theelf wrote on 2024-12-01, 18:48:

Last month i decide to try use linux as my main OS, and the same, the experience is not nice, I feel uncomfortable

Try a different desktop environment.

I was using Xfce for a long time, but switched to KDE Plasma about a year ago. It's very customizable and can be made to "feel" like the classic Win9x/XP era desktop with some work. Of course, the underlying stuff is completely different, but the look and feel is good enough for everyday tasks, at least to me.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2024-12-01, 18:57:

theelf wrote on 2024-12-01, 18:48:

Last month i decide to try use linux as my main OS, and the same, the experience is not nice, I feel uncomfortable

Try a different desktop environment.

I was using Xfce for a long time, but switched to KDE Plasma about a year ago. It's very customizable and can be made to "feel" like the classic Win9x/XP era desktop with some work. Of course, the underlying stuff is completely different, but the look and feel is good enough for everyday tasks, at least for me.

No way, tried different desktops env and nothing beats the feeling i have working in NT4+, and XP is just latest classic NT. Plus i want to use the same software that was with me latest 25 years, like winamp, winrar, Paint Shop Pro 7, Office 2000 and Lotus 123, Visual Studio 6, Art Icons, etc and while wine is working fine in most case, i always found some random or serious bugs

Feel like working in my Sparc and not using CDE... unconfortable

theelf wrote on 2024-12-01, 18:48:

I tried over the years windows vista, 7, 8.1, 10, 11 no way, i feel so unconfortable that i al ways back to XP

What do mean by uncomfortable? Is there anything specific you don't like about newer operating systems?

I get the feeling too. I don't daily drive XP anymore, but I keep my Pentium III XP rig next to my desk with its own CRT monitor, keyboard, and mouse and I boot it up almost daily for various tasks. I have some games on there, a collection of programming tools, Winamp for streaming music, etc. It has a real serial port which is handy - I used it today to connect to another retro system and do some setup. Like you said - the UI was peak classic NT design and it can be copied/emulated on other OSs but it's quite the same.

Windows 7 can fortunately still use the classic shell, but I find Windows 7 feels too modern and requires newer hardware (e.g. 2007/08 era Core2Duos or Quads). I like my retro PCs to be a little slower than that. : )

theelf wrote on 2024-12-01, 19:03:

No way, tried different desktops env and nothing beats the feeling i have working in NT4+, and XP is just latest classic NT. Plus i want to use the same software that was with me latest 25 years, like winamp, winrar, Paint Shop Pro 7, Office 2000 and Lotus 123, Visual Studio 6, Art Icons, etc and while wine is working fine in most case, i always found some random or serious bugs

Another alternative would be to run Linux as your main OS and have WinXP inside VirtualBox (or whatever) for the purpose of using software which you need. I used to do that at work a long time ago, and could switch between the two pretty seamlessly.

Just a disclaimer, I'm not a Linux expert by any means. For me, it just works well enough for my daily tasks, but everyone's use case is different.

Switched to Linux after using Win7 for years, never looked back.

When I use Windows, I use it on old computers with XP, 9x, or 3.1 - or, rarely, I'll fire up my WinXP or Win7 VirtualBox machines to run some program that doesn't run on Wine.

The reasons to use Win10 or Win11 are very niche when they do exist.

keenmaster486 wrote on 2024-12-01, 19:35:

Switched to Linux after using Win7 for years, never looked back.

When I use Windows, I use it on old computers with XP, 9x, or 3.1 - or, rarely, I'll fire up my WinXP or Win7 VirtualBox machines to run some program that doesn't run on Wine.

The reasons to use Win10 or Win11 are very niche when they do exist.

I did not find ANY GUI in unix that make me confortable that i feel when working in NT4+ like 2k, XP. Get very angry in linux for example, because i feel very difficult to have all software same look, there is gtk, qt, motiff etc etc and after a hour working i start getting very frustrated with all the gui inconsistencies

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2024-12-01, 19:13:

theelf wrote on 2024-12-01, 19:03:

No way, tried different desktops env and nothing beats the feeling i have working in NT4+, and XP is just latest classic NT. Plus i want to use the same software that was with me latest 25 years, like winamp, winrar, Paint Shop Pro 7, Office 2000 and Lotus 123, Visual Studio 6, Art Icons, etc and while wine is working fine in most case, i always found some random or serious bugs

Another alternative would be to run Linux as your main OS and have WinXP inside VirtualBox (or whatever) for the purpose of using software which you need. I used to do that at work a long time ago, and could switch between the two pretty seamlessly.

