SerenityOS is a love letter to '90s user interfaces
171 comments
·April 22, 2025dailykoder
GuB-42
> What I dislike the most on modern UI, and maybe absolutely hate, are all those super slow animations.
Slow animations are a way to hide latency, they are essentially loading screens. Apple is really good at it, or at least it was with the early iPhones, and a reason why iPhones felt so smooth compared to their Android counterparts while not being actually faster. For me, it is an impressive technical feat and it took years for Android to catch up (see: "project butter"), and in the end, it was mostly by brute force, i.e. putting ridiculously overpowered hardware in smartphones.
Remove the animations or make them faster (you can do that sometimes), and the lag may become apparent.
Why you have latency to hide in the first place is another problem. There may also be some clueless designers who put slow animations for no good reason, maybe because they are just copying Apple, not understanding why Apple did it in the first place.
cosmic_cheese
There are also some animations that that have utility beyond eye candy in communicating to the user what’s going on, which is particularly important for non-technical individuals.
For example the animation associated with minimizing windows in most desktop environments makes it crystal clear where your window went after you press the minimize button, even for novices. Removing that animation makes the interaction significantly more confusing.
winternewt
Those animations are a no brainer because they both communicate something meaningful and don't get in your way. While the animation is happening you can keep working with whatever you were doing. I think a great UI can both be animated and allow you to work unhindered, if the designers put their mind to it.
bgarbiak
Well, the iPhones were in fact faster. Faster at playing the animations, at least.
I worked on an app in the iPhone 4S and Galaxy S II era and we wanted to use the same trick on both: smoothly animate the view switch between user interaction event and the API response. It worked super smooth on iPhone, and it was jittery as hell on Android. In the end we left the animation on the former, and move the users straight into the loading screen on the latter.
zozbot234
> Slow animations are a way to hide latency, they are essentially loading screens.
Except that most of the time there really isn't any latency to be hidden, the action becomes effectively instant once you remove the animation. Starting a new app (or switching to an app that was evicted from memory) is the main exception and that's quite rare.
washadjeffmad
Sometimes it's a decision made for consistency of expectation.
shaftway
> Remove the animations or make them faster (you can do that sometimes), and the lag may become apparent.
This is my number one trick on Android phones. Enable developer options and change the animation speeds from 1x to 0.5x. It makes your old phone feel new.
cyberax
> Slow animations are a way to hide latency, they are essentially loading screens. Apple is really good at it, or at least it was with the early iPhones, and a reason why iPhones felt so smooth compared to their Android counterparts while not being actually faster.
Now it got flipped. I turned off animations on my Android phone, and it's great. And now every time I have to use iOS (for app development), everything seems to be moving in slow motion.
And you can not turn it off! Apple in their infinite wisdom doesn't provide ways for app developers to disable animated transitions.
LoganDark
> Apple is really good at it, or at least it was with the early iPhones, and a reason why iPhones felt so smooth compared to their Android counterparts while not being actually faster.
Is that why iOS animations always feel so slow to me? Modern phone hardware can do things so much faster, but the animations are still utterly sluggish in my opinion. Worse, there's no way to speed them up; even with reduced motion, slow movements are simply translated into just-as-slow fades, which are somehow even more obnoxious.
abraxas
Agreed on the animations but that isn't my top of the list because as you observed, those can usually be disabled. The most annoying aspect of modern interfaces is total inconsistency in looks and behaviour across different applications. Even common action icons vary in style, colouring and shape from one application to another. Title bars are hijacked for whatever fanciful ideas the app designers had in mind, scrollbars and other basic widgets are rarely drawn using native desktop components, tab ordering is a dream of the distant past and so on and that's if a given app even responds to the tab key.
btbuildem
You would've really hated software in the early 90's -- every single thing had an aesthetic of its own. It was actually quite wonderful, and a lot of style/"personality" embedded in these design choices.
bentcorner
The utmost worst was software that had complete custom UI, filled with buttons that didn't really look like buttons.
Media software and game launchers were usually the worst offenders.
mikepurvis
Are you thinking here of pre-multitasking desktop usage, stuff like DeluxePaint, Scream Tracker, that kind of thing?
