A very good online friend and clanmate of mine, Hawkfan, and I are quite heavy into desktop customization. What this means is that we use programs that modify the look and feel of the normal boring Windows desktop. NextSTART and Workshelf from Winstep provides my look and feel. Hawkfan uses LiteSTEP (OTS distro) on his main computer and either Winstep or LiteSTEP on his server. Keep in mind that neither of the above programs skin the actual application windows. To do that, you will need a program called WindowBlinds. Examples of what is possible are linked below. Some of the boxes use a high resolution so be sure to scroll around the image to see everything. In addition, several more clan mates and friends have installed NextSTART, Workshelf, or WindowBlinds. I'll be posting their desktops as well when they send them to me.

Update (5/10/2004): Under Linux my favourite window manager is Fluxbox. It's a very lightweight, stylish, popup-menu driven offshoot of the famed Blackbox window manager so I thought I'd give the Blackbox For Windows (bb4Win) shell a try. Wow. Colour me impressed. What a job they've done with this. I've been having a great time the last few weeks using and tweaking it. I've got it going on my main and @work boxes and am really torn between this and my long-time Winstep setups. =\ There are a couple of branches to the main bb4Win shell, too. They are xoblite and bbLean, of which, I'm running the bbLean branch (albeit with several plugins). Very cool.