AeroShell seems to only have full support on X11. Didn't expect this argument to come up again
jck86
Apparently you only want wayland based DEs and considered the argument to be over for everyone.
How wrong were you. Lot's of people don't want to use wayland until it reaches a certain feature-complete maturity. I for instance have again put it off for another year and won't consider running a wayland only DE at all for the forseable future since it breaks too many things for no good reason and I need to be able to switch back to X11 if needed. I use my pc for for work, not just as a troubleshooting toy.
Taking the topic into account of people moving from old school Windows 7 to this Windows-like distro, these people will probably be more pleased by X11 (hassle free screen sharing, global shortcuts) vs the wayland "in theory it is great and modern but in practice there still are way too many incomplete and missing pieces" situation.
cantrememberpw8
X11 is stable, mature, multiplatform, excellent software - wayland is not cross platform nor stable.
mixedCase
Wayland is stable. What it's not is stagnant, like X11, which lacks fractional/mixed-DPI scaling, per-window HDR/color management, explicit GPU synchronization, and a security model ready for the modern challenges of the mid 90s.
It's also technically cross-platform, as evidenced by FreeBSD's support for Wayland compositors. But it's not its goal either, the goal is an excellent Linux desktop, not something that serves the 17 people in the world that routinely run the same exact desktop config on Linux and non-Linux PCs.
DanielHB
The DPI thing is nuts, any high res monitor these days is unusable without some DPI adjustment.
exe34
> What it's not is stagnant, like X11
X11 used to crash all the time, especially after an update, back when it was being vibrantly developed. It's been a lot more stable since it got abandoned. I've not had a crash in 13 years.
kombine
> wayland is not cross platform nor stable.
I've been using Wayland for two and a half years and it's been more stable than X11 that I've been using prior for years.
pseudony
And I could say the opposite.
Anecdata, it isn’t really helpful.
Fact is still that wayland does some things better, and a bunch og other things worse.
ezst
Matter of fact, the vast majority has moved on to Wayland years ago, both KDE and Gnome have reported their usage stats and neither sees a point in keeping X11 afloat. I too have been using Wayland (KDE) for years, it addressed some decades-long struggles around multi monitor and DPI layouts. I use input methods for CJK that work better and more consistently than before. As far as I'm concerned, this ship has sailed, for the better.
exe34
No, X11 got stable once they abandoned it!
Brian_K_White
Wayland is annoying out of touch crap that works well enough for some people to think it's good. Enjoy your Wayland. Surely all the people who aren't you must just be stupid.
a2128
Don't be too alarmed by that notice, I use it daily on Wayland without any resulting issues as far as I can tell
userbinator
it's extremely close.
First thing that caught my eye is the space between the command prompt and the first character of the command; but other than that, it's very much "I can't believe it's not Windows".
cosmic_cheese
AeroThemePlasma is by far the closest that exists now, but I think there’s still a space for DE dedicated to being as close of a Windows analogue as possible while remaining legally distinct with a fixed feature set to prevent feature and resource creep. Think a desktop close enough to the user’s choice between 2K, XP, 7, 10 or 11 that they could transition from Windows to Linux and barely even notice that there was a change.
I believe that “my favorite OS, frozen in time” has substantial demand (which will only increase as the big commercial OSes continue to enshittify) and it’s surprising that there aren’t more attempts to capitalize on that.
felixding
I think about this all the time.
A high-quality replica takes tremendous effort and time, but it’s not really financially viable.
I’d be happy to be proven wrong.
Oh, and I’d be super happy to pay for such a replica too! For example, $99 a year for a Mac OS X Jaguar to Tiger era skin/theme/desktop environment.
cosmic_cheese
I think in the long term, such a project could be more sustainable than projects focused on an “original” experience.
