What's missing ...

[Mike Lobanovsky]

Yes John, I remember it being mentioned somewhere but you know I'm not too Linux-oriented to surf the OS market constantly. I have my tiny KolibriOS to train myself in assembly from time to time. I'm perfectly satisfied with the newly-acquired eOS Luna (to the extent of abandoning SliTaz) and LTS is all I care for at the moment.

In the meantime, here comes XP Luna Blue - as elegant as its Olive mate:

[Mike Lobanovsky]

And this is the beautiful XP Luna Silver to match the other two:

[John]

Looks awesome!

I think you found your calling. 

[Mike Lobanovsky]

John,

I've been fond of doing this for as long as I can remember. I'm even registered on deviantart.com under the name Deviationist (because all other perverted nicks were already engaged).

But I have never yet spent as long as 3 days in a row in order to re-skin elementaryOS to Mac OS X, and 5 days, Ubuntu to Win XP. My deviation (or is it perversion?) seems to aggravate with time.

[John]

I was wondering if a Windows application uninstall script could be used as a way to migrate an application to Wine? (file & registry)

Is a .PST the only method to move Outlook related content?

[AIR]

If you have your mail in Outlook, then PST is what you have.

Google "libpst" for a set of Linux utilities that, among other things, will convert a PST to MBOX.

[John]

Nice library, thanks!

[Mike Lobanovsky]

Windows 7 emulation turned out the toughest of all in the long run. The odd bits and pieces found on the net appeared to be either incompatible with Gtk 3 and/or Cinnamon 2 or ugly and misshaped. I almost gave up but finally was able to stitch two larger pieces (window decoration with controls and Cinnamon panel with menu) together and fix numerous glitches in theme coloring, metrics and placement in Java scripts and .CSS files into a nice-looking Windows 7 Basic emulation. As a side effect, I've also fixed main menu misplacement in the former Windows XP and 8 themes.

Windows 7 Aero will be a real challenge because Cinnamon 2 is incompatible with either Compiz or abandoned Emerald nor does it have built-in support for blurred Aero glass emulation. But who knows, who knows...

[John]

This is getting serious. 

Is your plan to offer a turn-key Windows look/work alike distribution and maybe some migration utilities to help make the move?

[Mike Lobanovsky]

My minimum goal (as soon as I get the blurred Aero stuff up and running) will be to provide an applet to automate switching between the themes in "the MS Windows Theme Pack for Linux" without resorting to all the relevant options scattered all over the disk. Each theme here requires individual pieces to be toggled and adjusted one by one. Linuxoids are good at ini and option files, sure. But us windozers are accustomed to one big red button that will just do its job in one go leaving the minute tweaks and fine tuning to geeks.

[John]

Sounds like a great plan. WWW Windows Without Windows. 

But us windozers are accustomed to one big red button that will just do its job

Are you referring to the ReBoot button? 

[John]

Interestingly, Windows 9 might not include a “Desktop for running legacy Win32 apps,” according to “previous tips,” and will be updated “frequently and regularly” via the Windows Store.

Sure sounds like another nail in the Windows 32 bit desktop coffin to me.   

AND

You get to buy bug fixes at the MS store.

I think the word Free is going to be the most misunderstood and abuse word for the next few years.

[Mike Lobanovsky]

John,

Let's not run before the horse. Let's wait at least till the Build 2014 developer conference in April 2014.

[John]

I'm curious. Who do you think Microsoft cares more about, consumers or business? Going forward, what will be the preferred computing device for the casual appliance user needing e-mail, browsing and occasional productivity software?