Certainly the late 90s was the heyday of desktop consistency on Windows, in the 95/98/ME era, I think driven largely by the conventions Microsoft established in Office. And I believe Mac OS gave pretty good platform-level guidance then too, so things were generally okay with a few exceptions— stuff like media players that have always been more on the fanciful side.
ryandrake
Yes, it’s wonderful having to figure out 50 different UIs designed by 50 different artists with 50 different ideas of what a drop-down should look like and how it should work.
ferguess_k
It's different that back in the early 90s everyone at least agrees that people don't want to disable certain important UI elements by default.
SirFatty
Personally, I dislike the flatness. It's hard (at times) to distinguish one from another when multiple windows are open.
whatevergoes
Window shadows are the solution here in my experience.
WD-42
It’s to be expected when almost every app is electron or some web wrapper, that all consistency is lost. The only way to get it back (kinda) is to avoid those apps.
Cthulhu_
But for a lot of use cases that's not possible anymore, that is, a lot of the applications using the OS' UI libraries are no longer maintained.
And a lot of people have to use the applications as supplied, e.g. Slack or Microsoft Teams. Which can be accessed via a web browser, sure, but dedicated apps for these are also nice because they have a dedicated spot in the app switchers.
prmoustache
This is self induced misery.
Nobody forces you to install and use apps made of a different toolkit (or version of said toolkit) from the one shipped with the desktop.
You can use only Cocoa apps on MacosX, qt6 apps on a kde plasma 6, gnome/gtk4 apps on a gnome3 desktop or whatever is the equivalent in the windows 11 world.
chairhairair
This will never happen because:
1. Companies will always want to brand their apps with their particular UI styles.
2. In order to prevent the above, the OS would have to deliberately NOT expose the ability for apps to control their own pixels.
Doing 2 means you are making it impossible to support many application types (photo editors, games, etc.).
NOT doing 2 means that app companies will eventually use the same APIs that the photo editor and game applications use.
ryandrake
The OS / UI toolkit should be strongly opinionated, making the consistent, happy path easier to develop and making customization possible but with great effort.
dharmab
Some projects are doing (2) anyway to get a better result. Examples: Kitty, Zed, File Pilot.
ferguess_k
My No.1 pet peeve is the scrollbars. Somehow every modern UI designer hates it, and hates it deeply. They always want to get rid of it. And TBH I'd prefer the other way around - how about we get rid of them instead?
cosmic_cheese
There’s a similar disdain for menubars which I really can’t understand. The disorderly and abbreviated hamburger menus that most often are used as a replacement are just worse on every single axis except for maybe visual appeal. They throw out what could be the single strain of consistent usability across apps in favor of looking good on a PowerPoint slide and web marketing blurb.
aidenn0
Two of GNOME's recent updates have made searching menus for a rarely used item incredibly painful:
1. Replace the menubar with a hamburger menu; in some cases the hamburger menu then contains file/edit/&c. so it's just a spurious extra click
2. Require a click to see the contents of a submenu and a click to go back
Fortunately my most-used GNOME application (Evolution) has an option to restore the old behavior for both of those, but I literally cannot think of the motivation for these two changes that clearly make things worse. The only halfway plausible idea I have heard for #2 is that the GNOME UX designers think that submenus are bad, so if you make them hard enough to use, developers will stop putting them in their applications. #1 is probably partly a looks thing, and partly a "too many people have fewer horizontal lines on their screens than I did in 2004[1]" thing.
1: That's when I got a 1600x1200 monitor; people today with 1080p screens have only 56 more lines than the 1280x1024 monitor I had been using since the previous millennium
mike_hearn
Hamburger menus work much better on mobile screens that are horizontally constrained, are less visually intrusive when not in use and don't require at least two levels of nesting like classical desktop menu bars do.
mo_42
I agree. Hamburger menus aren't any better than menu bars. It seems like an example where design has more importance than function.
My alternative to the menu bar would be a search bar that allowed me to search in a Google style everything related to that program: functions, features, shortcuts, and documentation.
File | Edit | View | etc. is not the right choice for every program.
sombragris
Agreed. And the worst part is that you could use a (well designed) menubar with a keyboard by using the Alt-key combinations together with cursor key menu navigation and similar techniques. But you don't have that luxury in hamburger menus. You are forced to use a pointing device such as the mouse, or if you are lucky, a completely non-standard key combination to bring it down. Awful.
jimbokun
Certain long emails I get don’t show the scroll bar at all in iOS Mail, and I get low grade anxiety not knowing how long the email is or how much more is left.
