theelf wrote on 2022-11-23, 10:08:XP SP3 just modded to my taste, nothing special […]
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XP SP3 just modded to my taste, nothing special
I resedit a lot of resources, and restore some CPLs from NT4
For example I remove all 256 color icons, or 48pz variants, change the windows to look exactly or very similar like NT4
Some things i have no choise than programming my own executable, like the shutdown dialog, and hack explorer to use my shutdown instead the one in shell32
Wow, that's incredible! Good to know that some NT4 CPLs could be made usable on XP.
In my opinion Windows Vista is actually the feature-richest of all Windows versions. It retains a good amount of classic features like XP, plus has some interesting features from Ultimate Extras, especially Dreamscene. Unfortunately most of these features did not carry over to Win7.
Vista was indeed very resource taxing when it just came out, that it was painfully slow on my main PC at that time (a P4 3.0 with 512MB of RAM), so I was not really able to enjoy it while it was still mainstream and stayed on XP for a few more years until I got myself a much better PC capable enough for Vista and above.
With the system specs nowadays, most if not all those performance-related criticisms about Windows Vista no longer stand. I think Win7's requirements were mostly similar to that of Vista's, but it was not as negatively viewed as Vista because the average performance levels of the PCs at the time of Win7's release has improved well enough.
theelf wrote on 2022-11-22, 19:21:
If i will use Linux for main OS, i think i will feel confortable using fvwm2 with default CDE look. Last time i use linux, i remember was difficult to match the look of QT, gtk, motif, etc etc applications. Not easy, was a mess of UI. I dont know how much change that this last years
Actually there are a bunch of Xfce themes aimed at creating a near-perfect Windows-like experience, covering nearly all Windows versions.
Sadly Linux GUI is still a mess, considering you still need to separately configure appearances for Gtk2/3, Qt, and so on. Not to mention some utilities depend on core DE libraries that you literally have to bring in the entire DE in question in order to install them, bloating the system. On the other hand, Linux CLI software can be very powerful, that many workloads I used to rely on complicated GUI or web programs on Windows can now be trivially done with one-liners in terminals.
I switched to Linux mainly because of Win10. I did try the Win10 insider builds prior to its release, and the days before and after Win10's formal release were quite abysmal. A few builds prior to release there were some breaking changes in the audio stack that left my system in total silence for a few days, while hardware vendors were working on updated drivers to fix the issues, and after Win10's release, its trashy network stack (ndis.sys) at that time was causing huge, intermittent DPC spikes that literally brought the PC to a brief halt, with any audio being played screech like the moment the system was about to BSoD in earlier Windows versions. Even though most of these issues have been addressed as of now, I've already become familiar with Linux and no longer need Windows for most of my use cases anymore...