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There's plenty of theming software available for Windows. Check out Litestep (here as well) or Windowblinds.

I'm certain there are others, but I'm only familiar with those...

It's a very pretty interface, though.

And even if most of us don't have Macs, we can still simulate it with a combination of Stardock's products. :)

W2K plays 3D shooters ("Tested": Unreal, Q3, QII, Half-Life, CounterStrike, FreeSpace, etc) faster and smoother than W98 *on the same hardware* (PII 350, 16MB Riva TNT, 128MB RAM, 10GB 7200 ATA66 disk - not big iron, by any means).

It seems to do better in both OpenGL and Direct3D modes - and the OpenGL is definitely better; a bunch of annoying artifacts in Half-Life (under OpenGL/W98SE) have gone away (decals not displaying correctly, etc). I run my games at 640x480x32, and they run nicely at default detail levels. Purely subjective, of course.

It also does better with lots of things running, and is generally kinder to the Win32 versions of XEmacs and ActivePerl.

W2K is not bad, not bad at all. Of course, I've souped mine up with Object Desktop from StarDock, so everything looks real purty - and ObjectZip and Control Centre give me some groovy stuff.
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Yep. Stardock has a utility in beta called WindowFX that, among other things, allows you to set transparency levels on any application. You have to be a member of their Object Desktop Network to get the latest beta, but they did have a public preview back in February that I believe is still downloadable. It was slow, but usable, on a P3-500 with 256MB. I'm guessing they have it optimized better by now, but I'm not sure.

I haven't signed up for the full network yet, but will probably do so soon. I've been trying out their WindowBlinds utility (also part of the network) and have been pretty impressed.

I agree, no standard. One of the things I loved about Un*x and X was the customizability of the gui and the different window managers. That is something I miss now that I must work on Windows most of the time. Although I recently discovered Window Blinds which helps out some.

YES!!! This is something that has occasionally been mentioned on the KDE look 'n' feel mailing list and obviously needs more input from end users. See also:

• Object Desktop (one of the few products to really exploit the WPS' capabilities)
• IBMCUA1 (DOS-based IBM CUA '91/Workplace Shell demo - Part 1)
• IBMCUA2 (Part 2)

YES!!! This is something that has occasionally been mentioned on the KDE look 'n' feel mailing list and obviously needs more input from end users. See also:

• Object Desktop (one of the few products to really exploit the WPS' capabilities)
• (DOS-based IBM CUA '91/Workplace Shell demo - Part 1)
• (Part 2)

Stardock has quite a few cool games. I still regularly play the OS/2 version of Galactic Civilizations, which won the internet game of the year in 1994, and Entreprenuer(an excellent on-line war game done using salesmen, marketing, and research instead of tanks, planes, and troups). I play Entreprenuer against my dad and brother, both in different parts of the country! Business Tycoon, the sequel to Entreprenuer is coming out for Windows only, as well as an updated version of Galactic Civilizations. The AI players in Stardock games are quite well done. Another cool game they are coming out with(Windows and OS/2 versions) is Stellar Frontier, another online game where you're flying a spaceship during an interstellar war.

Stardock has quite a few cool games. I still regularly play the OS/2 version of Galactic Civilizations, which won the internet game of the year in 1994, and Entreprenuer(an excellent on-line war game done using salesmen, marketing, and research instead of tanks, planes, and troups). I play Entreprenuer against my dad and brother, both in different parts of the country! Business Tycoon, the sequel to Entreprenuer is coming out for Windows only, as well as an updated version of Galactic Civilizations. The AI players in Stardock games are quite well done. Another cool game they are coming out with(Windows and OS/2 versions) is Stellar Frontier, another online game where you're flying a spaceship during an interstellar war.

Stardock has quite a few cool games. I still regularly play the OS/2 version of Galactic Civilizations, which won the internet game of the year in 1994, and Entreprenuer(an excellent on-line war game done using salesmen, marketing, and research instead of tanks, planes, and troups). I play Entreprenuer against my dad and brother, both in different parts of the country! Business Tycoon, the sequel to Entreprenuer is coming out for Windows only, as well as an updated version of Galactic Civilizations. The AI players in Stardock games are quite well done. Another cool game they are coming out with(Windows and OS/2 versions) is Stellar Frontier, another online game where you're flying a spaceship during an interstellar war.

Stardock has quite a few cool games. I still regularly play the OS/2 version of Galactic Civilizations, which won the internet game of the year in 1994, and Entreprenuer(an excellent on-line war game done using salesmen, marketing, and research instead of tanks, planes, and troups). I play Entreprenuer against my dad and brother, both in different parts of the country! Business Tycoon, the sequel to Entreprenuer is coming out for Windows only, as well as an updated version of Galactic Civilizations. The AI players in Stardock games are quite well done. Another cool game they are coming out with(Windows and OS/2 versions) is Stellar Frontier, another online game where you're flying a spaceship during an interstellar war.

Stardock has quite a few cool games. I still regularly play the OS/2 version of Galactic Civilizations, which won the internet game of the year in 1994, and Entreprenuer(an excellent on-line war game done using salesmen, marketing, and research instead of tanks, planes, and troups). I play Entreprenuer against my dad and brother, both in different parts of the country! Business Tycoon, the sequel to Entreprenuer is coming out for Windows only, as well as an updated version of Galactic Civilizations. The AI players in Stardock games are quite well done. Another cool game they are coming out with(Windows and OS/2 versions) is Stellar Frontier, another online game where you're flying a spaceship during an interstellar war.

OS/2 was perhaps the most stable OS I ever ran. Supported dos better than MS-DOS. Windows programs weren't stable (these are Windows apps we're talking about), but at least a misbehaving app didn't crash my system (or even other windows and dos vm's!)

Stardock (makers of Object Desktop, probably single most useful program I ever saw for OS/2) was trying to get IBM to let them further develop a client version. IBM, of course, in their infinite wisdom, said no.

Stardock moved on, I wish them well, but I won't be buying Object Desktop for Win.

while i admit the win95 GUI is faster and more stable, there are many things wrong with it. it's not nearly as configurable as most x11 GUIs, in both of a visual and feel sense. it only has one "workspace" or "virtual window" or "layer" or whatever you want to call it. and of course since it's "integrated" into the OS, if it crases, so does your computer.

Well, yes and no. Windows isn't out of the box themeable, but there are third party solutions available. There are also virtual desktops available.

For example, there is a port of Afterstep to Windows called Litestep (I don't have a decent URL to post... you can try Litestep.net but it seems to be dead) which will give you virtual desktops.

Stardock has a product called Windowblinds which will skin titlebars, window borders, menus and buttons (not scroll bars or progress bars yet) as well as allowing translucency and bitmap backgrounds for explorer windows. They also have IconPackager (theme manager for icons) and Control Center (virtual desktops and app launcher [kind of like CDE bar or KDE bar). You can learn more at their web site.

It does a lot more thank just virtual desktops!