... Is that Sinfest? From before the author went weird? If so, then that's certainly a very different way of feeling old than I expected when clicking the link.
P.S.: There's another in "RiscOS 3.71", and "System V Release 4 Amiga Version 1.1" references Penny Arcade. [0]
I don’t see any pie menus, so I’m leaning towards agreement...
mananaysiempre•May 12, 2026
Patents are very good at stifling progress and learning, even bogus ones.
grebc•May 12, 2026
Probably more accurately 40-45 years.
yjftsjthsd-h•May 12, 2026
It's funny how early some things do and don't look familiar. A decent chunk of unix-family OSs have changed some since then, but also kinda not. CDE 1.0 looks almost exactly like the latest version:)
Where did the author get a copy of pre-X-integration NeWS, I wonder (if indeed they did). I haven’t been able to locate one online after a lot of determined searching, but I also can’t bring myself to declare that there isn’t one because the name is so ungoogleable.
There is a `man` entry displayed in a terminal window there. The first Unix I've ever touched was HP-UX on an HP-9000 (server series, not the workstation one), and I have this memory that the underlined words you can see in that manpage as well were actually hyperlinks you can select and would bring you to the relevant section of the manpage that discussed that term. Am I fabricating that memory or is it real? I cannot find any info about it on the Internet.
yread•May 12, 2026
I thought only `info` had hyperlinks
darkwater•May 12, 2026
In the GNU world, indeed. And that's why it makes even harder for me to remember exactly, it was 30 years ago, I was clueless and also Linux was already "big enough" to have some Red Hat installed in some x86 PC in the same lab.
aa-jv•May 12, 2026
My 'first Unix' was MIPS Risc/OS, and it had that feature too.
jll29•May 12, 2026
I started with HP-UX 9.03 on a PA-RISC-powered 715-75 (to
use Emacs, our whole research group logged into the 735 server to edit there, which was faster than running it locally).
Any unclean pointer fiddling in C, and the process was terminated by the OS, so the machine was wonderful to use as a development box (especially with Purify installed) for software that would later be run on Windows or Linux.
I eventually bought my own refurbished (and using academic discount) 715 (instead of a car), so I had the fastest machine in our student dorm of anyone I knew, undergrad, grad student or professor. I could just write my Master's thesis when everyone else kept re-installing Windows - the HP never crashed in 6.5 years, which has left me with deep respect for the old-schol (pre-Compaq) HP engineers. The machine (21" color CRT) occupied half of my 9 square metre dorm room, but it also kept me warm.
inatreecrown2•May 12, 2026
What a wonderful resource!
HP VUE has interesting color choices and a nice "Dock"
pedrogpimenta•May 12, 2026
This is like porn for me :)
It's one of my favourite things, looking at and analyzing older interfaces. Some are lovely, some are cute, some are ugly, but most are... "naïve"? I love to think about the effort, the research, the trials and tribulations. I feel I will spend a great deal of time in this page!
repelsteeltje•May 12, 2026
> [..] lovely [..] cute [..] ugly [..] naive...
First and foremost to me those screenshots are somewhat disappointing as they can't match my memories. NeXT, BeOS, Irix, OpenLook, SunOS, Arthur (imagine the diversity)... they were SO awesomely impressive at insanely high multi-sync CRT resolution.
Reality simply can't match the mind's eye, at least not for me.
oniony•May 12, 2026
I love how little df has changed since 1985.
livinglist•May 12, 2026
Sometime I wish time goes slower
aidos•May 12, 2026
Alleycat in CGA just hit me hard.
For the people that didn’t live through this time, lining these images up makes it obvious why those that did speak of how visually impressive the Amiga was.
whynotmaybe•May 12, 2026
Nothing beats a 40 year nostalgia in the morning!
Except missing that sock and falling down into the dog's path and understanding the concept of fighting like cats and dogs.
I just found out that the theme song is on Wikipedia.
This leaves me kind of sad, that we've had such little innovation in desktop / window-managers for 30 years.
