A KDE Plasma theme that aims to replicate the look and feel of Windows 7 | Hacker News Reader

A KDE Plasma theme that aims to replicate the look and feel of Windows 7

gitgud.io

185 pointsunleaded78 comments

I actually love the Aero theme of Windows 7. Honestly, I would prefer some sort of derivative of this without Windows/MS logos or trademark, that does not necessarily adhere super-closely to Windows 7, but just does what makes most sense; taking the best parts of Aero and combining with the best aspects of other DEs and themes (including KDE Plasma's Breeze and/or the older Oxygen).

You should check out ZorinOS: https://zorin.com/

It does something very similar to your ask. I use it as a daily driver OS and it works really well and I love the UI.

I’m pretty attached (perhaps irrationally) to Arch Linux and KDE Plasma — but they’ve been my main driver for many years now. So, in general, I’d prefer just something that can just be installed as a theme, over installing a new distro (or a new DE) for a new UX.

Even a new DE might be something I’ll install on Arch and try out once in a while, but the thought of switching from a rolling-release distro (Arch, in my case) to a point-release distro (e.g. Ubuntu) just to try out a new desktop UX is a bit too much for me.

God, I hate how every time I see a new Linux Distro I want to ditch what I have and try it out.

At some point I'm going to become like the rest of you and buy a few hundred extra ThinkPads to satiate my curiosity.

You could consider installing them in separate btrfs subvolumes :-)

I never got over Windows 2000. That old grey theme was ugly, but an extremely clear and efficient design language. In wanting to keep on with the good and trusted, I would always disable all theming on Windows 7, which gave you basically the same style.

Try Reactionary[0] for a W2K-ish like thing for KDE. The same author has other themes like Expose[1] which I'm actually using for my daily theme.

[0]: https://store.kde.org/p/1252411

[1]: https://store.kde.org/p/1479063/

Reactionary looks cool, especially some of the icons being flat. (Not entirely kosher, but it sort of works!)

But when I saw Expose I just laughed with delight. It warms my heart that people are still enjoying XP's aesthetic.

Circa Win95 - Win2000 windows always reminded me of NeXTSTEP windows, and I wonder if that's where Microsoft got it's inspiration.

Edit: Here's a mirror of a document that purports to be from a Windows 95 design team member: https://socket3.wordpress.com/2018/02/03/designing-windows-9...

Edit2: And a Hanselman podcast episode with Kent Sullivan and Derek Hoiem: https://hanselminutes.com/628/a-history-of-the-windows-95-st...

And NextSTEP was very similar again to the motif widget kit which powered fvwm, VUE and CDE and a few others.

I forgot Win7 had a theme other than the "classic" one, so was briefly taken aback when I clicked the link and saw the screenshots.

Classic theme Win7 is peak Windows, aside from the installation footprint being incredibly bloated compared to WinXP.

https://github.com/dremin/RetroBar replicates all old taskbar and I have been using it for a long time now. Works perfectly on Windows 10.

You can use Chicago95 or the B00merang Win-classic theme to achieve a similar look on GTK+-based Linux desktops. It even works seamlessly with responsive/mobile-friendly GTK+4 apps, they show the same clear and simple widget design.

I use XFCE, hasn’t changed a bit for as long as I can remember, and is just as ugly.

I did the same, but more for performance reasons than the aesthetic or clarity.

A lot of these copycat themes end up getting like 80% of the way there with an uncanny valley vibe but this is spot on

I think this one in particular, like many others before it, always fail at replicating the Explorer look. This is probably a limitation in Dolphin and other linux file browsers, but it just doesn't look like Windows Explorer at all to me, it just looks like a ugly vista skinned dolphin.

That's one other thing too (also probably a limitation on a few widgets) like the calendar and system tray, which look more Vista than WinAero/7.

It had me until I saw the file explorer. Oh God, the design hurts me in so many ways.

Could you explore this more? Except for the tab bar, I can't even identify differences. It's been a while since I used this version of Windows.

On the plus side it has tabs, which is one of the main redeeming features of Windows 11 for me. It kind of looks like one of those alternate Explorer-replacement tools that were popular for a while. A little ugly, but more functional.

QtTabbar has been great for me, used it on Windows 7 and 10. I'm waiting for the respect the user EU version of 11 before switching.

this is like being unhappy about the particular shade of lipstick that a pig is wearing

It still has an uncanny valley vibe because of the worse Linux font rendering which makes it look a bit weird.

That’s an essential part of the charm. Windows font rendering looks terrible, especially period correct 1080p

The "Aero" look of Windows can be categorized into an esthetics era called "Frutiger Aero". (https://aesthetics.fandom.com/wiki/Frutiger_Aero)

The “Aero” in “Frutiger Aero” is Windows Aero. And Microsoft’s Segoe is practically Frutiger.

So more than being part of the era, I think it’s fair to say Windows Aero defined the aesthetic.

Nice. But (unpopular opinion) my favourite is Expose that clones Windows XP's Luna.

The included analog clock is from Windows 7 though.

