Comments on: Desktop usability

By: michuk

michuk — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 16:59:18 +0000

@TweakMeister: Yes, litestep is nice and I also have been using it when I had to use Windows in some occasions. But Litestep is a “hack” and thus it is not compatible with lots of Windows features (I had problems with docking in some situations, some programs behaved strangely, e.g. Psi). And it’s also not very elaborate. I can be compared with Fluxbox or XFCE more than KDE or GNOME. Still, a good choice for Windows users until KDE 4 comes in.

By: TweakMeister

TweakMeister — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 16:39:07 +0000

Before switching to linux I have been quite happy using Litestep on Windows XP. It is not a ‘window manager’ in the true sense, rather a replacement of explorer.exe which controls the startmenu and desktop, but but it’s got virtual desktops, context menu and other handy tweakable stuff.

By: Max

Max — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 17:53:29 +0000

If you’re a liftime windows user you won’t have heard of Window Manager as that’s a Linux term. The Win32 alternative is “Shell”. The shell or launcher has been customisable and replaceable since the early days of 16-bit windows. The Win32 shell is explorer and is more customisable than you give credit for here. The first thing I always do is turn off the noddy XP-style start panel and revert it back to plain “vanilla” cascading menus. Many of the faults which one could attribute to Windows are really due to the developers trying to ape the Macintosh interface. (large icon views, hidden filetypes, etc.) Most good Win32 support guys turn all this “mac” stuff off as a matter of routine (detailed icon viess, show filetypes, show system files, etc.)

By: Eric

Eric — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 20:21:06 +0000

Launchy is an open source Windows application launcher that can easily be configured to search your program folders for executables.