GNOME 1.4 styled Mint?

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warden
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GNOME 1.4 styled Mint?

Post by warden »

Hey people!

I've been using Mint as my first Linux distro for a few months now, and I really like it. I think it looks cool too, as I have everything styled to Mint X with white and teal blue folders. I'm a big fan of the aesthetic of computers from the 90s and early 2000s, and I'd love to have a desktop styled like that without losing any functionality.

So anyway, I logged onto 4chan today just to see what was happening, when I saw THIS:
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GNOME 1.4! Here's some more pictures:
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I don't I ever believed in love at first sight until I saw GNOME 1.4 lol. I adore how it looks!

Now while I'm still new to Linux, I've heard you can kinda mix and match parts of your OS, and I think Mint uses Cinnamon as it's desktop environment? I just wanna know if it would be possible to swap out Cinnamon for GNOME 1.4, because I think I might run into some trouble because GNOME 1.4 is, uhh, 21 years old.

Can anyone tell me more about this? And what do you think of old computer aesthetics?

Thanks! :D
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 2 times in total.
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rossdv8
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Re: GNOME 1.4 styled Mint?

Post by rossdv8 »

You can do most of that using 'Themes', 'Style' settings 'Window Decorations' etc and most depends on your Window Manager. Unfortunately I do not use Cinnamon.
I use Mint Xfce with loads of weird stuff like Transparent File Managers etc.
But I can replicate almost all of what is going on in those pictures by clicking a few

Most of the styling you see in those pictures is not actually 'Gnome 1.4' itself.
It is the display 'toolkit' that the Desktop Environment in Mint or any other distro uses to paint stuff on the screen.

I suspect that Mint Cinnamon is using GTk2 and GTK3, although I can't be sure. Those are easily configured to look like most of the pictures.

Have a look through your Settings.
In the Search part of your Mint Menu, type things like:
decoration
That should bring up things like 'Window manager', Window Manager tweaks (if you have it installed)

style
Style should offer 'Window Manager' and perhaps something like 'Appearance' as options

I can't help you much more than suggesting those few things as a starting area to look at, because I have my Xfce system so heavily customised that most of the default items like Window Manager and Window Manager tweaks, that usually work with Cinnamon etc. do not work in my Xfce.
Current main OS: MInt 21.3 with KDE Plasma 5.27 (using Compiz as WM) - Kernel: 6.5.0-15 on Lenovo m900 Tiny, i5-6400T (intel HD 530 graphics) 16GB RAM.
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sebastjava
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Re: GNOME 1.4 styled Mint?

Post by sebastjava »

Mint comes in 3 different desktop environments (DE). The most popular, and best, is Cinnamon.

Can you confirm you are on Cinnamon ? Type this in your terminal:

Code: Select all

inxi --basic | grep Desktop
Please don't try to change your DE. As said before, you only need to change the appearance.

In Cinnamon, go to Menu > Preferences > Themes.

You probably want to change everything: window borders, icons, controls, mouse pointer and desktop. The most important one is the Controls. That's the main GTK theme. The current Cinnamon is mostly made of GTK 3, but still supports GTK 2, and will include GTK 4 in the upcoming Mint-Y theme for Linux Mint 21.

You could possibly find some retro looking themes in one of those:

1. Software Manager
2. https://cinnamon-spices.linuxmint.com/themes/popular (or just click Add/Remove in Themes)
3. https://www.pling.com/browse?cat=381&ord=latest (Gnome/GTK and Cinnamon sub-categories)

This last one here, Pling, offers a huge quantity of homemade themes for everyone.
The future Linux Mint Forums is here.
Self-Appointed Benevolent Designer on Linux Mint Cinnamon.
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