HOT DOG Linux is a Retro Computing Fever Dream

[@LGR]

So I'd heard of Hot Dog Linux in passing online, but I admit I'd never looked into it any further and had no idea it was this much of a bonkers mashup of classic computing GUI gobbledegook. Definitely installing this next time I have a silly Linux project on the table.

[@ActionRetro]

It's a work of art!

[@JohnSmith-xq1pz]

Perhaps a Future LGR Hot Dog thing video?

[@aaaalex1994]

I'd love to see you try Hot Dog Linux with the Mouse-Burger 😂

[@JohnSmith-xq1pz]

@@aaaalex1994 Yes please lol

[@gnarlin4964]

Will you ever cover FreeDOS?

[@_ryanspecter]

Hot dog Linux looks like it would make a brilliant prop for movies where classic operating systems are being shown

[@merthyr1831]

"Oh my god, he's accessing the mainframe from a Hot Dog Linux(tm) UNIX system!"

[@TheSulross]

War Games was the last time Hollyweird really threw us computer geeks a bone - will probably never happen again

[@oscarcacnio8418]

​@@merthyr1831 "Dear god! He's messing with our timeshares!"

[@metalmassacrefilms]

In my AI animations, I always put these classic themes on the computers the characters use and even smartphones. If someone would like to check, my animation "The Great Ape" has a 90's webpage in one of the scenes, and a smartphone screen with that classic Ming Liu font. And on the animation "Yewande", the last scene shows a Smartphone with a classic layout on the page that shows on its screen.

[@megan_alnico]

I daily drive Linux as my desktop at work. I think I may have to use hot dog the next time I screen share. With my luck no one will notice or comment, but I think it's hilarious.

[@ActionRetro]

YES!

[@l4ndst4nder]

I’m jealous! I might have to figure out if my work computer locks out Windows Subsystem for Linux and see how hard would it be to get Hot Dog running through WSL.

[@eekee6034]

As I'm seeing this 2 months later, I just have to ask what, if any, were the results? XD

[@megan_alnico]

@@eekee6034 Some of my coworkers didn't notice at all, some of my coworkers left and one guy said "what the ever-loving F#$& did you do to your computer?"

[@mikephillips5551]

Can't just daily drive Linux !! Linux is just the kernel.

[@KalosLikesComputers]

This kind of UI is what I miss. Operating systems just looked so fun back in the day, now design is all...neat. Bring back jank creative design!

[@KalosLikesComputers]

@@youtubeisgarbage900 A bit of a nihilistic way of looking at it, but I really cannot disagree.

[@raptorchow329]

I agree, especially in the past few years. Too many designers working on the design, not enough practical people.

[@Moister356]

Yeaah, everything looks so good, shinny and professional nowdays

[@TheSimoc]

I kinda disagree. Not sure though if your "neatness" was sarcasm, but imho, back in the day OSes and all software looked neat, clear, and easy to use with logical outlinings and harmonic aesthetic design. Nowadays, they are exact opposite from neat, they are ugly as hell and extremely difficult and stressful to use even for experienced users. Useful and useless items scattered and cluttered here and there, with no logical arrangement and all relevant outlinings removed or blurred, rendering all views into pools of pure visual pollution, lots of functionality hidden behind unnecessarily many clicks and sequences and fragmented into unnecessarily many different views, lots of stupid redundancy, less and less descriptive texts nor recognizable icons, and inconsistent and unbalanced non-functional visual effects. I absolutely agree that we NEED to have these good old neat UIs back. We also NEED to get rid of the code bloat of modern software, OS should size in MBs at maximum, not GBs and even less dozens.

[@TheSimoc]

@@Moister356 Rather so ugly, unusable, and unprofessional. Your statement applies on good old software.

[@Moister356]

Boys: "I use arch linux btw" Teens: "I installed gentoo btw" Real Man: "I daily drive Hot Dog Linux"

[@kantraa]

i use artix linux btw

[@ardishco]

lmao

[@minty_Joe]

I use Linux Mint xfce 20.x as my daily driver.

