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Comment by majewsky | Hacker News Reader

More current-day developers are nostalgic for Windows 95/NT than for Motif because of sheer exposure. It's the same for me: Windows NT UIs have a vibe of "good old days" for me, whereas Motif UIs feel like ancient history that is unrelated to me personally.

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I've never used a pre-OSX Mac but still find the screenshots lovely. I've even styled my Linux window decorations after MacOS 9.2. I find it an optimal middle between heavily retro and modernly sleek themes.

Not a MacOS type UI, but I like WindowsMaker, which tried to emulate NeXTSTEP.

By the way, what's the difference between WindowMaker and AfterStep?

AfterStep had millions of bells and whistles. And the default theme was too horrible and gaudy like an LSD trip.

Two pieces of software developed by two different groups of people. I don't believe there's any sharing of code between these projects.

WindowMaker tried to recreate the NeXTSTEP UI and succeeded admirably.

AfterStep might've started out trying to recreate the NeXTSTEP UI, but it went all kinds of crazy with colors and gradients. Since then its connection to NeXTSTEP has almost entirely been in name only.

To be pedantic: just the window manager of NeXTStep, not the actual "desktop". (Not that real NeXTStep had a separate "window manager" as such.)

The whole UI was a lot more complex, and IMHO, probably the best-looking GUI ever designed. There's an effort to bring it back to life via GNUStep, and as a desktop environment, NEXTSpace:

https://github.com/trunkmaster/nextspace

It depends. NT users with Linux (specially Slackware) with FVWM and a bunch of Lesttif/GTK1 tools for sure they are nostalgic on Motif and even Athena. At least a bit.

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