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".
Wayland is stable. What it's not is stagnant, like X11, which lacks fractional/mixed-DPI scaling, per-window HDR/color management, explicit GPU synchronization, and a security model ready for the modern challenges of the mid 90s.
It's also technically cross-platform, as evidenced by FreeBSD's support for Wayland compositors. But it's not its goal either, the goal is an excellent Linux desktop, not something that serves the 17 people in the world that routinely run the same exact desktop config on Linux and non-Linux PCs.
X11 used to crash all the time, especially after an update, back when it was being vibrantly developed. It's been a lot more stable since it got abandoned. I've not had a crash in 13 years.
Matter of fact, the vast majority has moved on to Wayland years ago, both KDE and Gnome have reported their usage stats and neither sees a point in keeping X11 afloat. I too have been using Wayland (KDE) for years, it addressed some decades-long struggles around multi monitor and DPI layouts. I use input methods for CJK that work better and more consistently than before. As far as I'm concerned, this ship has sailed, for the better.
Wayland is annoying out of touch crap that works well enough for some people to think it's good. Enjoy your Wayland. Surely all the people who aren't you must just be stupid.
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.
I liked the transparency very much. Had it enabled in Windows7 for all of the 14 years. Until software incompatibility forced me to install Windows 10.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Up to Win2k, I don't recall new releases of Windows leading to people lamenting the UI changes; I do remember people not liking the initial look of XP, though. Maybe it's just because complaints got more visible after the Internet became popular, though. But even now few people seem to have strong preferences for, say, Windows 1.0 (… which was pretty much a TUI, IIRC)
I believe Win9x all had basically the same UI appearance, and 2k just changed the default colours slightly (and they were always fully customisable, so no difficulty in changing them either.)
Windows 1.x/2.x were noted for being rather primitive, and similar to the "flat design" trend hated by many when Win8 came out. 3.x is when the UI elements became 3D, and then they retained nearly the same appearance until XP introduced the bitmap-based theme.
IIRC win2k introduced some transparency effects and shadows, like when menus would gradually appear from transparent to fully opaque (I don't know the right word for that.) I found it really cool at the time.
WinXP with the "classic" theme was the best. Its default theme was goofy, but changing it took all of 10 seconds. Compared to Win2k, there were some minor improvements.
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...
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