I can't say I understand the prevalence of Windows-esque UI theming/refits beyond short-lived novelty- are people out there actually trying to make their UIs look like Windows XP and then using them like that on a daily basis?

I configured gnome to look like win 95/98, tried to use it for a while but the novelty wore off quite fast. Weirdly the mouse pointer still looks like win95 randomly in certain applications, guess I didn't clean up thoroughly!

To me it is adding things that windows love to do.

Examples: binary log files, binary configuration, .ini files, hidden options.