Compare the nextspace screenshot to the nextstep screenshot, and one can see they are appreciably different.

nextspace: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/trunkmaster/nextspace/mast...

nextstep: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/1d/NeXTSTEP_desk...

I don't see anything really standing out between these two.

Sorry for the late response. The biggest difference to my eyes is the color choices. Although this was many years ago, I recall that the nextstep color scheme was very muted, tending to scale of grays rather than contrasting colors. The wikipedia screenshot seems to confirm my memory.

The nextspace screenshot shows apps and icons with very bright colors. Nowadays icons and apps tend to be colorful, and since they follow different color schemes, a collection of them has a high probability of clashing (e.g. the gray Gimp next to the orange Firefox.)

Nextstep could maintain a consistent aesthetic, I think, because: 1) there were not many apps available on it as there are now on nextspace, and 2) a single company, which had a notoriously style conscious CEO, produced these apps. Nowadays, apps are produced by different groups, with different tastes (let alone skills) in designs.

Nextspace faces the problem of maintaining the muted and clean style of nextstep, in a more diversified world. That's what I was reacting to.

I'm not sure I'm seeing much difference. Could you explain more fully?

Pls see above.

appreciably different?!? Not sure I follow. Both are hideous to behold and look very similar. Is there a joke here I am missing?

Maybe Win 98 looks like Nextstep rather than the other way around.

Win 95 literally stole some of the NeXT look. They stole the grey raised borders and the close [X]. They turned the iconize button into a maximize button for some reason.

Grey raised borders definitely existed in Windows 3.1 GUI elements.

... which Microsoft copied from Motif

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motif_(software)

Both Windows 3.1 and Amiga OS (Workbench) 2.0 copied the look in 1990.

Totally, everyone not relegated to the dustbins of history stole.

Only on buttons until ctl3d.dll became commonplace.

Who's the guilty party does not really matter, it's crummy either way

What's your definition of crummy?

win2k UI is best UI

Amen.

The entire OS was so polished and stable. I don't think it has been surpassed yet. Maybe by OS X 10.6

Oh, 10.6 was so nice, my MBP came with it, it flew, it was fast on 4 GB of ram! Now, the latest MacOS is slow on 16GB of ram, it's the same machine and I still do the same things with it. I don't understand "progress".

For comparison, Windows 2000 has a recommended minimum requirement of 64MB of ram. Windows 95 recommended 8MB. That's the scale of bloat we're talking about. That a modern UI which does essentially the same things can feel unresponsive in any way on several orders of magnitude more resources says a lot about the priorities of modern software developers.

Windows 95 to Windows 2000 is not a fair comparison, but Windows NT 4.0 is - which required 16MB and recommended 32MB.

I don’t think they were comparing 2000 to 95, but both if them to modern OSs (in some sense 8MB vs 64MB is such a small difference compared to modern OSs which basically need 8GB minimum)

The more computing resources we make available, the more wasteful we become: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

my favorite MS anecdote: PC Magazine gave a beta 2k install on a CD. I tried it, and it was such an improvement over 98 that I never installed anything else until XP was a ~requirement (mostly a convenience because it embedded more and more recent drivers)

To be frank, that's because the Win 9x line was intentionally designed around the older, less-stable MS-DOS architecture. NT, which is what 2000 was based on, was around for seven years by that point and was remarkably stable. The big problem is that it was compatible with virtually nothing, and it wasn't until Win XP that the business world aligned itself with NT.

It wasn't until XP that the _consumer_ world aligned itself with NT. NT 4 & 2000 were unavoidable in business networks with windows domains

NT was more compatible with my hardware than 98 :)

Unless you wanted USB support.

> I never installed anything else until XP was a ~requirement

Likewise. I only migrated to WXP because AoE3 required it… and it turned out to be terrible but there was no real way to downgrade.

same, not AoE3 but I remember that I didn't want XP but something required it...

win2k "Windows Classic" or Win 7 Aero glass are the only decent UIs MS has ever offered.

So of course they remove classic from Windows 10 and force the issue.

win2k and osx tiger

It's sort of retro, but it's very clean, at least IMO. What's your idea of a clean and nice UI?

Windows 10 with transparency turned off is very clean and usable.

I know I'm going to get a lot of reflexive disagreement on this point for unrelated "because Windows" reasons, but I think this is objectively true. The entire UI is just basic shapes and line drawings.

I agree, and it's not just the appearance, the UX is generally sensible (and little things like keyboard shortcuts for snapping a window to half the screen are very useful). I just wish it weren't so damn buggy. I just had to reinstall because Windows Update got stuck on an install/uninstall update loop. Sigh

I'm missing depth in their UI. I liked the Windows 7 UX the most.

Basically what Windows Server comes with iirc. I wish the "Pro" version of Windows 10 was just Windows Server, aka I don't care for a lot of the bloat that Microsoft has to offer to all consumer versions of Windows. If I'm a Pro user let me decide what I want to install.

XFCE4.12 with the Default Window Manager styling.