RetroBar VS i3

Whenever I set up a new computer for older family members, despite it being windows 11, I always install open shell[1] and retro bar[2]. Between the two, I've made the operating system look very close to Windows XP visually, and they always appreciate it.

[1] https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu

[2] https://github.com/dremin/RetroBar

https://github.com/dremin/RetroBar replicates all old taskbar and I have been using it for a long time now. Works perfectly on Windows 10.

I wanted that toolbar for a very long time, didn't know it now exists. Thanks for recommending. I have switched to https://github.com/dremin/RetroBar/ for a very a while now but this is very intriguing.

Classic taskbar

Gibt's auch in OpenSource: https://github.com/dremin/RetroBar

not sure if this is the right place to post but windows 11 was restricted and the description says that anything that has the microsoft windows xp look and feel is welcome here so here i go. this here is a guide on how to make windows 11 (and maybe 10, didnt test it on that) look like windows xp, but slightly more modern. first get retrobar, from here. then once youve done that run the setup (it might ask you to install dotnet, so do that.) then run it. now right click your taskbar and click on properties. then youre gonna leave everything the same except for the theme, wich youll set to windows xp royale. once youve done that click ok. now you need openshell. you can get it right here. then install that and go launch "open shell menu settings." now in start menu style set it to classic with 2 collumns then click select skin (right under the option i just told you to click) and set it to windows aero, and have the options like this. no icons in second column on, show user picture on, show username on, center usernname optional but i reccoment off, small icons on, large font off, reduce glass color off, and finally, white sub menu's on. then click ok. now get the dark theme bliss from my google drive over here, and set it as your wallpaper, you dont have to, but it makes it look better. then get the recycle bin icon somewhere on the interwebs and go to settings>personalisation>themes>desktop icon settings. then set the empty bin to an empty windows xp bin ico file. and set the full one to the same one, or if you have time (and disk space) to waste, set it to a full version of it. now youre done! ill try to figure out how to change the windows 11 logo in about windows and give an update once i get that done. thats it for now, bye!

It's a bit complicated, but I mainly used some 3rd-party tools like Winaero Tweaker, WinClassic's SimpleThemeTray, RetroBar, and OpenShell to achieve this effect. As for the icons, I used a fresh Windows XP install for this, which someone extracted all the icons from said fresh install and put them on the Internet Archive. :)

RetroBar (Windows 9x/XP like status bar)

While I believe Memory Saver was a great improvement, it only works if the tab is hidden or the window minimized. I recently learned the required state is not triggered if the tab is open but on another virtual desktop. At least this is the case with many of not all Linux window managers. Some of the many discussion threads on the topic:

https://github.com/i3/i3/issues/4353

> This is very true, and unfortunately there are very few people working on linux accessibility (including not me! I am part of the problem!).

Accessibility work itself ironically suffers from an accessibility problem. I brought up i3wm above, the issue for that is pretty illuminating: https://github.com/i3/i3/issues/3393

It's not that the devs are saying "this doesn't matter", the devs behind one of the most popular tiling window managers in the X11 ecosystem are saying, "this does matter, but we don't know how to fix it. We don't know what changes we'd need to make to get Orca working."

It's a really fundamental breakdown that's kind of a tragedy because I honestly believe that if accessibility communities were more heavily baked into testing and development in Linux and if this wasn't treated like two separate worlds, it would be better for everyone -- fixing accessibility concerns very often improves interfaces across the board and makes them more powerful.

But... how do you bridge that gap? I don't really know, I tried looking into Orca to see what would need to happen here and bounced off of it pretty hard, it's not a very approachable tech stack and there aren't tutorials or getting started guides. And on the other side of the issue I can preach about needing accessibility input during interface design, but I'm not in a position to give specific advice because I don't use screenreaders or alternate control schemes and I don't know what the biggest problems are.

The people who need to be involved in that process can't get involved because there's a tech barrier in place even for technically inclined people, and because the underlying software locks them out from the start. i3wm isn't ever going to get someone who's intimately familiar with Orca to jump into the conversation because the people who need to use Orca can't use i3wm. So that leaves the people who can address that tech barrier, but they don't know what to do or how to approach the problem because of the lack of involvement and because the communities are isolated from each other. So it's a chicken-and-egg problem and I don't know how to solve it.

This is partially why i use tools like i3 (/ sway). i like the tool; it works extremely well for me; the design has stayed the same for 20 years; there's no profit motive to come along and fuck everything up. it just works. it is boring in the best way possible.

I use MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid-2014) with Manjaro as OS using i3 as a window manager. It isn't perfect, but I'm thrilled with it. I have been a Mac OS user for the last 15 years and wouldn't change what I have now for a Mac OS because I don't need more than what I'm using for development.

Even though, we have moved the official i3 support channel to GitHub discussions, i3's biggest community is still on reddit and if things continue like that there is going to be a lot of helpful content on an increasingly closed platform.

for example, take i3. https://github.com/i3/i3/issues/4478

For daily usage I really like kubuntu with i3wm, but it takes some configuration and getting used to the shortcuts, but it's well worth it