I always leaned into "Commercial Unix Workstation Circa 1993". I've considered CDE/NsCDE, but a lot of the pack-in software is of limited value, so I'm going for FVWM on the desktop and MWM on the laptop.
I should mod my big tower case to look like a brother of a HP 712.
I've been using Fedora (Gnome) on my laptop, but I'm going to try the KDE spin when my Framework ships. From what I hear it's possible to theme KDE like, infinitely, including iirc a windows 95 theme? Ideally I'll be able to keep that theme and a more "regular" theme and swap at will, only time shall tell. I don't think I could do it 24/7 though.
Apple is really the only company that did serious research on building their initial UIs with their human interface guidelines. It’s clear they don’t anymore, and everything is about driving engagement or whatever, but like during the golden era of OS X, Tiger, their UI was far superior, and most desktop environments borrow much of that stuff to this day. I now want a hat that says “Make macOS Tiger again”
I don’t like taskbar designs in general, I prefer the top bar with the menu bar integrated and I don’t like startmenu, that’s why I have fullscreen launcher set up, and well something like a dock that is hiding automatically is handy as well
And suddenly I have a macOS design without wanting to mimic it..
What is the core difference between windows design and standard KDE design if I may ask?
I agree, although I do like a MacOS-like dock, because when I was a kid using Gnome, I always loved the dock it came with by default. I'm a filthy casual though, so I can see why some don't like the docks.
I mean, if I had the time, skill, and drive, I'd probably go to Hell and back customizing my laptop to look like it's running xp since I think that look still holds up to this day.
It kinda doesn't IMO. It's a very different style from modern standards, and it uses very bulky interface solutions that were suited for a much weaker computer era.
Like, it's nostalgic and nice, but it's by no means keeping up.
I do this, legitimately -- but with a very specific application: Firefox. On Windows, I can get firefox top border to a VERY small amount. But for some reason, in the past -- every Linux distro I found, when Firefox is maximized, I still get an additional window decoration on the top, above the browser tabs. My Firefox bar on Windows only takes up 64 pixels of height.
For those that like firefox drawing its titlebar instead of using the system one (I can those psychopaths) it's literally a right click on some part of the ui, customize and at bottom there's an option about which titlebar to use.
I mean, at least I CAN fix this stuff in Linux. Plenty of instances like this in Windows where I'd just be stuck. I really need the FreeCAD team to get their shit together before I can truly swap over.
I am a fan of Vista, but 95 was my gateway drug to tech. I remember when I was like, 4? And I discovered that exes were like, huge! But lnks, tiny! Why do we have all these space-hogging exes anyway? Begone! Look dad, I saved us so much drive space! Why does nothing work now?
And that's basically been my method of learning ever since. How much can you really break, before it's broken, and why? Let's find out!
I used to mess with my windows Millenium so much and deleting random files and changing regex and understanding how things worked that tech support guy was almost every 2 weeks there reinstalling the system for me. And that was how they started to give me copies of the cds to install myself so I wouldn't bother them so much.
Getting the windows ME installation disks (floppys) was how I started learning my way around computers. I could experiment with the registry and other files and if I broke something I could just to re install the OS
Vista did a bunch of great things... It added BitLocker drive encryption. It added the Snipping Tool for screenshots. It added a newer driver model that end up making drivers far more reliable than on Windows 9x and XP. It required drivers to be signed, which helps a lot with security. It added UAC, which was initially painful but also really helped improve security (no more running every single process with admin permissions). It moved C:\Documents and Settings\ to C:\Users so we didn't have to type that long path any more. And probably a bunch of others I'm forgetting
It was kinda half-baked at the time, but these are all major defining features of Windows. It just took a while for them to become stable.
Self-healing capabilities, and the ability to do an 'in-place upgrade' (installing win over itself without data loss) were huge too. I had to wipe + reinstall XP dozens of times throughout the years, often for some small bullshit. I was a Vista beta tester, and got a copy for my machine as soon as it went gold. I went all-in and it was actually a fantastic OS. 7 was good too, but it didn't do that much new, comparatively. It stood on the shoulders of giants.
