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alberth

Windows 2000, to me, was the pinnacle. It had a number of refinements.

Gallery of screenshots

https://guidebookgallery.org/screenshots/win2000advserv

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Aaah look at that nice title bar gradient. Always liked that, they even took that away from us :-(

The Watercolor placeholder theme[0] for Windows XP was such a beautiful evolution of that Windows 2000 look and feel: much more professional looking than Luna, modern but obviously Microsoft, and very space efficient. I recently reinstalled XP on an old computer for some retro gaming and the first thing I did was find Watercolor and the anxiety induced by Windows XP instantly gave way to joy.

Windows 2000 will always be my favorite Windows, but XP with Watercolor is the best looking, imho.

0 - https://www.deviantart.com/alecu222/art/Watercolor-4-3-Visua...

So beautiful. We've fallen so far in modern UI.

Every six months or so I look for the ability to skin Windows 10 to look like this, or like Windows Classic at least. It seems to be largely impossible.

Watercolor is great! I used it too "back in the day". That crisp Tahoma font, those refined little squares where the 2 colors in the title bar meet... So elegant.

Speaking of Tahoma, I think that one was a big part of why Win2K looked so much better (the 9x series used Microsoft Sans Serif as its default UI font). It's not much to look at today, but it was amazingly readable on low-res screens back then.

I wonder sometimes just how much effort went into manually hinting it at all the standard UI sizes to make it pixel-perfect.

> much more professional looking than Luna

Coincidentally "Professional" was a code name for the theme, I guess making Luna "Home"? Glad there's a signed copy: https://archive.org/details/winxp-watercolor

Such a pretty theme, love it!

My favourite is the Gnome 2.2 icons that come with Redhat 9

https://guidebookgallery.org/screenshots/gnome220redhat9

That and the Bluecurve theme. Perfection.

Oh that's very nice. I remember that. You might like the BeOS icons too (which Haiku still has)

I agree 100%, it was perfect, and also intuitive.

Is there a Gnome or KDE theme or clone inspired by Windows 2000? Windows 8, 10, and 11 are simply offensive in comparison. I kept and open mind but still haven't come around to liking any version, not even close to W2K.

Edit: jeroenhd, this is superb, thank you for sharing! Also the BMW 7-series from 1998-1999 was one of the best ever. Every subsequent one isn't nearly as good, IMO.

There are several themes that try to approach older versions of Windows. Support for the latest versions of DEs is not guaranteed, though.

I've run variants of this: https://b00merang.weebly.com/desktop-themes.html on GNOME for quite some time, without putting in the effort to recreate the start menu. My coworkers definitely looked at me weird for my Windows XP theme but it felt very nostalgic. Small details are off, though, unless you go in manually and tweak the CSS even further to correct for the differences between the author's DE and yours.

For LXDE, this project: https://github.com/grassmunk/Chicago95 goes further than just a theme, restyling some common utilities as well. It's not Windows 95, but if you'd told me it was designed around that time I would've believed you.

This post: https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/comments/tijkr3/plasma_wel... shows a very good KDE Plasma theme. Some icons are Win98, though, so you may need to replace those for the authentic look and feel.

What I myself would love is for someone to make a proper Windows 7 Aero theme for Linux. The icon sets and the backwards compatibility themes are available everywhere, but there's no Aero theme that's not jarring. In a perfect world, I'd like the frosted glass effect as well, but that's probably too much to ask. I've thrown some Windows DLLs into Ghidra to try and find the frosted glass theme engine code, but I had no idea where to look and couldn't find anything.

Chicago 95 is not just for LXDE, it works perfectly under XFCE and MATE.

SerenityOS is inspired by old Windows stuff.

I have a gut feeling that SerenityOS is going to have the same kind of progress that Linux had. Started as a little hobby side project "but nothing serious" but could eventually become something that ends up being a really useful. We will see where it is in another 5 years. Coming from a completely fresh base means that it has not gather the same technical legacy as others and that could really play to its hands in years to come.

I don't like how it's written in C++ (and I'm not a Rust person either)

And you hate Python as well, so, which language is your cup of tea?

https://github.com/kelseyhightower/nocode

I use oxygen icons on KDE. Not at all a windows clone, but I think they look decent.

That old calc design with red text on light gray is an absolute abomination and an insult to UI designers everywhere.

UI designers had done worse stuff today with flat themes.

You should see the new calc. Gray on gray. Big buttons. Full screen.

Touchscreens really do ruin everything they touch (ha) in terms of UI design. All buttons need to be gigantic and simple, can't have mouse hover menus or anything nice.

I’d love to know the story behind why CD player is so different. Gotta be cool?

It's from the Windows 98 Plus Pack. They didn't rewrite it for Windows 2000, they just used it as-is, so it retains the Windows 98 "Plus" look.

> It's from the Windows 98 Plus Pack

Relevant: demo of this in Computer Chronicles' Windows 98 episode: https://youtu.be/N3s0_yf2mS4?t=1022

Oh that old chestnut. Is 2000 filled with 98 and 95 UIs like modern times?

Yes, but 95+98+2000 were basically all of the same design philosophy, so it doesn't stick out like a sore thumb when something was not changed from 95.

Except for the folder chooser from Win 3.1 that still lingers around in Win 11.

1990s multimedia skeumorphism.

Honestly, the cd player is quite understated there...

IIRC that cd player wasn't from Microsoft itself, they bought it from another company.

it was made to look like a car streo i guess

Absolutely. Windows 2000 was the pinnacle of Classical Millenial Windows design. After that we got XP’s Fisher Price mode (albeit easily regressed) and it’s been downhill since then (switched to Mac in ‘03, totally baffled by Windows UI nowadays).

it looked great, but it also 'felt' amazing. 2000 felt so different than windows 98.

It didn't crash upon installing a driver or sneezing near it.

The cohesiveness is delightful and makes me want to cry a little bit

This site is worth a post in its own right! Just enjoying skimming thru it. Good find!

Agreed.

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