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Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux

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Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux

#151

Post by terinjokes »

Dalewyn wrote: post #107
accrual wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

With certain programs (in this case Paint Shop Pro 5), you can get Windows 11 to render Windows Aero.[1] [1]: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/747297210613498216/10...

That's the officially deprecated for decades "Multiple Document Interface". Any app still using it will render that on modern versions of Windows.

The open source Windows all I maintain still uses this paradigm, and there's not really a good migration path to anything else, and Microsoft refuses to fix the chrome.

Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux

#152

Post by firen777 »

TillE wrote: post #120
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.

It doesn't even look "better". It's just more "modern", more "professional", more cooperate, or, my preferred description, more soulless.

Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux

#153

Post by firen777 »

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.

There's a study that shows flat UI designs cause uncertainty and can lower productivity: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/flat-ui-less-attention-caus...

My subjective experience agree with the study too. But since the entire industry (be it cooperate or non-profit org) collectively lost their mind and decided flat is the one true way and purged the entire internet of anything vaguely 3D, I can't really compare the experience again in a more objective manner.

I'd always go back to [Ross Scott's video of how a "non-expert" view modern GUI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AItTqnTsVjA) whenever I want some reminder on what good GUI should do. I don't agree with everything he say since a lot of it is subjective, but this video cursed me to pay far more attention on how shitty modern GUI is in my everyday interaction with the computer and phone.

(Ross's video essay style is more akin to how a cultist on the street preaches about the UFO or the end-of-the-world and doesn't even care if anyone listen. I personally love it but it may not be everyone's cup of tea)

Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux

#154

Post by acdha »

overgard wrote: post #122
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.

I think nostalgia might have rewritten your memory. Spinning rust disks meant apps would take 5-10 seconds to load, moving and resizing windows was laggy and left behind repaint artifacts, and anything network related took approximately forever

Yes - what he described was the experience using BeOS, which had an amazing I/O scheduler, but switching back to Win95 was noticeably worse on latency. A big problem was I/O deadlines - I knew so many people who burned “coasters” because Win95 and classic MacOS couldn’t reliably feed data to a CD writer with a small buffer. Audio capture and data acquisition were similarly fragile if you needed latency guarantees lower than hundreds of milliseconds.

Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux

#155

Post by userbinator »

Dalewyn wrote: post #107
accrual wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

With certain programs (in this case Paint Shop Pro 5), you can get Windows 11 to render Windows Aero.[1] [1]: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/747297210613498216/10...

That's not "real" Aero (as in the GPU accelerated effects that came with Vista); it looks like the "Windows Basic" theme in Windows 7.

Aero looks like this:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/df/Aero_Example....

Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux

#156

Post by qbasic_forever »

soraminazuki wrote: post #26
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.

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.

The terrible performance you remember is from slow hard drives and just a couple megabytes of RAM. Retro computing enthusiasts today have win 95 running on solid state flash disks and 32 megabytes of memory and it flies.

Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux

#157

Post by II2II »

mcny wrote: post #135
justsomehnguy wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, the wonderful world of balanced and effective configurations from the bottom of the barrel PCs... So much time, money and CO2 could be saved by another/bigger atick of RAM.

> So much time, money and CO2 could be saved by another/bigger atick of RAM. I did eventually get a 256 MB stick of RAM. iirc I was already out of high school at that point. One point I don't hear being talked about too much is how hopeful and stupid we were in the late nineties and early two thousands. We were supposed to have 10GHz processors by 2005, or I mean mass market for consumers by the end of the decade, at…

> One point I don't hear being talked about too much is how hopeful and stupid we were in the late nineties and early two thousands. We were supposed to have 10GHz processors by 2005, or I mean mass market for consumers by the end of the decade, at the latest?

Sure, but look at the decade prior. I had a 486 DX-50 in 1992. Within a decade, we had processors clocked in the GHz. A decade after that, clock rates had pretty much stagnated as we have shifted to multiple cores. We saw something similar happen with memory capacity (huge jump in the late 1990's, and near stagnation over the past decade). The switch from hard drives to solid state drives actually resulted in a huge step backwards (in terms of capacity, though we got a huge bump in performance).

There has been progress with modern computers, but the benchmarks we used in the late 1990's are practically irrelevant these days.

Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux

#158

Post by tombert »

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.

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

Same. I psychotically hit cmd-S or :w after every line of text I write; there was one time my computer crashed and I lost my entire 4th grade book report because I didn't save. I didn't know how to touch type then, so it took forever for me to retype it. Never again!

Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux

#159

Post by afavour »

qbasic_forever wrote: post #156
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.

The terrible performance you remember is from slow hard drives and just a couple megabytes of RAM. Retro computing enthusiasts today have win 95 running on solid state flash disks and 32 megabytes of memory and it flies.

Right but the OP said:

> sure do feel nostalgic how fast and responsive the desktop “felt” back in those days

Wasn’t referring to the retro computing setups of today.

Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux

#160

Post by xp84 »

pjerem wrote: post #101
xp84 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT202655

I like that it’s there, but sadly Apple thinks you need to wait through a dissolve animation that’s equally lengthy, for some reason.
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