61–70 of 226 posts
Anyone know if there's an os/2 warp theme? I recall being quite pleased with it.
But people mostly only knew Windows 95, so that's what they remember.
I'm a big fan of this aesthetic. If you appreciate the usability of W95 without needing a pixel perfect copy, it's very easy to theme KDE to strike a really good balance. As your global theme, use 'Reactionary'. Set your application style to 'MS Windows 9x'. For your icons, use 'Memphis98'. For cursors, 'Hackneyed (scaleable)'. Your Plasma style, colours, and window decorations should all follow your global theme (Re…
https://baloo.neocities.org/TheGuide/TheGuide-Part1 (bottom of page)
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I don't like how it looks (prefer a bit flatter buttons, but that are still buttons), but windows didn't really get any more usable after that...
> windows didn't really get any more usable after that... The old UI is good but I am not a fan of the everything is folders and files idea of the start menu. Maybe I'm misremembering but iirc as a child I used to forget which sub menu inside the thing I needed was except for the ones I used frequently. I like being able to just type obs and press enter in the new windows. I preferred the old theme better than window…
Which is quite strange, because even P2 level machines already had 64-128MBs of RAM, eg look at Quake 3 sysrq.
I'm a big fan of this aesthetic. If you appreciate the usability of W95 without needing a pixel perfect copy, it's very easy to theme KDE to strike a really good balance. As your global theme, use 'Reactionary'. Set your application style to 'MS Windows 9x'. For your icons, use 'Memphis98'. For cursors, 'Hackneyed (scaleable)'. Your Plasma style, colours, and window decorations should all follow your global theme (Re…
I don't like how it looks (prefer a bit flatter buttons, but that are still buttons), but windows didn't really get any more usable after that...
They definitely got a lot of things right, though. The basic aesthetic was pretty good and very discoverable.
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…
I wish Apple would let me watch each of their oh-so-clever animations one time to give these “designers” their satisfaction, and just jump-cut to the final state from that point on.
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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.
A typical XFCE system on startup will allocate around 500MB of RAM, but with the way memory management works on Linux I think it doesn't really need all of that and lets go of it if something else does.
It is kind of a barebones desktop environment, but certainly has a lot more stuff packed in than Win9x did and for a little extra disk space you can cherry pick whatever Gnome and KDE utilities you want anyway.
So I think this phenomenon of slow modern desktops is a Windows/Mac problem, if you want one that's lightning fast, they're out there.
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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.
For me, my Ctrl+S moment was with Apple's Writer, on my first Macbook back in 2005 or so. Lost a whole evening's worth of work due to a crash. I'm mostly in the `:w` camp now, but still...
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> Windows 9x was slow because hard drives. Now we have SSDs and the desktop is slower than ever still.
Chicago95 is a theme for XFCE. I run XFCE with i3wm on a SSD and it is insanely, perversely fast. Most of the default apps bundled with XFCE start instantly. The system boots within seconds, no need to consider any type of fast boot, hibernation etc. Native apps boot within seconds. Electron apps are slower, because Electron. A typical XFCE system on startup will allocate around 500MB of RAM, but with the way memory…
I'll try this for my new NUC, thanks for the tip!
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…
That's because you installed a ton of 3rd party shit which were registered as a handler for this/all filetypes so when the Explorer needed to show that menu it had to query every registered handler, extract an icon and if those .dlls weren't in the RAM, then you waited for the slow disk access.
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> 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.