What is the crowd's opinion of SharpEnviro?

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Linux is great, but unfortunately, compatibility with Windows games isn't quite there yet. It's gotten VERY close, but with anti-cheat still being an issue, there's still a bit more work to be done, and particularly with VR games, which are even more finicky in a *nix environment.

If I could, I'd be switched over to Mint or antiX (with a different DE), but the game support just isn't quite there, once it is, Windows is gone. Or hell freezes over and ReactOS gets good.

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You're evangelising to someone who knows full well how nice Linux customization is, and has a partition dedicated to Mint, but can't switch because of what I lose.

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Until it gets to where I need it to be, my only hope is that WSL2 with it's upcoming graphical mode allows an external shell to be used of some sort.

Windows 10 would be so much better with... well... a better shell. If I could toss Cinnamon, Budgie, or even KDE on Windows, I'd be much happier. Unfortunately, MS has made it very hard to have third party shells these days, and almost all the shell projects have died, save for Cairo, and (very stalled progress) on LiteStep, neither of which go in a direction that I particularly want. SharpEnviro was far closer, but it died ages ago.

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Basically, if I could run a Linux DE via WSL with a Windows bridge of some sort, I'd be much happier, because then whatever shitty UI choices Microsoft makes are irrelevant, until such a time where switching is actually more viable.

While SharpE is no longer being developed/supported, I love it. I run a stable 0.8 build and wouldn't have any other Windows 7 experience. I'm incredibly green to Linux experiences but this minimalist shell is my go to that I've ran for ~10 years. I really wish they would continue development on it. : / It and the impending lack of support for W7 are what keep me from W10.

I completely agree with everything you just said but that was not what my post is about. Its more about the egg / hen problematic. There is no reason to support Linux for most publisher since everybody that cares really about games (in contrast to having to buying a game once in a while mainly because of a pro Linux agenda or at least saying so) will dual boot to Windows if necessary.

> F one could choose operating system based on their respective strengths and weaknesses, and not on available software, would that not be a better world, in what comes to the IT industry?

Definitive! At the same time though realistically if multiple OS shared compatibility for native code across each other they would need to share many characteristics of each other as well. In the end you would end up that represents the different OEM versions and forks of Android more than anything else. And compared to this Windows is still very customisable for most use cases and users. I mean you aren't forced to use the default Windows command line, file explorer, start menu or even general GUI (http://sharpe.sourceforge.net/).

for most uses Windows is already pretty open to

> I'd say the most constructive opinion, one that all of us should have, is that it would be best if there were alternatives, avoiding a monopoly.

Problem is that this is a high concept that doesn't directly translate into a feature list. Sadly most people change products like OSs or platforms only because of feature lists. But again, I agree with you.

A friend of mine turned me onto SharpEnviro, or SharpE (cue jokes about sharpies in asshole), but unfortunately they've discontinued development. I don't think it's a tiling wm, but it's definitely way different than Explorer.