MS PowerToys also feature a launcher and a couple of nice features like mouse cursor highlight on shake and window zones which make 4k portrait mode monitors somewhat usable.
Re:Cairo: Alternative Windows Desktop
by CoolCold on Tuesday September 27, 2022 @06:12PM
(#33001795)
Used bb4win (bbmean afair) till 2012 I guess, but then it was not developed and not coupled well with Win 7/8 probably, so I came back to Explorer. Nowadays on Win11 I'd probably won't need bb4win anymore.
Re:Cairo: Alternative Windows Desktop
by butthatsit on Tuesday September 27, 2022 @04:00AM
(#32992666)
There also used to be KDE on Windows - exactly what it sounds like, a full Plasma desktop running on Windows!
I was under naive impression that Plasma inspired look of Vista/7.
Re:Cairo: Alternative Windows Desktop
by butthatsit on Tuesday September 27, 2022 @05:53AM
(#32993359)
I don't think so, the Aero look and feel was out (in Longhorn betas) way before KDE4 came to be... But perhaps the Windows 7 look was influenced by it.
However, the current look of KDE - which is much more like Aero - is very recent, at least post Windows 8. KDE4 as it was at the beginning didn't look like Aero that much IMHO.
Nowadays, all the customization I need is a tool to fix the taskbar position that someone who probably uses a portrait mode monitor moved to the wrong spot [2] and a launcher [3]
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiteStep
[1]: http://bb4win.sourceforge.net/
[2]: https://www.startallback.com/
[3]: https://keypirinha.com/