Birbla

Join the discussion

Write your take first — we'll ask for email only when you're ready to publish.

Sign in
  • Hacker News
  • Looks more like a cross between XP and 7 to me.
    by bdcravens
  • So, Vista?

    Not enough dark glass.

    by happymellon
  • I am more interested in a reimplementation of windows on top of Linux kernel. Loss32 hasn't come up with a release yet.
    by fithisux
  • I use a single Docker container [1] to run a full VM on Linux, and it works like a charm for Excel and Word when I still need them.

    [1] https://github.com/dockur/windows

    by zazuke
  • Is Windows 7 "retro" now? I personally still prefer the Windows Classic theme.

    The logo looks like Firefox, Thunderbird, and a Charmander mixed together.

    by userbinator
  • I'd consider a 18yo OS retro, yes :)

    Windows 7 is nearer to Windows 95 than to Windows 11.

    And yes, time flies.

    by pjerem
  • Which classic? 3.0? 3.5.1? 4.0/95? Win2k? I think 2k was top-tier.
    by edoceo
  • What would get me to stay with Linux (I've been going back and forth for the last few years) would be a fully-featured File Explorer work-alike complete with previews of every file type and a full-on context menu copy. One other thing... the ability to right-click any program icon and pin it to the taskbar. They're little things, but whenever I find myself on Windows 11, those are the things I find I missed most... well, other than being able to run File Locator Pro, NotePad++, and Bulk Rename natively.

    Oh, and getting some part of the OS/window manager to remember window placement/size. Wayland/GTK don't and this is NOT an innovation, it's trying to turn the desktop into a phone.

    by pythonRon
  • KDE has that?
    by fao_
  • > a fully-featured File Explorer work-alike complete with previews of every file type and a full-on context menu copy

    Corel LinuxOS did this at the turn of the century. Xandros took it even further.

    Sadly, although a company is still around and owns the names, they do not use any of the original code.

    Xandros's version of KDE 2 was the best Linux desktop of its era and it wasn't even close. By a decade later, Ubuntu Unity took that role, but a lot of people don't know how to drive Windows by keyboard, and aren't willing to learn new things, so they hated it -- especially here on HN, which called for it to be cancelled, and Canonical listened.

    by lproven
  • You're better off with Linux Mint and downloading the B00merang-Project themes, which includes good Win7 skins. A full distro just for an aesthetic (not to mention a distro nobody's heard of) isn't a good idea to use outside of a curiosity in a VM.
    by VCFundedGenYer
  • It is Windows 7 reminiscent, but it lacks the glassy appearance of Aero which is the defining characteristic of the OS' visual identity.
    by OuterVale
  • Anyone remember Xandros? https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=xandros

    Iirc it was a bit wonky and it eventually convinced me that, if I wanted to ever use Linux, I didn't need a Windows UI — I needed to learn to use Linux.

    by alexaholic
  • Remember Xandros? I'm old enough to remeber Lindows! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linspire
    by trelane
  • I've always found Zorin to be windows-like enough to transition people to. It has it's own visual identity, and isn't trying to be a simulacrum of windows - making it much more enjoyable to use.
    by pharos92
  • https://zorin.com/os/
    by pharos92
  • As Microsoft has expressed, Aero is "cheesy."

    Despite nostalgia, it was stripped in pursuit of a mobile-friendly UI (at the time).

    '...calling the UI that debuted in Vista and continued in Windows 7, “cheesy” and “dated.”'

    https://www.computerworld.com/article/1437474/microsoft-dump...

    All Windows UIs will die, on Microsoft's time, not the user community.

    by chasil
  • I didn't think it was cheesy, but when Windows 10 and 11 came along it sure felt like we evolved to shitty.
    by rkagerer
  • Don't think I could disagree more. Aero was the peak of Windows UI design. It's such a shame they ruined it and walked away from it in Win8 and beyond.
    by VCFundedGenYer
  • Aero was peak aesthetics. Flatcrap became commonplace because it was easy. No need for designers, just flat colors, resizable to fit any screen. Perfect for mobile slop!
    by GreenVulpine
  • The Shine 2 theme for Windows 7 still looks better than anything Microsoft has done in the 16 years since it was released:

    https://www.deviantart.com/zainadeel/art/Shine-2-0-for-Windo...

    Looks better than MacOS as well.

    by carlosjobim
  • Yes "cheesy" and "dated" because new Windows version was about to be released in 3 months from publication of that article. So marketing machine portraying everything old as bad and everything new as better was running full speed.

    In the end we all know how "well" W8 was received due to Metro components. Slightly modified Aero theme was still there, all resource files like icons, graphics were largely carried in. Aesthetically and visually that version of Windows was like 5-year old would made a papier mache operating system of two different products.

    by pndy
  • I'm surprised that this distro's headline is "The Windows 7 experience on Linux" even though it's using a vague Windows-style XFCE theme.

    If someone's interested in a real Windows 7 lookalike, take a look at https://gitgud.io/aeroshell/atp/aerothemeplasma, it's extremely close.

    See for yourself:

    - Kumander: https://www.kumander.org/img/images/kumander.png

    - AeroShell: https://gitgud.io/aeroshell/atp/aerothemeplasma/-/raw/Plasma...

    by Tiberium
  • Never seen a long term used windows pc with transparency enabled, just when people asking "how to disable this? Is confusing.."
    by n3storm
  • The thing is that this would seem to be a whole new shell, needing constant maintenance and adjustment to keep it current with KDE.

    Whereas AIUI the alternative here is just a cosmetic change to Xfce and shouldn't need any maintenance at all. There are only new KDE releases once every 2 years.

    I know which of those I'd want. As it happens, I also much prefer Xfce to KDE: it's smaller, simpler, lighter, faster, more coherent, and complies much better with Windows's keyboard UI.

    by lproven
  • AeroThemePlasma is by far the closest that exists now, but I think there’s still a space for DE dedicated to being as close of a Windows analogue as possible while remaining legally distinct with a fixed feature set to prevent feature and resource creep. Think a desktop close enough to the user’s choice between 2K, XP, 7, 10 or 11 that they could transition from Windows to Linux and barely even notice that there was a change.

    I believe that “my favorite OS, frozen in time” has substantial demand (which will only increase as the big commercial OSes continue to enshittify) and it’s surprising that there aren’t more attempts to capitalize on that.

    by cosmic_cheese
  • it's extremely close.

    First thing that caught my eye is the space between the command prompt and the first character of the command; but other than that, it's very much "I can't believe it's not Windows".

    by userbinator
  • AeroShell seems to only have full support on X11. Didn't expect this argument to come up again
    by OsrsNeedsf2P