Most beautiful GUI (OS 4, Windows 8, ...)?

[TeamBlackFox]

IRIX Magic Desktop for configurability and graphic effects.

[TeamBlackFox]

Ok, so what is the best looking and most well layed-out OS GUI with customization options enough for everyone? Platform independent?

Enlightenment is hella pretty.

[TeamBlackFox]

Another vote for Enlightenment! Looks very nice.

Thanks. Look at IRIX Magic Desktop too - not as flashy, but well designed nonetheless.

[TeamBlackFox]

Umm Sean Cunningham SGI IRIX was better under XSGI - they fixed what was wrong with  X11 while maintaining a minimal compatibility level. I'd call that impressive. Plus its a lot like AmigaOS all in all - but im not gonna debate its merits. Too tired

[TeamBlackFox]

I have a poll to add after this one...

Which OS is more like AmigaOS?

1. BeOS
2. IRIX
3. AmigaOS

BeOS is sort of like if you took Windows and UNIX and hybridized it between them. Its very pretty looking but I find the entire system lacking in expandability, the design choices are questionable such as using bash as the only UNIX shell ( I was never able to load ksh or zsh on it ) and generally it seems while its very overall efficient, it has cons in the areas of security and it just feels uncomfortable to use. Its a hard feeling to describe.

In contrast to Sean Cunningham's experiences, I find IRIX to be a good balance of console and GUI work. While I do most configuration from the commandline out of habit, its entirely possible to do from within the GUI. I find the Magic Desktop and CDE to be both well designed and I did not prefer NeWS at all, especially because when I used it was under SunOS on a friend's box with a monochrome monitor. It felt very broken but I guess lack of use on a colour monitor may have skewed my views. XSGI is SGI's proprietary implementation X11 which is multi-threaded and well optimized for the hardware. Out of all the proprietary X11 variants its the least broken and the most suitable for GUI use while retaining the benefits of X11 ( network transparency still works when I used it ). Plus I like Motif toolkit honestly then again my Fuel is a pretty fast SGI so on something slow like an Iris Indigo it may be totally different. In general I feel like I'm on a high end Amiga when I'm on my Fuel. Just no floppies or Guru Meditations to deal with.

[TeamBlackFox]

I see what you mean Sean. Honestly I never leave IRIX or Solaris in its default GUI configuration. Once I get my Fuel upgraded and reOS'd and configured I'll take a screencap of the desktop so you can see how I run them. I don't like 4Sight honestly as it reminds me of NeXTSTEP and I dislike that OS a lot. I also despise OS X so definitely different ideals of beauty

[TeamBlackFox]

When I get IRIX Magic Desktop configured just as I like it I'll have to post a picture. Its so elegantly simple and free of the stuff that makes OS X and GNU/Linux terrible looking. BSD is also a great OS, but it lacks the elegance. Its like an AKM vs a G3 rifle, the G3 is prettier, but the AKM sees far more use as a military weapon.

[TeamBlackFox]

Well I got it the way I like it. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but XSGI is an engineering marvel - X11 without the bull, yet mostly compatible with it.  Here I show off the standard IRIX console, my desktop, iconifying, mrxvt ( my terminal emulator ), FIrefox and the toolchest. At 1600 x 1200 on Mima, my Octane, I can comfortably browse the internet, check email etc. Which is important right now because my intel box caught a SIGHALTANDCATCHFIRE the other day and decided to burn its CPU up without cutting the power, ruining a $400 computer. Thus Mima is taking over daily driver duties as the Fuel is up for sale and Mima is roughly the same pace, unsurprisingly as the Octane is the pre-Tezro, which was the big brother of the Fuel.  4DWM may not be the prettiest out there, but it sure share's AmigaOS's customizabilty. Its definitely UNIX, but it has a artistic flair.  

[TeamBlackFox]

Well as I said beautiful is a subjective term. I find 4DWM superior to even more advanced DEs such as GNOME or KDE. Now Lumina is shaping up if you ask me, but its still buggy and has a lot of work ahead of it. Enlightenment is good, but has way too much eye candy at times. I also hate how everything in Enlightenment is cross licensed so it makes it here for a user who prefers to avoid GPL when feasible from trimming dependencies.

And by the way just for kicks I messed around with NeWS on SunOS on my SPARCSTATION 20. All I have to say is its basically a rudimentary version of Quartz or Display PostScript. NeXTSTEP is awful too.

[TeamBlackFox]

And trust me, plain 4DWM looks terrible by comparison. I scaled down the widgets,and cleaned up the general configuration. If you don't have experience with the 6.5.22 or above its totally different from the 4 and 5 and even the early 6 series.

[TeamBlackFox]

I don't mind the iconification of minimized programs. What I do mind is that NeXTSTEP is a proto OS X with just as many issues as the real thing. Golly gee I hate when people call it UNIX when its freaking Mach that is the kernel. I'm sorry but outside of Tru64 UNIX/Mach it sucks.