I really just put a bunch of pieces together. Forked from Reactionary Plus, but swapped out the icons, cursors, window decorations, color scheme, and made some slight tweaks to the layout.

More screenshots and changelogs here: https://store.kde.org/p/2330858

To install this, open System Settings, go to Colors & Themes -> Global Theme. In the top right there's a button for "Get New...", wait for it to load (it's very slow) then search for reactionary, and wait again, then install Reactionary 98.

This is my first time messing with any of this stuff, it was a bit janky lol.

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[–] hexagonwin@lemmy.sdf.org 22 points 2 days ago (3 children)

tbh it doesn't really accurately look 98, especially the taskbar, but it still looks great. nice functional unix desktop.

[–] ArsonButCute@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Agreed on the taskbar. If they added 'bevels' to the edges to give it that depth that Win98 had then maybe, but this taskbar looks flatter than Windows 8.1 as is.

Honestly as a whole it kinda just looks like Windows 10 with all the visuals turned off in the performance settings, which is fine, but its not what OP was going for.

If it were me, I'd spend some time in Gimp to make a custom start icon with the text on it, then go for a smaller taskbar, about 3/4 this height. I'd add a line of shading around the top and side of the taskbar and the buttons, and figure out how to retheme the notification panel to be the same shaded color so it appears depressed into the bar.

Windows 95/98 had a design philosophy which was meant to emulate the office, the literal desktop. Desks are 3D and have features, even the simplest ones usually at least have trim at the edges to break up the color. Its too flat. Too sterile.

[–] Die4Ever@retrolemmy.com 7 points 2 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I’d spend some time in Gimp to make a custom start icon with the text on it

Yea you can't add text to that button (EDIT: I was wrong, doing this for v0.8), but embedding the text into the icon image is a good idea, maybe I'll do that today (if it can handle non-square images)

and I gotta figure out a proper size for the taskbar, just need to compare the padding size relative to the text size

I’d add a line of shading around the top and side of the taskbar and the buttons, and figure out how to retheme the notification panel to be the same shaded color so it appears depressed into the bar.

idk if this is possible from a theme

[–] ArsonButCute@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I just saw your v.8 update that looks sick! I agree the noti-panel stuff may not be possible with just a theme on Plasma, about half of my customization experience is with lxqt and not plasma so I forget what is possible where sometime.

[–] Die4Ever@retrolemmy.com 1 points 1 day ago

Thanks! Yeah I mean worst case scenario, technically someone could program a replacement widget, but it'd have to be someone else, cause I think that's more work than I want to put into this lol

[–] Die4Ever@retrolemmy.com 6 points 2 days ago

thanks for the feedback, I made a bunch of improvements for v0.7

[–] Die4Ever@retrolemmy.com 6 points 2 days ago

thanks, I actually did manage to improve the taskbar a lot for v0.7

[–] refalo@programming.dev 0 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Wouldn't an exact replica be technically illegal?

[–] hexagonwin@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 1 day ago

well if you slap microsoft's logos on it well maybe, technically.. but who cares?

even back in the days there were a LOT of unix desktops made to look like windows as now. try searching fvwm95 for example

[–] piccolo@sh.itjust.works 1 points 22 hours ago

ReactOS gets by with it