[@gdblaster9302]

I daily drive Hannah Montana linux jokes aside its a real thing look it up

[@blazed-space]

💪🏻 you said it brother man

[@tjiiik]

"eating a hot dog with a knife and fork" The Least weird Linux user.

[@tylerdean980]

Choice is the power of free software. When you're high on choice weird things happen

[@ifrit05]

Centrino was not a CPU, but a computing platform made by intel. A computer "running" Centrino had a certain CPU, GPU, North/Southbridge, and PRO/Wireless chipset. "Dual Core Centrino" is a technically correct name, but not entirely if trying to describe what CPU a machine has.

[@drewzero1]

I was wondering about that as well. I think I remember seeing "centrino mobile chipset" stickers on laptops of that era, and sometimes a separate sticker with the specific processor "inside".

[@EssenceofPureFlavor]

Right. I think Centrino systems had Pentium M CPUs if I remember right...

[@lumpython5351]

​@@EssenceofPureFlavorNot exactly , depends on which generation of centrino, I brought a VAIO it has Core Duo

[@mari2.]

@@EssenceofPureFlavor there's Core Duos and even Core 2 Duo centrino systems

[@256byteram]

For years I've been running Mate Desktop with Windows 95 icons, Windows 3.11 window decorations and an upscaled marble.bmp as my desktop wallpaper. I'm delighted to see this!!!

[@ps5hasnogames55]

linux is trash

[@Tommy-the-coffee-addict]

@@ps5hasnogames55 mad

[@ps5hasnogames55]

@@Tommy-the-coffee-addict cringe nationalist pfp

[@Tommy-the-coffee-addict]

@@ps5hasnogames55 im not nationalist,i just really used to love the Byzantines/eastern romans.

[@robsku1]

@@ps5hasnogames55 Oh, come on! Put some effort into your trolling, that's a weak attempt and you know it!

[@polerix]

This is brilliant. Pure madness. Installing on my vaporwave IBM ThinkPad tomorrow morning. It's main purpose is as a soldering endoscope/microscope display

[@MaxOakland]

It’s cool that you show yourself in your videos now. They feel more personal

[@alerey4363]

You have demonstrated the *FREEDOM* Linux gives the user to literally change it to the his most weirdest desires; it's fun and you learn a lot in the process.Double thumbs up!

[@ps5hasnogames55]

or hers

[@josewells6390]

👍👍

[@josewells6390]

@@ps5hasnogames55 No. The English language prescribes the unknown speaker as 'HIS', for good reasons.

[@ps5hasnogames55]

@@josewells6390 did i ask

[@josewells6390]

in a fashion, yes.

[@SprocketWatchclock]

This needs to be turned into its own desktop environment. I would straight-up switch to this if that was done. I only care about the Amiga Workbench style though as that is the one I have nostalgia for. My first computer was an Amiga 500.

[@temetka]

This was fun to watch. I love the Lebowski references. They're wonderful. That Aqua UI brings back so many good memories of my old Pismo and TiBook. I love aqua so much and am still upset they locked down the OS so hard. I loved putting grass or xmas lights on my dock.

[@underconfident_asmr]

I’m honestly sad this whole thing is not much more than a toy. I’d be so thrilled to have my daily driver be a perfect recreation of platinum OS9, man if you only you knew how many years after OS 9 was killed off I used it anyway. It will always be my favorite UI even though everyone else in the world thought it sucked.

[@m3e642]

its linux you can do what you want with it

[@stevenbunch9369]

You can do the chicago95 stuff

[@JamesR624]

Exactly. I was about to ask if this could be run genuinely as a daily driver. With Flat Design taking over completely, I'd really love a sub-community in the linux community to really work on giving us back amazing interfaces like Aero, Win 9x, MacOS Platinum, and Mac OSX Aqua. I know you can "recreate" a lot of them with XFCE for 9x or KDE for Aero, but I'd love a linux distro with convincing full recreations of these skeuomorphic UIs. Right now the closest to a "real version" of this is the Included Oxygen them in KDE Plasma 5.

