Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 226 posts

Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux

#11

Post by pluijzer »

mrabcx wrote: post #2

Some of these old style themes are interesting for nostalgic reasons but then after a while you do realize that there are reasons why the world has moved on.

Seriously wonder what you think the reasons the world moved on is? Everything was so clear, neat and discoverable back then. Now everything needs to be hidden behind labels that may of may not be a button. And that is on a good day because many times I need to learn a new language where a rocket means pipeline and to download an artifact from it you obviously need to press the pinkish two squares thingy. But that is actually still a good day because nobody knew that to do [useful feature] you need to click the triangle next to the lightning bolt so nobody used it. Next update it will be removed. This update will also make the now remaining three buttons two times bigger because our CAD software needs to be mobile first.

Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux

#13

Post by KnobbleMcKnees »

pluijzer wrote: post #11
mrabcx wrote: post #2

Some of these old style themes are interesting for nostalgic reasons but then after a while you do realize that there are reasons why the world has moved on.

Seriously wonder what you think the reasons the world moved on is? Everything was so clear, neat and discoverable back then. Now everything needs to be hidden behind labels that may of may not be a button. And that is on a good day because many times I need to learn a new language where a rocket means pipeline and to download an artifact from it you obviously need to press the pinkish two squares thingy. But that is…

I kind of agree with this in that WIMP is a good philosophy for desktop UI design, and I feel that mobile has never really had the equivalent (hamburger menus falling out of fashion being the apotheosis of chasing rainbows IMHO)

But I feel we need only point to Microsoft Word as an example of how the statement.

>Everything was so clear, neat, and discoverable back then

just isn't true. The only difference now is that we have dozens of pieces of software in our lives now instead of the half dozen we used in the 90s, and we don't have one company monopolistically decreeing what the status quo of UI design is.

Meaningful competition is also why I think there is no WIMP in mobile. And that's a double-edged sword.

Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux

#14

Post by Karellen »

Such a pity GTK3 and later aren't intended to be themeable, and the devs make no release-to-release compatibility guarantees for the theme engines.

If this only affected Gnome, I wouldn't mind so much. But so many regular non-Gnome apps I use are GTK-based, even if I pick a different DE (which I do), I can't personalise my own user experience in a way that's consistent. The UX I keep behind a password, so I doesn't matter if anyone else would get confused if they tried to use it, because they can't.

I can still try to pick QT-based desktop apps where possible. And for some fairly simple apps, there are both GTK and QT implementations (e.g. calculators), so that's feasible. But a lot of apps have one main implementation in their niche, and you either have no choice, or if you pick the one with fewer developers some features just aren't there.

I really feel like we've lost something significant from where things were 15-odd years ago.

Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux

#15

Post by jtode »

mrabcx wrote: post #2

Some of these old style themes are interesting for nostalgic reasons but then after a while you do realize that there are reasons why the world has moved on.

I wish I could have a very long discussion of this. It is my belief that people think they want new stuff because marketing has told them that. The corporate internet is like someone took that process and welded their finger to the fast forward button, endless iterations of pointless redesigns, galaxies of UXes that only a few people in Boise Iowa ever visited, it's nuts.

I want the internet back where everything looked like that phpbb stuff. You just got the information then. Now you have to solve the CCS/JS puzzle first.

Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux

#16

Post by throwaway2990 »

moron4hire wrote: post #7
reacharavindh wrote: post #4

Not that I want the UX To _look_ like Windows 95, but I sure do feel nostalgic how fast and responsive the desktop “felt” back in those days. These days, it is a rarity to see a native app that is as responsive. It feels like all native apps burn through CPU cycles in cosmetic things and animations that it feels sluggish in comparison.

My Windows 11 laptop at home is quite snappy. My Windows 10 laptop at work with more RAM, a better SSD, and a newer, faster CPU, is not. It's because they virus scan and authorization check every single file access, every time. Even starting small programs like Notepad takes at least 2 seconds at work whereas it's instantaneous at home. Same story at my previous job. Actually, my work laptop had been faster than my p…

I got a dell XPS 15 for work, 2022 one. 32gb 12700h. It’s slow and loud. Especially compared to my personal laptop. Not enough to be annoying tho. But then IT decided they want some software installed to make sure they can monitor for bad processes. Wow it’s annoyingly slow now for development because every process is analysised.

Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux

#18

Post by rpastuszak »

reacharavindh wrote: post #4

Not that I want the UX To _look_ like Windows 95, but I sure do feel nostalgic how fast and responsive the desktop “felt” back in those days. These days, it is a rarity to see a native app that is as responsive. It feels like all native apps burn through CPU cycles in cosmetic things and animations that it feels sluggish in comparison.

My experience was different as my first Windows PC was already quite old when I got it, so I was used to random delays in UI feedback. My current M1 feels like what you've just described.

I tried to run DSL (damn small linux) on my P60 around 2003-4 and felt what you've just described. The UI seemed to respond before the interaction!

Then, a few months ago I spent a an evening or two messing with Microsoft Bob (Win 3.11) then Win 95 trying to code a simple website compatible with the tech of the time, using the tools available at the time. Everything felt so snappy.

I don't mind animations applied thoughtfully (e.g. short UI transitions emphasising the state change), but what annoys me the most is animation jank, drops in frame rate, unpredictable delays. Older Windows versions weren't that great in that regard either (do you remember how much time it used to take for the "Open With" dialog, or event file context menu to show up on Win, when you right clicked on a file in Win9x-7?)

Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux

#19

Post by BaculumMeumEst »

mati365 wrote: post #9
reacharavindh wrote: post #4

Not that I want the UX To _look_ like Windows 95, but I sure do feel nostalgic how fast and responsive the desktop “felt” back in those days. These days, it is a rarity to see a native app that is as responsive. It feels like all native apps burn through CPU cycles in cosmetic things and animations that it feels sluggish in comparison.

[flagged]

If you're curious about Gentoo, sure. But you're not going to get a perceptible advantage for the substantial time investment.

Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux

#20

Post by nils-herzig »

Karellen wrote: post #14

Such a pity GTK3 and later aren't intended to be themeable, and the devs make no release-to-release compatibility guarantees for the theme engines. If this only affected Gnome, I wouldn't mind so much. But so many regular non-Gnome apps I use are GTK-based, even if I pick a different DE (which I do), I can't personalise my own user experience in a way that's consistent. The UX I keep behind a password, so I doesn't m…

I really like GTK4 / Adwaita and dislike the look and feel of QT, but I guess that's just personal preference.

You can change the colors of Adwaita using https://github.com/GradienceTeam/Gradience it even has a mode to extract colors from your background like current android versions

Post reply on HN