Oh boy, Windows Blinds were the thing for Windows XP. Longhorn theme for Windows XP? Remember Windows Blackcomb theme? I also remember customizing msgina.dll :)
Good to see at least two people remember the old Cairo shell :) I remember trying it out on Windows XP long time ago. I'd say it was even before 2010, as the alpha supported Windows XP and Vista.
Cairo shell has been around for quite a while though. I remember trying out alpha version on Windows XP many years ago. I'm not sure if the current version is a fork or someone sold the brand but it has been around for a longer time. I also recall it wasn't open source at first, but was later open sourced. It just never gained enough momentum and publicity.
It looks like they took the old blog post updates offline, but they’re available on Wayback machine [0]. The comments on posts back in 07/08 were consistently critical of the project’s slow development speed and use of photoshopped mockups to drum up hype.
Another heavy bookmarks user / hoarder here. I have around 30k bookmarks, so much bookmarks that Firefox freezes for a few seconds when I click on bookmarks menu bar item, because it tries to load them all within that drop down menu. I keep bookmarks sidebar permanently open without any slowdowns.
I've been using Firefox from its very beginnings so I can tell you I've tried switching to Chrome and Safari a few times over the years. Every time I tried to import bookmarks to other browsers they would simply crap out, while Firefox handled them without breaking a sweat.
Of course I continue to use FF for many other reasons but, at least at first, good and fast bookmarks management kept me using Firefox.
Lastly, if anyone knows a way to prevent Firefox to show all bookmarks in drop-down menu, let me know :)
That's a really good idea. To achieve similar result, I am currently using multiple Firefox profiles which have different proxies configured. I also have separate profiles for social media. It wouldn't be bad if they made profiles work in the same way or with similar functionality like containers work (profile per tab, each tab uses different proxy etc.).
Ideally, I'd love to have Firefox handle the whole proxying or even networking part. Like have each Firefox profile use different network gateway (useful when you want to route all network traffic trough VPN for example).
Came here to say that. Though I vaguely remember them trying some paid options even before Sophos. I recall using Sandboxie on Windows XP and Vista, back then it was incredibly useful to have such a tool.
Longhorn concept was awesome. I remember how crazy and advanced this Longhorn promo was https://youtu.be/b9ifQvQCO7Y
>Sadly, we all know how Vista turned out at the end.
Maybe with the first versions, but after a few service packs it was really usable. Hell, Windows 7 was referred to as "Windows Vista SP3" :)
But I do agree that Vista wasn't as Longhorn. I think they realized it was too demanding and too advanced so they decided to milk the concept ideas for later versions.
In the video, is the last application that opens when Longhorn starts up a package manager ? I've never really understood why both Microsoft and, especially, Apple have never tried to adopt a model similar to the one used by Linux distributions, positioning themselves as the intermediary between the end users and application developers. I suppose this is because they were focused on enterprise customers, and there was already a model in place for shipping software to such customers. However, for home users, installing applications have always been a tedious process that is full of risk.
> Apple have never tried to adopt a model similar to the one used by Linux distributions, positioning themselves as the intermediary between the end users and application developers.
Wait, isn't the prime example of an OS or device manufacturer doing that not “Linux distros”, but instead the app store model that Apple embraced we exclusive consumer mechanism for add-on software with iOS, and have since extended in less-rigid form (because of legacy expectations) to MacOS?
> Apple [has] never tried to adopt a model [...] positioning themselves as the intermediary between the end users and application developers.
I know it's in a way tangental to what your point was, but if you read this sentence again you'll realise that it is exactly what they have tried (rather successfully) to adopt.
> I think they realized it was too demanding and too advanced so they decided to milk the concept ideas for later versions.
there were major resource leaks in the file system and the shell that they just weren't able to fix. meanwhile the company kept piling in new features without having a roadmap for actually shipping the project.
Yes, and it works quite well. I've flashed the latest OpenWRT on my Unifi AP for a test, I'm really impressed with the performance. It also adds more features with OpenWRT packages.
Do note that some ubnt devices have custom firmwares blocked on newer software versions. For example Unifi AP and LR:
