If someone is on KDE, I recommend the themes by phobian [0]. I had an issue where I needed to force my DPI to get things aligning nicely, but there's a lot of themes based off of various operating systems that are fun to mess with.
Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux
31–40 of 226 posts
Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux
#32Not 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.
That's not how I remember it. Windows 9x was slow and constantly crashing. Booting and launching programs took ages. To be fair, the performance problems had more to do with the available hardware back then, but still.
> Windows 9x was slow
because hard drives. Now we have SSDs and the desktop is slower than ever still.
Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux
#33You know the old saying: "BSD is for people who like Unix, Linux is for people who hate Windows". I don't think it's hate. I think it's "for people who are tsundere about Windows".
You say that, but jwm was born on Irix I think and plenty of people used that instead of MWM/FVWM and similar. In the end, you just managed windows, so
using XFM/XFE with JWM was more than enough.
Also, lots of *BSD people liked IceWM with Metal themes for similar reasons. The Windows UI was already peaking at usability, so they used that among virtual desktops and the power of Unix utilities on shells, tools and services.
Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's not how I remember it. Windows 9x was slow and constantly crashing. Booting and launching programs took ages. To be fair, the performance problems had more to do with the available hardware back then, but still.
IO was slow. Once stuff was in RAM, it was quite fast.
At least at the beginning not everybody had hardware that supported DMA for disk access (and those that had it, not always had it configured properly).
That meant burning CPU cycles just for doing IO.
Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux
#35Not 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.
Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux
#36Would be cool to “do it right” and have a proper window manager for Linux like this rather than “just” a skin (I really don’t want to diminish the ton of work sunk into this). So you get the last details about windowing behavior and animations right, and achieving much more in terms of start menu, task bar behavior and so on.
To be less niche and reach even more nostalgic users it could be something like a RetroWM with modes for like Windows 95, XP, maybe even Mac OS 9.
If I only had unlimited time on my hands… :D
Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's not how I remember it. Windows 9x was slow and constantly crashing. Booting and launching programs took ages. To be fair, the performance problems had more to do with the available hardware back then, but still.
IO was slow. Once stuff was in RAM, it was quite fast.
This. I was recently backing up some stuff from an old Mac OS 8 machine and it was amazing how snappy a lot of things feel.
But if something is not on RAM you can clearly notice it.
Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux
#38Some 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 loo…
Phpbb had a very windowsxp style. Im always trying to pinpoint what that is.
I think it includes smaller, denser text.
And something about the borders. Chunkier, more ornate, or griadients/light or something.
Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux
#39Related: is there any "high resolution" version of setup.bmp ( https://raw.githubusercontent.com/grassmunk/Chicago95/5670fd... ) that does not kill the spirit of it? I tried upscaling it, but it's like upscaling pixel art... I guess my best bet would be retaking the original pictures (the OG MS Natural Keyboard, CDs, etc.) and recreating it, but it sounds like plenty of work
How about scaling with Midjourney's img2img (if it will do a wallpaper size image?).