Windows 95 is probably the oldest OS easily usable by young people. It's fascinating because:

- It has established strong foundations about Windows UI. The Menu/Toolbar couple, scrollbars with a relative size, 3D buttons, start menu, toolbar...

- The gap between Windows 3.1 (1992) and Windows 95 is insane.

- It was beautifully coherent. Today, Windows 10 seems like a mess with different UI pieces from different universes: Modern UI, Windows Vista/7 era utilities, Windows XP/2003 config things and some older gems. Fun thing: open a Word document from a pendrive and unplug the pendrive, MS Word will show an error box from Win95 era, asking to insert the floppy in the drive.

- When booting a VM or an old computer with classic Windows I feel "at home". Our first family computer when I was a child was a Pentium II / Windows 98. I have strong reflexes with this kind of UI and I'm faster with classic window and menus compared to my phone or a tablet with modern touch interface.

> It was beautifully coherent.

And that's because it copied heavily from NeXTSTEP of the late 1980's.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXTSTEP#/media/File:NeXTSTEP_...

That beveled look was invented by Steve Jobs's team, and copied by Microsoft.

I would much rather use NeXTSTEP look & feel than Windows 10 or even OS X.

I want to go to the alternate timeline where a major distro actually picked up the GNUstep ball and ran with it, and built out a full desktop based around WindowMaker. It's still faster and more fun than most modern desktops.

> It's still faster and more fun than most modern desktops.

And doesn't even look (too) dated when paired with a compositor: https://i.imgur.com/YJkDMjr.png

If Wayland could just give me this I'd switch to it in a heartbeat, versus possibly-never :(