Not currently. Maybe I can integrate this one https://store.kde.org/p/1876409 but you should be able to install that on its own.

That's easy to tweak. I made everything big for the thumbnail and screenshots lol. I should try to get the proportions right on it though.

I made it thinner in v0.9, with a bunch of other changes. New screenshots on the store page.

If only I could get a Win98 VM working lol

Yeah. I installed it out of nostalgia and once it was all set up I used it for about 30 seconds and switched back.

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.

thanks, I actually did manage to improve the taskbar a lot for v0.7

Wouldn't an exact replica be technically illegal?

In my mind it's weird to use any light theme at all now that dark themes are widely available, but if you are going to, this isn't any weirder than any other.

Another disadvantage it seems to have over many other themes is that in tabbed interfaces there is no color bar on the currently active tab, so you can't spot the currently active tab as quickly.

I've tried a couple versions of this out of nostalgia a few times like using chicago95 and some other custom options. you can pretty much get it right to the classic feel of old Windows GUI's but then you start using it and think "how did I ever use a PC like this?" especially when you're so used to minimal tiling. it's fun for a bit but I always just ended back to like sway or something.

Lol I think it's the best looking Windows

“Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”

Only has the functionality that you need, everything is obviously in its place. Runs incredibly quickly without using a lot of resources, and then gets out your way when you're trying to do stuff. No settings hidden away because they might confuse novice users. No bullshit shoehorned in by managers.

Apart from the ugly font rendering, this might be as good as the Windows UI ever got. WinNT looks the same and has almost incomparable stability improvements, but only if you've the right hardware to run it. WinXP starts the downhill slide with 'appearance over functionality' and the hot mess of the control panel.

I could live with how OP has things set up here; my own copy of Plasma doesn't look a million miles from this.

Windows 98 had god usability. The buttons and controls all had borders, so you could know where they are. In Windows 11, everything is flat, nothing has a border, so you can never know where the interactive area is.

Someone already made it: https://github.com/WackyIdeas/aerothemeplasma

I tweaked it slightly, I think the titlebars are pretty accurate now, at least proportionally

Windows 98:

my theme v0.9:

The icons could definitely use some work. I haven't really looked into how hard those types of issues would be to fix

You can disable the icon pack if you want