KDE, GNOME, etc spend a lot of resources on new features and overhauls to enable new features. A fixed-feature replica project by comparison would eventually achieve a “finished” state, with resources instead going towards optimizations, bug fixes, code correctness, etc which are overall less demanding and make unavoidable tech migrations (e.g. X11 → Wayland) less of a pain since the project won’t be mired in tech debt.
lproven
The thing is that this would seem to be a whole new shell, needing constant maintenance and adjustment to keep it current with KDE.
Whereas AIUI the alternative here is just a cosmetic change to Xfce and shouldn't need any maintenance at all. There are only new KDE releases once every 2 years.
I know which of those I'd want. As it happens, I also much prefer Xfce to KDE: it's smaller, simpler, lighter, faster, more coherent, and complies much better with Windows's keyboard UI.
n3storm
Never seen a long term used windows pc with transparency enabled, just when people asking "how to disable this? Is confusing.."
qwertfisch
I liked the transparency very much. Had it enabled in Windows7 for all of the 14 years. Until software incompatibility forced me to install Windows 10.
n3storm
While office working or at home/gaming?
lproven
Why not both?
chasil
As Microsoft has expressed, Aero is "cheesy."
Despite nostalgia, it was stripped in pursuit of a mobile-friendly UI (at the time).
'...calling the UI that debuted in Vista and continued in Windows 7, “cheesy” and “dated.”'
All Windows UIs will die, on Microsoft's time, not the user community.
pndy
Yes "cheesy" and "dated" because new Windows version was about to be released in 3 months from publication of that article. So marketing machine portraying everything old as bad and everything new as better was running full speed.
In the end we all know how "well" W8 was received due to Metro components. Slightly modified Aero theme was still there, all resource files like icons, graphics were largely carried in. Aesthetically and visually that version of Windows was like 5-year old would made a papier mache operating system of two different products.
GreenVulpine
Aero was peak aesthetics. Flatcrap became commonplace because it was easy. No need for designers, just flat colors, resizable to fit any screen. Perfect for mobile slop!
3eb7988a1663
Was Aero also the last instance where all of the Control Panel widgets were actually Desktop first? Ever since, they Control Panel has been a mismatch of Mobile design and being limited to a single interface pane. It is maddening to look at the historical data density that was tossed for something a programmer could thoughtlessly bang out in an afternoon.
VCFundedGenYer
Don't think I could disagree more. Aero was the peak of Windows UI design. It's such a shame they ruined it and walked away from it in Win8 and beyond.
carlosjobim
The Shine 2 theme for Windows 7 still looks better than anything Microsoft has done in the 16 years since it was released:
Iirc it was a bit wonky and it eventually convinced me that, if I wanted to ever use Linux, I didn't need a Windows UI — I needed to learn to use Linux.
Heavily XP inspired and it even came with similar task-oriented interface "hacks"
pharos92
I've always found Zorin to be windows-like enough to transition people to. It has it's own visual identity, and isn't trying to be a simulacrum of windows - making it much more enjoyable to use.
It's pretty but it's just GNOME with a ton of extensions.
There are no true title bars, so I can't middle-click the title bar to send the window to the back. I can't roll up windows into the title bar. Random dialog buttons end up in there although I have not yet had a chance to read the text and work out what answer I need; the GNOME design is "answer first then we'll ask the question." Keyboard UI is woeful because it's GNOME. Files was cut down into a sad castrated replica of itself a decade ago, and still is. Apps mostly have no menu bars and I have to mess around with tiny hidden hamburger menus as if I were trying to control an iPad that had a broken touchscreen.
It feels like trying to operate a desktop with my nose because both hands are tied behind my back. It is painful.
It's pretty, though.
OuterVale
It is Windows 7 reminiscent, but it lacks the glassy appearance of Aero which is the defining characteristic of the OS' visual identity.
VCFundedGenYer
You're better off with Linux Mint and downloading the B00merang-Project themes, which includes good Win7 skins. A full distro just for an aesthetic (not to mention a distro nobody's heard of) isn't a good idea to use outside of a curiosity in a VM.
pythonRon
What would get me to stay with Linux (I've been going back and forth for the last few years) would be a fully-featured File Explorer work-alike complete with previews of every file type and a full-on context menu copy. One other thing... the ability to right-click any program icon and pin it to the taskbar. They're little things, but whenever I find myself on Windows 11, those are the things I find I missed most... well, other than being able to run File Locator Pro, NotePad++, and Bulk Rename natively.
