A desktop for your childhood home’s computer room.
Blue95 is a modern and lightweight desktop experience that is reminiscent of a bygone era of computing.
Based on Fedora Atomic Xfce with the Chicago95 theme.
For more screenshots, see screenshots.md.
Note
Live CD is a new feature and is still in testing.
We are now creating a Live ISO that can be used to boot into a Blue95 live environment. Test it out without needing to install anything.
Note that the included installer is an alpha version and it is recommended to instead install Blue95 via the other methods listed below.
We are currently having issues with our installer ISOs. The current recommended installation path is though rebasing from a different Fedora Atomic desktop, preferably from an Xfce-based image such as winblues/vauxite.
After installing vauixite, you can rebase directly to this image with:
rpm-ostree rebase ostree-image-signed:docker://ghcr.io/winblues/blue95:latest
If you are currently using an atomic desktop, you can rebase to the latest blue95 image.
- First rebase to the unsigned image, to get the proper signing keys and policies installed:
rpm-ostree rebase ostree-unverified-registry:ghcr.io/winblues/blue95:latest - Reboot and then rebase to the signed image, like so:
rpm-ostree rebase ostree-image-signed:docker://ghcr.io/winblues/blue95:latest
It is r
19 Comments
esafak
I'm trying to forget that horror show and you want to put it under a spotlight! If I never see a bsod or windows registry again it'll be too soon.
rbanffy
How cute… imagine my childhood home would have a computer with a graphical desktop…
I feel so old now…
metadat
This looks nice and easy to use.
My hypothesis is today's "modern" OS user interfaces are objectively worse from a usability perspective, obfuscating key functionality behind layers of confusing menus.
It reminds me of these "OS popularity since the 70s" time lapse views:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=cTKhqtll5cQ
The dominance of Windows is crazy, even today, Mac desktops and laptops are comparatively niche
anthk
It needs the BSOD screensaver from XScreensaver, for sure. And, maybe, DOSBox-X or DOSEmu2.
Also:
– Pan
– Sylpheed
– Audacious with the WinAMP theme
– Hexchat kinda has a MIRC vibe
– Parole looks like WMP from < v9 releases
– You can't simulate a dialer, but with trickle you can mimic a 56k/ISDN connection pretty well
– SyncTERM for BBS's
– ScummVM, with just a bilinear filter, because I played tons of adventures
– There's an SDL2 reimplementation of Space Cadet Pinball at github.
– Trigger Rally would look like a great shareware game
– Pidgin, hands down. Either you were an AOL user in America, or a MSN user in Europe. It has emoticons, not emojis. Add that annoying notification theme with a sound and that would be the very late 90's/early 00's (my early teen years)
emidln
This looks neat. I remember the various fvwm95 and icewm themes doing a similar number in the late 90s and early 2000s.
It would be fun to pair this with Gambas[0], a free VB6 clone that works with GTK.
[0] https://gambaswiki.org/website/en/main.html
bsnnkv
This still remains the absolute pinnacle of cohesive desktop environment design in my books.
jemurray
My childhood home would need DOS. Maybe deskview for multitasking. :)
OsrsNeedsf2P
Does this project offer anything besides Chicago95's UI pre-installed?
doright
I like themes like this. The only thing that hampers the authenticity for me, and this isn't the fault of the author really, is the super high resolution fonts compared to what was available back then. There's just something charming about low resolution fonts that are readable enough on screen, probably nostalgia.
I think any type of pixel font authentic to a couple decades ago won't look good on a 4K monitor, unfortunately. It got to the point where I ordered a 1024×768 monitor just to play old games with a period system.
mfro
Is it really necessary to spin up an entirely new distro for an XFCE+GTK theme?
bitbasher
It's not complete until you have a comet cursor and several IE toolbars that were somehow installed.
vardump
My childhood home's computer said 38911 BYTES FREE.
herrherrmann
This looks great with some apps that have matching themes, but I wonder if it quickly falls apart once you rely on apps with very non-consistent UIs (audio/video software, Discord, Spotify, Slack, and basically all other Electron-based apps). Although I guess there might be some matching CSS injection hacks available for the Electron ones?
haunter
A better modern middle ground imo is the KD3 continuation project https://www.trinitydesktop.org/
ranger_danger
Why are recreations of old UIs always differently wrong? Is pixel-perfection too much to ask for?
qwertox
`/var/home/afidel/`
There are some pretty good desktop environments for Linux which emulate the Windows desktop, so that old Windows users would feel at home immediately.
But I've never seen them emulate the filesystem, which is what took most old Windows users the biggest effort to understand. And the Linux filesystem raises it to a new level of complexity, which makes every old Windows users want to go back to Windows immediately.
With "old" users I don't mean experienced users.
Is there some kind of overlay which does all this `C:UserafidelDesktop` mapping for those users?
nostrademons
My childhood computer was a Mac. Anyone have a theme that emulates System 6.08?
MarkusWandel
Three modern desktop environments that I use:
– Windows 10/11. Especially in 11, it's easiest just to type the start of an app's name into the search box. As opposed to the two clicks it takes to get to the "traditional" menu where you still have to scroll to find it.
– Gnome (only on fresh Linux installs, usually replaced with Mate pretty soon). Has a smartphone-style app grid, but here, too, its quickest just to type the start of the app's name.
– Mate: Modern, but still has the Windows 95 paradigm (easy enough to collapse the two toolbars into just one bottom one). Still my favourite desktop environment.
Not all fancy graphic stuff is good. And don't even get me started on how hard it is to drag an app window to another screen these days – on Windows. You really have to find the 2% or so of the top bar that's still draggable and not cluttered up by other stuff.
geor9e
I remember a couple kids with Windows 95 PCs at home. They seemed like such richie rich's. We'd all play Wolfenstein when we'd sleep over at their houses. My childhood computer was a WebTV, hacked to get dialup internet for free, on a 100 lb CRT TV from Goodwill. I finally scraped up the money for an actual PC some time in highschool.