
Cairo Desktop Environment - Rerarom
https://cairoshell.com/
======
etaioinshrdlu
It looks rather interesting. I didn't realize Windows 10 was hackable enough
to do this. The name made me think of the Cairo graphics drawling library
initially.

~~~
jchw
I was sad when shell replacements stopped being as much of a thing; all the
way back to Windows 3 and up to ar least Windows XP there were well designed
alternatives to the default Windows shell environment.

A good example of an early one is Norton Shell for Windows:

[http://toastytech.com/guis/ndw.html](http://toastytech.com/guis/ndw.html)

Then later there were things such as LiteStep, bbZero and even KDE at a time.

Personally, I actually used ReactOS shell as my default shell briefly, judging
its workspaces functionality to be worth other trade offs at the time. I
believe it still works in Windows to this day, though it may still have bugs
that don’t happen on ReactOS itself.

Even though Windows isn’t really “hackable” for a long time people found a way
to do many things, especially companies like Stardock, using API hooking and
other somewhat brittle tricks, and Microsoft somewhat embraced it. For some
good reasons and some bad, modern Windows is a lot more limited in this regard
and there’s not much to replace the old hackability.

~~~
viraptor
Do you know what changed recently? The last one I used with an alternative
shell was windows 2k and the shells replaced shell.exe. is that not doable
these days?

~~~
jchw
The old method of changing the default shell still works. Although I don't
think you replace/move explorer.exe anymore, but just change registry keys.
When used in embedded systems or kiosks, this type of functionality is
commonly needed, so it is unlikely to change.

When I talked about things changing, it was more regarding changes that:

\- Improve security and stability by disallowing software from invading other
address spaces to do patching.

\- Prevent modification of the operating system itself, by more thoroughly
enforcing signature checking, file integrity, and with periodic large system
updates that are effectively like full Windows version upgrades.

These improvements may make Windows more secure and stable for users, but
combined with modern PCs that come with Secure Boot enabled by default (and
unfortunately, some that came with Secure Boot forcibly enabled during the
Windows 8 era,) it makes modifications and customizations more challenging.

There's no clean mechanism for which a piece of software like WindowBlinds can
exist, and indeed, sometimes running Stardock software in modern Windows can
be troublesome. A while back I hit a bug in WindowFX that effectively bricked
your Windows install if you were running with Hyper-V enabled. It was fixed by
Stardock but nonetheless, with a living OS like Windows 10, breaks like this
can happen more often, without warning, and there's still not good
alternatives for lots of customization stuff.

It's interesting because there are actually still lots of ways in which
Windows lets software extend the operating system - probably more than any
other operating system, but most of them are very old and not very
reliable/stable.

------
galago
Like others, I clicked on it because I thought it was related to the Linux
project.

------
rvz
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 project in the same
technical area of graphics, which may cause some confusion.

Perhaps the naming of this project was derived from Microsoft Cairo that was
never released. [0]

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairo_(operating_system)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairo_\(operating_system\))

~~~
nmg
This part of the description really hit home:

"Never again waste time hunting for applications in poorly organized menus."

The Windows Start menu is terrible, and it's the most iconic part of MS
Windows, or it has been to me since the "Start me up" campaign for W95 (one of
the best tech ad campaigns not made by Apple in my opinion). And now it is a
place where I struggle to activate (?!) the scrollbar. It's an alphabetized
list, but I can't tap a keyboard letter to jump down the list, which kills me
a little every time I do it and nothing happens. I use the Start menu
primarily for locating items to drag to my Taskbar, so I never have to
unwillingly scroll past Candy Crush Slot Machine Simular Redux or You Didn't
Install This! Saga.

~~~
stinos
_but I can 't tap a keyboard letter to jump down the list_

Works for me: Win key, down arrow to get into list (otherwise it will search
everything), typing a letter jumps to that letter. Bonus tip, sometimes
useful: Ctrl+arrows resizes start menu.

 _Candy Crush Slot Machine Simular Redux_

That sucks, yes, but right-click + uninstall seems to get rid of it once and
for all.

~~~
thunderbong
That Ctl+arrows key to resize the Start Menu I didn't know about. Thanks!

~~~
stinos
Figuring out these things is fairly easy: Windows is quite involved when it
comes to using keyboard, so usually when I'm in a new environment I try a
bunch of typical keyboard strokes to see which ones react.

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archie2
Has anyone actually tried this? I'm curious but if I don't like it and
uninstall it I'm afraid of weird glitchy behaviors and a broken shell and I
really don't feel like reinstalling Windows right now.

~~~
chillytoes
Perhaps you could install it with Windows Sandbox. Low risk.

~~~
archie2
I completely forgot about Sandbox - fantastic idea!

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jotm
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 fix that, that would
be great.

~~~
mnkypete
Have you tried Ueli? Has been working great for me:
[https://ueli.oliverschwendener.ch/](https://ueli.oliverschwendener.ch/)

~~~
anotheryou
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)

~~~
Semaphor
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?

~~~
anotheryou
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.

~~~
drewkett
I don’t think that’s true. Everything takes ~20 seconds to index my machine. I
think Everything reads NTFS file table directly. Maybe you didn’t give it
Admin privileges?

~~~
anotheryou
Ooops, I think you are right!

Here is where I mixed up things: WizTree does what WinDirStat does, but here
it's really quicker.

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rjknight
I wonder if the name is inspired by this:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairo_(operating_system)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairo_\(operating_system\))

~~~
dragonwriter
Probably. Or possibly by Windows Chi-Rho (the same source of the name of the
city “Cairo”), which is more popularly known by the English names of those
letters, which is often looked at as the peak of Windows UX with later
iterations as regressions (though sometimes Windows 7 gets that honor.)

~~~
Quarrel
Chi-Rho is not at all the source of the name of the city Cairo.

Cairo was founded by the Fatimid's and called al-Qāhirah, and this is the
etymology of the anglicisation.

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bschne
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!

