[sthuck]

I kinda miss that in the early 2000's kde and gnome shipped with a fuck ton of window decorations based on all those (then-not-so) old OS. Teenager me had fun switching them every day and playing with windowing behavior (focus follows mouse! hover to select and only one click needed!). I wonder what techy kids today do to explore and have fun.

Speaking of the early 2000's, man, Aqua was such a good design. I appreciate the nextstep paradigm and design, but Aqua was just so futuristic, in a good way.

[somat]

In some ways X11 with it's focus follows mouse, don't raise on focus, select:middle click paste features provide a far more refined desktop experience then mac or windows ever could. No wait, stop laughing, sure X11 was a garbage fire when it came to consistent professional design, but because it was such a wild west of an environment there was place for real ui innovation. I know, I get grumpy fast without middle click paste. And I hate having to raise a window in order to click and type on it(A common access pattern for me is to read docs on the top window while I am operating the bottom window).

[lstodd]

Cut-buffer (the middle click) I just can't live without. People that never experienced that still get awestruck with the ease and effortlessness.

And virtual desktops/workspaces also had that awe-effect back then. Although with multimonitor setups this faded a bit.

[hermitcrab]

Yes Aqua was quite striking. Also much more consistent than the rag bag of different styling you see on Windows or Mac today.

[eloisant]

Even before those, AfterStep, Enlightenment and many others were really nice.