FVWM-95 (2001) • Hacker News Board

Re: FVWM-95 (2001)

#101

Post by sombragris » Thu, Dec 18, 2025, 10:11 PM UTC

hakfoo wrote: post #93

sombragris wrote: post #49

fvwm is still one of the default graphical environments in Slackware (even in -current), and fvwm95 came packaged for some time, too. Now fvwm95 is no longer part of the basic Slackware distribution but there's a SlackBuild for it: https://slackbuilds.org/repository/15.0/desktop/fvwm95/ I like the Win95 aesthetic, but I like a close relative, KDE1, better; and I have configured my Plasma 6 setup along these lines. Sc…

To me, the big aesthetic of early Qt/KDE1 is "Obvious Motif ripoff". Aside from the Win95/Warp style titlebars, if you don't have the big thick bevels and the distinct scroll bars, it's not quite right. It really galls me that they removed the Motif style in Qt6, since I target that as my default look and feel. It gives a nice "This is expensive professional software with a codebase tracing back to the Reagan adminis…

> To me, the big aesthetic of early Qt/KDE1 is "Obvious Motif ripoff". Aside from the Win95/Warp style titlebars, if you don't have the big thick bevels and the distinct scroll bars, it's not quite right.

This is a KDE1 screenshot: https://diit.cz/sites/default/files/kde1-snapshot01.png

Is this really a Motif ripoff? For me it's much more like Win95 with a better titlebar in the window decoration. To each their own, but it seems quite right to me.

Re: FVWM-95 (2001)

#102

Post by hakfoo » Fri, Dec 19, 2025, 12:21 AM UTC

sombragris wrote: post #101

hakfoo wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, the big aesthetic of early Qt/KDE1 is "Obvious Motif ripoff". Aside from the Win95/Warp style titlebars, if you don't have the big thick bevels and the distinct scroll bars, it's not quite right. It really galls me that they removed the Motif style in Qt6, since I target that as my default look and feel. It gives a nice "This is expensive professional software with a codebase tracing back to the Reagan adminis…

> To me, the big aesthetic of early Qt/KDE1 is "Obvious Motif ripoff". Aside from the Win95/Warp style titlebars, if you don't have the big thick bevels and the distinct scroll bars, it's not quite right. This is a KDE1 screenshot: https://diit.cz/sites/default/files/kde1-snapshot01.png Is this really a Motif ripoff? For me it's much more like Win95 with a better titlebar in the window decoration. To each their own,…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K_Desktop_Environment_1#/media... Evidently they offered both the Win9x and Motif-like themes back then too, I guess I never bothered with it.

I can recall trying Beta 4 and probably 1.0, but at the time it felt like a weird situation. It wasn't quite everything you needed, and a lot of the apps were still obviously sort of immature. The HTML-driven file manager was interesting (ISTR OS/2 offered a similar way to customize things on a per-directory level) but it seemed like a lot of resources when a 486/80 with an obscene 32Mb of memory was my Linux machine.

Re: FVWM-95 (2001)

#103

Post by sombragris » Fri, Dec 19, 2025, 5:41 AM UTC

hakfoo wrote: post #102

sombragris wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To me, the big aesthetic of early Qt/KDE1 is "Obvious Motif ripoff". Aside from the Win95/Warp style titlebars, if you don't have the big thick bevels and the distinct scroll bars, it's not quite right. This is a KDE1 screenshot: https://diit.cz/sites/default/files/kde1-snapshot01.png Is this really a Motif ripoff? For me it's much more like Win95 with a better titlebar in the window decoration. To each their own,…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K_Desktop_Environment_1#/media... Evidently they offered both the Win9x and Motif-like themes back then too, I guess I never bothered with it. I can recall trying Beta 4 and probably 1.0, but at the time it felt like a weird situation. It wasn't quite everything you needed, and a lot of the apps were still obviously sort of immature. The HTML-driven file manager was interesting (ISTR OS/…

Of course you thought that was a Motif ripoff. The screenshot you reference is from an alpha pre-release version. KDE1 had neither the widget style nor the window decorations of that screenshot.

Re: FVWM-95 (2001)

#104

Post by sombragris » Fri, Dec 19, 2025, 1:38 PM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #63

sombragris wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC fvwm95 was not meant as a next-gen fvwm, but as a customization of the existing fvwm desktop.

Nevertheless, I never got the point to use another platform to look just like Windows 95, Mac, Amiga or whatever. While you may get the Look, you will never get the Feel.

> While you may get the Look, you will never get the Feel.

Perhaps for many of us this is exactly as intended. The look of W95 or something else, the feel (and power) of Unix.

Re: FVWM-95 (2001)

#105

Post by aap_ » Fri, Dec 19, 2025, 2:44 PM UTC

I find it strange that nobody has ever recreated the classic windows desktop faithfully, except for reactos i suppose. But on Linux i think there are quite a few people around who would happily use it. All sorts of themes for other interfaces aren't quite the same thing