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Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux

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Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux

#181

Post by wildrhythms »

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

There was a recent thread with twitter clips showing old Windows vs. new Windows and how old Windows opened its programs noticeably faster.

https://twitter.com/jmmv/status/1671670996921896960?s=20

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36503983

Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux

#183

Post by ShadowBanThis01 »

lelanthran wrote: post #169
ShadowBanThis01 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand this objection. The Start menu (which was a step backward from Program Manager) really went downhill when it obscured or removed the ability to group your programs into folders. Why do I want my audio & music programs jumbled together with my development tools? Or my graphics programs mixed in with general office apps? People who argue that you should just type into a search bar 100% of the time to…

> People who argue that you should just type into a search bar 100% of the time to find and launch apps are naíve. First of all, unless you have a trivial number of applications, it's absurd to expect everyone to remember the name of every program on his computer. Oh gee, what was that SD-card-formatting utility again? I don't know, but hey in two clicks I'm in my Utils folder and there it is. Maybe you should relook…

Thanks for the info. I don't use Windows anymore, but people make the same argument on Mac; I don't see any description field there, and searches can fail even when you use a word contained in the program title.

Even if such a field is 100% accurately and adequately populated for every application (which I doubt), I don't want to invoke a text-based search and have to start typing a query.

Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux

#184

Post by Aeolun »

tommica wrote: post #179
troad wrote: post #25

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…

This is a hail mary, but would there be something similar for getting the Win XP look? I'd love that

Absolutely. I’ve been doing this with the XP theme after this was posted on HN last time and I thought the same thing.

It exists, but need to check where.

Edit: No idea where I got it from. I know I installed the 98 theme first from this thing, and then downloaded a WinXP theme that I selected in all of the places it mattered.

Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux

#185

Post by Aeolun »

serf wrote: post #86
justsomehnguy wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Even our pentium 3 had 512mb as far as I recall. I couldn’t imagine a P4 with less than 1Gb

So of course I checked. It’s bizarre that they ever sold them with 128mb…

Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux

#186

Post by dale_glass »

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…

What does 10 GHz matter?

It's not that meaningful of a number. A modern 3.8 GHz leaves an identically clocked P4 in the dust:

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/1081vs3733/Intel-Pentiu...

Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux

#187

Post by troad »

tommica wrote: post #179
troad wrote: post #25

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…

This is a hail mary, but would there be something similar for getting the Win XP look? I'd love that

There is a KDE theme called 'Expose', by the same person who made Reactionary, which looks like it might be what you're after. (For icons, there's a set called just called 'Windows XP').

Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux

#188

Post by wildrhythms »

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.

At the $bigcorp level, they ask survey panels "Which of these interfaces looks more modern to you?" that's largely the extent of the justification to completely change the entire UI that has been perfected and beloved by users over many years. The users begrudgingly learn the new UI, and a bunch of project managers get promoted and leave for the next company to do the same thing.

Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux

#189

Post by wildrhythms »

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

For dithered images I find waifu2x with the noise removal at 'None' to be pretty good at scaling these things up without destroying the dithered shapes.

Unrelated (Maybe related actually) this tool for applying old-school style dithering to an image with a bunch of settings and dithering algos: https://doodad.dev/dither-me-this/

Re: Chicago95 – Windows 95 Theme for Linux

#190

Post by prmoustache »

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…

Aren't you mixing up toolkits and window manager? Seems to me like we are pretty well sorted on linux with some amazing window managers that are superior to what Microsoft and Apple ever produced.
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