I’m going to break radio silence a little bit, and drop a post here for the first time in years.

I’ll say up front that if these screenshots offend you, I won’t apologize.

Nor will I apologize if you find these somehow irritating.

In fact, if you don’t like them, I really don’t care at all. Simply because what I use on my computer is not your business.

Horrified at the thought that someone might still use an interface that was designed before you were born? Deal with it. Can’t believe someone wouldn’t find the Luna-esque Windows XP themes oily and kitsch? Tough. Think I’m a troll if I claim Windows 2000 was the last good Microsoft operating system? Suffer.

The thing is, I still use desktops like that from time to time, maybe just to irritate readers like you, but maybe because it’s what I like.

I got a lot of traffic over the weekend to an old page I drew up a few years ago, about massaging IceWM to follow the look of the old Windows XP Classic theme. The referring site linked to my page, and to another that wasn’t mine, that offered some themes intended to XP-Luna-ify Lubuntu. That’s what you see in the top photos.

I knew it would happen. Unless I’m mistaken, Tuesday was the death knell for Windows XP. Some well-meaning Linux enthusiasts are pushing the OS of their choice, with an XP makeover, as an alternative to buying the newest slop out of Redmond.

And surprisingly (to me, anyway), the majority of the feedback on that referring site was negative. Don’t lull a Windows user into using Linux. You’re doing them a disservice. Tell them to adapt or perish, now as ever, as is nature’s inexorable imperative.

Take a step back for a second. Try to think like you’re not the geek that we both are. 😉

There are a lot of people — a lot — for whom a computer is not a hobby, not a passion, and not the locus of their waking hours. For them, computers are just tools, probably in the same way cars are for other people. Or microwave ovens for others, or bookkeeping for others … or you name it for whoever.

A computer to them is just an object. It’s a thing. It doesn’t hold any great curiosity, it’s not interesting to pull apart, and it doesn’t enthuse them beyond what they need to get a job done. A car gets you from point A to point B, and a computer gets you from point C to point D.

I can sympathize. I have a lot of dis-interests like that. You could talk to me all day about laptops and free software, and you’d lose me the second you changed the subject to real estate or the stock market. It just doesn’t grab me.

So for those folks who need something that behaves how they expect, and does what they need, and looks the way they know … I fail to see the harm in setting up a desktop that is arranged the way they want it.

And if that doesn’t squelch your quasi-insurgent anti-establishment justifications for Ludovico techniques, consider the possibility that Lubuntu rearranged to look like the original Windows XP startup screen might just be what they like.

About five years ago I put fingers to keys and pounded out a list of four hideous reasons to adopt Linux, the last of which was “duress.” Actually, looking over it now is a good reminder of how things were, and what they’ve become.

I won’t retract that last item though. I still think being “forced” to use Linux, either through deceit or the expiration of a 13-year-old operating system, is a bad idea.

But I can’t see the harm in giving someone a newer, or even a different operating system at their request, and then rearranging it to resemble what they know and expect. Or just plain like.

And now, one more, to see if I can trigger a gag reflex in that last tiny segment of the audience who actually read this far:

Linux Mint Petra, MATE edition, done over to look like XP. Why? Because I like it that way. 😈