Why was 90s system software so aesthetic?

>nostalgia effect
this. OP's image is objectively hideous:
>mixing serif and sans-serif fonts with abandon
>some stuff is 3d-skeuomorphic, some isn't - whatevs
>weird border around top window
>certified israeli flag colors only

When you're working with limitations (like low color and resolution) there's less opportunities to fuck up. It's basically what Terry was saying about the 16 colors and the elephant.

Attached: DxeKaUBVYAAkrd3[1].jpg (1022x1023, 66K)

>winshit
Ew.

This
But I also know Microsoft were fucking slave drivers. See the hall of tortured souls

Attached: A91E8221-9FFA-4F85-935A-FF588E4039AA.png (1028x777, 214K)

Somebody needs to get a relatively modern Firefox or Chrome onto Plan 9 or Haiku.

Somebody needs to nuke the internet

twitter.com/themikepan/status/1093035372186034176

I'm slightly drunk, but this shit always fascinated me.

With modern interfaces, the goal is typically to provide seemless interactivity while organizing information (or at least whenever you don't run into something designed by a bunch of interns running the latest Javascript framework to try to make their hamburger menus unique and special). This means that anything on the screen for a modern GUI "should" be interchangeable from similar elements while still communicating what those elements are.

Modern OSes can pull off more neat tricks like make the title bar opaque, make a highlighted element gradient, or replace the user's current menu with a sub-menu instead of opening a new one in order to better make the experience non-obtrusive.

The technology of the 90s couldn't pull this off with enough finesse, so it based its standard, default color scheme on a very deep blue and made most colors it used some form of green/cyan/etc to complement it (except for reds and yellows, which explicitly needed to draw attention), so it used its limitations to focus on making a framing that worked with the user experience rather than trying to just facilitate it.

The screenshot in is a wonderful example of this in action - notice that the monotonous text blocks are broken up with images to try to make reading this easier for the user. Highlights needed to replace the element's color entirely with a calming color instead of adding in a tint/shade/gradient. Sub-menus needed distinction from their parent menus, so an emphasis on placement was made that caused sub-menus to lay out like flowcharts that could let a user know at a glance where they were nested.

To summarize, it's the difference between just mounting art on a wall verses carefully selecting a frame to wrap it in. One gets the job done, but the other does it while inviting the viewer to appreciate the designer's implementation.

minimalism (caused by hard resource contraints)
years of ergonomic reasearch into a variety of different interfaces converging onto a window/desktop metaphor
emphasis on functionality instead of cute visual gimmicks to appeal to ADD consumers

Thanks user, have another screenshot.

Attached: VirtualBox_Windows 98_10_05_2019_00_31_00.png (640x480, 27K)

you install ltsc to get rid of that now

AmigaOS > that shite.

thats not how you use the word aesthetic you stupid fucking zoomer

Just look at the settings menu in windows 10. They tried so hard to be minimalist they created a cluttered and ugly interface.

Attached: Capture.png (1193x943, 390K)

>borders and separators are le ebul :DD
I don't know what the fuck is wrong with today's designers.

idk but i’m glad there’s a new OS trying to continue the tradition

Attached: 6B7DA361-2C13-42E6-B4EC-7540C16E643B.png (1280x720, 531K)

I hope that guy keeps up.

What the fuck is that? Windows 3.1 didn't have a defrag GUI?

Older GUIs were better. I don't care if you believe it's muh nostalgia or not.
Less effects, less colors and other visual gimmicks overall mean less mental overhead and a more practical interface.

It's not exactly attractive, but it's crisp and clean.

The Windows UI throughout the 90s was designed for all windows to be visible at 640x480.
Admittedly, this leads to the opposite issue, of running at 1920x1080 and having tiny-ass windows and text.

Also, 1024x600 displays were a mistake in every fucking way.

Could be NT 3.51 with a third party clone/backported version of the 95 defragger. Or a WindowBlinds skin.

They are all Indians with fake degrees and the mentally Ill. ALL of them.

The Windows 95/98 defragger was just a third-party 16-bit application that could be run on Win3.1 as well if you had a proper driver for 32-bit disk access. Only in Windows Me it became a native 32-bit application.
I bet this is actually Diskeeper with the NT 3.51 kernel patch for moving clusters instead.

me too. maybe some anons who can into programming will help out
i will def try this when it’s released

what os

github.com/awesomekling/serenity
it’s made by an user who posts progress every now and then in /dpt/

look like early gtk2

Cmon man, I lived through the 80's and 90's phase. It's fun to reminisce at times but I woudn't want to use that again desu.

t. real boomer

Based and truthpilled

>certified israeli flag colors only
My fucking sides

No pointless eyecandy, not underestimating the user compared to nowadays "Oopsiewoopsie, we made a fuckywucky but not telling you what it is that went wrong, teeheehee muach"

Attached: 1541806893653.jpg (538x960, 42K)

>I'm slightly drunk
That was absolutely unnecessary. Why do you think we care? You're not cool for being intoxicated, grow the fuck up.

this desu
also:
terrible rendering on the "gray" text
the "g"s in "Defragmenting" are cut off at the bottom

Literally because every pixel mattered with the resolution being low, limited colour pallet on monitors of those times and the hardware not being up to much either.

Obviously there was research and ergonomics that went into it.

For instance a colour blind person would see the interface better for an older Windows operating systems than a modern one (pretty much from Windows 7 to present, XP and Vista still maintain such distinction in this design, but it began to slip with Vista's Aero which was further refined in 7) due to use of distinctly different colours (XP's Lime green Start button with the rest of the bar being of two different blues wasn't a coincidence).

