I love seeing these screenshots of old Linux distributions as it makes me realize how much things have improved.
I’m just a consumer but I really appreciate the work everyone has done and I ain’t going back to Windows anymore.
this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2024
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I have to say these desktops look to damn confusing
What are you confused by?
There are way too many bars that look like dockable windows, the stuff at the bottom. Lots of stuff looking like decorations (but in general these buttons are confusing af even macOS is better than that.
And at the top it looks like the whole desktop is a window with decoration??
In general low contrast, too many strange thin things, no clear icons.
This is a screenshot of window running a VM, so yes it is a window running a whole desktop. The top window decoration, menu bar, and the very bottom panel are not part of the old desktop, but rather from the modern host system.
I agree though, it is confusing. Main problem (and I remember this) is that this is Gnome with Enlightenment as a wm, and Enlightenment had aspirations to be more than a wm. So there's some duplication of effort there, and no integration/communication between the two projects (Gnome in the next version used sawfish/sawmill as wm, which was more coordinated with Gnome).
Enlightenment has/had its own toolkit, which you can see here in the DOX window, which is different from Gtk. Enlightenment also has a bunch of widgets, like the top bar and the stuff in the bottom corners, which are non-Gnome and clash with and are on top of the Gnome panel. The desktop icons are also zero pixels under the Enlightenment top bar, which suggest the people responsible weren't coordinating at all.
Interesting! This explains a lot, thanks!
Happy to be a Linux user in 2024!
That was probably close to one of the last versions of enlightenment I used regularly. It was such a fun WM to use at the time. If I remember correctly, GNOME and KDE were really ramping up about then and e fell behind.
TRANSPARENT TERMINALS! Haha it felt so futuristic and to this day I can't run a terminal without a little transparency. Enlightenment was my first experience of it.
It looks quite usable, to be honest. I would have loved to use it back then.
I really enjoyed the diversity of WM/DE back then, and the innovation when new ones like Enlightenment were released!