[keyle]

Man I'm old, but give me NT 4 with modern technology support, modern drivers and GPU driven and I would move in a heartbeat.

[macjohnmcc]

Yeah I remember when there weren't dozens of services running in the background just for basic OS functionality.

[sn_master]

What do you miss the most? The UI? Speed?

[keyle]

UX, speed, simplicity, lightness. Applications ran without talking to the internet, asking if it's ok to run it, telling me it's probably unsafe to run it, telling me I need to update for security reason, telling me I should play candy crush, letting me search my files without adding recommended noise somewhat supposed to be relevant to what I did 3 days ago. I could go on. I just want to stare at a blue flat colour knowing tomorrow it will be just the same. /s

[vxNsr]

Yes! UI was amazing and obviously you can’t beat the speed it would run at on modern hardware

[lukeschlather]

Honestly I think Xfce is about the same. And probably more stable, though obviously it's hard to do a direct comparison.

[LargoLasskhyfv]

Depending on the "Distro" and compile options/build flags/included libraries MATE is as fast and light, since at least 6 years, actually. I think the first distribution which showed that to a general audience was LMDE a.k.a. Linux Mint - Debian Edition.

[tonyedgecombe]

The window chrome is fine but the settings are a bit of a mess in my opinion.

[sn_master]

UI shouldn't be too hard (https://www.wincustomize.com/explore/windowblinds/8628/). I am not so sure about the speed if you'll use modern drivers.