Aska, Shin

File Explorers

Some built in programs on Windows lacks something. Although it does it job fine
but some tries to find features that will not only make their easier but also make their
working space more comfortable.

One reason why some Linux users don't want to go back to Windows is because majority of the applications in Linux are customizable. Take a look at this for example.

Leaving the themes and icons aside. We can observe that it has the following features available out of the box compare to the default file manager of Windows.

Tabs
Plugins
Adjustable UI

It may seem that it may be too perfect but that's how it is. KDE's file manager Dolphin does what it said above with litte to no problems. Although there's a KDE Port for Windows but at this moment it is a bit unstable and can lead to a whole-set of new problems.

One thing I found out that does the job is QTTabBar. QTTabBar allows Windows Explorer to have tabs just like Dolphin and can be easily set up with just an installer. Making it easily Explorer in the modern era.

Another one is called CubicExplorer, unlike QTTabBar which is a program that inserts itself in Windows Explorer, CubicExplorer is a seperate program that acts like a file manager similar to Norton Commander but is aimed as a Windows Explorer replacement.

It has native file browsing out of the box and a customizable UI as well, although a bit of a downside is inorder for you to completely replace it as the default file manager of Windows, you must resort to registry hacking which is something I do not recommend unless you know what you're doing.

There are others too that are similar to Cubicexplorer, like Explorer++ and Xplorer2 but pretty much they all act the same, you must resort to registry hacking inorder for it to become the default file manager.

Terminal Emulators

Looking at the appearance of the Linux Terminal Emulators, it features a quite nice of theme set and at the same time also offers a quite set of features, including tabs, bookmarks, customizable look and etc.

The regular command prompt can be quite bland.. taking its appearance back a century and sure it hasn't change much for a bit. Microsoft had put efforts into replacing it with Powershell.

Despite having a powerful scripting shell, Powershell lacks things in terms of interface that Linux Terminal Emulator (Such as Konsole) supports. However we can change that by using Console.

Console supports most of the features that are seen with Linux Terminal Emulators such as Tabs, customizable backgrounds, customizable fonts and etc. What makes it so great is that it does not inject anything into the system but instead it is just an interface that covers command prompt. Now combine that with Cygwin, can really put much your windows machine into use.

With this you're not only be able to use POSIX commands on windows but will have a great interface for it as well, which is double times the fun.