Re: How to make ubuntu look like Windows 3.1?

[K.Mandla]

IceWM with WinClassic (http://themes.freshmeat.net/projects/winclassic/), a Windows 2000-lookalike theme, which shouldn't be hard to knock around until you got something Win98 or even Win95-ish. Or WinME-ish, if you're a glutton for punishment.

<snip>

Now Windows 3.1, that's sheer madness. Utterly ridiculous. Total insanity.

Post screenshots when you've got them. If you build it, they will come. :twisted:

[Mulenmar]

This is two years late, and has existed for at least 13 months now, but it answers the call:

http://box-look.org/content/show.php/Win+3.1?content=110302 (http://box-look.org/content/show.php/Win+3.1?content=110302)

[Phrea]

Ok, necrophiliac that I am...
There was a less old thread about a W3.11 skin, look for it.
From what I remember, it was quite good.

[Frogs Hair]

My first computer had W98 , so I had to find a photo because I have never seen 3.1 and I don't think I could duplicate this.

[Phrea]

Found it: http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-867150.html

[Spice Weasel]

Trust me, that's the last thing you'd want to do. Eugh.

Especially with the default UI, that was horrible to use. I hated the Program Manager.

[K.Mandla]

I have no recollection whatsoever of starting this thread. :shock:

[Rasa1111]

My first computer had W98 , so I had to find a photo because I have never seen 3.1 and I don't think I could duplicate this.

good god man,
that is dreadful. :(

[Frogs Hair]

good god man,
that is dreadful. :(

I will see your dreadful and riase to hiddious .:-s

[Rasa1111]

haha,
alright then
I will see your hideous and raise to WTFis this!?. lol

[beew]

Why would you even want to make Ubuntu look like *******?

P.S. I heard that in China some software pirates are now selling fake Windows 7 that is actually Ubuntu..

[Rasa1111]

Why would you even want to make Ubuntu look like *******?

P.S. I heard that in China some software pirates are now selling fake Windows 7 that is actually Ubuntu..

haha, so that's where the "windows7 is amazing" jibberjabber is coming from! :lol:

funny.

[Lightstar]

I have no recollection whatsoever of starting this thread. :shock:

Hahahaha
Yeah it's been awhile

[fatality_uk]

I have no recollection whatsoever of starting this thread. :shock:

Ahh the folly of youth. Post something YEARS ago & it comes back to haunt you :)

[Sporkman]

This is two years late, and has existed for at least 13 months now, but it answers the call:

http://box-look.org/content/show.php/Win+3.1?content=110302 (http://box-look.org/content/show.php/Win+3.1?content=110302)

Win 3.1 did not have a taskbar - that didn't arrive until win 95.

[forrestcupp]

Ok, necrophiliac that I am...
There was a less old thread about a W3.11 skin, look for it.
From what I remember, it was quite good.

Yeah, but if you can find a thread that was started by a Forum Staff member, there's slightly less of a chance that it will get shut down. ;)

[pookiebear]

Win 3.1 was fast. and small at 10-40mb. It gets back to the window manager as just being a graphical menu. Which is all it is. I liked it. On a 486-66 it would boot in about 2 second. and with the ami-pro word processor I could be typing something in 4seconds after post screen. Kind of makes you wonder why all the new computers are "slower" even though they are 17 years newer.

[Spice Weasel]

Win 3.1 was fast. and small at 10-40mb. It gets back to the window manager as just being a graphical menu. Which is all it is. I liked it. On a 486-66 it would boot in about 2 second. and with the ami-pro word processor I could be typing something in 4seconds after post screen. Kind of makes you wonder why all the new computers are "slower" even though they are 17 years newer.

Windows 3.1 didn't boot. :P It loaded. It was just a shell.

