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Screenshots from developers and Unix people taken in 2002

anders.unix.se

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Re: Screenshots from developers and Unix people taken in 2002

#171

Post by lisivka »

mangecoeur wrote: post #45
72deluxe wrote: post #12

I really liked these. This makes me feel old. I look at those desktops (particularly the Windows 95 one) and think they look clean and neat, with few distractions. I also know that they ran speedily on rubbish hardware. After ditching my BBC B (I was poor), I remember using Win 3.1 on a 386SX with 4MB RAM that someone had thrown out and installing software to take over program manager and make it look like Win95 beca…

> clean and neat Really? You miss that special "concrete gray and primary blue" feel? I think I used every MS operating system starting with DOS, and I miss exactly none of the "historic" interfaces. To the extent I get annoyed when institutional IT departments force you to use the "classic" theme on modern windows boxes ("It's faster!" - no, it isn't to any human perceptible degree, and I appreciate not having to st…

All Linux desktops are themable. Gnome1 and Sawfish has hundreds of nice themes.

Re: Screenshots from developers and Unix people taken in 2002

#172

Post by urs2102 »

Did people primarily not use terminal multiplexers like GNU Screen back then (or like tmux today)? It seems to be a lot of windows all over the place.

Other than that, jumping a little ahead --I remember getting Windows XP in late 2001, early 2002. Everything looked so nice and shiny - it may have been the last time I was so unbelievably impressed with Windows. I'm not sure why I liked it so much - either because the UI (at the time) looked gorgeous, or because I was in second grade.

Realistically, it was the latter.

Re: Screenshots from developers and Unix people taken in 2002

#174

Post by _jomo »

Anyone looking for Unix screenshots of 2015 should have a look at the /r/unixporn [0] subreddit. As the name suggest, it's a collection of really nice-looking *nix systems, usually providing all the details to "reproduce" the setup.

0: https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn

Re: Screenshots from developers and Unix people taken in 2002

#176

Post by macNchz »

currysausage wrote: post #36

"I do not tend to listen to music through my workstation, since that both distracts me and wastes cpu power. My workstation is a dual CPU, 500 MHZ system, but I like things to work fast, not be bogged down with decompressing music, etc." (Jon Hall)

I remember this being a concern around when mp3s started to become popular–it's quite amazing how far we've come since the age where an mp3 would soak up an appreciable amount of CPU and saturate an internet connection seemingly forever while downloading.

I just started playing an old mp3 file on my new-ish MacBook and was surprised that it was using 15% CPU...before I realized that it was actually loading it from the cloud storage that holds my 7000 song/50gb music library for next to no cost (it dropped to 1% CPU moments later after it had buffered)–never mind having subscription access to essentially all the world's music.

Re: Screenshots from developers and Unix people taken in 2002

#177

Post by mreiland »

FireBeyond wrote: post #168
72deluxe wrote: post #12

I really liked these. This makes me feel old. I look at those desktops (particularly the Windows 95 one) and think they look clean and neat, with few distractions. I also know that they ran speedily on rubbish hardware. After ditching my BBC B (I was poor), I remember using Win 3.1 on a 386SX with 4MB RAM that someone had thrown out and installing software to take over program manager and make it look like Win95 beca…

"then running FVWM, KDE1 (looked like CDE, how reassuring), GNOME1 (it's squishy), KDE2, 3.5 (perfection, everything was configurable) then going back to GNOME2 (it was simple), then abandoning it all after GNOME3 and KDE4 (hmmm a cashew) and going to OSX. All the Linux desktops I used in tandem with Windows XP and 7 to "keep my hand in" both markets." The only thing 'disappointing' in this is you didn't/didn't menti…

> The only thing 'disappointing' in this is you didn't/didn't mention countless attempts to get E(nlightenment) running. After an overnight compile, of course!

lmao. I so badly wanted to check it out, but couldn't for the longest time because it was such a pita to deal with.

Years later I finally got it installed successfully and found it wasn't as snazzy as I had hoped sigh.

Oh well, such fond memories of old skool linux :)

Re: Screenshots from developers and Unix people taken in 2002

#178

Post by mikegirouard »

What an excellent post.

This inspired me to dig up an old screenshot from the same time:

https://web.archive.org/web/20020408224844/http://p0w3r.com/...

Most likely this was on a Red Hat desktop I was running (before the enterprise switch). Man, I really miss running WindowMaker…

Re: Screenshots from developers and Unix people taken in 2002

#179

Post by Avshalom »

jff wrote: post #154
fluxquanta wrote: post #152

Really diggin' Rob Malda's Ryoko background.

cmdrtaco's screenshot is a great example of how, back in 2002, we hadn't yet learned "just because you can, doesn't mean you should".

I dunno, the idea that we could have fun with, or at least be enjoying, the thing we spend all day dealing with doesn't seem like something we shouldn't be doing.

Plus he's got what, a slightly dodgey font going on? That's hardly ostentatious.

Re: Screenshots from developers and Unix people taken in 2002

#180

Post by nitrogen »

mangecoeur wrote: post #45
72deluxe wrote: post #12

I really liked these. This makes me feel old. I look at those desktops (particularly the Windows 95 one) and think they look clean and neat, with few distractions. I also know that they ran speedily on rubbish hardware. After ditching my BBC B (I was poor), I remember using Win 3.1 on a 386SX with 4MB RAM that someone had thrown out and installing software to take over program manager and make it look like Win95 beca…

> clean and neat Really? You miss that special "concrete gray and primary blue" feel? I think I used every MS operating system starting with DOS, and I miss exactly none of the "historic" interfaces. To the extent I get annoyed when institutional IT departments force you to use the "classic" theme on modern windows boxes ("It's faster!" - no, it isn't to any human perceptible degree, and I appreciate not having to st…

The classic Windows UI was exceptionally customizable. I often configured inverse color schemes that worked better in dark rooms. At one point I even edited some of the core OS binaries to change the text on the Start button, get custom logos and messaging, etc. Classic Linux and Windows desktops were all about customization, so the defaults don't really matter. Last time I checked, it wasn't even possible to set a custom solid color background on OSX without using a transparent PNG image.
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