I just saw your v.8 update that looks sick!
I agree the noti-panel stuff may not be possible with just a theme on Plasma, about half of my customization experience is with lxqt and not plasma so I forget what is possible where sometime.
OH! I actually don't think that's possible without some kludging.
You could make a panel for each icon, have them side by side, and use Panel Colorizer to make them grow on hover, but that's mega-tedious. Totally doable though. I'd hate to see plasma's ram requirements with like 9 panels each being monitored for activity though, I suspect the performance on that setup would be rough.
In edit mode when changing the location of the bar there should be an option for "fit content" under height
Example: (sorry about the moire pattern, low res screen)
Latte has been deprecated because its features are (afict) all now included in the base plasma panels.
You can make extra panels, have them float, have them dynamically change size, use panel colorizer to retheme only one (if desired).
On my ultraportable I've got a sidebar and a lower dock. The sidebar has actively running apps, my menu bar for open windows, a big honkin app launcher button, and my notification panel. My dock has all my frequently used apps, and some shortcuts to frequently used websites. All just minimal plasma-session + panel colorizer.
Agreed on the taskbar. If they added 'bevels' to the edges to give it that depth that Win98 had then maybe, but this taskbar looks flatter than Windows 8.1 as is.
Honestly as a whole it kinda just looks like Windows 10 with all the visuals turned off in the performance settings, which is fine, but its not what OP was going for.
If it were me, I'd spend some time in Gimp to make a custom start icon with the text on it, then go for a smaller taskbar, about 3/4 this height. I'd add a line of shading around the top and side of the taskbar and the buttons, and figure out how to retheme the notification panel to be the same shaded color so it appears depressed into the bar.
Windows 95/98 had a design philosophy which was meant to emulate the office, the literal desktop. Desks are 3D and have features, even the simplest ones usually at least have trim at the edges to break up the color. Its too flat. Too sterile.
Is that not common anymore? I remember back in the day I'd commonly end up with installers that were just self exteacting archives with a little extra. Idk I haven't used windows basically at all in at least a decade
I'm not familiar with app bundles, and tbh my only experience with exe's are the kind that are just zip files with a different extension. I'd assumed that under the hood they were similar, but I guess I never actually checked.
If your distrobution's maintainers have your package in their repos it will generally only be 3-5 clicks in the GUI package manager or 1-2 lines at the terminal.
Flatpak solved compatibility and library issues, becoming huge in the process.
AppImage is basically like an Exe for windows.
can I run exe's yet...
This has been possible for over 20 years, but with the more recent changes to WINE most (MOST not ALL) windows apps will work fine but you really shouldn't be trying to use the windows apps unless there's no other option
I like when it insists I'm using escape
characters in my text when I absolutely am not and I have to convince a machine I didn't type a certain string of characters because on its end those are absolutely the characters it recieved.
The other day I argued with a bot for 10 minutes that I used a right caret and not the html escape sequence that results in a right caret. Then I realized I was arguing with a bot, went outside for a bit, and finished my project without the slot machine.
Even knowing the other possible orientations I still had to force quite hard to see the cube change, once it did though it shifted between forms easily without much effort.
Did this last year when my heat went out.
Opened up comfyUI and started churning some AI slop on the gaming rigs to keep the place warm.
Edit: autocorrupt changed heat to brain for some reason?