[lykwydchykyn]

Win 3.1 was fast. and small at 10-40mb. It gets back to the window manager as just being a graphical menu. Which is all it is. I liked it. On a 486-66 it would boot in about 2 second. and with the ami-pro word processor I could be typing something in 4seconds after post screen. Kind of makes you wonder why all the new computers are "slower" even though they are 17 years newer.

People wanted silly things like "network connectivity" and "rudimentary security", I guess.

[koenn]

I have no recollection whatsoever of starting this thread. :shock:

getting old ?

[beew]

Win 3.1 was fast. and small at 10-40mb. It gets back to the window manager as just being a graphical menu. Which is all it is. I liked it. On a 486-66 it would boot in about 2 second. and with the ami-pro word processor I could be typing something in 4seconds after post screen. Kind of makes you wonder why all the new computers are "slower" even though they are 17 years newer.

yeah I know some people who insist that the abacus is faster than the calculator and kung fu is more lethal than bullets.

[witeshark17]

Hahaha it's such an entertaining idea... Ima keep it in mind... :guitar:

[forrestcupp]

Yeah, but if you can find a thread that was started by a Forum Staff member, there's slightly less of a chance that it will get shut down. ;)

Still alive? Somebody needs to do a study on this.

[sydbat]

Still alive? Somebody needs to do a study on this.Maybe we should apply for a government grant...

[forrestcupp]

Death by inactivity.

Come on, guys. Let's keep this one going. :guitar:

[Frogs Hair]

Ouch !! Blast from the past (sorry link failed )

[TNT1]

yeah I know some people who insist that the abacus is faster than the calculator and kung fu is more lethal than bullets.

Yeah, and Chinese with their chop-sticks. You know they've seen the knife and fork...

[beew]

Yeah, and Chinese with their chop-sticks. You know they've seen the knife and fork...

Wrong analogy. Chopsticks are technologically more advanced than the fork, which is just like using your hand really, it even looks like a hand.

Yeah, I should have added to my last post those who think that floppies are superior to usb flash drives.

[Khakilang]

What is past is past, dead is dead. Let it rest in peace.

[beew]

Do you mean the thread or windows 3.1 (and abacus and floppies)?

[formaldehyde_spoon]

Win 3.1 was fast. and small at 10-40mb. It gets back to the window manager as just being a graphical menu. Which is all it is. I liked it. On a 486-66 it would boot in about 2 second. and with the ami-pro word processor I could be typing something in 4seconds after post screen. Kind of makes you wonder why all the new computers are &quot;slower&quot; even though they are 17 years newer.

I must have had some other "Windows 3.1" then, or much worse hardware than you...

[Khakilang]

You're trying to awaken the dead? They may not look good. But no one is going to kill the thread for that.

[blueturtl]

I've got a shorcut: make Ubuntu look like Windows 3.1 looking like Windows 2000/XP (http://www.calmira.de/screenshots/protus.htm) :P

[Roasted]

I have no recollection whatsoever of starting this thread. :shock:

Posting under the influence, eh? :popcorn:

[CJ Master]

Now I'm curious if progman runs under wine.

[forrestcupp]

Well, if they won't shut down a necropost made in a thread started by a Forum Staffer, maybe we can at least get this sent to the Cafe Games subforum. :)

[pookiebear]

I must have had some other "Windows 3.1" then, or much worse hardware than you...


Yes windows 3.1 was a shell...

If you take out the fonts except for the core 20 or so core ones It would "load" super fast. Then you could use one of the type manager programs to parse in the font you wanted if you were working in illustrator/photoshop or corel.
and it had tcpip as an add-on or built in with 3.11. Load a firewall for the same level of security you have now, which is almost nil.

[beew]

Yeah, DOS loaded even faster with no graphics, why even care about the desktop? Gone is the good old days where the computer interface was just a black screen with blinking green characters and everything was installed by floppies. It was soooo much faster if you just use the computer to learn how to type. :)

[lykwydchykyn]

Yes windows 3.1 was a shell...

