> I'll also lament the loss of bold, opinionated design. "Modern" compositors are either minimal to the point of nothingness, or insipid and generic. They don't look like the awesome UIs you'd see in old hacker movies, or the classic systems that were backed by 500 page HCI standards guides, they just look like the sort of UI you'd use in an textbook where you wanted to imply a GUI without anything specifically branded.

On Mastodon I follow a bot that posts screenshots of old Mac Kaleidoscope schemes and the creativity on display both leaves me in awe and makes me sad that no modern windowing system can hold a candle to it. With Kaleidoscope there were no rules. You could do a hacker OS[0], or game UI[1], or titlebars on the left[2] or underneath[3], or non-rectangular and chrome[4], or made of denim[5], and those are just a few of the thousands of wildly different themes[6].

Nothing on modern Linux comes close. Even if you seek out third party themes all you find are dozens of minor permutations on popular flat themes like Material and Nord. It's so dull.

[0]: https://macthemes.garden/themes/24c0f39f11eb-net-ghost/ [1]: https://macthemes.garden/themes/8f7b145a33f3-Millenniac [2]: https://macthemes.garden/themes/95203ae3bfe0-my-sidewyas-os/ [3]: https://macthemes.garden/themes/6da656d65263-modulus/ [4]: https://macthemes.garden/themes/7e008718df3c-dt-chromxium-tw... [5]: https://macthemes.garden/themes/0305d1075f5e-dt-denim/ [6]: https://macthemes.garden/