Looking for a specific desktop/distro
 

I'm looking for primarily a desktop environment that looks and feels more like a mid to early 2000's computer and less like a tablet (KDE Plasma, GNOME4?) and all that new stuff like Deepin or any sort of "sleek" desktop/distro.

I want small icons that look like pixel art, and a desktop environment without 6145283800 unnecessary features. I want the bare minimum on a desktop where everything looks straight out of an old computer. things like the old icons for RedHat or square window frames like on Win98, even like on KDE2 and DSL (which is amazing but does NOT work with my current setup). I guess in a word, what I'm looking for is retro, but I would also like modern things on a desktop environment (as long as it's not bloatware).

Does anyone know of anything nearly similar to what I'm describing? I've tried amiwm, Xfce (probably the best out there right now AFAIK), Trinity, CDE, JWM, and so many others. None of them seemed to do it for me. Xfce got very close, but there's something missing.

I appreciate the help in advance, and I apologise if this is the wrong forum to post this in.

:hattip:

Have you considered a retro icon theme pack?

This article is a bit dated but may give you a nice starting point.

www.google.com/amp/s/www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2010/06/daily-5-five-retro-desktop-themes/amp

Thank you very much for your response, Mechanikx. Unfortunately, I have used most of these in the past. they're cool, but they still rely on a modern desktop environment, which is something I am looking for, but not with all the bells and whistles, like some of the desktop environments I mentioned above. I noticed that the ones I hadn't used yet (BeOS on OS/2) were for GNOME, and even if they weren't, they have no icons to go with them.

You can make Xfce (and other desktops) look like just about anything you want.
I was just fooling around with an old windows XP theme and icons for Xfce.

Here is a good place to start, https://www.xfce-look.org/

And, here is a very useful article on how to customize the Xfce desktop,

https://www.lifewire.com/customize-x...onment-2202080

I double-posted. Sorry, please ignore this.

Xfce is indeed very customizable, but are there any Distros that include it as default? In my experience, I've always downloaded Xfce as a secondary desktop and the bloatware from the original stayed because some functionalities did not work properly on Xfce.

Sorry I couldn't be of more help.

My thinking was you could trim down a desktop to a suitable level then apply a retro them.

Good luck in your search :)

Slackware.

Isn't Slackware super difficult to use? I really, really don't want an OS where I have to spend the whole day trying to figure out how to make work. I'll give it a chance though. Thank you.

You can always try a Fedora spin. As in https://spins.fedoraproject.org/.
There is an XFCE spin there which is a live distro with the ability to be installed straight from the boot image. It still comes with a bit of bloat but it wont have a lot of the KDE and GNOME stuff.

If you like the old W98 look, the IceWM used in AntiX may well suit your needs, & it's a great distro. :)

https://antixlinux.com/

Looking for a specific desktop/distro
 

Slackware is not difficult to use. It is however designed to be a full installation. Probably not what you want.

Several either have Xfce as the default or you can select it during the installation.
You can look through the information on numerous distributions at,
https://distrowatch.com/

BTW, I've never thought Slackware was difficult to use, but it doesn't hold your hand. Help can be found
at, https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/

But, first, look here,
https://docs.slackware.com/start

It comes with Xfce, which you can pick as your default desktop during the installation process and, as someone else pointed out, a full installation is recommended. Once you understand it and know what you want and don't want, you can prune what you don't need. Many people who are not fans of KDE remove it. I've done that, but found there are a few (of the many) KDE applications I have use for every now and then, so I keep just enough of kde to run those apps.

Xubuntu is very good. Before I started using it on an old laptop, I was skeptical about anything Ubuntu but I've had no problems. You are certainly right about using the default environment for a distro: just adding a different GUI and switching sometimes works fine, sometimes leaves you with little bits missing or not quite right.

The problem with Slackware is not that the installation is difficult but the fact that unless you try to customise (that can be difficult) you end up with a computer full of KDE but without such useful items as a decent word processor. The answer is Salix: Slackware with added user-friendliness, lots more ready-to-run software, and the Xfce desktop by default. But Xubuntu boots in half the time.

I'll not disagree with the suggestion of Slackware above as I know XFCE installs work well.
My choice, however, is the "expert install" option when installing Debian and choosing XFCE as default.
Has LXDE been mentioned? It "does the job", in my opinion, but I prefer the flexibility of XFCE.
Oh, and if you want to try a paradigm shift then try Ratpoison...