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Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux

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Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux

#81

Post by dharmab »

stavros wrote: post #68
safety1st wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 do want one that's lightning fast, thank you. If it launches a terminal and a browser, I'm good. I'll try this for my new NUC, thanks for the tip!

I use i3wm + kitty abd it's instantly responsive. Such a refreshing experience.

Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux

#82

Post by stavros »

dharmab wrote: post #81
stavros wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do want one that's lightning fast, thank you. If it launches a terminal and a browser, I'm good. I'll try this for my new NUC, thanks for the tip!

I use i3wm + kitty abd it's instantly responsive. Such a refreshing experience.

Thanks, I also use kitty as my main terminal. I'll give i3wm a go, even though I'm not a huge fan of tiling window managers (but maybe I should be).

Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux

#83

Post by accrual »

tyingq wrote: post #46
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #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 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.

I love that some of these old UIs are still present in current Windows 11 22H2. I was surprised "control userpasswords2" still exists.

Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux

#84

Post by accrual »

ceeam wrote: post #10

You 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".

I also like the old quote "BSD is what you get when a bunch of Unix hackers sit down to try to port a Unix system to the PC. Linux is what you get when a bunch of PC hackers sit down and try to write a Unix system for the PC."

Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux

#85

Post by gcoakes »

stavros wrote: post #67
mbwgh wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

:w is muscle memory by now, and it'll never change.

A quirk in my config that I haven't bothered to fix makes it so my formatter runs post write. I've unfortunately picked up the habit of :w:w in rapid succession.

Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux

#86

Post by serf »

justsomehnguy wrote: post #63
mcny wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> iirc I only had 128MB on my pentium 4 computer Which is quite strange, because even P2 level machines already had 64-128MBs of RAM, eg look at Quake 3 sysrq.

bottom-end (600-900) dollar range in 2001-2002ish got you between 128mb and 256mb of ram.

my bottom end pentium 4 presario came with 128 mb and the slowest hard drive in the world.

Office XP/2002 and Windows XP both called for 128mb minimum as far as I remember, so a lot of the machines were targetting that number.

Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux

#87

Post by accrual »

CalRobert wrote: post #24
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.

Moved on to dark patterns and dumbed down interfaces. Personally, I really miss mnemonics. Alt+underlined letter for_everything_. But having an underlined letter for everything died out and keyboard nav means a lot more memorization.

I'm going to miss when the ability to double-click the top-left corner of a window will close it (and right-click brings up the window menu). This has been around since the Windows 3 days and still persists in 11, but it's going away in some places - e.g. you can't do this in most browsers, and the new file Explorer in 11 dropped it to support tabs.

Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux

#88

Post by LoganDark »

wanderingstan wrote: post #49
soraminazuki wrote: post #26

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.

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.

> I still hit CTRL-S obsessively

Same here, but because I used to forget to save before tabbing over to something else that depended on the changes I made. Now I never forget to save...

Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux

#89

Post by stavros »

gcoakes wrote: post #85
stavros wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

:w is muscle memory by now, and it'll never change.

A quirk in my config that I haven't bothered to fix makes it so my formatter runs post write. I've unfortunately picked up the habit of :w :w in rapid succession.

Oof, my condolences. At least you make doubly sure it's saved.

Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux

#90

Post by accrual »

stainablesteel wrote: post #53

this is the kind of stuff i use when we get a new IT person, i walk over and ask for help doing something mundane just to watch their reaction

I've never done hiring myself, but I'd joke with my manager that I should be allowed to watch potential new hires type for a bit before approving them for the role which involves a lot of typing/chatting, copy/paste, general UI work. So frustrating to see tech staff manually highlight words, right-click, copy, find some buried window, hunt and peck to type, etc.
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