Just a disclaimer, I'm not a Linux expert by any means. For me, it just works well enough for my daily tasks, but everyone's use case is different.

In fact, i do oposite i have multiple windows 7-10 VMs for running software i need that is not working in XP, like new visual studio, etc but i use very few times, because almost of the work i need to do is covered with software that runs on XP

I dont see the point to use linux to run software in wine that i can native run in XP jeje

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-12-01, 19:11:

theelf wrote on 2024-12-01, 18:48:

I tried over the years windows vista, 7, 8.1, 10, 11 no way, i feel so unconfortable that i al ways back to XP

What do mean by uncomfortable? Is there anything specific you don't like about newer operating systems?

Everything, i dont know, first all control panel i want to have in classic CPL stile, not this new shit that looks like a android tablet, second windows 8+ classic theme is very difficult to use, for example is possible to have classic theme in windows 8.1+ working more or less fine with Windhawk but still a lot of inconsistencies and problems, for example, having 32x32 icons in explorer, or classic search and not the one integrated in explorer that works like a shit, etc etc etc etc etc etc

Hey windows XP is not perfect neither, but is still possible to fix all the microsoft garbage, for example, i edited all DLL, EXE, CPL etc and remove 256+ color icons, and left only 16 colors one, restore all classic CPLs from NT4, etc and only when i do this i can feel the OS is confortable to use

I have a windows 11 laptop for work and my god, and one of first thing I need to do is remove HDD and in another windows change all permissions to addapt to my needs, for example remove trustedinstaller from the system... but the changes in the OS are too much, and i think is too much work to restore all classic functions or even impossible

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-12-01, 19:11:

theelf wrote on 2024-12-01, 18:48:

I tried over the years windows vista, 7, 8.1, 10, 11 no way, i feel so unconfortable that i al ways back to XP

What do mean by uncomfortable? Is there anything specific you don't like about newer operating systems?

My heart says it's about a "lack of transparency"

theelf wrote on 2024-12-01, 20:32:

Hey windows XP is not perfect neither, but is still possible to fix all the microsoft garbage, for example, i edited all DLL, EXE, CPL etc and remove 256+ color icons, and left only 16 colors one, restore all classic CPLs from NT4, etc and only when i do this i can feel the OS is confortable to use

This sounds very cool! I would love to see how this looks on your system if you have any screenshots handy. NT4 does have a certain austere charm...

Cosmic wrote on 2024-12-01, 20:48:

theelf wrote on 2024-12-01, 20:32:

Hey windows XP is not perfect neither, but is still possible to fix all the microsoft garbage, for example, i edited all DLL, EXE, CPL etc and remove 256+ color icons, and left only 16 colors one, restore all classic CPLs from NT4, etc and only when i do this i can feel the OS is confortable to use

This sounds very cool! I would love to see how this looks on your system if you have any screenshots handy. NT4 does have a certain austere charm...

I made a post long time ago

Re: Customize Windows XP to look like 95

For example, right now my XP looks like this

Of course if i still can use XP is because the community there is a new browser version, sadly chrome is not soo easy to customize, the most i can do was this

BEEN_Nath_58 wrote on 2024-12-01, 20:38:

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-12-01, 19:11:

theelf wrote on 2024-12-01, 18:48:

I tried over the years windows vista, 7, 8.1, 10, 11 no way, i feel so unconfortable that i al ways back to XP

What do mean by uncomfortable? Is there anything specific you don't like about newer operating systems?

My heart says it's about a "lack of transparency"

Transparency is the worst invention after rounded stuff 😀

BEEN_Nath_58 wrote on 2024-12-01, 20:38:

My heart says it's about a "lack of transparency"

Assuming you mean having more control over hardware then Linux would be an obvious solution, but it seems the OP didn't like that either.

theelf wrote on 2024-12-01, 20:32:

Hey windows XP is not perfect neither, but is still possible to fix all the microsoft garbage, for example, i edited all DLL, EXE, CPL etc and remove 256+ color icons, and left only 16 colors one, restore all classic CPLs from NT4, etc and only when i do this i can feel the OS is confortable to use

I can understand how functional differences can be an issue between OS versions. But why does something like 16 color vs 256+ color icons matter? Help me understand, are aesthetics that important?

