Hey, where do you find the ISOs for these old distros?
Multiple desktops, 1999. What an amazing feature.
A quick web search suggests that macOS (then OS X) got this in 2007 (“Spaces”), and Windows not until 2015.
This alone makes this GUI more functional IMHO.
Most Unix systems had it in CDE, 1993. Most also had it in whatever came before.
The first platform to implement multiple desktop display as a hardware feature was Amiga 1000, released in 1985.
The first implementation of virtual desktops for Unix was vtwm in 1990.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_desktop
It had been the expected default for pretty much an entire decade. Also X often supported a different size viewport and desktop so the view would scroll. Not sure if anyone really liked using that.
I remember this! I’m French and remember reading Mandrake comics, so when Mandrake Linux came I needed to install it!
Ooh damn. Mandrake was my first distro, I remember being sooo excited when the CDs came in the mail. It was I think 4 discs?
The experience was absolutely not good lol. At the time I only had one computer (some eMachines something or other) and a 56k line that only went to 14400 or 2600 baud depending on the weather. My NIC wasn’t supported and after some banging my head on the desk I ended up going back to windows 98se after a few days because it was the family computer I messed up and caught sooo much flak for wiping.
Returned some years later when it was called Mandriva and had a better experience with a custom built AMD machine. The eMachines machine by then was still around as a network file server running a flavour of BSD that served media to my OG xbox played through XBMC (now Kodi).
Great post OP and thanks for the trip down memory lane!
“baud” 😭🥹
Gimp’s mascot is in some kind of hard drugs in that icon
Looks like Crash Bandicoot on drugs
Jesus, UI design was terrible back then. I’m not talking about technical limitations, I don’t need fancy transparency effects or something like that, but I’m sure that you could come up with something much better using the old UI libraries as long as you follow modern design principles.
It’s probably just familiarity bias, but I really like the classic 3D design elements of the '90s desktops. I was a big fan of the Windows classic shell, NeXTSTEP and Openbox UIs. And even though I think both GNOME and KDE look fantastic today, I would still happily use a CDE-style UI if I could do so consistently.
Xkill… Now that’s a name I havent heard in a long time :-)
