Man I miss windows vista. It was peak windows design. I loved the glassy windows and buttons.
I miss Windows 7. The default wallpapers were a treat. I remember one that had like a flying turtle with a city on its back
I miss 3.1. the blue background was a specific blue and the gray taskbars were gray. What a wonderful time.
I fully agree. Windows 8 and up are so sadly neutered
In all fairness, nothing beat Windows 8 on tablets. The touch controls were fantastic. Was disappointed when 10 got rid of them.
Oh for tablets it was fantastic. I’m mainly just speaking to the styling. I actually didn’t mind windows 8 functionally
I mean, if you want to relive the glory days, here you go.
Reply here with a screenshot or PM me when you’re done, please. 😁
Oshit. Now this is a reason to log into my PC.
It was aesthetic
In my experience Vista was the worst version of windows ever released. Glassy stuff looked cool but was a huge power hog. Thank god you could turn it off. And 10 feel horrible too (dont upgrade). It doesnt let you “ungroup” windows on the task bar. I prefer them separate and they just removed the option. Why? It was already there. It is a common preference of users. Best windows in my opinion was xp and 7.
It doesnt let you “ungroup” windows on the task bar
Sure it does. Right click the taskbar, go into the Taskbar settings, and there’s a dropdown called “Combine taskbar buttons” with an option to never combine.
No XP was peak.
I like the aero aesthetic tbh, especially the vista rendition.
It’s heavy on GPU for sure; but it manages to pull off a relatively consistent look (or at least more consistent than anything that came after)
GPUs nowadays are orders of magnitude better than the ones during the era of Vista.
I see no reason why we can’t have Aero everywhere, even on systems with integrated graphics.
joking aside, windows 7 is by FAR the greatest looking version of windows. i’m probably biased because it’s the one i used during my formative years, but holy shit man everything from win8 and up just looks like complete soulless corpo garbage. that new shit looks like a free powerpoint template
Win7 was also the last “neutral” version of Windows in terms of integrated spyware (“telemetry”) features (or rather, the lack thereof). Since Win8, this OS truly rolls downhill in many aspects. Since Win10, with greater speed.
totally agree!
Vista and XP were pretty baller. Really like the glassy look that Vista had, and it had video wallpapers built in. They were ahead of the game with ricing, and the transparency/glass is just now coming back!
I feel like Windows 7 fills the sweet spot between the seemless UI of the 2000/XP era and newer versions. Windows 10/11 could top that list if Microsoft had bothered to create a proper UI instead of just slapping some material design on a handful of apps, while everything else is still basically 2000/XP. Then again, GTK2/3/4 can be almost as bad.
my eyes
I’d be lying if I said it got better over time
spoiler
I love that Linux allows us to do this, but why
As a new Linux user at the time. I hated the look of Ubuntu 09.04 - 10.10 compared to Windows, but the netbook couldn’t run Windows for the life of it. I swapped back a more normal desktop around 11.04
Ah I see, this is an old screenshot. Understandable have a great day
It’s a shame this is such an old screenshot. I wanted to ask about specifics!!
b00merang have almost every single mainstream operating system as a downloable GTK/Cinnamon/MATE/Gnome theme.
This is incredibly cursed, thanks OP
I personally value my ability to make bad decisions
I fully support this. You do you. It’s your computer; you can do what you want with it. Whether you’re using it for work or play, if it’s the way you like it, then it’s not wrong.
If someone wrote a Linux theme that could replicate Windows Aero, I would install it without a second thought.
The B00merang Project has gotten most of the theme components mostly down, but without Aero it’s just not worth tweaking to get everything right.
Chicago95 brought Windows 95 to Linux, I’m patiently waiting for someone to bring back Windows 7…
As far as I know there is areo theme plasma. It seems a little rough around the edges but it’s the best one I’ve seen so far. Pain to install imo though but it’s a bit of fun I say
This looks absolutely excellent! It’s still not the beautiful frosted glass effect I like so much in Aero, but I don’t think I’ll ever see that reversed engineered (unless I gather the skills to do it myself).
I’m definitely going to give this project a go, thank you very much for linking it!
No worries :D. Sadly I don’t think it has the best effect of the shine on the titlebars moving at a different rate to the window position like in 7 + vista. But damn its close. Hopefully it can get some more contributes someday.
Additionally just remembered this fantastic windows xp theme for xfce
Windows 7 and Vista are beautiful. It is very sad that Windows 7 is dying. Hopefully someone can make a good theme that replicates it (I’ve tried some but they are not just right)
ngl I actually really like that. the start button popping out over the taskbar is a nice touch. what’s the setup?
That’s how windows Vista was.
Oh you’re right, no wonder this looked kinda weird but kinda normal.
I have the theme files SOMEWHERE. It was Ubuntu 10.04 with a lot of Compiz and GNOME 2(?) Tweaks.
I haven’t found a way to replicate that, yet. I’d love a start orb hanging off the taskbar in modern Cinnamon or something, but it doesn’t seem possible.
Nothing opens windows like Linox
Oh god no. At least use a windows 98 skin
Chicago95 ftw
My friend daily drives Chicago95
Ah, I see you are a man of culture as well.
Is there a theme that imitates Windows 8/8.1 and its metro menu?
@fraenki @rcmaehl If you are a KDE user, these two are likely the closest option available to meet your needs…
If you use Gnome and use the ArcMenu extension, it has a preset to mimic that menu exactly.
That’s the power of Linux, you can make it yours.
Sounds nice for somebody that likes windows 7 and don’t want to use obsolete system kek
Windows 7 was peak Microsoft fwiw. Interface wise at least.
Me unironically lmao
You should join us over on the Unixporn community! Always fun to see peoples customizations lol
Crossposted and subbed!