Certainly it doesn't feel any easier to manage multiple windows than when we had a quarter of the screen space.
adrianwaj•May 12, 2026
I am starting to think the top half of the screen should be the desktop, the bottom half should be the start menu but already activated and full of programs. No conventional bottom panel-bar with a start button. A right-most column should exist that fills up with a list of opened windows. [1]
When I first saw Win95 with a cleared desktop, I immediately thought - where has everything gone? Why is this empty? Decades later I still think it's cumbersome to have to look and press at bottom left to see all the programs every time.
[1] proportions and locations can be set
Also, a "sweep" button that quickly clears the desktop into a "desktop archive." I do that manually anyway with my own "sweep" folders. Every few months I delete and categorize within the sweep folder. Keeping the desktop clean and organized is the new frontier, especially as screens become smaller and people don't want to lose flow.
Verbose response, but what are your thoughts? Maybe use voice recognition that uses lip-reading through a camera to launch or modify?
Mice and keyboards are just so passe, right, but I wouldn't go so far as getting a brain chip? Maybe a spherical "touchball" that senses the pressure of each finger to move a cursor? Trackballs are too laborsome. I have my mouse on maximum sensitivity and acceleration anyway.
pjc50•May 12, 2026
Screen real estate is precious unless on the very largest screens. Especially vertical. I'm a big fan of being able to put the app list/bar on the right, keeping the maximum vertical space available and allowing its captions to be readable horizontally.
> Maybe use voice recognition that uses lip-reading through a camera to launch or modify?
This feels like the result of a competition to design the worst possible user interface. To about 5% of people it might be an accessibility feature, to everyone else it's worse, and people with beards, marks, or dark skinned faces are going to find it a disaster.
adrianwaj•May 12, 2026
"are going to find it a disaster."
True, it's not a good solution and there is Subvocal Recognition (SVR) that detects electrical signals in the neck or jaw using pads. Hall effect keyboards are pretty good in terms of sensitivity I find.
Lip reading by HAL was also a disaster for Frank Poole.
Maybe a large screen that can easily be flipped vertical/horizontal would work well. People already do it with the their smartphones - why not stationary screens? Have the OS detect when it happens so it can make any predetermined layout changes. Maybe have it rotate using a small motor? Cable connections into a base unit to avoid entanglement.
In terms of screens - I think two volume dials to adjust for brightness and another one for blue-light would be ideal. It should be super easy to do at a hardware level. On 24 hour programs if really pedantic. Maybe an external "volume dial" pad that can be plugged into a USB-C would be suffice and it could have a light and movement sensor as well to take a computer out of (and into) suspend and set the desired brightness according to the environment.
There are rechargeable closet lights that already have movement and light sensors - just need to adapt it to a screen.
It's suprising at first look that GEM tops my preferences
but I recall having a very fond time on the Atari ST 520+.
It had one of the best b/w monitors and TOS+GEM was orderly and uncluttered.
Only preemptive multitasking and per-window menus were missing. As a plus, the OS was in ROM, so boot times were <1s.
bronlund•May 12, 2026
I can't help thinking about how much we have lost. Just finding the scrollbar nowadays can be a challenge. Not to mention if you want to resize a pane - in some applications they seem to have taken extra steps to make it difficult to find the line to grab.
pjc50•May 12, 2026
Operating systems of that era were designed based on UX research to help people use the unfamiliar operating system.
Subsequent ones were designed by UI designers, and opinionated senior managers, who already knew how to use them, and took out usability features to make them "look nicer". This sort of worked when the opinionated manager was Steve Jobs. Most managers are not Steve Jobs.
> in some applications they seem to have taken extra steps to make it difficult to find the line to grab
Pet peeve of mine in Windows where the line is at most one pixel now. They also took away the coloured distinction between title bars for the active window, so you don't know where keystrokes are going to go.
BoredPositron•May 12, 2026
That brings back memories from pre press days and the SGI Indigo machines. They did some heavy lifting for the time.
