What your typical Linux system looked like in 2003. We've come so far | Hacker News Reader

What your typical Linux system looked like in 2003. We've come so far

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25 pointsmariuz30 comments

My only complaint with 2003 was screen resolutions. Otherwise I find that theme to be beautiful and more importantly, functional. You can cleary and quickly identify which window has focus, there are clear borders seperating one application for another.

If my comment isn't making it clear, I absoluetly HATE "modern" flat interfaces.

  >I have two windows side-by-side with a little overlap, I can't figure out where one ends and the other starts. 

  >I can't quickly tell which window has focus, because the focus indicators are some little tiny graphical detail. 

  >Some applications (/cough/ chrome) go out of their way to break OS standards. Like merging the tab-bar into the title bar, or hiding the tab-history icon over by the window control icons.

You can set both Chrome [1] and Firefox [2] to use Server Side Decorations (SSD) instead of Client Side Decorations (CSD), this will make it use the system title bar and frame like you want.

[1] https://askubuntu.com/questions/1365609/how-to-enable-system...

[2] https://linuxconfig.org/how-to-remove-firefox-title-bar-on-l... (this article is about how to disable it but the idea is the same)

I agree with this entirely. User interfaces in general have become harder to use and, if I may say subjectively opine, uglier. Both with Linux and most other OSes and applications.

That UI is heaps better that the flat shit we've got today. Only thing I'd take from today is the modern resolutions.

These genuinely look better than modern counterparts, along with Windows 98 / Windows 2000. It's just more visually pleasing and friendlier UX. I see most comments there mention the same things.

Are we just a bunch of old farts, or is that true for younger folks as well?

ugh, the “look better” part is highly subjective.

I’m 29, so sort of young I guess. The main problem I have with modern UIs is the fact that they make icons flat and monochrome. I personally dislike the monochrome part a lot and there’s plenty of UX research showing this type of design makes things harder for older folks.

I tried to teach my dad how to cast YouTube videos to the TV using his phone once. I found it weird he struggled so much with it until I realised the problem was the “chromecast” icon in the YouTube app. It’s just a flat rectangle with some decorations and he has a hard time distinguishing that.

I’m younger (18) and I prefer the new flat design, it could be my age or maybe it’s just different people having different tastes

Same, but wonder if non-flat design is objectively better, because it imitates physical objects and buttons with depth etc.

I've heard that helps people who are new to tech, but it might just get in the way otherwise

Hate to be that guy, but did we?

Sure it looks different, but I'm still dragging windows on a virtual desktop.

You'd think there would be some innovation. For example I've always dreamed of a scrolling-timeline-like interaction with desktop, where your activities would scroll to the side when you switch to the new one and then you'd be able to "scrub back in time" to see what you were doing before.

Windows 10 has that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeqYVFChpMM&t=120s although I don't use it at all. And obnoxiously it's a "join the Borg so you can see up to 30 days" feature.

I mean, there is GNOME, which to a certain extent is pushing the desktop metaphor forward (IMO, by removing the useless and fiddly concept of minimization in favor of just using virtual desktops, and favoring fuzzy searching to launch applications instead of panels, and finally eliminating the superfluous taskbar in favor of solely relying on expose views), especially when combined with tiling window managers, which are doing even more by themselves to advance things.

There's also PaperWM, an extension for GNOME that pretty much does what you want IIRC.

Yup - we're doing almost the same things. Only with nicer graphics - sigh.

I know it's a UI thread, but for me the most important thing is usability.

This has been the year of linux on the desktop for me, after trying on and off for the last few decades.

I don't know if it's a few things finally clicking at my end, but it feels to me now that everything "just works".

My memory of my last attempt, say five years ago, was that I was still having trouble getting basic stuff like multiple monitors working, and at one point everything just ground to a big, flaky halt.

This time has really been plain sailing. I'm in love with my computer again and excited about all the stuff I can do with it. That's how far we've come.

>We've come so far

Well... We're still using overlapping windows we shuffle around like it's 1984. I guess we now have tab widgets and hot corners. Are there any alternatives to windows (the rectangles on the screen, not the os) yet?

Maybe you are looking for a tiling window manager.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiling_window_manager

Or maybe that elusive zooming interface Jeff Raskin described in his book.

Well I certainly don't use overlapping windows nor do I shuffle them around. If you're using a window manager that works this way it's your choice.

Sway or hyprland

I find Gnome 40+ to be beautiful but I can't tell why this is so appealing! Especially the icons.

Surprisingly text rendering and font hinting/anti-aliasing doesn't appear to have improved significantly since then. I am curious if there is a reason for this.

Yes there is, the reason is that this is just a difficult problem with a lot of trade-offs, and in a world where there is no strong authority deciding on the trade-offs everyone is going to make a different choice. So all the toolkits look different which is objectively the worst result.

I think because it's not so important anymore.

I work on a 24" 4K screen at 200% scaling. I can still see the pixels a bit so a little anti aliasing is still great to have but it no longer has to be perfect.

/? 2003 linux: https://www.google.com/search?q=2003+linux&tbm=isch

Ahh yes we all had 800x600 in 2003, not 1280x1024 or higher.

Not entirely true. i was running a 1600x1200 Linux desktop at the time on a 23-inch CRT. Ten years earlier we were using 640x480 to 800x600.

I was using a throw away monitor the machine shop my dad was working at gave him, and it could do 1280x1024. I’m not sure everybody was stuck at 800x600.

1080p was hardly any extra vertical space, and which was does a page go?

i was definitely on 800x600 back then. we didn't get 1024x768 until 2005 or so.

Flat UI is abundant in early GUIs. The skeuomorphic style came later.

Yes, but the GUI elements were clearly delimited.

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