Some frellwit over at microsoft decided that the startbutton should be placed in explorer.exe.


_{(What if explorer.exe gets an update so it breaks all visual styles with a custom startbutton?)}

And yes, I managed to create a Windows 7 basic style in vbox...



Now I want to style KDE4, but that seems hopeless at the moment.

Downloaded Anolis Resourcer to see if I could create a basic theme for Windows 7 in VirtualBox. It's something new I need to learn if I'm going to style 7. When I opened a msstyle file I found over 1000 images. In XP there is around 127 files to style, more or less. Also, sweatyfish told me that Vista Style Builder still isn't quite ready for 7. So I won't be styling Windows 7 for a long time I guess. At least I want to try to make a basic style in VirtualBox before I completely switch.

Hopefully I'll have some more ideas for Gnome though, at least Gnome is quite easy to style. Too bad gnome-panel and metacity is a bit old and boring to style, I wish those parts were updated to work with alpha transparency and background blur. The abandoned Emerald project also needs to be forked or updated, it needs to recognize window sizes and apply another border to smaller windows, like the tool-window in GIMP for example. A designer and programmer may not be the best companions I guess, but feel free to contact me if you need a designer's view on how panels, window decorations and other parts need to work if you think about programming the next-gen GNU/Linux desktop.

And to whoever bought me a 1 year da subscription. Cheers!

So there is some hope for me after all. I'm extremely picky about certain things, and one of them is the amount of hard-disk space Windows 7 takes. Removing features in the default "Remove windows components" doesn't seem to free up disk-space, it justs removes the menu items.

So yesterday I found this little guide - [link]

vLite can remove certain things that I don't need it seems. Strange though, because I've heard that the Games and some other parts of 7 can't be removed with vLite. But this guide seems legit, and I can always test it in VirtualBox before a full install.

I just wish Microsoft could make a version for us who wants a modular operating system. If that was possible I guess I would just install the base files, aero and directx for a start. This is the way I usually do when I install Ubuntu. First it installs all the necessary files, then when I boot up for the first time I can just type a line of softwares I want to install. But Windows with a default package manager made by Microsoft is something we'll never see I guess. :/

Update: Managed to get it down to around 5GB when installed in vbox, and I can probably remove more. It was the 32bit version, so I guess the 64bit one will take some more space.

8192MBytes RAM installed and ready for a 64-bit operating system. Which one? I haven't decided yet. Shall I wait until October, or should I just yar har fiddle tee dee? I'm worrying that dualbooting won't work if I do that though.

I've tested Windows 7 in VirtualBox, and I have some opinions...

1. The ugly interface. Yes, I want to change it so bad. Vista actually looks much better compared to that plastic thing they got in 7.

2. There are million sub-menus. Compared to XP which only had a few menus for each task, 7 just had to add fiftyeleven new ones. It's even worse than KDE4.

3. The overall bloat and clunkiness. I don't personally need WMP, IE, Printer support, Fax support, Bluetooth, Games, Support for million of other devices. In XP i nLited away those things I didn't need, I want to have something similar for 7. I guess I can try vLite, but I've heard it can't remove all of the things I don't need.
Edit: These things are there, even if they're not activated. The hdd space these things take up can be used for other things imo.

4. I wonder how easy it is to style. I guess I should make a Slan7 if I get my hands on some tools. But right now I don't understand the thing about browserui (x32 & x64) or whatever it's called. What does it do? Can I only make one when I use the 64bit version?

5. I've heard that people have some trouble with Punkbuster in 7 x64 that I just need for BF2 gaming. Evenbalance doesn't like to create software for unfinished operating systems it seems.

6. Still ClearType for the font rendering...*sigh.* The rendering in OSX and Gnome/KDE is superior compared to that.

I've also tried KDE4.3, and I also have some opinions about it...

1. It looks much better than Windows 7 by default. There seems to be some neat plasmoids for all kind of things.

2. It seems to be a pain to style KDE4 though. I have no idea how to style buttons, panel and the window frame. I've read some things about plasma styling though which seems to be easy, but... I'm a raster-graphics artist, and I've tried using Inkscape to create Vector-graphics. I don't know why, but I just hate working with vector-graphics in Inkscape, I can't do anything that looks good. Maybe because it's easier to style the smaller details when I have access to the pixels.

And have you all heard about Gnome-shell which seems to be the new thing for Gnome 3? - [link] I guess it's still an early pre-alpha, but what they've done to it right now is beyond forgiveness. An enormous menu to the left that I somehow need to drag icons and shit to? No thank you. Workflow just became 80% slower. I just wish they fixed the horrible gnome-panel and metacity that they currently have. Just make it support alpha-transparent PNGs and background blur behind the transparency.

<sub>And it's back to deciding what OS I'll use for the following years... >_>

Edit: Also, these are just early opinions. I can't be 100% sure until I've tried it for some more time. So no need to troll each other in the comments below.</sub>

There are plenty things that we can all learn from eachother, and I'm going to share some of it. This article is about consistency & minimalism (The article is still in beta and reflects most of my views on things which doesn't necisarrily always have to be true.)