“When’s the last time anyone tried to steal design ideas from Microsoft?” I remember a time when Linux desktops were heavily influenced by Windows 95. In fact, the Windows 95 interface still holds up to this day. While certain design elements and styling choices were influenced by NeXTSTEP, other ideas such as the taskbar and the Start menu were original.
My favorite era of Microsoft software from a UI/UX standpoint is the period between Windows 95 and Windows 2000, alongside other Microsoft products such as Office 97/2000 and Visual Basic 6. I particularly liked the flat toolbars and the Tahoma font introduced in Office 97 and spreading to the rest of the Microsoft ecosystem; a Windows 2000 installation with Office 97/2000 and Visual Basic 6 looked quite consistent.
If you don't like the FVWM Windows95 theme, don't use the FVWM Windows95 theme. I will say, however, the Windows95 design language is MUCH SUPERIOR to either MacOS 7 or MacOS 8. Windows had consistent decoration and behavior. #a11y features actually worked. MSFT continues to do font rendering wrong, but just about everything else is more consistent. But in this regard, I sort of prefer linux. Gnome can be configured to "get out of your way" and simply place windows on the screen. The thing I dislike about macOS is its features change between revision and apparently system-specific software has an undue influence on how well basic functionality works. (my mbp is a highly inconsistent, but a previous rev mbp or mac-mini isn't. or rather, it's inconsistent on a smaller, different set of features.)
It's been almost 20 years since we got to the point where you didn't have to manually configure x. And since then I have never seen features around the edge of the screen (menu bars, docks, etc.) render off the edge of the screen. I saw that this morning on my MBP running macOS. The best minds in corporate support suggest apple shipped this week's MBPs with the wrong graphics driver. (we updated the driver and changed a few defaults and it works fine now. I can actually boot far enough to get a terminal window open.)
My favorite era of Microsoft software from a UI/UX standpoint is the period between Windows 95 and Windows 2000, alongside other Microsoft products such as Office 97/2000 and Visual Basic 6. I particularly liked the flat toolbars and the Tahoma font introduced in Office 97 and spreading to the rest of the Microsoft ecosystem; a Windows 2000 installation with Office 97/2000 and Visual Basic 6 looked quite consistent.