Technology
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Major difference: Android is open source and Linux-based. Everything is made up of components z which are quite close together, but can be separated. In Windows everything is glued together. You can't separate it. You can't remove explorer.exe (Windows' window manager) and replace it with another. You can replace your android Launcher, and you can replace your Linux desktop environment. Heck, you can even install a tiling window manager on the MacOS, Apple's locked down desktop OS!!!! But not on Windows.
I am sorry but this doesn't make sense. Chromium is an open source software and in no way is glued together with any operating system. Unless you want to glue it. They can just have edge WebView2... glued with the os the same way google has to use android webview when a webview is needed.
Microsoft back in the days was forced to... unglue... Internet Explorer. And they managed to do it in a browser that was.. glued in the first place. No OS has to glue anything no matter the source of it being open or closed. Unless they want to glue.
Microsoft btw just.. managed to unglue... Teams from Office... this is way more difficult to do. They will find a way to unglue Edge lol.
Let me send you to that:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pagfXnqOyOE
And how painful it is to remove Edge:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xdFLL9f9sk
Edge is made to be a part of windows, and difficult, if not impossible to remove. It is currently possible, but for how long?
@theshatterstone54 @olympus Yes, you can remove explorer.exe and run an alternative shell. I've done it.
How? Please, please let me know. That sounds like a fun project, and I've already got a Windows VM I don't use.
@theshatterstone54 It basically a registry entry that you change.
superuser.com/questions/1016380/how-do-i-replace-the-system-shell-explorer-exe-with-another-process-in-windows#1016381
I’ve used litestep in the past for about 10 minutes.
litestep.net/
But there are others:
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_alternative_shells_for_Windows
Okay, I was hoping this could pave the way to more tiling window managers on Windows, but it doesn't seem to be the case.