Screenshots of Old Desktop OSes • Hacker News Board

Re: Screenshots of Old Desktop OSes

#271

Post by xnx » Tue, May 12, 2026, 4:44 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #49

bronlund wrote: post #32

I can't help thinking about how much we have lost. Just finding the scrollbar nowadays can be a challenge. Not to mention if you want to resize a pane - in some applications they seem to have taken extra steps to make it difficult to find the line to grab.

Operating systems of that era were designed based on UX research to help people use the unfamiliar operating system. Subsequent ones were designed by UI designers, and opinionated senior managers, who already knew how to use them, and took out usability features to make them "look nicer". This sort of worked when the opinionated manager was Steve Jobs. Most managers are not Steve Jobs. > in some applications they see…

> opinionated senior managers, who already knew how to use them

The latest design of interfaces is designed by people who have barely used a desktop computer and have no idea of the conventions or advanced usage. They create terrible UIs because they have no idea what a good UI is and they often don't even use the product they create.

Re: Screenshots of Old Desktop OSes

#272

Post by herf » Tue, May 12, 2026, 4:45 PM UTC

The aspect ratios were much "taller" back then, which was kind of better for editing code. All these late 90s designs were near NTSC at the time - aspect ratios like 1.25:1 (1280x1024) or 1024x768 (1.33:1). Monitors have always followed TVs, since displays now are the "HD" ratio of 16:9 (1.77:1), or 16:10 if we're lucky. But we do get way more pixels now anyway.

Re: Screenshots of Old Desktop OSes

#273

Post by exe34 » Tue, May 12, 2026, 4:47 PM UTC

jonhohle wrote: post #179

exe34 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> safe triangles in nested menus I did not know about this, but I did notice my own menu-rage every time a submenu disappears!

I was trying to use Orca Slicer (which itself is intractable) and it had a combo button whose menu was disconnected from the button. The menu would disappear as soon as the cursor left the button boundary, but because it was disconnected, there was no way to get to the menu without leaving the button boundary, traveling a void, and then getting to the menu. I’m unsure what incantation allowed me to finally choose the…

Potentially keyboard arrows?

Re: Screenshots of Old Desktop OSes

#274

Post by exe34 » Tue, May 12, 2026, 4:50 PM UTC

embedding-shape wrote: post #221

jonhohle wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was trying to use Orca Slicer (which itself is intractable) and it had a combo button whose menu was disconnected from the button. The menu would disappear as soon as the cursor left the button boundary, but because it was disconnected, there was no way to get to the menu without leaving the button boundary, traveling a void, and then getting to the menu. I’m unsure what incantation allowed me to finally choose the…

Most fun is when the menu opens both on button hover and on button press, but if the menu already opened, clicking the button closes it instead, so the first 2-3 you use it, you end up opening the panel and closing it immediately. Not sure how stuff like this gets deployed in the first place, guess we're just a few people left who test things we develop before we push them to the public, I'd rather believe that than…

I feel like the modern web/app ecosystems have forced developers onto a red queen type treadmill, so software never really matures. They often build up to 70% of the features they want, the codebase gets intractable because of all the crap they have to deal with and they start over.

I love software like Gimp, Blender, Inkscape, etc, that matured over decades and kept their soul.

Re: Screenshots of Old Desktop OSes

#275

Post by kps » Tue, May 12, 2026, 5:11 PM UTC

dspillett wrote: post #170

kps wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

‘Took out usability features to make them "look nicer"’ is exactly how Steve Jobs gave us the double-click, undiscoverable and timing-sensitive.

Double-click came out of Xerox's research park. Apply might have been the first to put that into a popular desktop PC solution, but it wasn't their design any more than the rest of the system they copied. There are arguments that a second button was a much better idea, but that would still not be immediately discoverable and even with many buttons in modern solutions we _still_ have double-clicking.

It may have been Tajo (XDE) though a quick search doesn't find any documentation of multi-click _older_ than Apple's.

Star definitely didn't have multi-click.

Re: Screenshots of Old Desktop OSes

#276

Post by delta_p_delta_x » Tue, May 12, 2026, 5:13 PM UTC

breakwaterlabs wrote: post #266

delta_p_delta_x wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No thanks, I do not want Linux. I use Linux for my home servers and at work, and I'd like to keep it that way, at arm's length. I don't know why people suggest Linux for desktop use at the first swoop. I dislike it. I dislike how janky its various GUI desktop managers are, I dislike how edge cases that are handled straightforwardly on Windows just aren't on Linux. Things like high pixel density, different audio setup…

> I dislike how it is 'developers first' and not 'users first', There are user-centric and dev-centric Linux distros. Windows is "Microsoft cloud onboarding" centric, and the experience has been dramatically degrading for years. If that were not the case, why would senior executives at Microsoft say things like "we've heard you" and "we intend to reverse the suck in the coming year"? Even their management knows users…

> These things are objectively better on a modern KDE linux

They are not.

I use a KDE distribution at work. I regularly see GPU texture copy bugs like random lines across the middle of the display, or along the bottom edge. I use a 4K 144 Hz 16:9 display, and the Linux platform absolutely struggles with getting the scaling, resolution, and colour depth on all the dozens of GUI toolkits correct. Subpixel antialiasing doesn't work on many applications. It doesn't matter if I am using Wayland or X; both are bad experiences.

