The earthy tones of Ubuntu 8.10 using Gnome2

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Those were the days when windows were resizeable, moveable and one could even have several of them opened at the same time. Objects could be moved from one window into another, believe it or not, windows even could overlap each other. Yes GNOMEs were still GNOMEs then and desktop environments were kept safe from stubborn children who loved nothing more than their toy telephones...

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S7relok@reddit

MATE is doing literally a continuation of GNOME 2 (and I'm not counting the other alternatives that do similar operations) but you needed to belch to the world your boomer complaint.

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FormerSlacker@reddit

Mate lost a lot with the transition to GTK3, all the good themes are gone and it lost a lot of responsiveness as well - still very good I use it but it's not what it was.

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Player0a@reddit

God i love GNOME 2. I remember when i saw GNOME 3, i didn't liked it =(

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ouyawei@reddit

Fortunately there is Mate

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Serializedrequests@reddit

Sadly glitchy since nothing is tested on it anymore.

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Eric_12345678@reddit

I loved Gnome 2, Mate, and now Cinnamon.

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Malsententia@reddit

It's when I left, never to return. KDE ever since that fateful day, on Debian Sid, when I ran a full update and woke up to ...

i fear no man. But that THING(3)....It scares me.

Gnome devs didn't used to hate customization, until they did.

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LonelyMachines@reddit

And it was forced on us so suddenly, with no option (at the time) for keeping Gnome 2.

THEN Ubuntu had to make it worse with Unity.

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hendricha@reddit

And I still don't

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w3rt@reddit

Same, it was just such a massive shift away from what made gnome good.

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KudzuPlant@reddit

This is the Ubuntu I cut my teeth on as a kid

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Siarzewski@reddit

I liked all those oranges and browns of the early ubuntu

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arkoinad@reddit

The beat days of Gnome for me. Right when it was getting polished and super stable. I am liking Gnome now but would switch to this in a heart beat (mate was there but…)

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hendricha@reddit

Ah, times when buttons still looked like buttons, tabs still looked like tabs and toolbars were visbly separated from the contents of the applications.

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ptoki@reddit

I still use the old style decorations now. Ubuntu Mate and crux like theme.

I hate the windows flat style where noone can tell where windowses end, where are the divider bars, window edges and so on...

Why so many devs/designers are deranged enough to think this is good idea to basically tell user: Click and try everytime, if you miss the control, its your fault.

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Fallom_@reddit

When you had an area you could grab to move windows around instead of trying to dodge toolbar buttons to find some whitespace…

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__konrad@reddit

trying to dodge toolbar buttons to find some whitespace…

In GNOME/GTK dragging a toolbar button moves window...
In Thunderbird/Firefox the window spontaneously moves and shrinks if you click something in a "wrong way" (very annoying)

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valgrid@reddit

Just drag the button.

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thebigkevdogg@reddit

Just hold alt and drag? Or maybe they moved it to a different key now and I remapped it back to alt, I can't remember.

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window_owl@reddit

and when scrollbars were always visible!

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elsjpq@reddit

Also back when you still had a usable system on a 800 x 600 screen. Now, you'd be lucky to fit a single toolbar with the bloated icon sizes and padding.

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def-pri-pub@reddit

Flat UI has been such an issue for usability. What it cool and refreshing when it first came out? Yes. But in some ways it's gone way too far. I'm kind of hopeful that Liquid Glass will at least bring back the concept of dimensionality to UI design.

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hex0xX@reddit

Too bright

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window_owl@reddit

Just turn your display brightness down! Or bring more light into the room you work in. Light themes are great when you're in a sunny, well-lit room.

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Apyr124@reddit

Gemmy

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Declination@reddit

You know what I don’t miss from this era. ndiswrapper

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Malsententia@reddit

Well sure. I specifically bought atheros based PCMCIA cards to avoid that shit. like nuh uh.

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window_owl@reddit

I didn't know about this at the time (it was my first computer, and I had limited internet access), so I bought the cheapest USB wifi adapter at Radio Shack, plugged it in, and then learned that I'd have to do "stuff" to make it work.

After hours of work with ndiswrapper, I got it to work long enough to load google.com once, then never again.

That's what kept me from really using linux until I went to college and got a modern laptop (which worked perfectly on every distro I tried on it).