~~~
hobofan
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 that much of an upside compared to the standard
Windows UI.

~~~
kompakt
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.

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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.

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arianvanp
Reminds me of the good ol' days of Litestep. Before I discovered Linux I
customized my windows shell to the max on XP

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ginko
No relation to the Cairo vector graphics API I assume?

~~~
baybal2
No, none

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thom
For the record, you can add custom folders to your toolbar. Since Windows 95
I've found it useful to have Desktop and Downloads there, so you can quickly
access stuff. I only use those folders plus one root for projects, so don't
really have this problem of getting lost in various folders or regularly
needing Explorer.

~~~
Rerarom
I used to love this once, when you're a child it feels like hacking, like
forcing Windows to have a second start menu (if you make the new toolbar small
enough, the folder contents appear as a menu).

~~~
thom
Yeah, you have to fiddle a bit to get them to minimum width with the ">>" menu
and no extra space. Obvious search is more or less good enough now, but you
still can't drag from the start menu.

~~~
netsharc
A long time ago (Windows 98? 2000?), you can add the IE address bar to the
taskbar, but it also had auto-complete for directories, so if you wanted to
open C:\Projects\Foobar\main.c you could just type a few letters and open that
file. It also let you drag and drop the icon (where IE would show you the
favicon) to any open program. Sadly this behavior got changed later, so drag &
drop no longer works...

~~~
thom
Yeah, I think I used this, even justifying a two-row taskbar for a while.
There even used to be a Google widget to search from the taskbar (and yet here
I am instantly turning off web searches in the start menu out of sheer
disgust).

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rsrx
While this looks cool, I learned over time that basic Windows shell works just
fine for productivity purposes:
[https://i.imgur.com/HC4evaK.jpg](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 Commander and Cmder via Win+1, Win+2, etc hotkeys.

And to run any other program, it is enough to hit Win key and start typing
that programs name.

~~~
abhijitparida
> 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?

~~~
rsrx
I prefer to use keyboard instead mouse.

~~~
hb0ss
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.

~~~
rsrx
I didn't know this was possible, thanks!

~~~
com2kid
shift-win-# opens a new instance/window of an app that is already open, and
alt-win-# closes that app (which can be sorta weird with multiple windows of
an app open.)

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jankotek
Back in 2003 I used Litestep. It was scriptable modular windows shell. It had
integration with IMs (Miranda), mail, weather, voice control... Sometimes I
feel like technology is evolving backwards.

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okramcivokram
_Cairo is a customizable, intuitive desktop environment for Windows._

 _Cairo requires Windows 7 or later, including Windows 10, and .NET 4.7.1 or
later (already included with Windows 10 1709 and newer)_

Looks like it's a alternative windows shell, and not a cross platform Desktop
Environment like KDE/GNOME etc.

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rafaelvasco
Instead of replacing windows shell like this I currently use Rainmeter. Very
flexible on what you can do. I currently have a shortcut bar, a datetime
display, a spotify now playing and controller, a sound spectrum viewer, system
stats like processor, ram, hd space etc. Really useful; The best thing is that
you download these elements as Skins, and then you can modify their code and
assets at will. Really easy to do so. Very little processing power required
too.

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milankragujevic
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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WindowBlinds)]
for 2020. Ah, XP with transparency... memories :)

~~~
kompakt
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 :)

~~~
Rerarom
One could also use the built-in visual style engine by patching uxtheme.dll or
by using StyleXP which patched it in RAM

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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).

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rishabhd
I used to use this on a regular basis, unfortunately it still has a lot of
bugs (sometimes reproducible, sometimes not) which made me switch to classic
windows environment with conemu maximus.

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ibotty
Why didn't they use CDE as abbreviation. It makes so much sense!

~~~
sjansen
Are you punning on Common Desktop Environment?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Desktop_Environment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Desktop_Environment)

I for one don't miss CDE.

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downrightmike
The main reason to use the default shell is that it is pretty much the same
desktop as server. So why learn how bad things are if I'm never going to put
this on a server?

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marsrover
Wow, I thought this was dead. I don’t remember when I first saw it but it must
have been more than a decade ago.

I was amped for it but it never released until now.

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yani
I would love to see mininalistic design. There are way too many choices
available to me and most of them are of no or minimal use.

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_pmf_
Since it has not been mentioned (maybe it's common knowledge): cairo is a
(wrong) pronunciation of Greek chi rho (XP).

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pier25
Does this also replace the file explorer?

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stinos
This looks pretty neat, but most features listed are sort of customised clones
of standard Windows behavior so I'm not sure it's compelling enough to switch
(or, the explanation isn't doing justice to what it actually does)? For
example:

\- 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?

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bayarrhea
47 comments and at least 24 of them are about reading comprehension..

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peter_retief
Was Cairo not a Linux Desktop at some point?

~~~
jraph
There is indeed cairo-dock / glx-dock [1], that can probably be used as a
desktop environment too by using a separate window manager like Compiz.

I thought this link was about it. The name clash is very unfortunate here.

[1] [http://www.glx-dock.org/](http://www.glx-dock.org/)

~~~
peter_retief
I was looking for the Linux download link.

