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The Windows Interface You Didn’t Like, For Linux (hackaday.com)

submitted 3 days ago by cm0002@lemmings.world to c/linux@programming.dev

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If you were asked to pick the most annoying of the various Microsoft Windows interfaces that have appeared over the years, there’s a reasonable chance that Windows 8’s Metro start screen and interface design language would make it your choice. In 2012 the software company abandoned their tried-and-tested desktop whose roots extended back to Windows 95 in favor of the colorful blocks it had created for its line of music players and mobile phones.

Consumers weren’t impressed and it was quickly shelved in subsequent versions, but should you wish to revisit Metro you can now get the experience on Linux. [er-bharat] has created Win8DE, a shell for Wayland window managers that brings the Metro interface — or something very like it — to the open source operating system.

The most beautiful horror to ever exist lmao

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[–] ulterno@programming.dev 0 points 1 day ago

The looks of the UI were never bad at all. There were other problems:

The larger distance between icons made it worse for cursor users. Specially for trackpad. But this is just a tradeoff, as it made it better for touchscreens. Also, this is the only problem with the design.
Laggy context menus and overall slow animations
- This made it objectively worse for all mouse users
The method to access a list of all applications was also undesirable
No easy access to exit options
- one of the versions I had to use, didn't exit to desktop on Esc key.
- Where do you find the Shut Down button? I actually started using the terminal to shutdown the computer on these systems.

There was a similar looking UI in Windows Phone and it worked pretty well for me. I actually liked that one more than the Android UI. So, in this case it really was the substandard execution.