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Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux

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Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux

#91

Post by accrual »

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.

Initial versions of Windows 95 would crash if uptime exceeded 49.7 days. :)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28340101

Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux

#92

Post by accrual »

xp84 wrote: post #65
rpastuszak wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 miss, when I had a jailbroken phone, briefly being able to set the animation time to zero. Everything is so much faster, even with hardware that can more than handle the GPU stuff. It’s now (on fast hardware) the actual animation frames themselves that are literally wasting my time. I wish Apple would let me watch each of their oh-so-clever animations one time to give these “designers” their satisfaction, and just…

I think Android KitKat 4.4 had an animation time slider hidden in some "Developer" menu that could be trivally enabled. It made my phone feel so much faster.

Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux

#93

Post by accrual »

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…

> It's because they virus scan and authorization check every single file access, every time.

Haha, I know this. I could be doing absolutely nothing and my 10th Gen work laptop CPU is chugging along at 40% utilization.

Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux

#94

Post by wanderingstan »

LoganDark wrote: post #88
wanderingstan wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Ah yes, I’ve had that too: I still wish editors would make it more visually apparent when you had unsaved changes.

Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux

#96

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

mcny wrote: post #55
ilyt wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I like being able to just type obs and press enter in the new windows.

This might be one of the few useful features that I take for granted in modern Windows. That and Win + tab which I think GNOME does better. The "Windows" key in GNOME brings up the overview but also brings up search where you can either click which window you want or type what you want. Intuitive

Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux

#97

Post by WesolyKubeczek »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #61
jtode wrote: post #12

Anyone know if there's an os/2 warp theme? I recall being quite pleased with it.

Back then about just anything was better looking than Windows 95. OS/2 was slick. Mac computers had a very enjoyable UI. SGI machines had a very good looking UI. But people mostly only knew Windows 95, so that's what they remember.

I would say that Win95 aesthetics was about someone with an actual good taste taking Motif and making it not suck. Remember how selecting menu items by hovering was BIG? Coming from Windows 3.1/3.11, the usability improvement of this alone was massive. Same with mouse wheel becoming ubiquitous, courtesy of Microsoft (they weren't the first, but it's thanks to them that everyone and their dog could actually make use of it).

Another thing about Win95 aesthetics (which peaked at the time of Windows 2000) was the extreme consistency which had been simply absent before that in the DOS/Win3/PC world. Maybe Apple could brag about it too, can't say about SGI (was it all like Motif in all applications, with colors/hotkeys set platform-wide, or was it the ugly Motif/Xaw/Athena mix seen elsewhere and each application having a mind of its own?). Man, you can't find it these days, especially since Electron.

I'm purposely omitting Qt/GTK, as they have always felt like also-ran toolkits, mimicking the conventions of the platforms they inhabited, and I can't for the life of me remember when it was that they actually set any trends instead of mimicking some hotness of the day introduced by the dominant platforms.

Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux

#98

Post by ptx »

mcny wrote: post #55
ilyt wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I used to forget which sub menu inside the thing I needed was except for the ones I used frequently

The trick was to create your own folders to flatten the hierarchy, so you never have to look inside the "Programs" sub menu. You could even move your most frequently used items to the top level, with no folders at all, so they're available with a single click.

This got a lot easier with Windows 98 (or with the IE version that included the shell update) where you could just drag and drop to rearrange the menus.

Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux

#99

Post by WesolyKubeczek »

rtpg wrote: post #31

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. [0]: https://store.kde.org/u/phob1an

I like his color schemes a lot. Especially the contrast.

Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux

#100

Post by WesolyKubeczek »

nonethewiser wrote: post #38
jtode wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Remember how everyone was complaining how "heavy" all that glitz was? Images this, heavy HTML that, garishness this, load times that? I remember.

And then Windows 8 aesthetic came in, suddenly flat and a few colors with very reduced palette of available widgets became en vogue, but at the same time somehow the load and render times of sites bragging to be "simple" and "minimalistic" and "lightweight" soared with megabytes of assets none of your old sites sporting image borders and marble backgrounds ever had.

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