Now we rely on distinctive shading instead and crappy minimalism from crap 'Modern Art' that are used for money laundering (suffice to say the artistic inspiration that modern designers could do with a good overhaul of sorts).

lmao he is an underage poster.

Software, before India, was written by intelligent, nerdy white guys who were generally eccentric, but humorous and fun dudes who put soul into their software. Software today is written by the absolute foulest, most dishonorable, dishonest, smelly, low IQ subhumans on the planet: Indians.

As a result software stinks of India and it's only going to get worse from here.

Attached: Micrsoft headquaters.jpg (1024x639, 261K)

It still is

Attached: Capture.png (1280x1024, 828K)

Comfy.

needs more winamp

As someone who first started with Windows 3.11 in the very early 90's, I always found the software ugly as shit. The first Windows that looked remotely good was Vista.

It was more of a preemptive for "I'm going to make a redundant ramble."

>India developing software
That implies that India actually innovates and produces product instead of sitting at the heel of some graphic designer. Most of the time India just gets handed half-completed projects with awful UI or specific design documents outlining the client's specification. The Indians don't give any feedback or offer any suggestions, leaving the pages designed still by American fresh graduates that latch on to whatever philosophy they learned in college the year before.

i had that problem with my eeepc 701, it had an 800x480 display. xp was designed with at least 800x600 in mind, so some dialogs are taller than 480px
wish i kept it long enough so i still had it when i started getting into linux

i think 10 is the first version of windows that looks passable

Because it tried to look like realistic small toys of sorts instead of glass shit.

it wasn't, you're probably too young to know that

or just without any taste

It's hard to explain.

MS only had to keep compositing enabled and disable their GFX when classic theme was used.

>designers
There are none at MS. This is all engineers.

I like you user.

ngl this would've fooled me if it weren't for the font hinting.

>Somebody needs to nuke the internet
The internet was a mistake.

ugly af. go flat or kys

>win98 in 16 color mode

Attached: (you) are so fucking dead, boi.png (600x337, 357K)

You can change the Mozilla Firefox string in about:config

I'm a zoomer and I like this look.

hey Jow Forums how do I make windows 10 look like windows 95/98

Mid-to-late 90s > Early 90s

Attached: windows 95.png (640x480, 33K)

I never much liked the grey/silver themes
Always used to make it black from 98 onwards then my folks would get the shits and change it back

I still have a 701. That screen is the worst thing about it. Still worked good enough for some zdoom and NES games on the go.

i liked the classic sandy orangey-grey themes that kind of looked like Jow Forums

Are you still using MSN?

Cause it just worked. A lot of shit was better back then. Games especially. Function was key. Now it's all about how pretty and how much drive space/ram it can use to get the job done.

Case in point. Win 2k. Used maybe 1.3GB of space. What people did then; Internet, e-mail,office work,games,etc. Everyone got by fine.

Now; Windows Ten. Uses 16GB space. What people do now; omg, not a damn thing different from 1999 aside from being Youtube and FB freaks. Windows Ten Sucks, people dump it back to 7.

>Games especially.
I could never get ESPN XTREME GAMES to work on DOS. Fuck that shit.

since when does aesthetic now equal cancer?

I hope flat design dies someday.

Attached: shinji-ikari-2671.jpg (400x603, 153K)

holy fuck why do I miss this so much

>Why was 90s system software so aesthetic?
>Case in point. Win 2k.
>Windows 2000
>RTM: December 15, 1999
Fucking retard. And possibly underage, because real 90s software has never "just worked". Ask your granddad the purpose of autoexec.bat

Yeah because you are a zoomer and think retro shit has an intrinsc value.

can this meme die already?
it was proven that ltsc still reports back to MS.
it was proven within days of the first release.
the only thing ltsc is good for is for a bare minimal windows. eg. no apps

Wow, it looks so beauti-

Attached: Windows_9X_BSOD.png (640x400, 2K)

yeah because
>uwu we made a fucky wucky :(
is so much more aesthetic

>want a 90s era desktop for Linux
>none of it's unique, just tries real hard to look exactly like windows

At least on newer revisions you don't see a BSOD every 5 minutes.
Windows in the 90s would shit itself just opening Wordperfect.

Then;
Press enter.
Save your shit.
Reboot PC.
Now;
Lose all your shit.
See useless error message that doesn't really tell you much.

That's not actually underestimating the user. 95% of humanity have the computing skills of a zucchini.

interfaces were consistent and clear at the time

nowadays every application has an skin that is different to every other, 80% of them are electron apps, and the other 20% are some random shit that matches the OS little better

Worse part they try only in looks not functionality and interaction. Freetards confirmed for just wanting to look special.

because you have shit taste, that's why

>OneStepBack

Dont you have some underages to spy on cortana?

imo, mostly because of its simplicity and "cleanliness".

Attached: 2019-05-10-214135_1366x768_scrot.png (1366x768, 202K)

sadly the botnet is right and the average PC user is nigger cattle

My first thought as well. Summer starts earlier and earlier.

>doesn't begin all sentences with "i'm fucked up" when he's fucked up
fuck la

they don't have to be unique

use icewm or windowmaker

Because it was good software

ful.
Just look on this BSOD.
>Look serious
>Provides information
>Allows you to return back to Windows

a more relevant question is how things could be so bad in the current year

Attached: win10.jpg (1472x933, 155K)

Don't remind me; fuck. I hate that shit so much.
Nice digits, by the way.

I hate how windows 10 looks so much it's the ugliest OS ever I hate that I have to use it

If only you knew the lengths you would have to go through if you wanted to fix all the inconsistencies within Windows
It would involve messing with codebases going on close to 20 years old

>See useless error message that doesn't really tell you much.
Does no one here know how to analyze minidumps?
Diagnosing BSODs can take less than 5 min