And 16 color icons isn't even a Windows XP thing. That's going back to Windows 3.0 in terms of interface aesthetics, which predates XP by over a decade.

theelf wrote on 2024-12-01, 20:58:

For example, right now my XP looks like this

The attachment desktop.png is no longer available

So you're after something more akin to a Windows 3.x / 95 type of aesthetic...

Never liked XP, doesn't even interest me as retro OS to travel back in time, finally got rid of its partition this year. Don't like lack of desktop compositing, screen tearing on desktop, programs drawing shit over each other, DirectX rendering in windowed mode being laggy when bound to one monitor and you move window to another, the registry setting to set it to interpret CMOS clock in UTC is totally buggy (search for "RealTimeIsUniversal"), crappy cmd.exe you can't resize normally or maximize etc. etc.

Not that Windows 10 didn't need some work that'd be impossible to accomplish without hackers out there, but it was the first OS when tweaked, I could stop to think about it. Well, except now that my 4 years old install started to randomly to crash on shutdown after several hybrid shutdown cycles when going for several days without full shutdown or reboot.

Still, XP was breaking much more often on me back in the day, had to look for cracks as MS blocked me from activating so many times, LMAO.

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-12-01, 21:45:

BEEN_Nath_58 wrote on 2024-12-01, 20:38:

My heart says it's about a "lack of transparency"

Assuming you mean having more control over hardware then Linux would be an obvious solution, but it seems the OP didn't like that either.

yes I was referring that over transparency effects.

Would there be a 9x themed Linux for that matter?

BEEN_Nath_58 wrote on 2024-12-01, 22:07:

yes I was referring that over transparency effects.

Would there be a 9x themed Linux for that matter?

There is a project called Chicago95 which is a conversion of Ubuntu Linux to make it look and feel like Windows 95: https://github.com/grassmunk/Chicago95

OP probably could get what they want from Linux if they went the above route.

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-12-01, 21:54:

theelf wrote on 2024-12-01, 20:32:

Hey windows XP is not perfect neither, but is still possible to fix all the microsoft garbage, for example, i edited all DLL, EXE, CPL etc and remove 256+ color icons, and left only 16 colors one, restore all classic CPLs from NT4, etc and only when i do this i can feel the OS is confortable to use

I can understand how functional differences can be an issue between OS versions. But why does something like 16 color vs 256+ color icons matter? Help me understand, are aesthetics that important?

And 16 color icons isn't even a Windows XP thing. That's going back to Windows 3.0 in terms of interface aesthetics, which predates XP by over a decade.

Is EVERYTHING for me, i cant use a OS i dont like is impossible to me

Is not a XP thing, is that XP still is possible to customize in morea classic way, like win95 or NT4, i hate this horrible XP icons for example, god, is worst thing ever, even windows 10+ icons are better than the ones in XP... are crap

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-12-01, 22:14:

BEEN_Nath_58 wrote on 2024-12-01, 22:07:

yes I was referring that over transparency effects.

Would there be a 9x themed Linux for that matter?

There is a project called Chicago95 which is a conversion of Ubuntu Linux to make it look and feel like Windows 95: https://github.com/grassmunk/Chicago95

OP probably could get what they want from Linux if they went the above route.

Tested, terrible! taste nothing like win95, only nice in screenshots

UCyborg wrote on 2024-12-01, 22:06:

Never liked XP, doesn't even interest me as retro OS to travel back in time

thats the point of my thread... technically is not a retroOS because i can still use for most of modern task in more or less modern hardware, thats why still is a option for me as everyday use... if is not, i was forced to change

theelf wrote on 2024-12-01, 22:25:

Is EVERYTHING for me, i cant use a OS i dont like is impossible to me

Is not a XP thing, is that XP still is possible to customize in morea classic way, like win95 or NT4, i hate this horrible XP icons for example, god, is worst thing ever, even windows 10+ icons are better than the ones in XP... are crap

But *why* is something like the number of colors used in an icon a deal breaker for you? That's what I'm trying to understand here.