-for-C-and-C++.html https://best.openssf.org/Compiler-Hardening-Guides/Compiler-...
  - lproven 9mo ago
    > do you really want your operating system's shell written in slow ass Javascript? What, like GNOME Shell you mean?
- array_key_first 9mo ago
  TypeScript is way, way too slow to use for desktop applications. People try and, surprise surprise, those applications are slow as shit. Qt has a C++ backend, so C++ is used. Qt is relatively safe and well designed.
  - NateEag 9mo ago
    Qt uses "slow as shit" JavaScript in its UI markup language: https://doc.qt.io/qt-6/qtqml-javascript-expressions.html https://doc.qt.io/qt-6/qtqml-javascript-expressions.html Is your complaint with Electron, the "browser as local GUI app" framework that's been popular with SaaS vendors for their "native" apps?
    - 9mo ago

realusername 9mo ago

I would be okay to use this DE on a mobile Linux but I'm afraid the usability on desktop is going to suffer like it did with Windows 8.

notRobot 9mo ago

I use a Windows Metro inspired launcher on Android and it's the best phone UI experience I've ever had: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nfwebdev.launcher10 https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nfwebdev.l...

nacozarina 9mo ago

ugh I still have to administer old w2k12 Metro vms and I hate it

amlib 9mo ago
Now you can install it on your linux servers and hate it even more! :)

user3939382 9mo ago

There was nothing wrong with the Windows 2000 UI except that it was “boring”. I get wanting to make things feel new, but doing so requires great skill to achieve without losing the functional imperatives, which is exactly what they did with pretty much every design since Win2k.

yyaakkqq 9mo ago

The only thing worth saving from windows8-10 is the windows border. it is a huge usability win. Clear borders. square (so it's also fast). clear colors showing which window has focus. It's also funny this show up now a day after the top post was the osx windows border radius fiasco. yet no linux WM has a decent windows8-10 window border clone. KDE used to but since the rewrite of the theme from kde5+ they not only killed it, but also removed the option to have sane window border color to show focus. Now it's "accent color" which should be non contrast because they will force that same color on toolbars and such, just like all the bad ideas from office-ribbon era.

WillAdams 9mo ago
I am currently running a utility to square off the window borders in Windows 11.
- yyaakkqq 9mo ago
  on KDE5-6, ironically, to have high-contrast windows and square borders, one must use something written because the author wanted round corners on older versions of kde :) https://github.com/matinlotfali/KDE-Rounded-Corners https://github.com/matinlotfali/KDE-Rounded-Corners
  - WillAdams 9mo ago
    Given the complexities which anything but square corners adds to screen grabs, I've never understood why anyone would want to use such.
somat 9mo ago
well there is the default style for openbsd's fvwm. clear borders, grab handles, contrasting fg/bg colors. But I won't go so far as to say it is decent. https://debugpointnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/OpenBSD-desktop-7-fvwm-1024x588.jpg https://debugpointnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/OpenBS... Anyhow it's bold to claim that there are no linux window managers to rival win8, linux is like the paleozoic of desktop interfaces. It has the opposite problem there are too many of the infernal things.

normalaccess 9mo ago

First thought that popped into my mind is the quote from Bennett Foddy for his game Getting Over It. --"I made a game for a certain kind of person. To hurt them."

b00ty4breakfast 9mo ago

win8 is the latest version of windows I've used (for about a week before I installed linux, ironically enough. I'm using that laptop right now lol) and I do not remember it being a good experience. Why you would recreate it is beyond me but I think it's neat that folks are doing stuff like this. Now, if someone wants to recreate win95, I might be interested

lucasoshiro 9mo ago
> Now, if someone wants to recreate win95 You can try Chicago95 [1], but it's only a XFCE theme. If you want more than a theme, there's SerenityOS [2] but it isn't suitable for daily use (yet) [1] https://github.com/grassmunk/Chicago95 https://github.com/grassmunk/Chicago95 [2] https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity
- sneak 9mo ago
  I'd like a DE/theme that aims to do what the Win2k shell did. File explorer, basic window management, app switching, app launching. Back before every single UI widget had to integrate 47 types of OS feature-of-this-year's-product-cycle functionality. Chicago95 isn't far off looks-wise. Something slightly more polished than Xfce, but way less than the behemoth that KDE is. I really feel like the modern basic desktop UI was pretty close to complete in 2002-2005, and the moment we tried to make your contacts list available for use in every single application we fell onto a slippery slope from which we have never recovered.