I’m also perplexed why the mail developers would allow such a thing or what kind of bug causes such behavior.
ferguess_k
My hunch is that they are just using an existing framework that does that, and it may require some digging into the configuration to disable that (or worse, have to change some code). Since this is never going to be an urgent thing it will never be fixed.
I work in MacOS VSCode frequently, and whenever I open a large repo with a huge number of files, it's PIA to find the scrollbar. I have to hover the mouse above it to make it appear, but how can I hover above it without knowing where it is?
BTW if you share the same frustration with VSCode, please vote this ticket: https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/244123
bromuro
> Certain long emails I get don’t show the scroll bar at all in iOS Mail, and I get low grade anxiety not knowing how long the email is or how much more is left.
Yet in iOS you can swipe vertically some pixels and you will see the scrollbar telling you this exact information.
thewebguyd
> What I dislike the most on modern UI, and maybe absolutely hate, are all those super slow animations.
This is what drives me crazy on macOS. Specifically, the animation for switching between virtual desktops. When I hit Ctrl+1/2/3/etc I want it to switch instantly, no animation - not slide into place. It's even unresponsive until the animation finishes.
nextos
I don't use Mac because I prefer Linux tiling WMs, but this is easy to fix?
Most animations can be disabled using the defaults system.
I think the desktop animation option is called workspaces-swoosh-animation-off or similar.
I also recall that Settings > Accessibility has a reduce motion option that disables lots of things.
doix
I have to use a Mac for work and it drives me crazy. I disabled everything I could find, enabled reduced motion preferences or whatever it's called and still got some animations.
My "solution" is to use Aerospace [0], which reimplements window management. That's the only way I found to not have animations. Unfortunately i still feel some delay when switching windows compared to i3wm/sway in Linux.
airstrike
I use the Aerospace tiling window manager for macOS just so I can move my apps to different spaces and opt+key move to them. usually vscode in opt+1, firefox in opt+2 and discord in opt+d
ZuLuuuuuu
I hate the default animation speed of Androids that come with Pixel phones. They are too long and makes it feel like the phone is slow. One of the first things I do after buying a new phone is to half the animation durations using developer settings, and the phone feels much faster.
imiric
> Good font rendering
A large part of the charm of these 90s UI recreations is precisely the lack of antialiasing and other niceties we expect of modern UIs. There was another project recently on HN that uses modern font rendering with a Windows 9x look, and it's just not the same, IMO. SerenityOS comes closer to what I remember, though it still doesn't quite match the look of MS Sans Serif(?).
aembleton
You might need a CRT to properly recreate the look of a 90s UI.
immibis
You can always turn it off. I don't think lack of antialiasing is what gives these UIs their character.
mardifoufs
I agree that it is charming when I want to tinker with stuff. But if it's for "real world " usage, I don't think that being charming matters a lot. I mean, it really depends, not everything has to be about "serious" usage but if it's the intended goal then I think that good font rendering is something that still matters a lot.
I still use chrome sometimes for example just because it seems to have a better font rendering (on Linux but also on Windows) than Firefox. It's completely irrational in a way but it does matter sometimes
cjbgkagh
AFAIK there was a case being made at the time that the animations were to provide predictability in performance, users get into a bit of a rhythm and it was better to slow everything down a bit to lower the overall variance of response. This made more sense when HDDs were slow.
ulrikrasmussen
Agreed! Whenever I use someone's phone I instantly notice how sluggish it feels with animations turned on. If I offer to turn them off they often get surprised at how much faster the phone feels after.
My pet peeve: Animations are a crutch used by designers who think they need them when in fact they should just have improved the UI so users don't get confused about the origin of a popup or window. The only justified use of animations in UIs that make sense is in scrolling, everything else is just adding latency to hide your incompetence.
zozbot234
> If I offer to turn them off they often get surprised at how much faster the phone feels after.
If you're using Android there's also a "visible touches" option you can turn on in the Developer settings. It's a big UX enhancement of its own and IMHO should be promoted to the Accessibility settings (together with the options for speeding up or disabling animations).
arcanemachiner
What are the benefits of enabling this feature?
pdntspa
Idunno man, I enjoy the animations. They're a big part of the 'feel' of MacOS. But they could be faster in some cases.
raxxorraxor
Peak usability in my opinion. Space efficient and simple.