If you take out the fonts except for the core 20 or so core ones It would "load" super fast. Then you could use one of the type manager programs to parse in the font you wanted if you were working in illustrator/photoshop or corel.
and it had tcpip as an add-on or built in with 3.11. Load a firewall for the same level of security you have now, which is almost nil.

Are you still running it?

[Spice Weasel]

I am, I boot DOS and launch 3.1 in about 4 seconds (32MB RAM and 486)

[formaldehyde_spoon]

Yes windows 3.1 was a shell...

If you take out the fonts except for the core 20 or so core ones It would &quot;load&quot; super fast. Then you could use one of the type manager programs to parse in the font you wanted if you were working in illustrator/photoshop or corel.
and it had tcpip as an add-on or built in with 3.11. Load a firewall for the same level of security you have now, which is almost nil.

Are you replying to my post?

I used DOS directly long after I acquired Win 3.1, because it was so much faster; 3.1 was very sluggish and clunky on my hardware (I have no memory of 3.1 load time though).
Until I bought another computer in fact, which came with XP pre-installed!

[Spice Weasel]

What? How can you use Windows 3.1 without DOS?

[formaldehyde_spoon]

What? How can you use Windows 3.1 without DOS?

Me? I wish people would use quotes! ;)
Re-read what I wrote; I didn't say anything about Win 3.1 without DOS...

[Spice Weasel]

I used DOS directly long after I acquired Win 3.1

Why would you acquire 3.1 before DOS?

[robert shearer]

Ok, necrophiliac that I am...
There was a less old thread about a W3.11 skin, look for it.
From what I remember, it was quite good.

Way too much information for a family oriented forum.

'Necromancer' would be more than sufficient...:P

[formaldehyde_spoon]

Why would you acquire 3.1 before DOS?

Need one more even closer look: I used DOS after I acquired W3.1. Obviously I already had it... :p

[Spice Weasel]

Oh, right. Sorry. :P

[an0dos]

Need one more even closer look: I used DOS after I acquired W3.1. Obviously I already had it... :p


Back in my day we didn't have windows and fancy buttons clickety click. We had sticks and rocks. And we liked it!

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/8b/StatlerAndWaldorf.jpg

[Mulenmar]

Win 3.1 did not have a taskbar - that didn't arrive until win 95.

I'm well aware of that. My first computer was an IBM AT with MS-DOS 5.0 and Windows 3.1.

IceWM can be easily configured to not display a taskbar. It can even be compiled to have no taskbar support at all, which isn't as bad as it sounds. You could still right-click the desktop and easily access the menu, much like in Openbox.

As for the cries of "necromancy post!", I have been scouring the Internet for long-lost IceWM themes. That search began here in the Ubuntu Forums, where I found the post/challenge. I'm a regular reader of K.Mandla's blog, and know how much he/she is a fan of lightweight software, so I thought an answer to this would be welcome and (hopefully) entertaining.

Well, it certainly seems to have been the latter! :P

/me curses Freshmeat for deleting all IceWM themes and making him have to hunt down the last known existing, working mirror of the original IceWM theme archive (http://ftp.chg.ru/mirrors/ftp.x11.org/pub/themes/icewm/) on his way out.

[jimmybarcelona]

I was thinking a different vein. I'm a bit of a practical joker at heart, and I work on a campus with a computer lab. All of the machines in the lab run Ubuntu. We get a new batch of students in this week, and I thought it would be funny (and a bit of a challenge) to see if I could get them to think they were using Windows. So not quite like bringing back windows 3.1, but still potentially funny. Then I could say something like "Ha! You've been using Linux all this time." To which they would probably reply something along the lines of "What's that?".:shock:

[Spice Weasel]

/me curses Freshmeat for deleting all IceWM themes and making him have to hunt down the last known existing, working mirror of the original IceWM theme archive (http://ftp.chg.ru/mirrors/ftp.x11.org/pub/themes/icewm/) on his way out.

