Not for people who are not mentally stuck in the 90s. I am very glad things have processed and have left the ugliness and usabilitly problems of Windows 95 in the past.
I'm in the opposite camp. I recall great monolithic software for media production from the 90's and think our modern web-centric view is "dumbed-down".
There's a time and place for minimalism, but the term "power user" also has a meaning: your accumulated user-base that didn't leave.
Windows post-Vista has forced me and countless others into never bothering again. The fact of a 90's MCSE certification means nothing when I blankly gaze at the visage of a "modern" Windows UI that tells me nothing of import.
M$ basically told all their power users to go away.
I'm so harsh with Windows 95 here because back then I found out about other desktops (e.g. on Unix) that had better UI. Several workspaces, ability to drag windows not only by grabbing the title bar, clicking the scroll bar to the scroll place you need (instead of having to drag it all the way there), launching programs by other means than a non ending hierarchy of menus. Not to mention that anything not Windows was more stable. Also Unix/Linux was multi user and solid enough to run read services on the same machine (even if it was the same little piece of junk your Windows 98 had come with in the first place).
Exploring the world beyond Windows felt like finally seeing how the real pros do it. That is why I absolutely can't understand the starry eyed reverence people have for sorry "OSes" like Windows 95/98.
TLDR: Windows 95/98 wasn't the pinncacle of UI even when it came out, so it definitely isn't today.
The discussion is about UI here, so the fact that Windows 95/98 was built on shaky foundations is besides the point.
Other GUI systems may have had this or that feature over Windows 95/98, but none matched its cleanness, consistency, discoverability, functionality, and overall usability.
> TLDR: Windows 95/98 wasn't the pinncacle of UI even when it came out, so it definitely isn't today.
I'd argue that it was, and that it still is near, if not the pinnacle today.
" left the ugliness and usability problems of Windows 95 in the past."
And I think this is why Linux on the desktop is going no where soon. The Win 95 interface / control panel / taskbar / start menu was very discoverable for many. In corporate environments it was THE go to interface forever. Yes, KDE and its plasmoids, Windows and it's "live tiles" are the new hotness, but for folks just looking to work the "cool" fly in fly out effects, secret touch points (move mouse to side or top of screen etc) etc are just losers.
You could RDP into a Win95 box set to best performance and basically not know you were remote. All the fancy animations are actually a negative in many environments.
Microsoft itself keeps on trying out new things, but user pressure gets them going back to older ideas.
There's a time and place for minimalism, but the term "power user" also has a meaning: your accumulated user-base that didn't leave.
Windows post-Vista has forced me and countless others into never bothering again. The fact of a 90's MCSE certification means nothing when I blankly gaze at the visage of a "modern" Windows UI that tells me nothing of import. M$ basically told all their power users to go away.