Not my favorite design and color scheme, but certainly better than what modern Windows looks like.
That has no direction and doesn't even look modern. And the line of text with "Windows Update is committed to helping reduce carbon emissions" is as superfluous as many other controls as well. I mean nice for MS, but it really doesn't belong there.
klabb3
> Peak usability in my opinion. Space efficient and simple.
Disagree. Aside from nostalgia, there are numerous visual clutter issues that affect the ability to overview. Not to mention the aliased text rendering. Then you have double click to open files/dirs which might feel normal, but both younger and older people struggle with (like long press on iOS) + knowing what can be double clicked. My mom always asks me if she’s supposed to double or single click. But she can use a smartphone UI without my help.
That said, the one thing I like compared to modern designs is the very clear layering (with awful fake bevel 3d but nevertheless it does the job). This makes it very clear what toggle state a button has, and also which things are on top of other things.
Suppafly
>My mom always asks me if she’s supposed to double or single click. But she can use a smartphone UI without my help.
That's honestly just an old person thing to do, usually coupled with a huge helping of learned helplessness "I just don't get these newfangled computers" and refusing to learn anything new. Show them right click one time and they'll forever ask if you if something that they've always double-clicked on requires a right click.
klabb3
[delayed]
dijit
double click vs single click is interesting, seems nobody knows how to handle an object needing to be interacted with more than a single way.
Maybe the right idea is to just pick one arbitrarily and stick to it consistently.
I’m only mildly joking, UX guidelines are basically just this. There is no way to make people implicitly know how to do things (skeuomorphism was a solid attempt).
In society it’s only things like hammers that have a universal/innate understood use.
mixmastamyk
Single-click was implemented possibly by 2k but definitely by XP. Think it had to do with IE—yes, details below.
zozbot234
You could single-click to open files in Windows 98 already. You could also hover your mouse pointer on a file icon and it would become selected.
null
lurk2
> And the line of text with "Windows Update is committed to helping reduce carbon emissions" is as superfluous as many other controls as well. I mean nice for MS, but it really doesn't belong there.
I agree with you wholeheartedly, but would note that this isn’t anything new. I can remember seeing messages like this on HP and DELL machines as early as 2007.
gjvc
somewhere, "simplicity is a feature" got lost in the everyday computer experience
no_wizard
It seems sometimes the past is better than the future that came after.
In my opinion, peak usability for platforms I use:
- iOS 6
- Windows 7
- Snow Leopard
- Windows Phone 10 (may actually have been the best mobile OS user experience I ever had)
bee_rider
Are those the systems you learned as a teenager/young adult?
I felt the same way about XP, despite it being generally regarded as a UI abomination. I think it was just familiar.
Anyway, I eventually shook lose of that nostalgia, and for me the best usability has been more recent. The wmii/i3/sway family of window managers are have been just great: simple, to the point, and automatic.
I dunno. There are pretty clearly some bad trends in computing generally and mainstream UX specifically, but improvements are still bouncing around in the margins.
cosmic_cheese
Snow Leopard is pretty good, but personally I’ve found that Mavericks (10.9) edges it out for the little bits of polish it has that SL doesn’t, as well as its brighter more cheery color scheme. The only big downside of Mavericks for me is that it’s missing Snow Leopard’s 2D grid of virtual desktops and instead only has the linear arrangement found in modern versions. I really miss the 2D grid.
NoSalt
It's funny that you mentioned "Snow Leopard", as Apple moving on from that OS version was my reason for going Linux 100% of the time, and I haven't regretted the switch at all.
lurk2
The thing that gets me about iOS is that they tanked responsiveness in exchange for such a small number of features that don’t even work well.
Zambyte
Can you elaborate on what you enjoyed about the Windows Phone? I've heard people say they liked it, but I've never really dug into why before.
dartharva
Current interfaces are generally a lot more simpler than those ones though?
Are you saying those elaborate 90s style window menus are somehow simpler than iPad interfaces?
MyPasswordSucks
> Current interfaces are generally a lot more simpler than those ones though?
Unless and until you need to do something that isn't one of the three or four basic functions.