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.
eloisant•May 12, 2026
Even before those, AfterStep, Enlightenment and many others were really nice.
somat•May 12, 2026
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).
hermitcrab•May 12, 2026
Yes Aqua was quite striking. Also much more consistent than the rag bag of different styling you see on Windows or Mac today.
great list, would be cool to see each OS evolving over time.
NextStep/OSX was the only desktop OS that did not feel like a downgrade from Amiga Workbench
daneel_w•May 12, 2026
I'm sure someone reading this thread has UAE handy in order to contribute a screenshot of AmigaOS/Workbench 1.x.
andrewstuart•May 12, 2026
The Cambrian period of operating systems and GUIs.
FergusArgyll•May 12, 2026
There's a lot of nostalgia in the comments here. I wonder if any reader under say 25 is willing to comment; do you think OS's today are a regression? do those look better?
To me they look unwieldy, heavy and overwhelming and I can't help but think the love for them is just the love for youth or whatever
hermitcrab•May 12, 2026
There is definitely an element of nostalgia. However, a lot of earlier desktop OS GUIs do seem to be more internally consistent and with more emphasis on usability than the current crop. I think part of the issue is that things that might make sense on a phone have bled into desktop OSes, where they make a lot less sense.
FergusArgyll•May 12, 2026
I don't mean this in a dismissive way but based on your profile I'd say you're > 25. I'm curious about the perspective of someone who didn't grow up with the those os's
hermitcrab•May 12, 2026
25 is a very distant memory. ;0)
piekvorst•May 12, 2026
No Plan 9. Otherwise, resources like this might help studying how the interfaces of the past evolved (at least, on the surface).
ori_b•May 12, 2026
The plan 9 interface has evolved quite a bit, but it's largely invisible in screenshots. The differences are in things like triple click behavior, jumps to insertion points, effective use of mouse cursor warping, chording.
hermitcrab•May 12, 2026
Invisible scroll bars are a source of constant annoyance. And it sometimes takes me several attempts to move a window, because of all the various clickable things without visible boundaries. Frustrating.
anthk•May 12, 2026
On GNU/Linux run this command, it will fix it for all the GTK based desktops, such as XFCE, Gnome and Mate:
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface overlay-scrolling false
Under Mac you might have a similar Cocoa setting or whatever is called (nsproperties?) with "defaults write".
hermitcrab•May 12, 2026
I'm on Windows and Mac. Not because I love them, but because that is where my customers are. Also I try to keep my computers fairly vanilla, so that they don't look too different to the user's computer when I do videos or screenshots of my software.
ahmedfromtunis•May 12, 2026
Can't help noticing how the interface and general mechanics of these old OSes were tightly coupled to the hardware. Both the makers and users of that era seemed to relish that vibe. I know I certainly do.
However, that paradigm made computers daunting for anyone who wasn't an enthusiast. While I’m nostalgic for that level of transparency, I recognize that those hurdles stood in the way of mass adoption.
We might lament how 'dull' or 'abstracted' modern software feels, but technology's primary purpose is utility, not just to be venerated as an artifact.
THAT SAID, I still believe that user-friendliness isn't an excuse to strip away agency.
Modern simplification shouldn't feel like a forced lobotomy of the OS (or any piece of software really). There’s no reason we can't have both: an interface that stays out of the way for the average user, while providing total control for power users.
Whatever happened to progressive disclosure?
rschoultz•May 12, 2026
I distinctly remember, and found, the NeWS (Network extensible windowing sisten), where you could develop with PostScript(TM) for application windows.
q8zd3•May 12, 2026
I was not ready to start my day with a OS/2 Warp nostalgia feeling
shevy-java•May 12, 2026
GEM Desktop 1.2 looks sooooooo like the ancient Apple operating systems. I first saw this on a friends' parents computer and was quite astonished why computers may look like that. I was very used to Windows/DOS back then.
