Love skeuomorphism. This just gave me a reminder to build a paper-like calendar app now, with pencil markings showing events.

I definitely don't want a skeuomorphic desktop, but little web-apps, text editors, chat apps? I say we need a lot more of this type of design there, especially with how good modern CSS is at this kind of thing.

This is a really enjoyable take, pushing the feeling of what one does on a computer towards actually being at a desk and having to reach for various functions. I feel like that would enable spatial memory to do some cool things.

I miss the 90s chunkiness of switches, buttons, hardware: being able to hear the computer "think" (HDD seeks), the hum of a CRT. Modern machinery feels so insubstantial, emphasizing clean glass and tidy machined chassis. (chassies?)

I have this persistent daydream about a computer setup that feels like the Nostromo flight deck from Alien. I almost want to feel like I'm sitting _inside_ a computer when I'm at my desk, surrounded by powerful feeling electronics with substantial switches and such. Of course there's plenty of inconvenience there too, but something about it appeals to me.

I want more stuff like this. The era 20 years ago (e.g. Enlightenment) was way more fun than the bland monotonic design we have these days. If you like bland modern design, great, that should be an option as well, but we should still have good variety.

I'm typically not a big proponent of skeuomorphism, but it's nice to have actual variety of experimental options, a bit like the crazy things people did with UIs back in the old days.

This is very funny. But I think it would make me feel like I was working inside of Papers Please or some similar game.

I always think about video game UI's when I read the skeuomorphic design arugments. I suspect video games use them, at the very least, because they are delightful and fun; which, in my opinion, is a good reason to do something anywhere.

I will say that a long time ago I installed enlightenment and after about 10 minutes the burning windows felt like they were getting in the way, so I guess, like everything, there should be balance.

Man, first Felix Reiseberg[0], then OpenCode 2.0[1], and now this in the last 24 hrs. Really giving off heavy Myst vibes. They are briefly interesting encounters, buy I deeply hope this isn't a legitimate UI trend.

It's hardly even skeuomorphism, it's a almost digital twin rendered with Phong.

[0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50082470

[1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50094994

The README being so full of AI prose is super grating.

> the kind iOS 6 had

> The room is ray-traced

imho, part of the charm of iOS6 was that everything was baked into native-resolution textures.

BeOS of 2026?

> DEsk is Desktop Environment and desk in one word

They dropped the ball:

DESk would have been Desktop Environment, desk, and Skeumorphic in one word.

> Windows are sheets of paper on a walnut desk.

The calculator is a sheet of paper..

I love this. Hopefully we start to see more experiments like this.

nice! would be cool to customize to different era's of office life ... or even a creative version, e.g. Picasso's desktop

This is lovely. I really hope society returns to chasing beauty again. We need it.

This is neat, it’s not for me (I prefer extreme minimalism) but I could see how some would prefer it. I like how we’re getting more desktop options now thanks to wlroots.

Fun, makes me think of Bumptop :)

Flashback to TabWorks.

Compaq Presario 486 1994, I was 10.

And yes, played Myst on it.

Tempus fugit…

I'd be into something as useful as Quartz Composer was for Desktop Widgets, but not a full skeuomorphic desktop.

Indigo Magic or CDE is as close as I'd want to go with that concept.

2004 was a long time ago, and I suppose what is old can be new (again).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQQPTtdzBig

I thought we were done with the skeuomorphism craze back in the late 00s. (Thanks Apple). Is the trend coming back?

HN crowd be like: THANKS GOD APPLE WILL NEVER OPEN-SOURCE THE DE SO WE CAN'T HAVE THEMES FOR INDIVIDUALS WHO WANTS THEM

This project highlights why designers hate skeuomorphism. Skeuomorphism looks tacky unless done very very well. Skeuomorphic design under Steve Jobs looked very good. This doesn't come close.

the "paper windows" idea doesn't seem to have been done with as much soul as the rest of the ui. Just a turned up corner. I reckon something done there could really tie this together

Fantastic. Giving me memories of MS Bob. Put a talking animal assistant in the corner and you’ve got it. Oh, and you could connect the assistant to an LLM of course.

I see that this very bad idea is returning from the 90's.

I think AR/XR glasses are going to start to become popular in the next couple of years and I think some mixed reality shells will have more physical/3d interfaces.

This adds to a belief that I have that UI design undergoes cycles like fashion, just that we haven't yet seen a complete cycle.

I can imagine this being really helpful for beginners and kids. It's hard to grok what windows and tabs are etc. without any context.

That control panel looks fantastic! Too bad I don't wayland. Last I checked, Mathematica doesn't like it.

This looks like peak skeuomorphism. I like it, but ray-tracing the desktop sounds like overkill.

This is pretty cool! I'd use this, once out of beta.

(Bonus points for not throwing AI-tells at everyone in the README - much appreciated).

I love this, at least from the screenshots. I'll test it out tomorrow. I hope this kind of design makes a comeback.

Coupled with steam frame headset this might be great experience.

I can feel my shoulders unlocking looking at the screenshots.

I am skeptical that a transition from X to Wayland is actually merited.

As for the post / the repo itself, this analysis:

https://www.salahadawi.com/hacker-news-ai-detector/50103338

suggests it is LLM-generated. Not sure what to make of it.

fascinating, I recently was also exploring various skeuomorphic design pattern in Flutter and now this!

memory 4 GB (DEsk itself 200-450 MB)

This makes it interesting. I may try it out. Moksha uses 200 MB to 300 MB of RAM

Love it. Maximize skeuomorphic design.

How come the 'documents' are floating above the wood surface creating such deep drop shadows?

Very interesting concept but I doubt it's stable due to the amount of slopped code and I don't like that it requires a hodgepoge of libraries from different DEs.

Sweet

Skeuomorphic design was a solution to teaching the customer how to use the digital product, but I wish we have more of its side effects like shadows, icons that pop and other things that are pleasant for the eye and depth.

I don't know if it's just because it was better or am I just tired of the current white (like #FFFFFF white) backgrounds with everything flat and not connected. I would like my browser tabs to be in the shape of a physical tab in notebooks.

Please tell me it has coffee ring stains and spiral lined notebooks.

In Brett Victor's 2011 essay, "A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design", he laid out the foundation for his critique of skeuomorphic design. He believes hands are our future.

https://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDes...

On the visual pretense: "Pictures Under Glass sacrifice all the tactile richness of working with our hands, offering instead a hokey visual facade."

On touchscreens mimicking real objects without haptics: "Pictures Under Glass is an interaction paradigm of permanent numbness. It's a Novocaine drip to the wrist. It denies our hands what they do best."

On why this design path is short-sighted: "To me, claiming that Pictures Under Glass is the future of interaction is like claiming that black-and-white is the future of photography. It's obviously a transitional technology. And the sooner we transition, the better."

Yes! Please bring back the soul we had with retro OS GUIs (and the speed)... it's time for a resurgence. Especially with new systems/RAM/GPUs/etc. not being a thing for quite a while for a lot of people now.

The thing I hate with vibed apps the most is zero seconds spend on how things around what is being build are already structured and what problems was already solved, just focusing on shiny result.

`sudo sh scripts/install_debian.sh`, a 583 lines long script, basically now a whole software just to handle the installation of this project on one distribution, seriously? If we vibecode already, just do the normal packaging.

okay, now use this for a month and report back

I don't hate skeuomorphic design but come on man

god please no