RetroBar VS reactos

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)

https://reactos.org/ implement some of the windows API

You can use Rufus: https://rufus.ie/en/

To modify the ISO to turn off hardware check and TPM support for Windows 11 to install it on an unsupported PC.

https://github.com/pbatard/rufus/wiki/FAQ#user-content-Help_...

Besides Linux and BSD Unix there is: https://reactos.org/ https://aros.sourceforge.io/ https://www.haiku-os.org/ and https://www.arcanoae.com/arcaos/

I know some third-world nations still use DOS and the BORLAND DOS compilers because people donate old computers to their nations.

With the right OS, old computers are still usable. Please don't throw them away, e-cycle them so they get used by poor nations that cannot afford new PCs.

ReactOS is sometimes very disappointing. Take the issue with toolbar icons, for example. Toolbar icons in at least Office 97, Office 2000 and Visual Basic 6 were affected, as was some game [0]. Microsoft Office is a complex Win32 application, making it a good guinea pig for testing compatibility. And yet, this was fixed a few months ago, and the Office bug was reported in 2016 [1]. The bug with no text wrapping for tray balloons is also an embarrassing thing to have lingering for years (I assume it was like this since the balloons were first implemented in ReactOS).

Does the world really need a buggy Windows Server 2003 reimplementation? I think the efforts of the development team could be better spent elsewhere.

[0]: https://github.com/reactos/reactos/pull/5227

[1]: https://jira.reactos.org/browse/CORE-12377

Anyone tried ReactOS recently? Supposed to be a clean-room FOSS Windows NT compatible OS.

https://reactos.org/

It's still on my TODO. Mostly cause my parents want XP back.

> It's whitespace. There's wayyyy too much god damn whitespace in modern UIs, and it's awful.

I wanted to see how LibreOffice would compare on my netbook, and frankly it's better than the new Word, but still "worse" than the old version: https://i.imgur.com/cWGYh3M.png

That said, at least LibreOffice lets you have your custom themes and actually offers a variety of different interface layouts, which I think is a nice touch: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Videos/User_interface

> Windows 7 with the Classic theme (which really was just a slight evolution over Win2K) was peak UI/UX, and you'll never change my mind. It's been downhill ever since, getting worse and worse with each generation.

To be honest, I'm inclined to agree with this. That's also why I rather enjoyed the Redmond theme even in *nix distros. There's just something so very usable about the old Windows look and more modern attempts, such as SerenityOS https://serenityos.org/ and even ReactOS https://reactos.org/