igmn 9mo ago

It feels like no one in this thread has actually clicked the link or watched the video demo. Do you people only read titles? Purely from a conceptual point of view, sure, it's a cool project, but the actual UI and UX are abysmal compared to what Windows 8 was. Take one look at the lock screen. Not to crap on the dev, but ignoring it is also counter-productive: it feels a bit like seeing one of those iPhone 4 clones that ran on J2ME trying to parody iOS - impressive attempt at making a dumb phone look less like a dumb phone, but it was miserable to use or even look at. I see this all the time around Linux UIs, no one has standards and no one wants to point the lack of them out.

user205738 9mo ago
You read the title and go to discuss about it in the comments. No one has time to follow the links and watch something there.

alexpadula 9mo ago

Oh helllllllll no. I’ll stick with my Linux. Cool project but Windows is just crap nowadays, even the UI. Best was XP.

leke 9mo ago

This would be nice for a Linux phone.

Fabricio20 9mo ago

Is it just me or does anyone else notice all the little inconsistencies on these "windows ui clones" that show up on linux? I like the idea but looking at the pictures I can't get past the lock screen (font size feels wrong, the borders missing on the input field, the size.. it just all feels wrong somehow I can't explain. That On-Screen-Keyboard squeezed into a tiny square??). On the "start menu" picture the two font sizes near the battery icon, how all the linux apps on display have weird coloring and blues-that-dont-quite-match, the bright greens with white text, etc.. Not to diss the UI attempt at all, I just always seem to spot all these little things/polish every time one of these come up (I've seen so many XP clones where the minimize/maximize/close buttons look out of place and badly shaped, etc..). I genuinely wonder if it's because I spent so much time on these OSes back in the day or if all the DEs being used have some inherent limitations that cause these design inconsistencies.

sneak 9mo ago
It's because it's a tremendous amount of time and work and effort and QA to get UIs to look really really well-designed. (Even then, the design can still suck, like modern Windows or appleOS 26.x.) I don't think people realize just what an insane amount of labor it is to get these things implemented, even if you're handed a perfect design spec up front. Maybe LLMs will close this gap once they get better at seeing things.
bee_rider 9mo ago
I think these things tend to be somebody’s fun little mini project, so polish is not a high priority. Realistically a big community of contributors isn’t going to grow around cloning a UI that Linux users intentionally left behind. The beautiful thing about Free software is that people can do whatever they want! In a way is is quite impressive that somebody can get into the uncanny valley with this sort of project, right?
lunar_rover 9mo ago
You need tons of effort, plenty of experience in the field and a single unified direction to get them done well, and unfortunately the Linus Torvalds of Design currently does not exist. Many underestimate just how much is behind everyday basic UIs. Even the biggest native Linux desktop projects suffer from this. KDE is typical death by a thousand papercuts, GNOME tried but their amateurism is clearly visible.

ferguess_k 9mo ago

Is there a Windows 98 SP2 Env for Linux? The peak of personal (non-sysadmin) computing experience. There were fewer BSOD than Windows 95, and all DOS games still worked unlike Windows 2000/XP where most DOS games worked.

sneak 9mo ago
My fond memory is of XP (with the child's toy color scheme changed to the Win2000 one) or simply Win2000 - it actually had preemptive multitasking and protected memory, unlike 95/89. Everything you need, nothing you don't. The OS/DE stayed in its lane.
- ferguess_k 9mo ago
  2000 and XP both gave me fond memories too. 3.1 and 95/98 were the starter though, like one always have fond memory with the first love :D
forgotmypw17 9mo ago
Well, there's this, for XFCE: https://github.com/grassmunk/Chicago95 https://github.com/grassmunk/Chicago95
- jeroenhd 9mo ago
  I've tried it for fun, but it quickly falls apart. The consistency and attention to detail that made the Windows 95 user interface good just isn't there when reskinning an entirely different piece of UI.