> Are you saying those elaborate 90s style window menus are somehow simpler than iPad interfaces?
A perfectly-designed window menu is going to be simpler than a perfectly-designed iPad interface. There's only so much you can really have access to in iPad/Android-land, and any functionality that can't be encompassed with tap/long-tap/tap-and-drag is going to require a drastic break from the ordinary functionality. With window-menus, since you're already using window-menus for lots of stuff, it's not as drastic a break from the routine.
Now, I was careful to say "perfectly-designed" for each, because around the edges it can absolutely be a bit of a pain (my favorite go-to example is finding a "preferences" menu, which in Windows software can be in any of File > Preferences, Edit > Preferences, Tools > Preferences, or Options > Preferences - among many other options; and sometimes there's even a separate "Settings" menu with different options buried somewhere else), but even so, more often than not, window-menus still win by virtue of flexibility.
gjvc
Current interfaces are generally a lot more simpler than those ones though?
Are you saying those elaborate 90s style window menus are somehow simpler than iPad interfaces?
"simpler" == "easier to find the feature you need", not "fewer gui items to click"
Also, do you realise you attempting an apples to pears comparison?
dartharva
Horrible accessibility. I couldn't make out jack without my glasses on those UIs, unlike current interfaces and fonts.
zozbot234
The original 1990s version could be scaled by just picking different pixel sizes for the UI elements. And the tiny 16px icons and labels would actually look quite nice in a basic 640x480 resolution.
cesarb
> And the tiny 16px icons and labels would actually look quite nice in a basic 640x480 resolution.
For those who didn't live through these days: the physical size of common computer monitors wasn't very different from what we have now (other than being more square, bulky, and really heavy), but the resolution was much lower; 640x480 was not just a "basic resolution", it was the standard display resolution everybody used (a higher 800x600 resolution became common later). Icons, labels, fonts, etc, were designed to be readable and look good on a typical-sized CRT monitor at 640x480 resolution. The whole user interface was designed to work well at 640x480 resolution.
mixmastamyk
“Large fonts” was a setting back then.
adamgordonbell
It's a super cool project that boots up surprisingly fast. You can just grab the git repo and and `Meta/serenity.sh run` and its starts up in qemu on my mac.
I interviewed Andreas about it some time ago:
signa11
oh i listened to this podcast couple of days ago. lovely stuff, and i _really_ like the human side of it. a lot actually.
your podcasts are really great from that perspective. thank you !
pakyr
How's this project doing after it lost its founder and biggest contributor (Andreas Kling)? I see the commit history is still reasonably active, so it's not dead at least . . .
INTPenis
They only show the good part of 90s UIs, the standardized part. They don't show the part where every installer wanted to look unique, weird ICQ clients.
cryptonym
That was every installer looking unique now it's every app wanting to look unique.
breadwinner
Win95 UI is a cheap copy of NeXTSTEP. The original is so much nicer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXTSTEP#/media/File:NeXTSTEP_...
Fr3ck
"nicer" is very subjective. To me it looks like a train wreck.
Suppafly
>"nicer" is very subjective. To me it looks like a train wreck.
This, it looks like the most generic x-windows client ever.
pak9rabid
I suppose one could always use WindowMaker if they're looking for that experience:
breadwinner
This is much nicer: https://github.com/trunkmaster/nextspace/blob/master/Documen...
VyseofArcadia
Another roughly contemporary point of comparison, Haiku OS: https://www.haiku-os.org/slideshows/haiku-1/
thesuitonym
I'm very curious to hear why you feel that way. Windows 95 always felt like more of an amalgamation of CDE and what Mac OS was doing at the time, than anything to do with NeXTSTEP.
breadwinner
NeXTSTEP's interface (1988–1989) used subtle shading and depth for buttons and windows, creating a dimensional appearance. Its visual design pioneered the use of shading for depth in GUIs.
Microsoft's timeline:
CTL3D.DLL: Introduced circa 1991–1992, primarily for Windows 3.1 applications (not the OS itself). It added 3D effects to dialog boxes and controls but was optional for developers.
Windows 95: Introduced native 3D controls (e.g., recessed buttons, drop shadows) as the system-wide default in 1995, eliminating the need for CTL3D.DLL
SSLy
NextStep is virtually unknown outside of USA. DOS/Win clones have much bigger absolute market cap measured in eyeballs.
