I believe it's always possible to do better, and I will try DO out. However, ironically, windows file explorer is one of those parts of ms-windows I normally appreciate, as being "more good than bad". In particular, I love the shell integration in Explorer. Even if it is a messed-up compromise. I love that with the explorer tortoise-git integration, I get git menus directly in explorer. Which means, in a random application, I can trigger the "load file" or "save as" explorer-dialog, and use the explorer context menu do do git commands or zip/unzip stuff, in a random application that knows nothing about git or zip. Compromise: I know the shell integration is buggy, and thus a nightmare for developers - the developer behind tortoise-git is flooded with bug reports stemming from conflicts with other buggily-implemented explorer-extensions that are not his fault. Also, in a world with 8billion people, it is probably a nightmare to let "everyone" add menu items to the context menu - envision 500 sub-menu items.

Both on linux and windows, I dream of an "explorer nirvana", where the following is solved to perfection: -relevant context-menus for all file-types. -"perfect" 'application-versus-documents-assocatation', so the system knows which applications MAY support a given filetype, and the user dynamically can enable/disable a file association (I don't want the user to delete any file association, only to DISABLE it). - perfectly registered file-viewers, so the details/preview pane can always easily preview any file. Windows Explorer, in my mind, scores high on this, mostly based on efforts back before 2005; hopefully they won't squander it all. If I was a linux distro, my attack vector would be an awesome 'file explorer/previewer'.

My pet peeve in windows explorer, is that file byte size isn't offered as one of the configurable columns. My pet enthusiasm on explorer is, that for many years this as been available as a third-party extension, which highlights what a good design windows explorer has.

Since the end of windows 7/arrival of windows 8, I regard microsoft as incapable of ever building something as great as windows explorer, sadly. The cathedral OS with a consistent UI look & feel (including navigation shortcuts and behaviour), seems to be an art lost with the redmond roman empire of the nineties, and now we must live in perpetual Electron Hell, where UI's are built to be operated with a nose.