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Comment by buckbova | Hacker News Reader

> If you’re using Windows, you’re pretty much stuck with the Windows interface. The menus are always going to be in the same place and while you can do things, like change your desktop image and your colors and themes, you’re still limited in how you interact with your computer.

I'm not so sure about that. I used winblinds years ago for XP. Not surprised to learn that they're still around.

http://www.stardock.com/products/

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There used to be a bunch of alternatives to explorer.exe (yep, the very same damned .exe as the file explorer), but its been ages since i played with them. They all had quirks and issues, as best i recall.

Litestep used to be very sleek at one point. I've used it for an year or two without any problems.

I remember making themes (and even a "distro") for litestep when I was in highschool. Good times.

The best shell I ever used for Windows in terms of productivity was a blackbox variant, xoblite (http://xoblite.net/).

They with different products provide a dock like experience, virtual desktops, some of the bling of compiz themeing etc etc etc. Which is fantastic until windows which on some machines is more flakey than others acts weird and you get to figure out if the quirk is in the app, your machine, or your stardock product which in my experience it often is.

Stardock is buggy and costs money. Linux DE are free and superior.

I used Rainmeter and DisplayFusion to set this up as my desktop: https://goo.gl/photos/JNtxrGasR4LnRPPn6

Pardon the phone recording bit, I had difficulty finding a screen recording software that would record at a decent framerate at 4K.

Hadn't heard of it. Very cool alternative. Especially since I still can't get used to Win 10.

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