> dual-Sonos / Airpod setup by... clicking the sound icon

Speaking of sound... Linux doesn't even pick up my Audient interface unless I physically reinsert the USB cable. It doesn't have a channel or volume control for audio feedback from my mic to my outputs. If I change the output volume slider down from 100%, the actual volume output is asymmetric—one channel is considerably louder than the other at 50%.

I have experienced issues with wpa_supplicant, iwd/iwctl, and systemd-networkd fighting each other. Why are there even so many network managers? Why does the platform not provide one?

I will disagree until the cows come home that any Linux desktop interface (again, bar Android... but like I said, Android is almost an entirely different platform) is less jank than Windows. People bring up Windows' old UIs, but said UIs still work. gpedit.exe, regedit.exe, msc.exe, services.exe, ncpa.cpl, perfmon.exe, windbg.exe, these are things that haven't changed in nearly 3 decades.

Re: Screenshots of Old Desktop OSes

#277

Post by anthonypasq » Tue, May 12, 2026, 5:22 PM UTC

washingupliquid wrote: post #239

pjc50 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Operating systems of that era were designed based on UX research to help people use the unfamiliar operating system. Subsequent ones were designed by UI designers, and opinionated senior managers, who already knew how to use them, and took out usability features to make them "look nicer". This sort of worked when the opinionated manager was Steve Jobs. Most managers are not Steve Jobs. > in some applications they see…

> This sort of worked when the opinionated manager was Steve Jobs. Steve indirectly had a hand in this, by emphasizing the humanities. That, unfortunately, backfired as a sort of positive feedback loop. Someone hired a few underemployed artists onto the team, and the artists invited all their friends and soon took over the department. People that in an alternate timeline would be smoking weed whilst sculpting wood in…

idk, i think your underestimating the ubiquity and resources behind stuff like A/B and usability testing nowadays. Certainly a much more sophisticated way of determining whether people are able to find what they need.

Re: Screenshots of Old Desktop OSes

#278

Post by andai » Tue, May 12, 2026, 5:24 PM UTC

andai wrote: post #84

BoppreH wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We also lost clearly identifiable buttons, loading bars (replaced with throbbers), status bars that tell you what you're hovering over and what the program is doing, stable UIs to develop muscle memory, etc. But we did gain some nice things! - Tabs. - Titlebar buttons and other space-saving measures. - Document editors remembering unsaved changes. - Forms that validate on focus lost, instead of submission. - Ctrl+P m…

There was a brief moment in history where we had the best of both worlds. I grew up with Windows XP. We had most of these (except the titlebar buttons — although on second thought some custom Windows Media Player skins did have that, haha). We all carried USB sticks around. So you always had your files with you. The computer itself was interchangeable, for the most part. (Which also led to my interest in portable app…

...and of course, Portable Apps require a relatively stable ABI...

https://blog.hiler.eu/win32-the-only-stable-abi/

>Win32 is the only stable ABI on Linux

Though macOS I think has a similar issue.

Re: Screenshots of Old Desktop OSes

#279

Post by adrianwaj » Tue, May 12, 2026, 5:27 PM UTC

pdntspa wrote: post #225

adrianwaj wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am starting to think the top half of the screen should be the desktop, the bottom half should be the start menu but already activated and full of programs. No conventional bottom panel-bar with a start button. A right-most column should exist that fills up with a list of opened windows. [1] When I first saw Win95 with a cleared desktop, I immediately thought - where has everything gone? Why is this empty? Decades l…

You would really dedicate half the screen to something we use like 5% of the time?

Not half, less than that, but I'd have the most commonly used things automatically become the most prominent.

There could also be a feed/notification/realtime panel built into it for programs to insert into. I'd also have a bottle shown there, and I could talk to the genie that lives there. Everytime it wanted to talk, the color would change.

Or just a prompt/chat box.

What would you suggest? Maybe a start window that opens to full screen on the off-chance it's pressed? They're fairly fidgety things, right?

Re: Screenshots of Old Desktop OSes

#280

Post by bombcar » Tue, May 12, 2026, 5:28 PM UTC

xp84 wrote: post #263

bombcar wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even with screen sharing, I've said "click the three dots" and then "no, not those, not that one, wait there's another one, no that's the wrong one ..."

But if we didn’t use ••• menus everywhere then some parts of the UI might be cLuTtErEd!!! The worst sin of computing. To think that we used to trust mere mortals - without even a signing certificate or developer membership - with the power to customize every toolbar in a Microsoft application, and to set every font and color for the whole UI of the system. People made their computer environments ugly in some cases. A…

It's not just what we've lost, it's an incredible disservice to "non-nerds" - old DOS programs may have been annoying and cluttered, but everything was right there and more importantly, it didn't change so you could learn what you needed and just work with it.

We could go back and forth on things like "the ribbon" being better or worse, but the fact that it changes depending on window size is an incredible sin. Hello, everyone! Learn how to click a tiny 5x5 pixel arrow or lose your menu items forever!