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onearmedphil@reddit

I just threw up a bit

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PuzzleheadedPen2798@reddit

This iteration of the Human theme was Ubuntu's best default theme ever imo.

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trashcatt_@reddit

I was a big fan of the Tango style icons that were popular at the time. Still kind of miss that style.

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Lhaer@reddit

Yupp... and I honestly think it was the best phase of Gnome

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bingblangblong@reddit

Wobbly windows too

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HomsarWasRight@reddit

I hated them at the time. Now I like the whimsy.

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Jarngreipr9@reddit

I loved that at time, the cube too. Now it's too tacky to me. Funny how things change.

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tjorben123@reddit

tbh it was "too much" back in the days, they should have had used 50% of "wobbliness" and everyone would love it.

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HomsarWasRight@reddit

Yeah, you’re probably right.

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rapidge-returns@reddit

Who else tossed Compiz on this?

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hendricha@reddit

Since I moved to KDE two years ago I got the effect back, and I love it.

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tjorben123@reddit

wasnt there a controversy about naked people in some of the default wallpapres? wasnt that seen as a big hit in "responsibility" for shuttleworth?

ahh found it :D

https://geekfeminism.fandom.com/wiki/Ubuntu_Warty_visual_theme

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julioqc@reddit

I would say it was the worse...

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tjorben123@reddit

back in the day i did not like it, it looks... pale... on old crt and early tn-panels it looked washed out.

but seeing it now it gives me a light shiver of "cozyness and warmth", hard to describe but i like it now more than the newer "whiteish" and "purple" things.

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Jarngreipr9@reddit

Omg same. I thought it was nostalgia but it definitely is because the theme looks better on modern lcd

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Normal_Usual7367@reddit

Amber LED Orange > purple

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No_Understanding6647@reddit

I was there Gandalf...

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trashcatt_@reddit

I remember installing this in high school using a physical Ubuntu disk that my friend's girlfriend's dad had. Lol.

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zacyzacy@reddit

i remember installing this on on my family's 2004 imac and being absolutely blown away by the gnome cube

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tjorben123@reddit

i was there 3000 years ago...

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Catonpillar@reddit

I was there when I was young...

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Obvious-Hunt19@reddit

When the courage of Men failed

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nonaveris@reddit

That’s when Gnome went to Wayland.

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TeesCDF@reddit

Something something and my axe!

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necoarcarmy@reddit

Kandalf

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Suspicious_Joke482@reddit

Looks cool

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Nero-Angelo117@reddit

How can I rice gnome to look like this now?

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thewhitewulfy_@reddit

Still got the orginal DVD that canonical mailed. After all these years.

I might frame and hang that someday.

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Puzzleheaded_Elk7153@reddit

Oh I miss this, it was so pretty and cosy!

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Lhaer@reddit

First Linux distro I ever used

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otakugrey@reddit

All themeing was better and more easy to do when GTK is stable and not changing all the time. That's why I will use many different GTK based DEs, but not GNOME itself. You can make a bunch of other GTK based DE's look like this right now if you want to! I like MATE best. Seems the most stable.

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whatstefansees@reddit

Intrepid Ibex - with the short drum sound when booting-up

I started a year before with 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon

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araujoms@reddit

I started a year and a half before with 7.04 Feisty Fawn. Good times.

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Pijuli@reddit

Warty for me. Did not work at all. Then Dapper Drake was the first to stay in my pc. 20 years of daily driving Ubuntu (amongst others)

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Big-Promise-5255@reddit

Love it. my first it was ubuntu 6.06. Love the “human” theme on gnome 2. Best interface ever!

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speedyundeadhittite@reddit

6.06 LTS was a good server.

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aRx4ErZYc6ut35@reddit

I have CD with Ubuntu 8.10

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my-comp-tips@reddit

Crisp

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skeptical-speculator@reddit

This is a blast from the past. The first version of Ubuntu I used looked very similar to this, but I think it was 8.04 or 9.04. I love it.

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tigerbloodz13@reddit

I loved this version, man did GNOME 3 fuck up. Still can't stand GNOME these days.

Haven't tried Ubuntu since I tried Unity when it launched for all of one day and noped out.

