Linux has over 6% of the desktop market

[Mæstro]

I think Linux desktop environments are a fair subject in a thread about desktop Linux’s popularity, for user interface much affects this.

the only DEs I think that are usable are lumina desktop and maybe lxde. The others look so beyond awful.
Too much bloat and shininess yuck to me.

You have my sympathy here. Appearances count for far more than many technically skilled users realise.

As far as imitating windows goes, 2000 probably was the last one worth imitating graphics wise.

My tastes are not too far from yours. I would actually have liked to theme my system after Windows 2000, much like I had originally put 7 in Classic, but no such theme exists to my knowledge. Boomerang’s Windows 95 theme is reckoned close enough, when it is not. The sorest points for me are the windows, which are solid in 95 but graded in 2000, and incongruous icons from the default set if the 95 theme lacks them. Windows 2000’s UI was much more consistent, as is to be desired, than its successors: I am thinking especially of Windows Media Player in XP and the ribbon in Vista and 7. It is a pity that VirtualBox (6) only supports DirectX for XP, and the legacy browser maintainers target XP but not 2000, for I would really rather work in a twentieth-century OS in my VM. (I have not explored kernel extending for 2000.)

[andyprough]

the only DEs I think that are usable are lumina desktop and maybe lxde. The others look so beyond awful.

Too much bloat and shininess yuck to me.

Lumina and LXDE are too much shininess and yuck to me. Here's my window manager (DWM):

dwm.jpg

I showed that to Jason Self one time, and he said "too much bloat" and showed me his workspace:

terminal.png

I told him the "$" and the blinking cursor are bloat.

[Lucio Chiappetti]

That reminds me of the postcards with the "nights of Alsace" they used to sell in Strasbourg

[frostknight]

Lumina and LXDE are too much shininess and yuck to me. Here's my window manager (DWM):

dwm.jpg

To be honest, those are a bit too shiny for me as well, but as DEs they are the least annoying.

I prefer JWM as you well know

[Moonchild]

I guess Linux will fall short for a while yet for me if what looks to me like super-minimalistic DEs are considered "too shiny". I've looked over the current offerings of DEs and almost all of them feature what I find precisely the more offensive about "modern" UX design: flat, often disjointed sizes for different elements, and either screen-estate-wasteful window decorations OR the other extreme, and none seem to leverage visual compositor advantages, apart from maybe "Deepin".

But I guess I should expect such from a crew of developers who don't really touch on the graphical design side of things.

For me, an appealing DE would have high affordance and intuitive design with a good dose of elegance; but that is still nowhere to be found, apparently, on the *nix side of things...

[moonbat]

For me, an appealing DE would have high affordance and intuitive design with a good dose of elegance; but that is still nowhere to be found, apparently, on the *nix side of things...

I was on Mint XFCE for 5 years; after I found the default Cinnamon too resource heavy for my old laptop. It comes closest to Windows XP in classic mode - no frills but same familiar taskbar and window behavior, plus the panel is extremely customizable.

[frostknight]

For me, an appealing DE would have high affordance and intuitive design with a good dose of elegance; but that is still nowhere to be found, apparently, on the *nix side of things...

Hmm... do you want it to look like windows 10 or 11? I have heard KDE5 looks like windows 10 and KDE6 looks like windows 11.

I don't know for sure of course, but I am not into the heavy crap like that. I got what I need in jwm as I have said many places probably online by now.



But this being said, I am not blind to what other options exist.

Also btw, Zorin might have what your looking for DE wise, application wise? maybe, definitely more likely then other distros. Zorin is the closest thing to Windows in linux form I have ever seen.


I don't consider most of the DEs minimalistic though myself in fact just the opposite.

[Moonchild]

Hmm... do you want it to look like windows 10 or 11?

Not necessarily. Win 10's interface is already a heavy compromise.

[gabrgv]

Off-topic:
the only DEs I think that are usable are lumina desktop and maybe lxde.