evanjrowley 9mo ago

Glad to see someone was inspired to do this! I believe the Windows 8 UI was good - one of my unpopular opinions explained below. I never personally owned a Windows 8 computer, but I used some at work. I logged in to Windows Server 2012 and 2012 R2 on a daily bases for several years - these had the same type of start menu. Prior to this experience on Windows, I was a Mac OS X "power user" enjoying Quicksilver[0][1] on Snow Leopard (10.6) through (Mavericks 10.9). It's mode of interaction[2] was very similar to Spotlight[3] built-in to modern macOS. I also learned to touch type on that very same *MacBook while waiting for a plane in an airport terminal. All this is to say that the concept of hitting a key and typing to launch an application felt very natural to me when I first encountered the Windows 8 UI. I never felt the need to use a traditional start menu, despite having clocked lots of hours on Windows 7, Server 2008 R2, and older versions. in the office. When Windows 10 brought back the traditional start menu, I only ever searched through it like I would have on a Windows 8 or MacOS system. Recent benchmark testing[4] showed Windows 8.1 to be faster in many ways compared to Windows 10 and Windows 11. I was surprised someone actually did this, but not surprised at the results! Perhaps one of the reasons why I preferred it more than Windows 10 and Winows 11 is the Control Panel was still very usable in Windows 8. As someone who worked on Server versions of Windows, the Control Panel was very much embedded in my muscle memory. The erosion of it in subsequent versions of Windows is the source of my growing pains. That, plus all of the popular reasons why Microsoft/Windows gets backlash today. * The 2010 MacBook was advertized with a 10 hour battery life. Many years would pass before Apple would again advertize such a long battery lifetime. I had upgraded the RAM and swapped the optical drive for a second 2.5 hard disk, then re-installed Mac OS X in software RAID1 mode. It was extremely stable for many years until the day I decided to decomission it (ran 'sudo rm -rf /' at the Terminal). I.e., the type of stuff that would give Tim Cook indegestion. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quicksilver_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quicksilver_(software) [1] https://github.com/quicksilver/Quicksilver https://github.com/quicksilver/Quicksilver [2] https://images.sftcdn.net/images/t_app-cover-s,f_auto/p/7e76387e-9b26-11e6-b84a-00163ec9f5fa/3663276022/quicksilver-screenshot.png https://images.sftcdn.net/images/t_app-cover-s,f_auto/p/7e76... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotlight_(Apple) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotlight_(Apple) [4] https://meterpreter.org/the-20-year-showdown-why-windows-8-1-just-beat-windows-11-in-a-massive-speed-test/ https://meterpreter.org/the-20-year-showdown-why-windows-8-1...

GuB-42 9mo ago

Funny how almost everybody hated the Windows 8 desktop environment. And to this day, Windows 8 is still seen as one of the worst versions of Windows for that reason, even if it was pretty decent under the hood. Projects like this show that it has its fans. It feels like authors being successful only after their death. I still think of the Windows 8 UI as terrible overall, but now that the hate has passed, people are not afraid to give it some redeeming qualities. It was pretty good on mobile though, which is the root of the problem I think. They tried to unify what shouldn't be unified.

mring33621 9mo ago

No one ever uses/used our windows 8 laptop because it was so horrible. Total waste of money.

stuaxo 9mo ago

As a gnome user I remember thinking I could probably get used to the start screen.

petterroea 9mo ago

"look, they ported the worst part of Windows' history to Linux" Regardless of whether or not this was done for fun or due to actually missing Windows 8(as the author does), it's impressive. I remember reading some time ago that the windows 8 UI lead got fired but I can't find proof of that now. Maybe it was just satire lol

phoronixrly 9mo ago
Can't wait for the 'Show HN: MacOS Tahoe Desktop Environment for Linux' post
- lproven 9mo ago
  Here you go: https://pearos.xyz/ https://pearos.xyz/ "Liquid glass" and all.
  - phoronixrly 9mo ago
    Thank you! My Firefox started lagging even before I downloaded the distro and wiped my entire disk (it's seemingly a feature!)
    - lproven 9mo ago
      :-D
mock-possum 9mo ago
Wow they ported Windows Millennium Edition to Linux??
- petterroea 9mo ago
  Don't jinx it, someone may just do it
- red-iron-pine 9mo ago
  back then we called it Windows Mistake Edition

thiht 9mo ago

Oh god why

asveikau 9mo ago

I guess nobody here reminiscing about Windows 8 will mention that the executive in charge of it was texting and emailing with Jeffrey Epstein.

vondur 9mo ago

Oh boy. No one wanted this on Windows back when it was released. I’m sure it’ll be a hit with Linux users everywhere.

grougnax 9mo ago

Please permanently delete this repo forever. I am having nightmares right now.

kopollo 9mo ago

The best UX ui was in Windows XP.

grougnax 9mo ago
No. Nothing good has come from Microsoft.

ayi 9mo ago

If you want to read some confessions from the guy who is responsible for Windows 8 (Steven Sinofsky) read this blog post: https://hardcoresoftware.learningbyshipping.com/p/108-epilogue https://hardcoresoftware.learningbyshipping.com/p/108-epilog... Whole blog is about his time at Microsoft but this particular post mentions windows 8