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firemark_pl@reddit

Oh god I loved the UI. And xfce too! Style was not professional but just... friendly.

I miss them sometimes.

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RoomyRoots@reddit

Oh Gnome 2, I still miss you. Or rather, I miss that Linux scene from back them, even if I am much more happy with the hardware support.

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ibmi_not_as400_kerim@reddit

When I saw the 2 bars of Gnome 2, I was absolutely mindblown. I had only known Windows up to that point and thought: "OF COURSE! Why wouldn't you have a top and a bottom bar??"

I'll always remember late 00's Ubuntu fondly.

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peakdecline@reddit

Because it takes up vertical space for little to no benefit.

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elsjpq@reddit

Yea, even back then Gnome had too much padding. Now it's even worse

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KnowZeroX@reddit

Well, times were a bit different back then. Screens used to be more square, so some loss of vertical space wasn't the end of the world, you also mostly navigated with a pointer so you didn't need to worry about making the bars thick enough for a touch screen.

Nowadays with more wide screens, it makes more sense to put bars on the side.

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ibmi_not_as400_kerim@reddit

Because it takes up vertical space for little to no benefit.

I agree with you on this particular implementation but a 2 bar layout can work. E. g. (as it happened in Gnome later) when the application menu is integrated into the top bar.

macOS is basically a 2-bar interface and funnily enough, I actually prefer Gnome 2's bottom bar to the macOS dock.

look that is poorly used visual space.

Yeah, it's ugly as fuck but I love it lol

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Pietrslav@reddit

When I was a kid, my dad got me an Eee PC and put Ubuntu onto it. I remember thinking Ubuntu looked so cool. He installed Natty Narwal on the Eee PC because he said it was unusable with the pre-installed Windows.

It was dark and purple and orange and came with the bar on the left side, which blew my 11-year-old mind since I didn't know you could even do that, since all I had known at that time was Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7, which was still kinda new at the time. And it had a sweet app store with a bunch of free games I could download! I was in heaven. I played the crap out of Tux Racer and Spring Lobby on that thing.

Ever since then, I have always remembered thinking Windows was kinda boring and cold compared to Ubuntu on my little Netbook. And for the longest time after that, I always put the taskbar on the left-hand side in any Windows install.

My dad unknowingly planted a seed in me that brought me back to Linux a decade later, even though I'm not really a tech guy. Linux just makes computers feel fun!

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FrozenLogger@reddit

I didn't know the EeePC came with windows. Having Linux be the default OS was part of the draw. Mine ran Xandros I think. It has Peppermint on it now, but it hasn't been updated in years.

My eeepc became a wireless access point in its life time for our office.

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jkflying@reddit

The Netbook interface on those early Ubuntu's were amazing. It actually properly split the mobile/desktop paradigms and took the best of both.

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Pietrslav@reddit

It felt really modern. Looking back, I feel like it would have been fantastic on 2-in-1 touchscreen laptops. It makes me wish they'd stuck it out longer with Unity, Ubuntu Touch, and stuff.

Though I was just a kid at the time, so I didn't realize Unity was so controversial. It was just that cool-looking operating system on that sweet laptop my dad gave me.

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jkflying@reddit

The Netbook Unity felt inspired and opinionated, in a good way. The 'normal' unity was a watered down version that fell halfway in between and just didn't feel right.

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ibmi_not_as400_kerim@reddit

EeePC

Oh man dude, you've ignited some crazy nostalgia in me. I remember getting one of those and Linux felt so much faster than Windows Vista or whatever was on there before.

I thought I was so cool opening it up in high school, typing some basic commands, and closing it again lol

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Pietrslav@reddit

I would brag all the time in school that I had my own laptop. I felt so cool! My dad taught me the commands to update my laptop, but I could never remember them, so I'd always have to go to him to ask him to update the thing or download new games.

I just remembered, too, that in middle school we started needing to use computers for homework and stuff, so my family got me an HP Stream so I'd stop hogging the family computer. When I got it, it came with Windows 7, but I really wanted to try Windows 8, so I updated it, and it basically bricked that Netbook as well. It was just unusably slow. A friend of mine recommended this lightweight operating system called Linux Mint for it, so I went and, for the first time, installed Linux on that laptop by myself. It was so much faster than it was even with Windows 7 on that thing.

