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Comment by leonidasv | Hacker News Reader

When I used XFCE as my daily driver, I once tried installing Chicago95 just for nostalgia and it stick as my daily driver for almost a year! The UI is less distracting than modern UIs and there's something to it that makes it easier to just know which window is open over which window that's lacking in modern UIs (I think it's the over-reliance on soft shadows and the borderless windows).

Eventually, I stopped using it because: 1- it was always annoying to send an screenshot to someone and have to explain that no, I wasn't using Windows 95, and why; 2- the grey-ish look of everything started to bother me over time; 3- I wanted a more integrated desktop experience and moved to KDE Plasma. Still, I configured my Plasma to work like old Windows: window titles on taskbar, zero to none animations, etc.

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I also dailied it on XFCE. The UI was very utilitarian and purposeful. I suppose aesthetically it is unimpressive and not streamlined, but it serves the purpose of being a good interface to do a task.

Same as you say, people have asked me a lot about it and even asked me if I could set it up for them. The theme is evangelizing Linux a little bit, and that is interesting. In the right hands, these UI principles could convert many people to some product.

P.S. You can now change the grey-ish look with Win95-style theming support. I've not used it, but here's more info: https://github.com/grassmunk/Chicago95/blob/master/Plus/READ...

>and there's something to it that makes it easier to just know which window is open over which window that's lacking in modern UIs (I think it's the over-reliance on soft shadows and the borderless windows).

I think this started with Vista, I remember watching a video criticizing the new love of glass effects on UI chrome as it got rid of or minimized the color/shading difference between focused/unfocused windows. The example the video used was 6 notepad windows and pick which one was focused, and the main cue you'd need to look for is that the window with focus had a close button colored red.

Thin borders and minimalist/hiding scrollbars is another one that annoys me, give me something graphical for my gaze to grasp.

This entire comment section has me repeatedly thinking to myself "you don't run into that problem with i3-alikes" over and over. My choice not to put up with modern UX bullshit is feeling strongly reaffirmed right now. Not that it needed to be.

> it was always annoying to send an screenshot to someone and have to explain that no, I wasn't using Windows 95

That's not a negative, that's a fringe benefit as an endless source of entertainment.

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