Jigsy 9mo ago

The only thing I miss about Windows 8.1 is when I hovered my mouse over an application in my taskbar, it showed a little tab preview of what it's doing. I certainly don't miss that desktop environment, though.

tempaccsoz5 9mo ago

This is missing the best part of windows 8/metro - the glow around the cursor. I found it really fun playing with how the glow highlighted smooth sections of tile borders as well as illuminating the whole tile. IIRC it also affected window borders, etc. Very fun to play with.

arjie 9mo ago

Boy I could not stand Windows 8. Unfortunately, many of their techniques were copied into Linux distribution views and it made my life worse. The new start menu was perhaps the worst. It created this massive doorway effect where I'd hit Start and the whole screen would whiz and spin and then there'd be all these moving tiles and I'll forget what I hit Start for. Frequently I'd then hit Esc, remember, and Start again. This was compounded by the fact that if you started typing after hitting start it wouldn't just filter to the applications. God knows what it would actually do but not that. I was one of the people who enjoyed Windows Vista (which introduced sudo to Windows users) and Windows 7 and even Windows 10 after which the i7-4790k machine I had to do the Windows was no longer eligible for Windows 11 so I have no idea what that looks like. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event_perception#Relation_to_episodic_memory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event_perception#Relation_to_e...

realusername 9mo ago
I also loved Windows Vista, the system itself was quite buggy and slow but the UI was absolutely amazing and clear.
- ale42 9mo ago
  Windows 7 was better IMHO: clear interface, and less buggy than Vista.
  - chithanh 9mo ago
    Windows Vista SP2 was basically identical to Windows 7 RTM, with mostly cosmetic differences. What changed is that by Windows 7 launch, PC specs had caught up with system requirements and WDDM drivers had matured and were no longer crashing all the time. So the first impression was very different.
- Fnoord 9mo ago
  In that case, may I suggest macOS Tahoe and i(Pad)OS 26? I hated that UI so much, I'm glad I barely had to use it (that it was slow was due to underperforming hardware, esp. laptops, for which it arguably wasn't meant to run on). In the meantime, I'll migrate away from anything Apple, for two reasons: 1) I don't want to be dependent on a US company for my OSes, and 2) thank you very much Apple for this design choice making #1 a lot easier. But what I cannot say is 3) it is slow and buggy. I mean, the design itself is bad if you ask me, but the OSes aren't slow. The hardware can deal with it.

unexpectedtrap 9mo ago

It’s funny to see that even nowadays just a few people understand Windows 8’s UI, while the majority in these comments just blindly shits at it. Not surprising, though, since there are so many happy users of crap UI’s like KDE around. Sadly, this clone looks very‐very bad, just like millions of WP8‐like launchers compared to the actual WP8.

PeterStuer 9mo ago

Windows 7 was the last Windows gui optiized for keyboard and mouse users. Anything after that was sacrificed to Microsoft's desperate attempts to compete in the mobile space chasing that sweet 30% store tax.

Terr_ 9mo ago
If I had the option, I would Windows-7-ize the interface for everything on any later version. Is that crochety nostalgia, or the innate peak of the interface design? Hard to say. But I liked buttons that are distinct from the background, a judicious use of color, evoked depth and texture—especially for things that were supposed to pop "in" and "out" of the page, scrollbars I could always find, and things generally being keyboard-navigable in a pinch...
chao- 9mo ago
There used to be a competent theme for the Cinnamon DE that replicated Windows 7 fairly well from the "boomerang project" group. May still exist, but it's been a while since I've used it or checked on whether it's been updated.

Avlin67 9mo ago

is it the same font rendering ? if not it makes quite an akward feeling

okokwhatever 9mo ago

I still think the OS must feel boring and oriented to productivity. The consumer culture brought the worst usability to satisfy the media consumers, not the creators.

RRRA 9mo ago

Might be away to switch some countries administration's away from Windows and minimize resistance...

0xmattf 9mo ago

I couldn't believe my eyes the first time I opened up a laptop with Windows 8 installed. I had just gotten rid of a Windows smartphone because I hated it. Boom, now it's on my laptop! That made me switch to Linux full-time for the next ~8 years. If my employer didn't use Windows, I probably never would have used it again. But yeah... why would I want the worst part of Windows 8 on any *nix system?

ComputerGuru 9mo ago

I hated Windows 8 but this would make a nice kid-friendly OS.