I guess I've used Linux more often than I realized.

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Roidot@reddit

Gnome2 is my favorit desktop environment ever. Was my default for so many years. Never failed.

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sudogaeshi@reddit

I like 8.04 with the weird bird better, but this is a close second

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King_Corduroy@reddit

I really miss the old more 3D UI of Linux's past. Got in just on the tale end of it in 2014.

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Other_Class1906@reddit

That was such a good theme and overall feel of the system.

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Top-Airline1149@reddit

Back when i could actually use Ubuntu.

From 14.04 i moved to openSUSE.

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Oflameo@reddit

That looked beautiful.

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walmartbonerpills@reddit

I want to go back

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DonkeyDarko@reddit

I didn’t realise how much I missed this era of gnome / Ubuntu until I saw this picture

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hff0@reddit

frutiger aero in orange

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turdas@reddit

Damn, I remember when grunge brushes were all the rage.

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augusto_peress@reddit

Those were the good old days, back when there were no snaps 😂😂

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TrinitronX@reddit

alias crap=snap

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iamcarrasco@reddit

I remember those days and it was actually around the time I ditched Linux for Windows. Not ubuntu fault just profissional circunstances

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neverJamToday@reddit

I had this on a triple-booted 17-inch intel macbook pro. Golden days.

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ilovepolthavemybabie@reddit

Is it Ibex? Or is it just ElementaryOS?

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hendricha@reddit

elementary OS probably still was a couple of years away at that point

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ilovepolthavemybabie@reddit

Yeah I was throwing shade at it’s theming

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munkybut@reddit

This was my first ever Distro!

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Sh1v0n@reddit

Oh, those were a good times... Especially that I remember using the program using the external firmware for modem just to have a working internet.

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spots_reddit@reddit

is your wallpaper a crime scene?

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KittensInc@reddit

It's Intrepid Ibex - if you look closely you can see the head and horns. One of the better wallpapers, if you ask me.

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vinciblechunk@reddit

Ibex gets my vote for coolest default OS wallpaper of all time

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amogusdevilman@reddit (OP)

holy smokes i see it now, and all these time i thought it was some abstract art of the skull when the outline is actually the horns

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spots_reddit@reddit

i now see it too. however dried blood and the imprint of a bloody bucket looks very similar. apparently we found mother Mary's shape in a bag of potato chips

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galamsmsmsm@reddit

Looks very Selected Ambient Works Volume II.

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leaflock7@reddit

that was the 8.10 wallpaper codenamed Intrepid Ibex (ibex = wild goat)
this is the head of the goat

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amogusdevilman@reddit (OP)

it was the default on ubuntu 8.10 haha, i always thought it looked like a skull looking to the right or something

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spots_reddit@reddit

to me it looks like a bloody carpet but that's just me

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lbaile200@reddit

If I recall correctly (It's been awhile since I used Ubuntu), That is the "Intrepid Ibex" background. Ubuntu's naming schema has always been fun, and their numbering scheme has always made sense.

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Kaheil2@reddit

Oh that brings me back

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Guilty_Royal_9145@reddit

Oof, ubuntu 8.10 intrepid ibex was peak aesthetics!

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AndyGait@reddit

My first distro. So much brown.

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starsiegegambit@reddit

I remember it like it was yesterday.

Going through the installer, saying bye bye to Vista, being greeted by that screen and just sitting there with that, "well now what" feeling.

Getting amazed by the convenience of the package manager. The file manager having tabs. Compiz turning the desktop into a spinny globe. Nano. Upgrading to Jaunty. Using vim for the first time and not knowing how to close it. Nethack. Wesnoth. Rhythmbox. Nixie Pixel. Freenode. Trying KDE and not liking it. Fluxbox.

Arch. Openbox. Tint2. Compiling Chromium nightly build. Learning programming from my brother's O'Reilly books. Writing terminal chess in perl. Losing my arch install to a hard drive failure and switching to Crunchbang because ain't nobody got time to rebuild all that from scratch.

That old Toshiba laptop. Replaced hard drive, fan, keyboard, battery. Ship of Theseus that thing was. It had a weird screen resolution and Ubuntu would forget it every other reboot. No other distros ever had an issue with it though.

Good times.

