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Cairo Desktop Environment

cairoshell.com

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Re: Cairo Desktop Environment

#31

Post by tasogare »

jotm wrote: post #8

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 always feel like MS broke the search menu on Win10 on purpose. They begrudgingly get back the start menu but kill most of its advantages and productivity to punish users.

Re: Cairo Desktop Environment

#32

Post by hb0ss »

rsrx wrote: post #28
abhijitparida wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

I prefer to use keyboard instead mouse.

But if you pin them on the taskbar you can launch them with win + x in the order you have pinned them. I’m assuming that’s why the other person asked.

Re: Cairo Desktop Environment

#33

Post by kompakt »

rvz wrote: post #17

This 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…

Cairo shell has been around for quite a while though. I remember trying out alpha version on Windows XP many years ago. I'm not sure if the current version is a fork or someone sold the brand but it has been around for a longer time. I also recall it wasn't open source at first, but was later open sourced. It just never gained enough momentum and publicity.

Re: Cairo Desktop Environment

#34

Post by imafish »

Like others, I did not know of the Linux Cairo project and was enlightened by all the people telling interesting things about it in the comments to a totally different project.

Re: Cairo Desktop Environment

#35

Post by kompakt »

hobofan wrote: post #23
bschne wrote: post #14

Wait 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!

Yeah, I also would have said ~2010. After looking it up it traces back to at least 2008. I remember trying out the leaked alpha version, and it was incredibly unstable, and missing all the core features, and Milestone 1 wasn't any better. 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 th…

Good to see at least two people remember the old Cairo shell :) I remember trying it out on Windows XP long time ago. I'd say it was even before 2010, as the alpha supported Windows XP and Vista.

Re: Cairo Desktop Environment

#36

Post by kompakt »

milankragujevic wrote: post #11

Wow! This is awesome! I really did think Windows 10 removed most customization capabilities. Glad I thought wrong. This seems like WindowBlinds [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WindowBlinds ] for 2020. Ah, XP with transparency... memories :)

Oh boy, Windows Blinds were the thing for Windows XP. Longhorn theme for Windows XP? Remember Windows Blackcomb theme? I also remember customizing msgina.dll :)

Re: Cairo Desktop Environment

#37

Post by anotheryou »

Semaphor wrote: post #25
anotheryou wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

I use keypiranha as well. Great tool! > 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?

Indexing. Everything traverses your folders to find everything and make an index from that, WizFile reads this from some hard drive tables directly.

So the first indexing with everything takes maybe 30 minutes or more (I actually have no Idea how long it took exactly..) and wizfile is done in under a minute. With slower drives (e.g. external USB2) the difference should be even more dramatic.

The only downside appart from missing integrations is that it doesn't support full regex.

Re: Cairo Desktop Environment

#38

Post by kingo55 »

This looks like a big improvement to Windows. It's as though they've borrowed some elements of the desktop Mac/Linux experience (such as Latte dock).

This would have been really useful for me a few years ago, however I've migrated to Linux/KDE (Precisely for a more customisable desktop as this).

Re: Cairo Desktop Environment

#40

Post by pbhjpbhj »

hb0ss wrote: post #32
rsrx wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I prefer to use keyboard instead mouse.

But if you pin them on the taskbar you can launch them with win + x in the order you have pinned them. I’m assuming that’s why the other person asked.

Well TIL, thanks.
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