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Desktopcolors.com catalogs default desktop background colors across classic operating systems from Windows 1.0 to KDE Plasma 6
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A Hacker News Show HN post introduces Desktopcolors.com, a web museum that records the solid default background colors of operating systems spanning 1985 to 2024.
The site preserves a small but culturally significant detail of computing history, the exact hex values of default desktops that millions of users stared at. It covers mainstream systems like Windows 95's teal (#008080) alongside hobby OSes like BleskOS and SerenityOS, giving engineers a reference point for retro UI work or nostalgia-driven design.
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The site lists each OS with its default background hex code, release year, platform, and a count of available desktop colors.
Coverage spans from Windows 1.0 in 1985 through KDE Plasma 6 in 2024, including Amiga Workbench, BeOS, Solaris, Haiku, ReactOS, and SerenityOS.
Windows 95's teal (#008080) appears across multiple Microsoft releases including Windows 98 and Windows NT 4.0, while Windows 3.0 and 3.1 used gray (#c0c0c0).
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