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Blue95: a desktop for your childhood home's computer room

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Re: Blue95: a desktop for your childhood home's computer room

#161

Post by arcmechanica »

MarkusWandel wrote: post #124
wavemode wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The decline in usability and organization of the Windows start menu over the years has been frankly staggering. Whenever I see screenshots of the old menu I get pangs of nostalgia.

I think they drank the Macintosh kool-aid and expect you to have all your commonly used apps pinned. In Win11 this even looks sort of like a Mac dock. Still made no sense to ruin the usability of the start menu which they invented.

What happens when you are no longer the darling. And PMs need to ship something new to get noticed, so they screw it all up

Re: Blue95: a desktop for your childhood home's computer room

#163

Post by anthk »

WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #132
voidfunc wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got in an argument with an accessibility engineer about this recently... The whole UI as branding thing has utterly killed usability.

> The whole UI as branding thing has utterly killed usability. Imagine if Active Desktop had taken over. I eventually came up with a not-awful use for AD but that was a few years after it went away.

It did under several ways since w98SE and Explorer with IE merged on.

Re: Blue95: a desktop for your childhood home's computer room

#164

Post by anthk »

bbqfog wrote: post #25
esafak wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft Windows programs hid functionality under layers of menus and the registry. MacOS, at least, surfaces much less functionality, because it offers sensible defaults. I never had to do anything akin to fiddling with the Windows Registry. I did like some Windows things, though, like the ribbon, and reconfigurable UIs. Today's UIs are more immutable, for the worse.

MacOS is pretty cursed. The equivalent to registry fiddling is doing anything in ~/Library/Application Support It still has "Services" as a hold over from Next that is completely broken and unused (but still present in every app for some reason). Now you also have the joy of diving deep into the Settings every time an app needs some sort of permission. I'd say something about .DS_Store files, but that's not really UI…

NeXTStep/GNUStep/Cocoa 'defaults' commands.

Re: Blue95: a desktop for your childhood home's computer room

#165

Post by wvbdmp »

shrx wrote: post #89
ranger_danger wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have made pixel-perfect renditions before, but I would be worried to release them for fear of legal problems.

I guess you self-answered your question then.

Not really, cause these guys don’t seem to be afraid to use the Windows logo, so why not use historically accurate fonts, icons etc.?

Re: Blue95: a desktop for your childhood home's computer room

#166

Post by anthk »

epolanski wrote: post #140
hnthrowaway0315 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For modern Windows operating system, i.e. >= Windows 10, getting rid of ads, weather, auto-update and search bar can improve UI usability significantly. Windows 95 was not stable enough back then. I believe Windows 2000 was the first OS that was easy to use and relatively stable. XP and 7 are both solid options too. I have used both MacOS X and modern MacOS (15) and the UI of X is definitely way better than the UI of…

98 was a very good os. I don't think many got 2000, XP was the major windows for millennials.

XP was almost a re-skinned 2000. Most drivers for XP worked under 2000 and viceversa.

Re: Blue95: a desktop for your childhood home's computer room

#167

Post by ianmcgowan »

haswell wrote: post #141

Lately I've been strongly considering helping migrate my parents to Linux. Their needs are primarily web-based with some basic productivity tools mixed in, and Windows has just been getting more and more hostile. On top of this, they're at an age where they're now more susceptible than ever to various scams/attacks, and shutting down an entire category of problems by removing Windows from the picture is increasingly…

A chromebox mounted behind the monitor did the trick for me. Haven't had an emergency wipe/reinstall in years. Also, a tablet with keyboard takes some of the pressure off having a "computer" and you can go with iOS or Android depending on what phone they use.

Re: Blue95: a desktop for your childhood home's computer room

#168

Post by fragmede »

accrual wrote: post #158
hi_hi wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a kid, the OS's supported me in learning. They were simple, intuitive and rewarding. I'd click around and explore, and discover cool things like a Wheezer music video, or engaging puzzle games. There was no one who could help me when I got stuck, beyond maybe an instruction manual. I just had to figure it out, mostly by trial and error. I learned so much, eventually being able to replace hardware, install and upgr…

> Things popping up This is one of my biggest frustrations with modern GUI computing. It's especially bad with Windows and Office, but it happens on iOS and macOS too to an extent. Even though I've had Office installed for weeks I still get a "look over here at this new button!" pop-up while I'm in the middle of some Excel task. Pop-up here, pop-up there. It's insane the number of little bubbles and pop-ups and noise…

Omfg I do not need national political news shoved into my face in on the left side of my taskbar while I'm trying to focus on work, thank you Microsoft, k thx bye!

Re: Blue95: a desktop for your childhood home's computer room

#169

Post by trts »

anyone remember XPDE? I'm not sure it was ever finished / packaged in any major repo but came across someone doing a walkthrough of it the other week and it looked pretty complete.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFKx8nCl1Vw

It is hard for me to distinguish between the functional simplicity of desktop computing in that era, with the overall excitement that the explosion of connectivity brought to the world. The internet was a lot of fun and had so many surprising corners. Practically all of it was personal, niche, or experimental content for awhile.

I wonder if Windows 9X was really all that exceptional, or if it was just what people remember driving with as they navigated the new world.

The best modern equivalent to that desktop paradigm I've found is LXQt, although when I use it I find I kind of miss some of the accouterments of the modern desktops.

Re: Blue95: a desktop for your childhood home's computer room

#170

Post by grimgrin »

well this is simply adorable, down to the neocities hosted website

this already is my stack, tho I need to get over to the immutable variety. i'm on fedora 41 i3-spin, using chicago95. been using it for years, with the plymouth bit that gives you a proper win95 startup background during boot

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Plymouth

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