IMO, Lumina is horrible, it doesn't matter if it's lightweight and all free software. LXDE, and XFCE as far as I remember, looks like a bunch of programs loosely glued together. When I want a DE, I want a complete beast, with lots of programs available and everything seamlessly working together, not just a file manager, a bloated terminal emulator, a window manager and a panel.

The two DEs I consider using are TDE and CDE. They are both light (in resources) and actually complete DEs, and beautiful by default (also, they're out of the GTK and Qt trap). Well, MATE is ok, I think. (Too bad EDE is dead.)

I've looked over the current offerings of DEs and almost all of them feature what I find precisely the more offensive about "modern" UX design

Most of the times you can fix part of the ugliness of such DEs with themes. Here are a few that I find beautiful:
Raleigh (ported to GTK3);
Clearlooks (ported to GTK3);
Classiclooks;
Bluecurve (ported to GTK3);
OneStepBack.

Some "obscure" DEs/WMs you might consider looking at:
GNUstep (or WindowMaker);
Moksha (be sure to use a good theme, like Ice)
IceWM;
Progman.

[Gemmaugr]

Too bad EDE is dead.)

This is definitely what I would look for in a DE, if/when I switch to Linux. Win 95/98/XP. Maybe Vista/7. Definitely not Win 8/10/11.

Anymore like this?

[Night Wing]

There is an old adage. And it goes like this; "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder".

Looking over some of the themes some of you have posted. Some I like. Some I do not like. Since my daily driver in a linux distro is MX Linux, I themed MX with the standard Greybird theme. But I do not like the Greybird Dark theme since it is "too dark" for my eyes.

As they say. "To Each, Their Own".

[Mæstro]

[Current offerings of DEs almost all] feature what I find precisely the more offensive about "modern" UX design: flat, often disjointed sizes for different elements, and either screen-estate-wasteful window decorations OR the other extreme, and none seem to leverage visual compositor advantages, apart from maybe "Deepin".
But I guess I should expect such from a crew of developers who don't really touch on the graphical design side of things.

I have found it telling that Gajim, which had been my Jabber client over 2021–25, had switched from a traditional messenger interface to aping Discord after v1·3 or so, and the clients for Matrix, a younger open-source protocol, all copy Discord also. Earlier, I thought that this trend for Linux software arose from the desire to appear trendy to Windows or Mac refugees who dismiss more lively designs as ‘dated’. As time passes, we are likely running against the problem that many developers have only been in active practise at a time when flat design was normative. Someone learning Web design today is also receiving a poor background. I imagine the problem shall grow even worse as we begin to see developers who cannot remember a time before flat design.

[gabrgv]

Anymore like this?

Out of the box, none that I know of.

But you can achieve something close to it with nearly any DE or WM through themes (Chicago95, for example), though I don't recommend it, because it is a time-wasting and ungrateful enterprise, more so if you use a rolling release/bleeding edge distro like Arch, that will break your GUI setup often.

This is what my JWM looked like when it was my WM back then:

jwm-1.png

jwm-2.png

I wasn't trying to perfectly mimic Windows 95/98, but it came close anyway.

I themed MX with the standard Greybird theme.

Greybird was my theme too when I was using XFCE. Not bad looking.

[Night Wing]

Below is a screen shot of my MX Tweak context window showing my choices in Themes (Greybird), Icons (Adwaita), Window Manager (Daloa) and Cursors (Radioactive). You'll have to left click to enlarge the attachment to make it very clear to look at.

[Night Wing]

Since I am using the Xfce DE in MX Linux, I thought I would show all of you how I like to see what my file manager looks like. Since most people like to use and see "Icon View", I'm different. I like to see and use "List View".

Below is a screen shot of my Thunar file manager showing List View with the corresponding icons and color. Of course you will have to left click to enlarge the attachment to be able to see things larger and clearer.

[frostknight]

Not necessarily. Win 10's interface is already a heavy compromise.

Cinnamon looks like windows 7 I have heard.

