this question is twofold, I'm on a retro kick and I was wondering which distro is most like windows 2000, and which wm looks most like it

Another way saying the puzzle:

"Which cow is most like a buffalo;
and which angel looks most like it (demon)."

Answer:

Since their looks are often different,
but only rarely similar, then,
if they are not the same
they are different.

I've seen the complaint that Xfce looks like Windows 95, so try that! Mint and SalineOS have good live disks. Mind you, I've never had a Windows computer, so I'm no expert here!

I think you would like LXDE or IceWM. (They can be installed in any distro.)

1 members found this post helpful.

I use the gtk fallback theme (works on gnome and xfce probably any gtk based one) for best speed. It is very much like Windows' 95 theme (ok, not exactly, but close enough). Also it has distinguishable speed improvements over any other theme (on a recent dual core computer).

The idea is the following (this is under xfce, but works similarly under gnome):

1. Create the $HOME/.themes directory if it doesnt exist.
2. Create a directory with the name of your theme (i used xfce-fallback) under .themes ($HOME/.themes/xfce-fallback)
3. Create a directory named gtk-2.0 under your folder ($HOME/.themes/xfce-fallback/gtk-2.0)
4. Create an empty file named gtkrc ($HOME/.themes/xfce-fallback/gtk-2.0/gtkrc)
5. Go in the Settings Manager -> Appeareance -> Style, select the theme

You will see that everything will be gray with blocky widgets/buttons/etc. These are the built in gtk widgets, much like the basic Windows themes.

Are you prepared to work at it? Essentially, if you are prepared to do a little work, really most distros (and many wms) can be made to look like Win 2000...although the question why anyone would want to might be a more difficult question for anyone else to answer.

Look for "win2000 theme linux" (or add a wm name to that) in you favourite search engine, and you'll find a lot of stuff to play with; some will be more thorough than others, and some only give you win-2000-alike icons, but I'm sure that you'll find something.

I think you would find the task easiest by using an Xfce desktop. To get where you want though, you'll have to go through the themes and move some stuff around. That goes for any distro.

W2K was so great! In fact, it's still my favorite Windows Operating System. It was so fast and reliable. Adding process isolation and non-admin accounts by default made all the difference!

Come to think about it, why run a cheap ripoff clone when you can just the real thing? Be sure to invest in a good client side firewall though

hawaiianshirt3,

By the way my initial reply was not explicit. What I meant there is that as an OS with a DE Gnu/Linux has of course everything you need as you would have at Windows 2000: that's for the "likeness" between the two.

But since Gnu/Linux was implemented through a different (better) philosophy its current capability, stability and speed is generally wider and far better than that of Win2000: and that's for their "unlikeness".

Hope this helps.

mm