[@Fighter_Builder]

Agreed. I'd really love it if this was fleshed out more!

[@Shot5hells]

I love it, I have customised all my Linux devices to look like OS 9. I never used it but it’s just a way more appealing style for me, it helps me focus, doesn’t have anything unnecessary going on

[@za_wavbit]

That System 7 WM is awesome, brings back memories of playing Escape Velocity in black and white

[@TheBlueSkyRanger]

You had me when you showed it on your 32-bit from 2007. I have an Acer from 2008, and it needs a pure 32-bit OS to work, universals will hang during boot. Thank you for making sure this bit of info got out.

[@johnsaldivar2619]

in 1994 and pre WIndows 95' era, the default Thinkpad OEM load of Windows for Workgroups 3.11 with optional Novell Netware cliet, was hot dog stand followed by Black Leather Jacket I recall.

[@rockyoliver8459]

I have been dreaming a retro style slackware themed distro for my whole life. This has practically made my dreams come true, now to install and use it : D Thanks for making this video btw! You got a subscriber here.

[@HaveYouTriedGuillotines]

I legitimately wish I could get a DE or a skin for a DE that was just Mac Platinum. Platinum was unironically a good, minimalist design that's still usable to this day, even if it could do with a feature update in a few places. ...Honestly, if you give XFCE a sleek skin and customize the interface a little, you're already most of the way there. Wish I knew how to skin, I'd make it myself.

[@paulwratt]

get TwisterOS (installer), run it on RPiOS x86_64 version and you will have acces to what you asked for.

[@patchso]

Agreed. There's something beautiful about Mac Platinum. Considering the first OSX's that replaced it were a bit over the top, made it appear better by comparison.

[@TheGameboyGTS]

I refreshed youtube to a New ActionRetro with only 10 views uploaded "two minutes ago" sometimes i hit these things right as they launch. another excellent video.

[@knghtbrd]

I've seen a few on Raspberry Pi emulator images… Where possible, such machines really should use the UI of the thing they emulate. Some DOS/Windows emulator machine should probably use a version of fvwm95 or icewm configured to look like Win95. Unless of course it's going for more classic stuff, then it needs to be possibly mwm with some hacks so Motif can look properly Windows 3.1ish. Emulating NeXT ought to use something based on Window Maker and GNUStep. There's definitely amiwm for Amiga folks … I don't know what there is for classic Macs, what's here in hotdog is probably the closest I've seen? Definitely approve of classic UI cheesiness!

[@stridervanmeter8409]

big thumbs up for the thinkpad representation. the x230 and x60 are a couple of awesome examples.

[@turbo1gts]

Cool throwback UI. I admit I have used AMI window manager at times. I think it's installed right now on my tower with Afterstep and WindowMaker. One cool thing to see would be a more fleshed out GEOS mode on HOT DOG Linux. And, I would love to see a Workplace Shell clone for Linux, too.

[@bryede]

I would love to see this idea fully fleshed out to where you could flip between fully functional retro desktops in an instant with everything set up the way you want it for that system.

[@Ragnar8504]

Yup, with functional icons on the desktop and all that. The whole thing reminds me of MacOS 8.5 themes and their predecessor Kaleidoscope. Both let you change the GUI of MacOS to a surprising degree using various themes. All my 8.5/9 machines run on a System 7 theme I found somewhere back in the day because I didn't like Platinum but that's subtle compared to what Kaleidoscope themes offered. I absolutely turned 7.6 into a somewhat convincing imitation of Windows 98, especially with the addition of a shareware Start menu and I'm fairly sure I had an Amiga Workbench 1.3 theme as well. Kaleidoscope also let you choose any old JPEG as a wallpaper long before MacOS let you do that. Let's just say on a 25 MHz 68030 with 8 MB of RAM that wasn't a great idea. It worked but it made the computer incredibly slow, especially at startup. After that it wasn't so bad but loading the desktop took forever.

