Don’t get me wrong, the average X-interface looks great. Some are absolutely stunning. But, in my opinion usability has gone down the toilet. Almost everything that should be a clear distinction is displayed in shades of the same color, including icons.

I’m now running an XP-inspired theme on cinnamon so I at least have some functionality (e.g. title bar in a different color, buttons with clear borders, etc). I wish I wouldn’t need to, to have a productive interface. I wish for something beautiful and productive.

Seeing screenshots of someones Aero-inspired Steam-mockup inspired me to make this post. I found it attractive while I hated Aero when it came out and never used it (it was around the time I switched to Linux). Is there any theme/window manager/setup I should be looking at that I obviously haven’t?

  • Telorand@reddthat.com
    3·
    1 month ago

    Sway? Cosmic? OpenBox? KDE? Like, look up some DEs, look up themes on Pling, and pick your favorite. Try them out in a VM.

    Cinnamon has made opinionated choices based on the majority of their demographic (newbie users). If you aren’t a fan, pick something else.

    • bigBananas@beehaw.orgOP
      2·
      1 month ago

      Thanks, unfortunately my pc’s bones stem from 2008 (building a new one has been on my todo list for…I don’t know…8 years?) so VMs aren’t really an option, installing something on another partition is faster.

      I do still have my own openbox config somewhere that’s also beautiful, imo, but not very productive. Never looked at sway or cosmic and didn’t realize KDE changed as much as it did.