Calmira Reborn is fourth in the line of Calmira projects. It is a fork of Calmira LFN 3.32 by Alexandre Rodrigues de Sousa, itself a fork of Calmira II 3.3 by Calmira Online!, itself a fork of Calmira 2.2SR by Li-Hsin Huang.
This fork does not place much emphasis on new features and instead focuses on fixing issues I’ve discovered with Calmira LFN while using it on my old computers.
Calmira should ring a bell for most Windows users of the ’90s. Calmira adds a Windows 95-like desktop environment to replace Program Manager on Windows 3.x, along with tons of other features and niceties. It makes using Windows 3.x a lot less cumbersome, and I am definitely going to set up a new Windows 3.11 install in PCem to try this new release out.
I don’t really remember why, but I do remember being severely disappointed with Windows 95’s taskbar and star menu paradigm, which to me felt like a step back from Windows 3.x’s more consistent and straightforward UI.
That’s what I came here to say! I haaaaated Windows 95 when it came out. I still hate the taskbar / start menu paradigm, and to make matters worse almost every user interface copies it!
I’ve been using Openbox in a vaguely NeXT-style configuration for probably a decade now.
Is there a modern user interface that replicates the UI from Windows 3.1?
Yes.
https://github.com/jcs/progman
Thanks!
…of COURSE it includes the “hot dog stand” theme. XD
I used to be a huge fan of calmira in mid 90s, when my poor 386 wasn’t up to the task with 95 or NT.
Is there something comparable for win11 today? Bringing back the 95-2000 series of sensible grey taskbar and start menu for win1*?
There’s a bunch of different ones for Windows 11:
* Stardock Start11 https://www.stardock.com/products/start11/
* Classic Shell / Open Shell http://www.classicshell.net/
There’s probably more, those are just the two I remember off the top of my head, as we use them at work with Windows 10.
This may not be quite what you’re looking for but it’s how I get the Windows 10 style start menu in Windows 11. Open the Registry Editor (regedit.exe), create a key within HKEY_CURRENT_USER called “Start_ShowClassicMode”, set it to a value of “1”, and reboot. It also helps to move the Taskbar back to the left instead of the center, you can do that by right-clicking the Taskbar and selecting Taskbar Settings, there’s an option there to move it to the left.
Why they ever moved it to the “middle” truly baffles me. It’s been on the left since forever (Well, Win95), and it just seems like changing for the sake of changing.
When it comes to the Win11 start menu however, i’ve had little to no experience, but from what i’ve seen, it emulates MacOS and various Linux themes quite closely, which i don’t think is a bad thing. I’m not saying that Windows 10’s start menu was terrible or bad in any way, but it’s not like Microsoft haven’t tried improving the start menu on other versions before.
Moving the button for the start menu, however…. Sacrilege.
I never liked the default Program Manager shell for Windows 3.x. It was just so clunky and non-intuitive, coming from the CLI of DOS. When we upgraded to a Compaq Presario 486SX/33, it came with TabWorks pre-installed as an alternative shell for Windows 3.x. Now THAT was an intuitive interface. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TabWorks
I always wished there were a version of TabWorks for Windows 95, as the Start Menu/taskbar interface wasn’t useful when I started using it on my 486DX4/133. While I never actually looked for it, apparently TabWorks 2.0 was designed for Windows 95.
By the time Windows 98 shipped, I had adapted to the Start Menu/Taskbar (although I played around with various alternate shells like Litestep, Darkstep, and similar). Around the time of Windows XP I discovered KDE on FreeBSD and Linux and haven’t looked back. 🙂
Never heard of Calmira, though. Screenshots from the different versions look neat.
According to the link you shared, TabWorks WAS available for Windows 95.
It’s available here on the internet archive.
https://archive.org/details/tabworks
Spam alert
I think I used something like Litestep in the old days of Windows 95.
So much fun. And once in a while it crashed. But hey, it was fun. With that insane fast file manager.
I feel old.
Oh wow, LiteStep. I used to use that way, way back in the day. I had forgotten all about it. I just did a quick Google and it seems that it is still “around” and still “works” but it has not been developed forever and the experience has degraded. Alternative desktops have just never really become a thing on Windows.
I mostly use Linux these days but I am on a Windows laptop at the moment. If something like LiteStep was still an active and vibrant project, I think I would give it a go.