[@michaeldeloatch7461]

Well you have earned my sub just for reminding me of the good old hot dog stand SCHEME in win 3. How had I forgotten that classic? Back in the good old days when we had schemes, not themes. I am watching on a machine I just reinstalled arch to after a HD failure. Now that goes out the window and it's gonna be hot dog linux all the way from now on for me.

[@Ragnar8504]

Of course let's not forget Hotdog Stand's black sheep brother, Neon! That was my favourite when I was a teen. A Win 3.1 scheme based on neon green, magenta and black. I even tweaked some of the colour settings to make it more consistent (can't remember any details unfortunately) and created a wallpaper of random airbrush strokes on a black background.

[@joeldowell5059]

Interesting project. I love when people do things like this

[@macsnafu]

The first thing I thought of was the Hot Dog Stand theme from Windows 3.1, and that's apparently exactly where it came from! I miss Windows 3.1, or rather, I was using Windows For Worgroups 3.11, which had a few extra features, but still all of the goofiness of the 3.1 interface. There are few things more fun than just playing around with silly stuff that has little or no effect on your productivity.

[@XyNoST]

I really love the mix of Amiga Workbench 1.3 and the Atari ST TOS green background ! I am totally addicted to that Green since 2008 or something. All my Atari shirts are green and even got a crashbombs tattoo on my left arm ! :)

[@fiddley]

As a child of the 90's, this interface feels like coming home.

[@dikemawson3008]

Oh my god. I use slackware so theres nothing stopping me from doing this on my main computer

[@jefffrasca4054]

Slackware 15 is the best choice for a base system for this. I might be biased, I run Slackware on my desktop.

[@wileywiggins1097]

Dang, I know this is supposed to be a joke but I really would like a GUI that would be readable on a CRT for my retropie/crt raspberry pi setup.

[@Fighter_Builder]

Same.

[@urbanknish]

Looks like fun but I get all of my 'rough around the edges' with Raspbian on a Pi. It's a like a world of retro computing challenges and brick walls that you can put in your pocket.

[@paulwratt]

FWIW I was just reading through the source and I believe you can use mouse wheel to scroll the "long menus" (its also available in the AtariST menu, even though it fits in 640x480, maybe test with 640x400)

[@evanjrowley]

Thank you so much I'm very glad to see this in action after reading about it on HN not too long ago

[@andytsai9844]

That does take me back, the illusion of emulated Look & Feel is rather easily shattered back in the heyday of Linux started to be used enmasse. I still remember running a file manager written in Tickle/Tick employ a fake CDE/heavy makeup fake Motif look while an image viewer straight out of Amiga OS 2.0 is running alongside while LinAmp is at the corner. That kind of messed up UI wouldn't fly now by itself, but could be useful today as part of that Linux distro that seperates apps to Kubernete containers.

[@LuxurioMusic]

Icons in .txt and config in .csv. Genuinely and wholeheartedly, this is so great.

[@merthyr1831]

I'm a big fan of these retro distros and GUIs. A lot can be learned from the first attempts at desktop operating systems.

[@theabhominal8131]

really liked the cut the hotdog with knife then picks up hotdog and bites it in the center..lol

[@ActionRetro]

😂

[@totallybonkers76]

Thanks for the total nostalgia overload. good job, nice one 🙂

[@mediocrefunkybeat]

The weirdest thing about this whole video is how you hold a fork! Great video as ever.

[@CubicleNate]

That was just fantastic! Thanks for this!

[@midorifox]

Oh, i love this kind of interface. There was one called CDE which fell out of favor, there's still one to take it's place

[@Tommy-the-coffee-addict]

neat little project,maybe take a look at windowmaker or nextspace? not totally "mac",but really cool projects that the "normal" linux channels don't cover.

[@awogbob]

The way you held the fork in the begining while cutting broke my brain

[@John-McAfee]

Quality content as always, buddy.