IMO, Lumina is horrible, it doesn't matter if it's lightweight and all free software. LXDE, and XFCE as far as I remember, looks like a bunch of programs loosely glued together. When I want a DE, I want a complete beast, with lots of programs available and everything seamlessly working together, not just a file manager, a bloated terminal emulator, a window manager and a panel.

Lumina Desktop isn't horrible, because it unlike XFCE, MATE CINNAMON, GNOME, KDE and others, it doesn't have a lot of bloated dependencies like dbus, elogind, polkit or in the case of current GNOME and KDE, systemd.

its default wallpaper can be horrible, but even still, that can be easily changed.

There was one with black wallpaper and a seahorse, if you mean that one to be ugly, you are 100% correct. That's why you change it.

also btw, some .config files and .local files can be copy pasted and you'll have the settings you setup on previous OS.

I have done this with JWM, i3-wm, bspwm and others as well.

Point being, sometimes you can setup something up on linux, make backup and use backup when needed to restore previous settings.

[Mæstro]

Cinnamon looks like windows 7 I have heard.

You don’t say! One can install a start menu structured like Windows 7’s also in Cinnamon, which is what I use.

[Night Wing]

Suffice to say, I am really enjoying this Linux topic thread.

Back on topic.

My daily linux distro driver is 64 bit MX Linux which at the time of this posting is version 25 (Infinity) with Xfce. MX has their own USB live maker which I use. But I discovered something about it that I missed. I have a 16 GB flash/thumb drive which I like to flash linux distro iso's to.

When the MX Live USB Maker is launched, there are two settings in the context window. Those two settings concerns the "Mode". The first setting is "Full featured mode-writable LiveUSB". The second setting is "Image mode-read only Live USB-dd".

The first setting (Full Featured) is for flashing a new MX version to a flash/thumb drive. I say this since MX has something named, "Persistence" where in the Live version one can use it to take MX for a "test drive" without installation. Any changes you make in this Live version is "saved" if and when you decide to install MX.

Normally in a Live version, if you make changes to a live version of a distro without Persistence, if one decides to install a distro, those changes made will not be carried over on the install. This second setting is the (dd) one.

I found out about this since I ran across an old MX Youtube video where one of the maintainers of MX (username: dolphin_oracle) explains both methods. Even though the video is old, the information in it is still correct. The video of the MX Live USB Maker is below and below that is the screen shot of MX Live USB Maker.

You'll have to click on the screen shot (attachment) to make it larger and clearer to see.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5lgdxYi5Ro

[andyprough]

I found out about this since I ran across an old MX Youtube video where one of the maintainers of MX (username: dolphin_oracle) explains both methods. Even though the video is old, the information in it is still correct. The video of the MX Live USB Maker is below and below that is the screen shot of MX Live USB Maker.

I watched that same video years ago and learned how to do persistence correctly. Currently I use static root+home persistence, and I usually give it about 4GB for persistence storage on a 16GB USB thumb drive.

If you want to get into some really cool stuff, watch dolphin_oracle's video(s) on doing a "frugal" installation. On MX, a "frugal" installation is where you keep using the USB thumb drive, but you take a small piece of your laptop's hard drive to set up your persistent changes. That allows you to use a lot more GB for your persistent storage than on a normal USB thumb drive, but still use the vast majority of the laptop's hard drive for something else.

By the way, dolphin_oracle is on the MX forum almost everyday, along with Steve Pusser who used to spend a lot of time on this Pale Moon forum. If you ever have any technical questions about MX, ask on the MX forum and some very knowledgeable people like dolphin and Steve are likely to jump right in and help. Pale Moon and MX are two of the only large projects I know where your everyday forum questions are likely to be answered by the lead developers.

[UCyborg]

Cinnamon looks like windows 7 I have heard.

You don’t say! One can install a start menu structured like Windows 7’s also in Cinnamon, which is what I use.

Is there an easy to install theme available to get this appearance?