I am also glad to have switched to Linux in 2004 already. Once you have been using Linux for a while, whenever I use windows I am annoyed at how slow it is. Just file copy operations alone and then billion excuses windows developers make, trying to copsplain why it is so slow. When I have to backup 30GB, I don't want an explanation why it is slow - I simply use what is faster. And that's just one advantage of many more Linux has. (I use the commandline most of the time though, so KDE and GNOME are IMO just pointless eyecandy these days.)
prevailrob•May 12, 2026
Them beOS icons were lovely at the time
DVRC•May 12, 2026
The man behind this site is known for his skills of recoverying data from QIC tapes.
Looking at the "Software Library" section makes me always wonder if it will be released at some point, since that there is some stuff that isn't on BitSavers or other sites.
delta_p_delta_x•May 12, 2026
I really wish Windows 11 had a Windows 2000 mode. I want a grey, boxy UI, but I also want al the modern technologies Windows has introduced since—DirectStorage, D3D12, fast SSDs, device-independent pixels and vector UIs, all written directly against a Windows API that is modernised, safe, and easy to use. No React, no ads in my weather app; the only browser on my computer will be the browser itself.
40 Comments
Historical workstation desktop interface screenshots - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36191713 - June 2023 (55 comments)
Retrotechnology – PC desktop screenshots from 1983-2005 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15968745 - Dec 2017 (58 comments)
> /tmp/med_16.sixel
... Is that Sinfest? From before the author went weird? If so, then that's certainly a very different way of feeling old than I expected when clicking the link.
P.S.: There's another in "RiscOS 3.71", and "System V Release 4 Amiga Version 1.1" references Penny Arcade. [0]
[0] https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2005/01/05/the-merch#
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEOS_(8-bit_operating_system) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Softworks
At first glance it looks like this is much more breadth over depth. Quite an array of systems here.
There is a `man` entry displayed in a terminal window there. The first Unix I've ever touched was HP-UX on an HP-9000 (server series, not the workstation one), and I have this memory that the underlined words you can see in that manpage as well were actually hyperlinks you can select and would bring you to the relevant section of the manpage that discussed that term. Am I fabricating that memory or is it real? I cannot find any info about it on the Internet.
Any unclean pointer fiddling in C, and the process was terminated by the OS, so the machine was wonderful to use as a development box (especially with Purify installed) for software that would later be run on Windows or Linux.
I eventually bought my own refurbished (and using academic discount) 715 (instead of a car), so I had the fastest machine in our student dorm of anyone I knew, undergrad, grad student or professor. I could just write my Master's thesis when everyone else kept re-installing Windows - the HP never crashed in 6.5 years, which has left me with deep respect for the old-schol (pre-Compaq) HP engineers. The machine (21" color CRT) occupied half of my 9 square metre dorm room, but it also kept me warm.
It's one of my favourite things, looking at and analyzing older interfaces. Some are lovely, some are cute, some are ugly, but most are... "naïve"? I love to think about the effort, the research, the trials and tribulations. I feel I will spend a great deal of time in this page!
First and foremost to me those screenshots are somewhat disappointing as they can't match my memories. NeXT, BeOS, Irix, OpenLook, SunOS, Arthur (imagine the diversity)... they were SO awesomely impressive at insanely high multi-sync CRT resolution.
Reality simply can't match the mind's eye, at least not for me.
For the people that didn’t live through this time, lining these images up makes it obvious why those that did speak of how visually impressive the Amiga was.
Except missing that sock and falling down into the dog's path and understanding the concept of fighting like cats and dogs.
I just found out that the theme song is on Wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alley_Cat_(video_game)
Certainly it doesn't feel any easier to manage multiple windows than when we had a quarter of the screen space.
When I first saw Win95 with a cleared desktop, I immediately thought - where has everything gone? Why is this empty? Decades later I still think it's cumbersome to have to look and press at bottom left to see all the programs every time.
[1] proportions and locations can be set
Also, a "sweep" button that quickly clears the desktop into a "desktop archive." I do that manually anyway with my own "sweep" folders. Every few months I delete and categorize within the sweep folder. Keeping the desktop clean and organized is the new frontier, especially as screens become smaller and people don't want to lose flow.
Verbose response, but what are your thoughts? Maybe use voice recognition that uses lip-reading through a camera to launch or modify?
