4 ms·

For me personally, IRIX 6.x had one of the most beautiful (and colourful) GUIs ever. For the curious, there is a guide (1) on how to run IRIX 6.5.22 in MAME.

For me personally, IRIX 6.x had one of the most beautiful (and colourful) GUIs ever. For the curious, there is a guide (1) on how to run IRIX 6.5.22 in MAME. 1. https://sgi.neocities.org https://sgi.neocities.org

mixmastamyk 8mo ago
Wow, look at those luxurious titlebars, windows edges, scrollbars, and tabs! So easy to use. One other thing lost, their scrollbars kept an indentation of where the bar was until you let go, which was sometimes useful. Not a fan of the busy backgrounds, but can’t win ’em all. Does anyone have a screenshot of the window menu (right click on titlebar)? Been looking for the CUA hotkeys related to those window functions. Most still work but are not shown on Linux desktops for some reason.
- sgt 8mo ago
  They also loved italic!
  - mixmastamyk 8mo ago
    Yeah, they were a few years ahead of cleartype/retina unfortunately.
- senko 8mo ago
  > Wow, look at those luxurious titlebars, windows edges, scrollbars, and tabs! So easy to use. That's just Motif: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motif_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motif_(software) Shame it wasn't under an open license to begin with (they relicenced it to LGPL waaay too late). We've been reimplementing it ever since.
hedgehog 8mo ago
Someone did a screen capture of a SGI "System Tour" app that explains how a lot of the UI worked: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sg8fiA9TrRk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sg8fiA9TrRk
rainingmonkey 8mo ago
What is the scrollwheel thing on the left side of some windows?
- blipvert 8mo ago
  As I recall that changed the size of the (vector graphic) icons in the window. Though it has been twenty-odd years since I last used an SGI box so open to correction!
  - zvr 8mo ago
    Yes, it was essentially a "zoom" wheel.
jnpnj 8mo ago
A blend of nextstep and macos classic somehow.
- actionfromafar 8mo ago
  I thought of BeOS for some reason.
dvno42 8mo ago
For those interested, there is a lovely IRIX clone WM called MaXX. I've been using it for a couple months and have been quite happy with it on a remote dev machine. I believe it only runs on xorg currently. 1. https://docs.maxxinteractive.com/ https://docs.maxxinteractive.com/
wink 8mo ago
That reminds me about some irc channel around 25 years ago where we had this odd guy running IRIX and occasionally sending us screenshots. Most people were on Windows, some of us were running Linux, but IRIX seemed odd even to us, with our mainstream DEs like enlightenment or KDE or windowmaker :D

mixmastamyk 8mo ago

Wow, look at those luxurious titlebars, windows edges, scrollbars, and tabs! So easy to use. One other thing lost, their scrollbars kept an indentation of where the bar was until you let go, which was sometimes useful. Not a fan of the busy backgrounds, but can’t win ’em all. Does anyone have a screenshot of the window menu (right click on titlebar)? Been looking for the CUA hotkeys related to those window functions. Most still work but are not shown on Linux desktops for some reason.

sgt 8mo ago
They also loved italic!
- mixmastamyk 8mo ago
  Yeah, they were a few years ahead of cleartype/retina unfortunately.
senko 8mo ago
> Wow, look at those luxurious titlebars, windows edges, scrollbars, and tabs! So easy to use. That's just Motif: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motif_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motif_(software) Shame it wasn't under an open license to begin with (they relicenced it to LGPL waaay too late). We've been reimplementing it ever since.

hedgehog 8mo ago

Someone did a screen capture of a SGI "System Tour" app that explains how a lot of the UI worked: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sg8fiA9TrRk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sg8fiA9TrRk

rainingmonkey 8mo ago

What is the scrollwheel thing on the left side of some windows?

blipvert 8mo ago
As I recall that changed the size of the (vector graphic) icons in the window. Though it has been twenty-odd years since I last used an SGI box so open to correction!
- zvr 8mo ago
  Yes, it was essentially a "zoom" wheel.

jnpnj 8mo ago

A blend of nextstep and macos classic somehow.

actionfromafar 8mo ago
I thought of BeOS for some reason.

dvno42 8mo ago

For those interested, there is a lovely IRIX clone WM called MaXX. I've been using it for a couple months and have been quite happy with it on a remote dev machine. I believe it only runs on xorg currently. 1. https://docs.maxxinteractive.com/ https://docs.maxxinteractive.com/

wink 8mo ago

That reminds me about some irc channel around 25 years ago where we had this odd guy running IRIX and occasionally sending us screenshots. Most people were on Windows, some of us were running Linux, but IRIX seemed odd even to us, with our mainstream DEs like enlightenment or KDE or windowmaker :D