They say Luna is plasticky and teletubbies land. But it just makes me happy :)

What I miss is files tree pane in the file manager. Dolphin has this dir/files mixed tree in the right pane, but it's just not the same.

Still very satisfied with my recent switch to Linux/KDE. Almost everything worked out of the box, with very minor annoyances. Refreshing compared with my recent Windows experience.

I love Expose too. Even my background image is the famous “bliss”. My colleagues laugh whenever I share my screen which brightens the mood as well.

I was already running KDE/Plasma for years by the time Windows 7 came out, so for me Aero's emotional associations are negative. It was the user interface of the janky, annoying side of my computer that I would occasionally boot in college in order to play trendy Windows games with my friends, and eventually abandoned because I hated having to deal with it. I can't help but be a bit repulsed looking at that UI (or the original Aero theme for Windows).

It's funny how those associations can color perception in such an immediate way. The 'pure' aesthetics are harder, if not impossible, to access.

Interesting. I was running KDE too, but I never was forced to use Windows 7/Aero until later. Personally I feel like Aero was by far the best-looking Windows ever, even though I never liked using Windows due to non-aesthetic problems.

When I think about individual features of the UI in isolation, it's easy to appreciate many small touches that I can see are quite nice. Transparency with blur, the glow effects on mouseover, the way it flattened a little bit compared to Vista but still returned some skeuomorphic sheen/gradients/animations, etc.

Other things, I think I enjoyed at the time, but resent in retrospect— the oversized window titlebars, for example, which proved to be a step towards Windows contemporary profligate wastefulness with screen space.

In some cases, evolutionary advances in Windows 7 UI were a step in the right direction (by me), but that of course means that I think later Windowses did it better. A good example here is the search-driven aspects of the start menu, which were introduced (IIRC) when Vista succeeded XP, and gradually increased with each release since. I think menus suck and search is awesome, so imo the way contemporary GNOME or Windows 11 display search results more centrally (and using more of the screen) is more appealing.

Anyhow, I do understand what you mean, I think, about the aesthetic of Windows 7 being exceptionally good among Windows aesthetics. Certain visual elements definitely seem to have hit a sweet spot in that release.

Tangential, but the default breeze theme of KDE plasma desktop is really good. I want to thank everyone who worked on that. That was the first OS theme I looked at and thought ok - system ui is a solved problem for me now. I have completely stopped tinkering with KDE customization options since - the default just looks perfect.

It was kind of similar when I first looked at VSCode's default color dark theme and realized - I am never changing an editor color theme again - and I haven't.

Defaults matter - and I am happy to see open source tools like KDE ship with great usability out of the box.

As a KDE4 user, I had been using a UI KDE4 for two years when Windows 7 came out in 2009. I thought Windows 7 felt a lot like KDE4 and maybe was inspiration for MS. Also, KDE4 was a one step back two steps forward release, and so it kind of felt good to see MS intentionally or unintentionally assimilating KDE's UI.

2010 will be the year of Linux on the Desktop.

All my friends on google plus agree!

Or they would if they ever actually interacted with my posts...

Wow, that is an impressive recreation of Aero.

I wonder if the taskbar animations are similar? I remember that on Windows 7, a cool animation was that the shine on the taskbar item would follow your cursor.

Yep https://gitgud.io/wackyideas/aerothemeplasma/-/raw/master/Sc...

My first introduction to computers was a FreeBSD machine my dad kept in the craft room closet—that's where I learned how to use bash, Emacs, mutt, and the like. My family had a Mac, and I daily drive a Mac. And while I'm not the Apple fanboy I used to be, I still like Apple's products for the most part.

Hot dang this theme looks awesome.

As much as I detest Windows and everything non-UNIXy about it, Windows 7 looked great. That's the version of Windows that my high school ran; none of the computers were fast by any means (IIRC it took all night to render the weekly video the press team put out on Fridays) so the animations all were a little… stiff… but I appreciated that MS actually made an OS that looked good. I mean, look at that shine! Look at those lighting effects! And the OS is still useable!

Anyway… it's also a testament that you can make KDE do this kind of trick. Nutso.

Honestly, I find that as long as the DE keeps the "desktop" metaphor, it's not too difficult to jump ship. Windows 7 was the last version of Windows I used in anger, and I had no trouble switching to Cinnamon DE. Mate would've worked just fine, too. It's GNOME 3 and its ilk that I find frustrating, and keep having to apply tweaks to make it usable for me.

The couple of times I tried Plasma, I loved all the customisability of it; it's awesome that I can apply one theme and now it feels like Windows 7, or a different theme and now it's Unity. But the "default" feel of Plasma just feels overwhelming, and even though I could drill down into fifty levels of settings to get what I want, it still turned me off because what I really wanted was just better defaults...

I hear you there. After getting frustrated enough with gnome 3 to jump to plasma I quickly came to discover that tweaking whatever you want on the desktop is way easier than what I thought. Literally just right click on the thing and disable stuff away!

The settings for plasma are certainly overwhelming, but if there are too many tools on the file browser, right clink on the icons and hide what you don’t want. Taskbar too crowded? Right click it and get rid of stuff. Konsole is showing the menu bar and wrong fonts? Right click the thing and fix it!