Oh, and getting some part of the OS/window manager to remember window placement/size. Wayland/GTK don't and this is NOT an innovation, it's trying to turn the desktop into a phone.
lproven
> a fully-featured File Explorer work-alike complete with previews of every file type and a full-on context menu copy
Corel LinuxOS did this at the turn of the century. Xandros took it even further.
Sadly, although a company is still around and owns the names, they do not use any of the original code.
Xandros's version of KDE 2 was the best Linux desktop of its era and it wasn't even close. By a decade later, Ubuntu Unity took that role, but a lot of people don't know how to drive Windows by keyboard, and aren't willing to learn new things, so they hated it -- especially here on HN, which called for it to be cancelled, and Canonical listened.
fao_
KDE has that?
zazuke
I use a single Docker container [1] to run a full VM on Linux, and it works like a charm for Excel and Word when I still need them.
Is Windows 7 "retro" now? I personally still prefer the Windows Classic theme.
The logo looks like Firefox, Thunderbird, and a Charmander mixed together.
edoceo
Which classic? 3.0? 3.5.1? 4.0/95? Win2k? I think 2k was top-tier.
mook
Up to Win2k, I don't recall new releases of Windows leading to people lamenting the UI changes; I do remember people not liking the initial look of XP, though. Maybe it's just because complaints got more visible after the Internet became popular, though. But even now few people seem to have strong preferences for, say, Windows 1.0 (… which was pretty much a TUI, IIRC)
userbinator
I believe Win9x all had basically the same UI appearance, and 2k just changed the default colours slightly (and they were always fully customisable, so no difficulty in changing them either.)
Windows 1.x/2.x were noted for being rather primitive, and similar to the "flat design" trend hated by many when Win8 came out. 3.x is when the UI elements became 3D, and then they retained nearly the same appearance until XP introduced the bitmap-based theme.
draven
IIRC win2k introduced some transparency effects and shadows, like when menus would gradually appear from transparent to fully opaque (I don't know the right word for that.) I found it really cool at the time.
cyberax
WinXP with the "classic" theme was the best. Its default theme was goofy, but changing it took all of 10 seconds. Compared to Win2k, there were some minor improvements.
pjerem
I'd consider a 18yo OS retro, yes :)
Windows 7 is nearer to Windows 95 than to Windows 11.
If someone's interested in a real Windows 7 lookalike, take a look at https://gitgud.io/aeroshell/atp/aerothemeplasma, it's extremely close.
See for yourself:
- Kumander: https://www.kumander.org/img/images/kumander.png
- AeroShell: https://gitgud.io/aeroshell/atp/aerothemeplasma/-/raw/Plasma...
How wrong were you. Lot's of people don't want to use wayland until it reaches a certain feature-complete maturity. I for instance have again put it off for another year and won't consider running a wayland only DE at all for the forseable future since it breaks too many things for no good reason and I need to be able to switch back to X11 if needed. I use my pc for for work, not just as a troubleshooting toy.
Taking the topic into account of people moving from old school Windows 7 to this Windows-like distro, these people will probably be more pleased by X11 (hassle free screen sharing, global shortcuts) vs the wayland "in theory it is great and modern but in practice there still are way too many incomplete and missing pieces" situation.
It's also technically cross-platform, as evidenced by FreeBSD's support for Wayland compositors. But it's not its goal either, the goal is an excellent Linux desktop, not something that serves the 17 people in the world that routinely run the same exact desktop config on Linux and non-Linux PCs.
X11 used to crash all the time, especially after an update, back when it was being vibrantly developed. It's been a lot more stable since it got abandoned. I've not had a crash in 13 years.
