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Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux

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41–50 of 226 posts

Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux

#41

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.

KDE Plasma in my opinion comes closest to this. It's stayed very snappy over the years and I'm mainly a laptop user.

Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux

#42
post #36

Would 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 wi…

There are already proper WMs with the Win95 look e.g. IceWM.

Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux

#43
Reflecting on the comments, I'm surprised - a little - that MS don't have backwards compatibility of GUI. Many older users like the interface not to change, or to change only superficially. It would, I think, be a usability improvement for many.

As a "family admin" I'd want to update for security reasons, or if the new version is better optimised or lacks some bugs, but for many elders (IME) any significant changes to UI are devastating to their comfort in using the OS.

MS just don't seem good at making windows (a DE), IMO.

Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux

#44

Reflecting on the comments, I'm surprised - a little - that MS don't have backwards compatibility of GUI. Many older users like the interface not to change, or to change only superficially. It would, I think, be a usability improvement for many. As a "family admin" I'd want to update for security reasons, or if the new version is better optimised or lacks some bugs, but for many elders (IME) any significant changes t…

It's still possible to render similar kinds of controls in Windows. It's evident by old software that is still shipped in Windows.

But judging by the abysmal state of Microsoft modern UI toolkits, and Microsoft's complete inability to adhere to any consistency between the different frameworks that render toolkits, I just don't see any way Microsoft could offer cross-OS theme support that would work in any meaningful way. This was possible up to and including Windows 7, but then Microsoft just derped in their UI development, and it has been more and more embarrassing with every Windows release.

Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux

#45

Earlier 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.

Drawing to the screen was also slow until accelerated 2D cards came along.

Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux

#46

Reflecting on the comments, I'm surprised - a little - that MS don't have backwards compatibility of GUI. Many older users like the interface not to change, or to change only superficially. It would, I think, be a usability improvement for many. As a "family admin" I'd want to update for security reasons, or if the new version is better optimised or lacks some bugs, but for many elders (IME) any significant changes t…

It's still there in some places...try +r then run odbcad32.exe

Click the "System DSN" tab, then "Add", Double-click the top entry ("Driver Da Microsoft..."), uncheck "Use Current Directory", then click the "Select Directory" button.

Also try the "help" button.

Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux

#47
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ah, I remember those days. Around that era, dragging windows around the screen was switching from "draw outline" to "draw the actual window".

Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux

#48
post #32

Earlier 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.

> Windows 9x was slow because hard drives. Now we have SSDs and the desktop is slower than ever still.

Desktop became slow when windows and widgets became objects, as in the OOP sense. The transition from hardcoded primitives to objects that would be created and destroyed on the fly slowed things down a lot, but that is the price to pay to have code that runs on very different platforms, also adapting itself to different screen sizes and resolutions, dynamic objects, etc.

Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux

#49

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.

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.

Hard to believe that a few system crashes per day was the norm. You just hoped you hadn’t lost too much, would re-boot and go get a drink while you waited.

Due to that “training” I still hit CTRL-S obsessively even when it hasn’t been needed for years.

Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux

#50
> for Linux

Linux is a kernel and does have a graphical interface. This theme is for XFCE, one of the many "desktop environments" that can run on the Linux kernel.

Other being: Gnome, Plasma (KDE), LXQt, and many more.

To make it more interesting, XFCE also runs on FreeBSD (another open source kernel/OS).

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