My desktop has that stipple without using the '-retro' option, I guess it may be getting set by the window manager.

You can use xsetroot on the bitmap file at any point later after startup.

I think "xsetroot -grey" should be the same? Or at least very similar. I don't feel like restarting X to check.

I wonder why they removed the stipple, just to add an opt-in to re-enable it. Was it causing problems with some newer hardware? I don't get why one would make such a deliberate change to a foundational piece of software if it was purely cosmetic.

Display managers were starting the X server and then immediately drawing a background on top of it, which meant you saw the stipple for a fraction of a second and it was just kind of jarring. These days the X server commonly won't even draw its own background, it'll just inherit the boot framebuffer contents and then draw over them, so you go straight from boot splash to login prompt without flicker.

Because modern operating systems like macOS don't have it and it looks old. When it comes to GUIs -- modern good, old bad. This is actually borne out by psychological research in which users found more modern-looking UIs to be subjectively easier and more pleasant to use. It can be jarring to the end user if some component fails and that visually noisy 1bpp stipple shows up. A more modern, seamless experience is worth more than the frisson of nostalgia you get seeing your X server look exactly as it did in the 80s upon initialization.

> This is actually borne out by psychological research in which users found more modern-looking UIs to be subjectively easier and more pleasant to use.

[[Citation needed]]

I find older-fashioned ones easier to use. I actively favour Xfce over GNOME, KDE, Budgie, etc.

I am wondering what this research was, who paid for it, the age group of the people they tested, and so on.

> A more modern, seamless experience is worth more

Too bad it doesn't exists. /s

Because it looks horrendously moire if you twitch your head ever so slightly. I am, for one, very glad Ubuntu got rid of it so I don't have to damage my poor eyesight even further by ever having to look at it.

probably because cosmetics aren't mere; they directly create pleasure or suffering

if tightvncserver is to be trusted, the new default is a solid gray, which i have to admit looks nicer. that doesn't seem optimal from the point of view of testability (for example, it'll look the same if your gamma is wrong, or if you've confused bgr with rgb, or used a tiled memory layout instead of the correct raster order or vice versa, though maybe not if you have a bit-plane layout or the wrong number of bits per pixel) which suggests that there was a different objective

I do remember this to flicker horrendously on certain early LCD screens.

LCD inversion pattern tests: http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/inversion.php

On my monitor, pattern 2(a) flickers "strongly" (compared to any others) and pattern 4(a) less so.

It still does if you turn on autoscroll and allow the pattern to shift slowly.

Your display will almost flicker like a CRT@60 hz if you watch it from above with your head tilted up.