I've been using Wayland for two and a half years and it's been more stable than X11 that I've been using prior for years.
Fact is still that wayland does some things better, and a bunch og other things worse.
First thing that caught my eye is the space between the command prompt and the first character of the command; but other than that, it's very much "I can't believe it's not Windows".
I believe that “my favorite OS, frozen in time” has substantial demand (which will only increase as the big commercial OSes continue to enshittify) and it’s surprising that there aren’t more attempts to capitalize on that.
A high-quality replica takes tremendous effort and time, but it’s not really financially viable.
I’d be happy to be proven wrong.
Oh, and I’d be super happy to pay for such a replica too! For example, $99 a year for a Mac OS X Jaguar to Tiger era skin/theme/desktop environment.
KDE, GNOME, etc spend a lot of resources on new features and overhauls to enable new features. A fixed-feature replica project by comparison would eventually achieve a “finished” state, with resources instead going towards optimizations, bug fixes, code correctness, etc which are overall less demanding and make unavoidable tech migrations (e.g. X11 → Wayland) less of a pain since the project won’t be mired in tech debt.
Whereas AIUI the alternative here is just a cosmetic change to Xfce and shouldn't need any maintenance at all. There are only new KDE releases once every 2 years.
I know which of those I'd want. As it happens, I also much prefer Xfce to KDE: it's smaller, simpler, lighter, faster, more coherent, and complies much better with Windows's keyboard UI.
Despite nostalgia, it was stripped in pursuit of a mobile-friendly UI (at the time).
'...calling the UI that debuted in Vista and continued in Windows 7, “cheesy” and “dated.”'
https://www.computerworld.com/article/1437474/microsoft-dump...
All Windows UIs will die, on Microsoft's time, not the user community.
In the end we all know how "well" W8 was received due to Metro components. Slightly modified Aero theme was still there, all resource files like icons, graphics were largely carried in. Aesthetically and visually that version of Windows was like 5-year old would made a papier mache operating system of two different products.
https://www.deviantart.com/zainadeel/art/Shine-2-0-for-Windo...
Looks better than MacOS as well.
Iirc it was a bit wonky and it eventually convinced me that, if I wanted to ever use Linux, I didn't need a Windows UI — I needed to learn to use Linux.
Heavily XP inspired and it even came with similar task-oriented interface "hacks"
There are no true title bars, so I can't middle-click the title bar to send the window to the back. I can't roll up windows into the title bar. Random dialog buttons end up in there although I have not yet had a chance to read the text and work out what answer I need; the GNOME design is "answer first then we'll ask the question." Keyboard UI is woeful because it's GNOME. Files was cut down into a sad castrated replica of itself a decade ago, and still is. Apps mostly have no menu bars and I have to mess around with tiny hidden hamburger menus as if I were trying to control an iPad that had a broken touchscreen.
It feels like trying to operate a desktop with my nose because both hands are tied behind my back. It is painful.
It's pretty, though.
Oh, and getting some part of the OS/window manager to remember window placement/size. Wayland/GTK don't and this is NOT an innovation, it's trying to turn the desktop into a phone.
Corel LinuxOS did this at the turn of the century. Xandros took it even further.
Sadly, although a company is still around and owns the names, they do not use any of the original code.
Xandros's version of KDE 2 was the best Linux desktop of its era and it wasn't even close. By a decade later, Ubuntu Unity took that role, but a lot of people don't know how to drive Windows by keyboard, and aren't willing to learn new things, so they hated it -- especially here on HN, which called for it to be cancelled, and Canonical listened.
[1] https://github.com/dockur/windows
The logo looks like Firefox, Thunderbird, and a Charmander mixed together.
Windows 1.x/2.x were noted for being rather primitive, and similar to the "flat design" trend hated by many when Win8 came out. 3.x is when the UI elements became 3D, and then they retained nearly the same appearance until XP introduced the bitmap-based theme.
Windows 7 is nearer to Windows 95 than to Windows 11.
And yes, time flies.
Not enough dark glass.