I've been using search for everything since Windows 7. Just have to remember the first 3-5 letters, or a word, and I could open any programs and folders/files. The windows key was my desktop, the actual desktop is blank and black. Windows 10 has a messed up search, it shows useless (for me) stuff first, and never learns to prioritize results based on previous searches/keywords/accessed files. Maybe there's a way to f…
I use Listary exactly for that. However I do keep the Windows key for programs, it seems to work well enough albeit not as fluid as Windows 7.
Cairo Desktop Environment
21–30 of 90 posts
Re: Cairo Desktop Environment
#22Re: Cairo Desktop Environment
#23Wait what? I remember seeing this around 2010 - 2012, eagerly following it because it looked pretty good, and it turning out to bee mostly vaporware at some point. Did not expect this to make a comeback!
Kinda interesting that they still continued with the project for 10 years, despite most of the core productivity features becoming mainstream during the time, and it not offering that much of an upside compared to the standard Windows UI.
Re: Cairo Desktop Environment
#24This looks very cool for an alternative shell for Windows, which is what I am seeing here but in all honesty, as soon I saw the title, it was easy to get this confused with the Cairo drawing library and associating that as a potentially new Linux "Desktop Environment" as the title outlines. The project is technically very interesting for Windows 10 customisation, but the name is very similar with another established…
Re: Cairo Desktop Environment
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you tried Ueli? Has been working great for me: https://ueli.oliverschwendener.ch/
Wox and keyperinha are 2 more alternatives (wox with more plugins but less maintained). Both integrate "everything" for filesearch (it's a pity they don't use the 100 times faster WizFile)
> it's a pity they don't use the 100 times faster WizFile
100 times faster? Everything is instant for me, never had any kind of delay. What things are slow enough with it that something else could be faster?
Re: Cairo Desktop Environment
#26Was Cairo not a Linux Desktop at some point?
I thought this link was about it. The name clash is very unfortunate here.
Re: Cairo Desktop Environment
#27No relation to the Cairo vector graphics API I assume?
Re: Cairo Desktop Environment
#28While this looks cool, I learned over time that basic Windows shell works just fine for productivity purposes: https://i.imgur.com/HC4evaK.jpg , and this would just add another layer on top which potentially requires maintenance, troubleshooting or debugging. The only additional customization I have is a little utility I wrote in C++ that runs in background and provides hotkeys to launch Chrome, Sublime Text, Total C…
> The only additional customization I have is a little utility I wrote in C++ that runs in background and provides hotkeys to launch Chrome, Sublime Text, Total Commander and Cmder via Win+1, Win+2, etc hotkeys. Why not just pin those programs to the taskbar?
Re: Cairo Desktop Environment
#29Re: Cairo Desktop Environment
#30- The Cairo taskbar preserves desktop area for your wallpaper and applications
I think I've yet to see a taskbar which doesn't do that :)
- The list button shows your open windows in an organized, easy to understand layout.
Alt/win-tab isn't a flat list, but I'm not convinced this is faster or easier. Part of this is learning process though: I know the icons of the applications I use most, making alt-tab fast because in a glance I know where to be.
- Never again waste time hunting for applications in poorly organized menus.
Win key and starting to type is usually faster than clicking, at least for me. As another poster mentioned this doesn't seem to always work as good depdning on the exact Windows build, but I've never really had problems and it works well for me, applications/documents/directories I use often are at the top of the list.
- Cairo lets you organize your apps into categories that make sense to you, using an easy drag-and-drop interface.
This is nice, and looks faster than the alternative (pin folder to taskbar as 'toolbar', populate folder with shortcuts).
- Tired of hunting for the same files over and over again, interrupting your work?
No because of win-key + typing, or pinning to taskbar, or fzf or similar in commandline shells. Though I think this might be something which I can only really figure out by trying.
tldr; maybe the front page, or a link on it, should provide some more detail about the features listed?