Most of those can be found in the package icewm-themes. :P

[formaldehyde_spoon]

Need one more even closer look: I used DOS after I acquired W3.1. Obviously I already had it... :p

Back in my day we didn't have windows and fancy buttons clickety click. We had sticks and rocks. And we liked it!

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/8b/StatlerAndWaldorf.jpg

Not quite the right idea...
I don't like DOS, and I never did.
I'd used GUIs long before W3.1 came along (Amiga, Atari ST) and thought they were fantastic (a million times better than DOS).
I was extremely excited about Win 3.1, and couldn't wait to get it onto my computer.

I kept using DOS on my computer because I had little choice: Win 3.1 was so slow and sluggish it was almost unusable.

Moral of the story: don't jump to conclusions.

[an0dos]

Indeed.

[inobe]

Do you mean the thread or windows 3.1 (and abacus and floppies)?

ram disks :lol:

edit: constantly ramming disks

[Mulenmar]

Most of those can be found in the package icewm-themes. :P

Debian's icewm-themes: 69 themes.
"The mother-lode mirror": 167 themes.

Neither number includes the alternate, sub-themes. The second number only counts the newest version of each theme.

Granted, there are a few Win95 themes. :P But even those are a small fraction of the total.

If anyone knows where a mirror of the lost themes from Freshmeat is, I'd be happy to go through those as well. The mirror I mentioned before only has the themes from the original ftp.x11.org theme site used from the 1999 to 2001. I've already downloaded most of the themes on box-look.org as well.

[red_Marvin]

I was thinking a different vein. I'm a bit of a practical joker at heart, and I work on a campus with a computer lab. All of the machines in the lab run Ubuntu. We get a new batch of students in this week, and I thought it would be funny (and a bit of a challenge) to see if I could get them to think they were using Windows. So not quite like bringing back windows 3.1, but still potentially funny. Then I could say something like "Ha! You've been using Linux all this time." To which they would probably reply something along the lines of "What's that?".:shock:

This might be easier than you think, windows 3.1 is becoming old enough that many new students do not have any experience with it.

As a fifth year university student, who draws the line between old and new tech by the x86 processor and msdos, I find this a quite odd feeling.

[Ibidem]

On Puppy there was a package--13 mb for more like 197 themes.
It's a .pet though, so what you do is:
copy to location
tar -xzf
Ignore the "trailing garbage" error (it's a 32-byte md5sum).
Look inside root/.icewm/themes

Same goes for all the other Puppy themes.
Probably you have most, but there are a few oddball ones. The Royale series was good; one theme (something-reanimated) was nice, but screwed up fullscreen Youtube videos.

Just BEWARE: the (p)kde(2) themes are dangerous. They have killed X more than once for me; the fix is editing ~/.icewm/theme manually.

[toupeiro]

Why on earth do you need a theme??


wine progman.exe

enjoy?

[Mulenmar]

On Puppy there was a package--13 mb for more like 197 themes.
It's a .pet though, so what you do is:
copy to location
tar -xzf
Ignore the "trailing garbage" error (it's a 32-byte md5sum).
Look inside root/.icewm/themes

Same goes for all the other Puppy themes.
Probably you have most, but there are a few oddball ones. The Royale series was good; one theme (something-reanimated) was nice, but screwed up fullscreen Youtube videos.

Just BEWARE: the (p)kde(2) themes are dangerous. They have killed X more than once for me; the fix is editing ~/.icewm/theme manually.

Hmm, maybe they damaged those themes, or compiled IceWM differently and exposed a bug somewhere. Debian's versions of pkde, pkde2, and kde2 work fine with IceWM 1.2.37 and 1.3.7 here.

Let's bring the "finding themes" discussion over to Project Permafrost's Hailstorm forum (http://sourceforge.net/apps/phpbb/icewm-themes/viewforum.php?f=4), and let this thread rest in peace. ;)