TheAmazingRace
If you're referring to the window buttons especially, I can definitely see that. I did hear that Microsoft did acquire several NeXT Computer boxes in the early 90s to study the hardware and the operating system, and I'm absolutely sure it played a role in influencing Windows 95's look and feel.
jeroenhd
NeXTSTEP is peak programmer UI. It looks absolutely atrocious, even by early GUI standards.
Windows 95's success was in part because Microsoft put in the effort to test and write good standardised UI controls and configurations. Throwing a bunch of UI elements on a heap with pretty high-res (at the time) graphics makes for a good freeze frame in a movie but a terrible UI.
MS copied from everyone, like Apple did before them and Unix display managers did after them, but their copy was far from cheap.
kccqzy
As someone who hasn't used NeXTSTEP before, can you explain why it is nicer?
raffael_de
The appeal of this UI can be boiled down to: form follows function + vintage rendering. Minus the vintage design it's basically isomorph to most common Linux window managers. Be it Cinnamon, xfce, KDE, mate ...
But if there was a good Windows 95 theme I'd probably use it.
lnkl
Would you consider Chicago95 a good theme? https://github.com/grassmunk/Chicago95
paradox460
No, it's a love letter to windows and CDE. It's missing out on the features that made NeXT, BeOS, and other 90s operating systems interesting
Heck it doesn't even have windows shade mode, that Mac systems had
averageRoyalty
This is a very cool art project.
Is there a practical daily driver Linux that has this feel and vibe? Can I do this cleanly with GNOME/Debian or XFCE/Manjaro, or a bespoke OS with an underlying package manager?
thawkth
The closest I know of is Blue95. I have only run the live environment but it worked pretty well and was impressive.
"Blue95 is a modern and lightweight desktop experience that is reminiscent of a bygone era of computing. Based on Fedora Atomic Xfce with the Chicago95 theme."
https://github.com/winblues/blue95
Depending on your chosen desktop and era, there are also things like TDE (trinity desktop environment) a fork (or spiritual successor) of the KDE 3.x environment: https://www.trinitydesktop.org/media/screenshots/large/tde3....
And if you like Gnome 2.x, there's MATE: https://mate-desktop.org/
zozbot234
https://github.com/grassmunk/Chicago95 and https://github.com/B00merang-Project/Windows-95 get quite close if you use them together. The B00merang one has presets for the GNOME/Cinnamon/MATE desktop and a GTK+4 theme (which adds terrible padding compared to the usual GTK+3 one, but at least it has visible and properly 3d-shaded widgets).
thesuitonym
Most window managers will have a theme that looks like the old 90s. They're commonly named things like "Chicago," or "Redmond."
astro1138
fvwm95, or newer: https://github.com/jcs/progman
I'd love a similar compositor for Wayland.
agos
it's basically windows 95, there does not seem to be other influences?
agumonkey
Windows 96 I'd say
HeckFeck
https://windows96.net/ - It's real!
mickael-kerjean
and so is windows RG edition: https://demo.filestash.app/login?type=webdav&url=https://web...
mtillman
Serenity is an amazing accomplishment. It’s odd to me though because I always hated the windows interface, even 3.11. It seems a lot of modern Linux desktops (I know serenity isn’t Linux) try to emulate the feel of modern windows but it ends up looking like a meh version of an already bad interface imo. I still prefer the look of enlightenment or motif+4dwm.
cmrdporcupine
The classic Unix interface that always seemed nicest to me was Sun's OpenLook.
secondcoming
I'm concerned MS might enforce copyright over some of those UI icons.
chrsw
Neat. Reminds me of the KDE Classic interface. KDE 1.
sombragris
I'm using a good replacement with my Plasma 6: Reactionary KDE1 window decoration, Reactionary theme, and MS Windows 9x Qt widget style.
andrea76
The former maintainer published a video summary every month on YouTube about SerenityOS progress. And now it seems that anyone does it
The UI in terms of space and usability looks great. Two "modern" things I don't want to miss: Good font rendering and a fast application launcher (mod -> type a few characters -> enter). What I dislike the most on modern UI, and maybe absolutely hate, are all those super slow animations. Just gimme the damn thing, I don't need those animations. (Yes I know on most plattforms I can disable them, but this often takes quite a few steps)