Mice and keyboards are just so passe, right, but I wouldn't go so far as getting a brain chip? Maybe a spherical "touchball" that senses the pressure of each finger to move a cursor? Trackballs are too laborsome. I have my mouse on maximum sensitivity and acceleration anyway.
> Maybe use voice recognition that uses lip-reading through a camera to launch or modify?
This feels like the result of a competition to design the worst possible user interface. To about 5% of people it might be an accessibility feature, to everyone else it's worse, and people with beards, marks, or dark skinned faces are going to find it a disaster.
True, it's not a good solution and there is Subvocal Recognition (SVR) that detects electrical signals in the neck or jaw using pads. Hall effect keyboards are pretty good in terms of sensitivity I find.
Lip reading by HAL was also a disaster for Frank Poole.
Maybe a large screen that can easily be flipped vertical/horizontal would work well. People already do it with the their smartphones - why not stationary screens? Have the OS detect when it happens so it can make any predetermined layout changes. Maybe have it rotate using a small motor? Cable connections into a base unit to avoid entanglement.
In terms of screens - I think two volume dials to adjust for brightness and another one for blue-light would be ideal. It should be super easy to do at a hardware level. On 24 hour programs if really pedantic. Maybe an external "volume dial" pad that can be plugged into a USB-C would be suffice and it could have a light and movement sensor as well to take a computer out of (and into) suspend and set the desired brightness according to the environment.
There are rechargeable closet lights that already have movement and light sensors - just need to adapt it to a screen.
GEM + Ventura Publisher http://www.typewritten.org/Media/Images/ventura-publisher-1....
Viewpoint http://www.typewritten.org/Media/Images/6085-viewpoint-2.0-p...
AUX http://www.typewritten.org/Media/Images/aux-3.0.1.png
It's suprising at first look that GEM tops my preferences but I recall having a very fond time on the Atari ST 520+. It had one of the best b/w monitors and TOS+GEM was orderly and uncluttered.
Only preemptive multitasking and per-window menus were missing. As a plus, the OS was in ROM, so boot times were <1s.
Subsequent ones were designed by UI designers, and opinionated senior managers, who already knew how to use them, and took out usability features to make them "look nicer". This sort of worked when the opinionated manager was Steve Jobs. Most managers are not Steve Jobs.
> in some applications they seem to have taken extra steps to make it difficult to find the line to grab
Pet peeve of mine in Windows where the line is at most one pixel now. They also took away the coloured distinction between title bars for the active window, so you don't know where keystrokes are going to go.
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.
A recent favorite of mine is this one. Timestamp starts at the final submission being reviewed: https://youtu.be/DxEKF0cuEzc?si=mqE_2vpKDBsMWlKW&t=557
NextStep/OSX was the only desktop OS that did not feel like a downgrade from Amiga Workbench
To me they look unwieldy, heavy and overwhelming and I can't help but think the love for them is just the love for youth or whatever
However, that paradigm made computers daunting for anyone who wasn't an enthusiast. While I’m nostalgic for that level of transparency, I recognize that those hurdles stood in the way of mass adoption.
We might lament how 'dull' or 'abstracted' modern software feels, but technology's primary purpose is utility, not just to be venerated as an artifact.
THAT SAID, I still believe that user-friendliness isn't an excuse to strip away agency.
Modern simplification shouldn't feel like a forced lobotomy of the OS (or any piece of software really). There’s no reason we can't have both: an interface that stays out of the way for the average user, while providing total control for power users.
Whatever happened to progressive disclosure?
I am also glad to have switched to Linux in 2004 already. Once you have been using Linux for a while, whenever I use windows I am annoyed at how slow it is. Just file copy operations alone and then billion excuses windows developers make, trying to copsplain why it is so slow. When I have to backup 30GB, I don't want an explanation why it is slow - I simply use what is faster. And that's just one advantage of many more Linux has. (I use the commandline most of the time though, so KDE and GNOME are IMO just pointless eyecandy these days.)