[@YesterGearPCii]

Should take a peek at Chicago95 as well. A full Windows 95 recreation graphics overhaul for ubuntu.

[@Darkside07543]

I feel nostalgic for something i never lived, what a joy :)

[@NoobixCube]

There is a mark on your wall that had me scrubbing at my screen until a jump cut moved it...

[@pseudotasuki]

This video makes me want a hotdog real bad.

[@tylerboothman4496]

"Really old machines... From 2007." That's not that old... Oh. Oh no.

[@kaitlyn__L]

Oh man! That’s the first modern Platinum theme recreation for Linux in something like 15 years! Up to date WMs have had for instance CDE or Amiga recreations for quite some time, but not a Platinum one. I’m almost a bit sad it’s a joke product rather than one for daily use, though the file browser and web browser does increase its utility somewhat.

[@nonchip]

QT: _am I a joke to you_ ?!

[@kaitlyn__L]

@@nonchip I don’t see the relevance. Qt is a GUI builder which can take-on the theming you’ve already set. I looked up Platinum themes for Linux and they were all only for really old WMs, none of the modern ones. Which is a shame because like I mentioned there’s the Amiga recreation one, and there’s even a CDE theme for modern (can’t remember if that’s for KDE or XFCE rn though), but I couldn’t find a Platinum one.

[@bronwaith]

As somebody who is used, hot dog as their username online for many years, my ears kept perking up through this video like walk with a dog 🤣

[@junker15]

Even with all the window decorations, you can still spot xterm from across the room thanks to it having the default X font of "fixed" The rug ties even xterm together, though

[@HPPalmtopTube]

Would have been nice if they could have added motif widgets and it's window manager (mwm), FVWM 1/2, and SGI 4DWM desktops...

[@badgerboy4448]

Surely the lack of sauce is the weirdest thing in the video.

[@SomeBlokeOrWhatever]

"Bet you thought you'd never see a youtube video running on a Mac Platinum interface!" Me who used a mac platinum theme on XFCE for *actual years* : "Am I a joke to you?"

[@a4e69636b]

Loved the classic Mac OS look!

[@wisteela]

Superb. Brew your own retro machine. I can see this having a lot of potential with a few upgrades etc. Subscribed.

[@stanmccorkle]

I always enjoy your videos. I’m grateful you are willing to share your talents with the world :)

[@АндрейЕлескин-л8с]

Deer goat, this is pure beauty

[@rosyidharyadi7871]

this is so beautiful. love it

[@burnitdwn]

I think my uncle has PTSD from all the times I set his 286 to Hot Dog Stand in windows 3.0.

[@majinshinsa]

I brought a laptop home from work that was hidden away running Windows XP. I think it's time to move beyond my love of XP for new, exciting adventures. Also my 6 year old thinks Hot Dogs are the best thing ever so it's a double whammy

[@tursilion]

It looks great, but most of the file GUI doesn't work correctly, much like the desktop icons. Can't copy files via the GUI, I couldn't get it to open them either, though there's apparently some kind of support in there. I was able to also get it working in Ubuntu and reconfigure the menu to be useful, but beyond the terminal it wasn't very useful. Perhaps it is missing function, perhaps it just needs more manual config. Still playing. ;)

[@chadmasta5]

There's something slightly unsettling about seeing someone eat a hotdog horizontally...

[@DerekWitt]

I guess you could call this the ELO edition of Linux. They have a pulsating neon hot dog in Don’t Bring Me Down’s video. :)

[@blasphemy619]

Hell yeah! Thanks for the vid.

[@itslegiter1394]

The way he eats that hotdog sure was cursed

[@joshi4912]

Can someone comment on how je bit the hotdog in the beginning? I now am co fused if he ate it weird or I did it wrong my entire life...

[@AROAH]

YES YES YES THIS IS WHAT I'VE WANTED FOR SO LONG IT'S GOING ON MY THINKPAD RIGHT NOW

[@greenoxidated9377]

0:05 You are going to hell for this sin

[@superfoxbat]

Using csv as registry? Am I living in alternate universe?