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DependentLecture3817@reddit

I used to get into the world of Linux by this version. Nostalgic

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montagyuu@reddit

I loved Intrepid Ibex. Peak Ubuntu theming.

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Eric_12345678@reddit

Thanks for the reminder. I loved it then, and it still looks gorgeous.

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bcredeur97@reddit

I remember pulling an old laptop out of a church closet and this was on it. I blame that laptop for starting my adventure

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Icy_Marionberry_5102@reddit

my first distro. back in 08 i think

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Discipline_Cautious1@reddit

I switched to Enlightenment desktop when they replaced it with newer version.

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overbost@reddit

Good times

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k4ever07@reddit

Wow, back in the days when I used to use GNOME as my primary desktop! Back when GNOME actually had useful stuff, like desktop icons, a usable system tray, minimize/maximize buttons, and a file manager that wasn't nurtured; all without installing buggy, unsupported extensions. Those were the days!

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nomemory@reddit

Those were the days. I had Ubuntu since 8.04 (if I remember correctly). Gnome 2 looked amazing.

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rexbron@reddit

It really felt like a _different_ os trying Gnome for the first time.

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TorpedoSkyline@reddit

I have very good memories of Ubuntu 8.04 through 11.10. Such good times.

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crypticcamelion@reddit

That was a good year and Gnome2 was a pleasure to work with especially when compared to the windows world.

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Nollie37@reddit

I remember this, I never liked gnome2 much, and hated any gnome afterwards. But notice how warm and homely this looks compared to the cold sterile industrial looks of today’s desktops.

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mutotmz@reddit

This took me back to my university years…

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kryo2019@reddit

I miss that era of ubuntu.

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hardeep1singh@reddit

Still have the 7.10 CD they used to send. I lost the 7.04 CD.

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ScientistAsHero@reddit

I miss this. I started tinkering around with Linux back in 2003 or so. First used Red Hat, I think maybe 6, then switched to Mandrake for awhile, then Ubuntu Warty and Hoary. It's crazy the wild history of Ubuntu from then until now. I don't use it anymore, but definitely have a strong nostalgia for these old versions.

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puffybaba@reddit

This hit me with a bit of nostalgia

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deltadarren@reddit

It was around this era I started using Ubuntu as my main OS, partly because of how good this looked as a default theme. Coming from winblows it was so refreshing. Takes me back :)

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lovestruck90210@reddit

if you want you could live the glory days with the Mate desktop. The wallpaper and theme should be easy enough to find. Question is... should you?

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shiningaeon@reddit

Nah. As great as Gnome 2 was, I still much prefer Plasma.

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t_zk@reddit

it peaked in 9.10 before the start of the collapse (at least design wise) in 10.04. I might still have the CDs.

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shiningaeon@reddit

Back before Ubuntu fucked everything up with Unity.

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GlobalCurry@reddit

I forgot how comfy this feels.

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wingsfortheirsmiles@reddit

Pretty sure this was my first intro to Linux - my dad had it on a CD I think?

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HeyKid_HelpComputer@reddit

This was my first ever Ubuntu and more-so Linux Desktop experience!

Absolutely great way to be introduced to Linux. I was only around 19 or so at the time though, and while I was relatively experienced with computers I still didn't feel like I understood everything well enough to really appreciate it at the time.

I spent maybe a few months on it before going back to Windows 7 or whatever the current Windows was. I'd checkout various Ubuntu versions from time to time before finally coming back completely in 2021 and I likely will never stop using Linux going forward. I feel like I've jumped to a ton of distros through the past few years before landing on Arch. Feels like the only one that I don't have issues with.

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spaceman_@reddit

I still use MATE with the Bluecurve theme from Fedora Core 1

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w3rt@reddit

I miss gnome2 so much.

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wiltors42@reddit

Wow this really brings me back to…. 2009?

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rebbsitor@reddit

That's nostalgia right there.

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pizdachio@reddit

This was my first ever Linux install. I recently tried to recreate the default desktop in xfce, but it's just not the same.

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Ziwwl@reddit

Just around the time when I first started using Linux for real, it was a nice time, Ubuntu 8.04, 10.4 and 12.04 were great systems, after that came this ungodly time of unity and whatnot, Mate helped with Gnome 3.0 and a few years ago the switch to KDE was effortless.

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