Plasma “get new stuff” does need an overhaul though, after a poorly-coded theme could wipe a guy’s drives. So careful what you install and always have backups, kids!
THAT BEING SAID:
I remember Win98 letting you customize wallpapers for individual folders.
I remember being a Win-ME kiddie that was thrilled with all the fun wallpaper/icon/sound/screensaver themes it came with. . .even though Windows ME lol.
Then XP was so bright and vibrant and fun I didn’t care too bad that it let you choose from THREE dazzling color schemes. I also loved that StarDock cursor freeware that gave me a bunch of obnoxious animated cursors.
Vista’s desktop applets seemed so neat except for the “massive security hole” part.
And here we are with 10 or 11: [Pulsing blue light] “We’Re sEtTiNg Up YoU’Re bLaNd DeSkToP…get hypnotized by spinny circles and forget you once had choices.”
It’s going so backwards, and they think they’re so ahead of the curve by letting you tint your theme based on wallpaper color. Pffft.
Since I switched to Plasma I’ve had SO MUCH FUN setting up my desktop however I want it. I have a laptop install that feels like “Vaporwave XP”, but my main rig is all efficient and sleek and pretty, and I get the urge to flip it all around every few months. It makes personal computing feel personal again!
Mimicking old themes is especially fun because you’re still on a security-patched system that works the way you expect, but with improved nostalgic feelings!
I really want to learn to make my own splash screens and icons and cursors some time. The fact that I easily can do this and the community could enjoy them is SO COOL.
I miss when it was commonplace for people to customize and personalize their computers. It would say a lot about them. Now most normie folk don’t even know how to change the wallpaper…
Why is everybody so obsessed with tweaking and customizing an OS?! My systems are pretty much vanilla and apart from the file browser I hardly use any active OS features.
I remember in XP, Vista and 7 using the UXtheme dll mod to get third party themes. First the loss of the sidebar then the drop-off of themers. I skipped 8 and by 10 I'd had enough. Didn't really come back to theming until I made the jump to full-time Linux in 2022. Theming support being there by default in KDE is amazing. I miss the 2007-2018 themes but Oxygen keeps me happy for now.
The uxtheme thing was great because it was pretty powerful, and since it was just the standard theming system built-in to Windows, it was more reliable than theming systems that required third-party apps (WindowBlinds being the most common one).
Apparently uxtheme patching still works on Windows 11, but I haven’t tried it.
They weren’t though… I used to love the stardock stuff especially. But they were objectively inferior. I also couldn’t run hyprland or sway with nearly every part replaced by an unconventional replacement like the friggin notifications daemon for example. Even on Plasma, i could literally replace the entire shell. And even on GNOME, I could add an “extension” that essentially replaces the GNOME workflow.
As much as I enjoyed those days of windows customisation, it was far too shallow compared to what i can do on a Linux setup. Will i do all that though? Probably not, i like my Plasma setup as it is right now.
i’m talking about being vastly superior to the built in theme options in windows since it implied third party tools were “bloat” instead of being genuinely useful.
difference is you dont need a third party tool to change the thing, if you’re unhappy with the thing, you change the thing out itself, you are not stuck with it.
It did more than “a few colors”, compared to today’s fancy modern theming systems it was def rudimentary, but with a single click Win 98 would change colors, the cursor, the entire sound pallette and even button images iirc. I was particularly fond of the Computer theme and the Space theme lol
You’re right except button images. That wasn’t a thing. But you could change fonts which I’d forgotten. My point though is that the things they let you change were pretty limited.
my memories are kinda foggy, but using Plus! in 98, some themes (like the space one) did change the dialog images, too, didn’t they? (so the info bubble, red circle X, yellow triangle exclamation mark etc)
Yeah I think some PCs came with Plus bundled/pre-installed. I got a copy from a friend at one point years into the 98 era, but otherwise never used Plus.
I remember running a 3rd party shell in windows 2000. It worked most of the time and had some cool widgets. When it crashed explorer would take its place.
In my opinion, it peaked in Windows XP. XP’s themes were way more customizable than 98’s. You could patch the uxtheme DLL (disable the signature check) to allow third-party themes.
Got to remember that most windows and Mac users aren’t even aware of the bloat. I don’t know how many times I’ve gotten on my mom’s pc that she said was going slow and found countless extensions, tool bars and off brand programs installed. Between her being in her 50s and her grand kids hopping on and clicking everything, nobody knows or gives a damn.
All I know is I booted Mint OS after getting several reccs for it, and the first thing I was greeted to was my Wi-Fi card not working, my keyboard couldn’t light up, and no right click lol.
I have since learned more and am enjoying Linux. But let’s not pretend it’s just some sort of fire and forget solution. Which a lot of people want at the end of the day. Even booting onto an older Intel Mac can be a real pain in the ass.
Did you ever install Windows manually? Often drivers are also missing, just that Windows actually doesnt care and you need to search on some random vendor websites.
Or even build drivers into the install ISO, like with my Thinkpad.
I literally installed Windows on another laptop and just switched the SSDs, as it wouldnt install without the “magic AMD platform drivers”.
yes, it’s currently dual booted on my Intel Mac. Took about 10 minutes of effort then a bunch of waiting around. Had a Valheim server running that day as well as a few other games installed and tested. No drivers needed, though I’m sure that happens to folks. This was windows 10 about 2 years ago
Add comment