[@brendanhoffmann8402]

lol this is so quirky, I love it! Definitely getting one of those PowerPC t-shirts!

[@pontiffex]

The intro was a crime against humanity!

[@photoniccannon2117]

I'd highly recommend QEMU for general virtualization if you get the chance. Way better performance than VirtualBox in my experience (and most distros already have the spice guest tools for 3D acceleration installed by default). I'm obviously not referring to CPU architecture emulation (which will perform about like a Pentium 2). QEMU is probably better known for this, but it can do regular virtualization (without architecture emulation) quite well, about 95% of native performance on my machine.

[@grencez]

0:12 *slaps roof of ThinkPad* This bad boy can fit so many hot dogs in it.

[@cemmy410]

"I don't use swap space, as I prefer to run out of memory" This but unironically lol. I haven't had a swap partition in six or seven years. Don't want the disk overhead and have never actually ran out of memory, even on my cheap laptop with only 20 gigs of RAM 😅

[@richardestes6499]

Got over halfway through the video when I started looking for it in my existing Deepin repositories.

[@deneb_tm]

Nitpicking because I gotta, that's not a "quad-core ThinkPad", but a dual-core hyperthreaded one

[@Aeduo]

the weirder thing about that hotdog is no toppings.

[@amoledzeppelin]

You may laugh as much as you want but TSV (like CSV but strictly with tabs) actually *is* the most resource-efficient config format. Much lighter than ini, in fact. Gophermaps are essentially TSVs for that very reason.

[@FoxWolfWorld]

Is Action Retro from New York? The way he says “Hot Dog” makes it sound like it

[@ForkedMan]

Can someone please try to get a call scammer to remote onto this XD

[@syrus3k]

I love workbench so much.

[@edwardecl]

I wish someone could replicate the one feature the Amiga had that nothing else does, the ability to have multiple screens at different resolutions that you could switch between and pull down. Why did nobody try to replicate that? I would love to have a 4k screen and a 1080p screen as virtual desktops or something on Linux.

[@robsquared2]

The Hot Dog Stand theme for windows 3.1 became a meme at work to the point we created a custom slack emoji.

[@IAMSolaara]

I bet making most of the utilities in Perl is line with the Horrible part of the acronym

[@paulwratt]

no, its just practical for the use situtation (I read some of the scripts)

[@aswinchristo4073]

This video introduced me to Atari UI. Thank you. I like neo-brutalistic looking stuff.

[@wheelieblind]

OK Seinfeld lol, next eat a chocolate bar with the cutlery.

[@ChozoSR388]

I heard "Aqua", and I was like, okay, I'm convinced.

[@jlindsley9288]

Amazing. I’m going to talk my boss into upgrading all of our workstations to this instead of Win11.

[@Zahgurym]

Slackware 15?... Now I feel old, I remember installing Slackware 3.5 from a cd I got on ebay because it was faster than downloading on dialup.

[@paulwratt]

You an get it on CD still :) v15 is a 2022 release

[@openBSDguru]

its a nice idea but i was hoping to find a distro for retro computing. ;)

[@ltxr9973]

A Mac OS Platinum WM? I want that!

[@trevor_mounts_music]

If i can run Renoise or Reaper DAWs on this distro I'm all in, chief

[@retronicksprogrammingchann2337]

kind of all over the place wit the themes, but it's linux and has something for everyone!

[@ipponyc]

@Action Retro and @LGR commented too. OMGGGGG! You are both awesome. What does anyone think about the AntiX vs. HOTDOG Linux regarding specs? I have 2 great HP 455 laptops (running AMD 8 processor with 16GB RAMN and 512 GB SSD) that run well on Lubuntu and my kids use it. I wanted to know if using the HOTDOG Windows manager was leaner than using AntiX in other words, so that these laptops will perform better with less processor usage.

[@proteque]

This is fantastic!

[@xnonsuchx]

Smother that hot dog with chili and cheese and a knife and fork isn’t awkward. :-)