It's worth checking out Blue95, which was originally made as a novelty but has all the power of uBlue behind it, as an opinionated, batteries-included Linux based on Fedora.
this post was submitted on 25 Apr 2025
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You're confusing themes with entire distros.
This is what you want: https://github.com/grassmunk/Chicago95
To add to this, a 'distro' -if you will- that was launched recently with this theme would be the aptly-named Blue95.
There's ReactOS, which is not Linux either and targets the early 2000s Windows versions. Though it doesn't just look like Windows, it's made to be compatible and capable of running those old Windows apps
https://reactos.org/what-is-reactos/
There's also Haiku which has the old Windows look, but prettier imo. It's not Linux, it's based on BeOS, and it's still in beta so not fully usable yet, but it's a pretty cool project
https://www.haiku-os.org/about/
Edit: okay none of those are actually Linux distros so it doesn't really answers the op 😅
Oh, cool! I thought Haiku had stalled out. I guess I was wrong.
Last commit to the nightly build was two days ago so it's definitely still going 😀
I haven’t used the Chicago theme, but if you’re in KDE, the Reactionary Plus theme is spot on and works great.
https://www.pling.com/p/2138468/
Or
[Trinity Desktop Environment] (https://www.trinitydesktop.org/) is really cool - a bit more XP-era, mid-2000s style, though.
Chicago95 XFCE on Debian is my daily driver. Having been a Windows 2000 fanboy, it makes me feel right at home.
The Raleigh GTK theme ported to GTK 3 on XFCE is also a quick and dirty way to get a 90s-esque look: https://github.com/thesquash/gtk-theme-raleigh
For an entire distro, there's Hot Dog Linux: https://github.com/arthurchoung/HOTDOG
I don’t think it’s what you’re looking for but what your post reminds me of is ReactOS, though that’s more of a rewrite of actual Windows than a Linux distro.
I think you're thinking of SerenityOS (although it isn't actually a Linux):
I think it might be LXQT?
You need to theme it but depending on how you theme it you can get it looking like Win95. In fact I distinctly remember seeing Win95 themes for LXQT
This is one that was shared recently:
!https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/42247576
Are you thinking of Plan 9?
zorin has a windows like interface. I don't think it necessarily is tracking windows 95 but really the windows like thing is really just a start menu with submenus like windows that I think have not changed much between windows 95 and now.
q40s is a debian based distro. It comes with trinity desktop and has some very retro looking themes.
I tried it on an old laptop a while ago and it worked fine. But you could probably do the same thing with regular debian
I've been using Debian MATE. It's mostly ok.
Also are the Rolling Stones involved? Asking for a friend.
Vanilla? XFCE was looked a bit like Win 95/98 the last time I used it, say 5 to 10 years ago. I’ve been using KDE which reminds me more of XP or Vista in default configuration. Probably why I like KDE so much.
What your probably looking for though is a theme.