EDIT: v0.9 released
and a dark version
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.
Am I weird for actually wanting to use this out of nostalgia? I distinctly remember thinking at the time that the gradients on the window bars were the coolest thing ever, especially because you could configure them to be whatever wacky colours you wanted.
I’ve tried a couple versions of this out of nostalgia a few times like using chicago95 and some other custom options. you can pretty much get it right to the classic feel of old Windows GUI’s but then you start using it and think “how did I ever use a PC like this?” especially when you’re so used to minimal tiling. it’s fun for a bit but I always just ended back to like sway or something.
I don’t personally have any nostalgia for the Mac interface, but I do wish Plasma 6 had a good latte-dock replacement.
Latte has been deprecated because its features are (afict) all now included in the base plasma panels.
You can make extra panels, have them float, have them dynamically change size, use panel colorizer to retheme only one (if desired).
On my ultraportable I’ve got a sidebar and a lower dock. The sidebar has actively running apps, my menu bar for open windows, a big honkin app launcher button, and my notification panel. My dock has all my frequently used apps, and some shortcuts to frequently used websites. All just minimal plasma-session + panel colorizer.
How do you do dynamic resizing without Latte?
In edit mode when changing the location of the bar there should be an option for “fit content” under height Example: (sorry about the moire pattern, low res screen)
Sorry, I mean the thing where application icons grow as your cursor passes over them.
OH! I actually don’t think that’s possible without some kludging.
You could make a panel for each icon, have them side by side, and use Panel Colorizer to make them grow on hover, but that’s mega-tedious. Totally doable though. I’d hate to see plasma’s ram requirements with like 9 panels each being monitored for activity though, I suspect the performance on that setup would be rough.
The feature I haven’t been able to replace from latte was dynic transparency. Basically I want to have my taskbar transparent when no windows touching it, but look normal when overlapping a window or something’s maximized
So like, inverted show/hide?
I’m not sure I understand, I’d be interested in seeing it though, it sounds peculiar and I love (for novelty) peculiar UIs
Yeah, basically but with all the buttons and icons still visible, just the background color turned transparent.
I’ve migrated all my systems to plasma 6, but I’ll check if I have any old screenshots laying around
In my mind it’s weird to use any light theme at all now that dark themes are widely available, but if you are going to, this isn’t any weirder than any other.
Another disadvantage it seems to have over many other themes is that in tabbed interfaces there is no color bar on the currently active tab, so you can’t spot the currently active tab as quickly.
Dude, preferences. And not everybody uses their computer in a dark room.
It isn’t any of my business whether other people use light themes… but IMHO dark themes are just so much easier on the eyes, no matter the surrounding light, that I don’t get why anyone would if they have the option.
For me, light themes are easier. Especially jarring, if a website forces a dark theme on me (theres’s a easy-to-use @prefers-color-scheme, use that, will ya). And syntax highlighting on dark just doesn’t work for me, no matter the scheme.
I was contemplating how to make a dark version of this lol
If you come up with one, I might start to use it. I generally like the classic Windows style because the first computer interfaces I ever used looked like that, but nowadays I definitely insist on dark mode.
How’s this? added in v0.7
That looks good, I might try it over the weekend. :D Thanks for the effort.
I’m also uploading v0.8 with darker borders too, unfortunately that’s a separate package from the colorscheme, it’s built into the svg file in Window Decorations