Modern UX trends are a scourge of excessive whitespace and low information density that get in the way of actually accomplishing tasks.

Any project that rejects those trends gets bonus points in my book.

I sympathize, but I feel compelled to point out that the parent didn’t say that the interface had to look like a contemporary desktop.

In my opinion, I believe the Tiny Core Linux GUI could use some more refinement. It seems inspired by 90s interfaces, but when compared to the interfaces of the classic Mac OS, Windows 95, OS/2 Warp, and BeOS, there’s more work to be done regarding the fit-and-finish of the UI, judging by the screenshots.

To be fair, I assume this is a hobbyist open source project where the contributors spend time as they see fit. I don’t want to be too harsh. Fit-and-finish is challenging; not even Steve Jobs-era Apple with all of its resources got Aqua right the first time when it unveiled the Mac OS X Public Beta in 2000. Massive changes were made between the beta and Mac OS X 10.0, and Aqua kept getting refined with each successive version, with the most refined version, in my opinion, being Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, nearly five years after the public beta.

If you look at the screenshots it immediately jumps out that it is unpolished: the spacings are all over the place, the window maximize/minimize/close buttons have different widths and weird margins.

I thought that would be immediately clear to the HN crowd but I might have overestimated your aesthetic senses.

Look at screenshots -> wallpaper window. The spacing between elements is all over the place and it simply looks like shit. Seeing this I'm having doubts if the team who did this is competent at all

There is a balance.

Too much information density is also disorienting, if not stressing. The biggest problem is finding that balance between multiple kinds of users and even individuals.

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