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Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux

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Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux

#111

Post by Roark66 »

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.

>Hard to believe that a few system crashes per day was the norm.

It certainly wasn't for me! At the time I had my first it job in a local pc repair shop and we had a series of 24h burn in tests. If the newly installed pc crashed during it, there was something wrong with the hw. My personal windows 95 definitely didn't crash more than once every few weeks of heavy use. Programs did crash, explorer did crash, but the actual BSOD was quite rare.

Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux

#113

Post by xp84 »

Pannoniae wrote: post #6
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.

I dunno but there's only a few things missing from those old-style UIs. (Notably, hiDPI support for example) This is probably a niche opinion but I think we have been steadily devolving and going backwards in terms of user design. We waste so much space, require so many clicks for worse usability than we started with. With the death of skeumorphism and textual UIs we regularly have to guess or hover buttons to find o…

100%. And all of this regression is either in the name of pure vapid trendiness, or an attempt to supposedly make things “easier for non-technical people” — and yet these people still have no idea how to use their devices any more expertly than they could Windows 95. The only difference is back then people knew what a file was and where it was located. Now there are a lot of people who don’t.

TL;DR millennial shakes fist at cloud

Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux

#115

Post by treve »

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.

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

I'm on Gnome because I prefer the design, but if you want fast it might be worth a shot.

Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux

#116

Post by jug »

petepete wrote: post #71
jug wrote: 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…

It's not Linux but Serenity OS checks all the other boxes. https://www.serenityos.org/

Yeah, I’m aware of Serenity and think it has a really cool combination of old school Windows and Mac OS!

Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux

#117

Post by gattilorenz »

post-it wrote: post #27
gattilorenz wrote: post #22

Related: 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

You could scale it without interpolation, giving you a crisper image at larger resolutions without blurring or smoothing.

yes, technically that is possible, but it would give you an image with... big square blocks instead of tiny pixels.

I'm thinking of achieving something like https://github.com/nestoris/win98wallpapers, and maybe Midjourney's img2img (as the other commenter suggested) might be able to do something like that, I don't know.

Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux

#118

Post by jug »

jwells89 wrote: post #57
jug wrote: 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…

I’ve wanted to work on OS clone desktop environments (to cover all the little things a window manager alone can’t) for a while now because I think it’s worthwhile to preserve older environments and keep them available for usage even after their commercial creators have abandoned them. Finding the time to do that is a challenge though, particularly with the higher activation energy of having to learn the ins and outs…

Yeah, that’s exactly it! Unfortunately the different skill sets required here are so different. You part need deep understanding of the low level inner workings, and part need great attention to detail in user interface design. It would probably be easiest to pull of as a team effort.

Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux

#119

Post by xp84 »

anthk wrote: post #23
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.

Yeah, to worse. On Windows XP, beside the childish theme, the window buttons were very usable. Ditto with XFCE with some xfwm4 with a round-surface squared buttons on yellow, green and red, you can find it under the last items of the list. Let's talk about the icons and usability. On overy modern Gnome3/XP icon theme, the icons seem contrastless and very hard to see. Meanwhile, the Tango icons are still standing a lo…

People hate on the default blue Luna theme, but there was a perfectly professional Silver version, and the later (black with orange accents) Zune Theme was one of the most attractive UIs I ever got to use.

Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux

#120

Post by TillE »

netbioserror wrote: post #73

Contrary to what many are saying, I want the LOOK but not the usability. We've made some good leaps since then and Cinnamon desktop represents just about the cutting edge in usability and familiarity. But that squared look with high-contrast and clearly-interactable elements was lost along the way. Now everything has to be flat, flat, flat with disappearing controls. Take me back.

> with high-contrast and clearly-interactable elements

Yeah, I miss that a lot. My favorite example is the iTunes sidebar icons going from clearly distinguishable different colors to flat uniform monochrome.

Why? Because someone decided it made the interface look "better" as an art object, rather than being a better user experience.

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