Yeah this is what I love about KDE. User choice is a design ideal to it's developers rather than a dirty smell like it is to Gnome devs.

I know there's been improvements to the defaults in Plasma 6 which is set to release in February. Stuff like double click instead of single click for opening folders. I plan to try it once it releases.

Aero is cool, and i'ma let you finish, but Windows 2000 was the best look ever.

Is there much difference from the Windows 2000 UI from Windows NT 4.0? Which also looks very close to Windows 95. Win95 was released in 1995, WinNT 4.0 in 1996, and I would guess they were developed in parallel.

It was the last iteration of refinement on the UI that was designed for 95. NT was meant to have its own shell, but that didn't pan out so the 95 shell was ported over.

Death's dynamic shroud? Whoever made this has seriously good taste in music.

Don't suffer in silence!

Macross 82-99 caught my eye, so I came here to say the same thing.

Also Blank Banshee, I mean damn.

Just bring back the Keramic, I'm not asking for much

I always jumped back and forth between Keramik and Plastik. I've tried a few times but haven't been able to get back into KDE since the KDE3 days.

There's always Trinity: https://trinitydesktop.org/

I love that this exists and in fact in many ways prefer how it looks to the stock KDE theme, but it’s unfortunate that modification of KDE itself was necessary to achieve this level of accuracy.

It underscores a more general frustration of mine of Linux DE theming in that it’s less flexible and capable than Kaleidoscope for classic Mac OS was, as a result of theming being somewhat tacked on even for DEs that pride themselves on flexibility (like KDE). Ideally, there’d be little that themes couldn’t be able to change about one’s desktop environment without invasive modifications.

Could this theme be implemented 1:1 in Kaleidoscope, then?

It’d get surprisingly close. The biggest issue would be 1-bit alpha preventing window transparency, but that’s more of a limitation of classic Mac OS than it is of kaleidoscope.

Just about everything else including window chrome shape, titlebar and titlebar button positioning, widget theme, desktop icons, fonts, and cursor were under the full control of the theme’s artist. There were Kaleidoscope themes (“schemes”) that did wild things like round windows and vertical titlebars. Schemes mimicking other contemporary-and-older desktop environments (Win95/98, IRIX, NeXTSTEP, BeOS, etc) were pixel perfect.

Great job. Maybe the best effort yet?

That said, I liked the windows 8 look and feel better though. Not a huge fan of shiny glass aero effects. Grouping was quite the innovation back then. I wonder what happened to the (woman) who created it.

I think Gnome can, easily, be turned into an amazing GUI but its creators, for whatever reason, insist on ruining the out-of-box experience. It's 99% there and better than almost anything Windows and macOS have to offer. How come only apple offers cool stuff such as reopen apps after reboot.

sorry for the rant

Aero was amazing. Windows XP and Windows 7 were big UI revolutions.

Even when Windows 7 was active, there were plenty of projects trying to bring Windows XP and Aero to Linux GUIs.

You have to go through archives to find them now but Microsoft used to publish reports on all their usability studies and it really gave me the sense of thoughtful and useful design of their UI elements. My favorite is the mouse ballistics https://web.archive.org/web/20110623221617/http://msdn.micro...

Saddly it seems like the latest trend is just to make things new and trendy with junk like rounded corners, low contrast flat colors and no delineation or highlighting for distinct elements.

Absolutely gorgeous. While I'm more of a Windows 9x guy these days, for a glossy, modern, transparent UI the peak is undoubtedly Windows 7. Just gorgeous. The last time Microsoft fully cared about releasing a finished product with an actual coherent philosophy of design underpinning it.

I'm sad that Windows doesn't look like this anymore. I've never liked KDE, but I might not mind using this. There's lots of caveats in that README; enough to make me think that Chicago95 works better.

Impressive. Anyone know where I might find a gnome version of this?

For those who prefer Windows XP: https://store.kde.org/p/1885548

Stuck in the past, literally. Not only by the look but by specifically not supporting the modern Linux graphics stack.

X11: Works

Wayland: Does not work

Which one is the modern one?

Nice job. I wonder if there's a way to get the font exactly like Windows 7? It looks a bit different.

As a recent convert to KDE (from GNOME) any good theme recommendations? Breeze is fine but a bit bland.

See youtube, pling and r/unixporn there's millions of links to some very nice things.

I personally love Oxygen, but it depends on what you're after.

Nice but if I could replicate KDE into windows I would, or other popular DE, except gnome.

And I though Windows Vista (which is basically same look as win7) was inspired by KDE3.

Windows Vista was the best-looking version of Windows ever. It didn't work all that great, of course, but it looked good.

pixel perfect! great job, really

This looks fantastic. Well done!

Looks amazing! I'm slapping this on my work laptop right now, no regrets!

Not bad. But what about replicating the KDE 1 classic desktop?

I prefer Windows 11 look and feel - Windows 7 kind reminds me Aqua (that lickable metric) - dated and ugly.

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