No, you won't actually have a Mac at the end of this transformation tutorial and, yes, it's just a tad bit, well, excessive. But if you're going to go through the effort of turning your Linux desktop into a Leopard clone, you may as well give it the full ride. Going beyond previously-posted guides, Make Tech Easier tackles how to transform your menu bar, add a dock and retractable widgets, create a floating stack over your places menu—even your boot-up screen is given the cold-steel apple and a minimalist progress bar. If you've got the time, it's at least worth the confused faces on your friends' and co-workers' faces.

Windows only: Rainbow Folders, a free interface-tweaking utility, is a great tool for de-cluttering a desktop, directory, or other work spaces where distinct colours and shapes help your mind sort out what goes where. Rather than offering just four or five colour labels, Rainbow Colours lets you use Photoshop-like hue and saturation values to make distinct shades, and lets you choose between classic, XP, or Vista-style stand-up folders to further distinguish your stuff. The app can also add mouse-over tooltip text to a folder, in case your visual memory needs a quick refresher. Rainbow Folders is a free download for Windows systems only. Note: If the main link below is overwhelmed, you can grab the install package from Freeware Files.

Windows only: Freeware application 360desktop turns your Windows desktop into a 360-degree virtual desktop. Using the application's unobtrusive slider, 360desktop scrolls around a cylindrical, widget-enabled desktop until it returns back to the start. As you can see in the video, some of the application's features are a touch frivolous, and unfortunately you can't yet use your own panoramic photos as your 360desktop wallpaper. That said, if you've always been interested in organizing your workspaces with virtual desktops or extending the size of your desktop but haven't found an application that fits your likes, 360desktop might be worth a look. 360desktop is freeware, Windows only.

Windows only: Free Windows utility DesktopOnTop adds an icon to your system tray that provides quick access to the files and shortcuts on your desktop, in either a pop-up list or a mini-desktop view. The right-click list isn't all that much more convenient than the "Desktop" toolbar that Windows itself provides, but the ordered desktop view is a boon for those who stack and filter their files on their background. The major drawback to DesktopOnTop is that its mini-desktop's wallpaper won't match yours (unless you cede your wallpaper to one of its designs), but color-picking and transparency settings can make it unobtrusive. DesktopOnTop is a free download for Windows systems only.

Designer Vijayakrishnan gives us a tour of his gorgeous Windows multi-desktop, which makes you look at it three times to figure out what operating system he's using. With a Mac style and a few free programs like RocketDock, Deskspace, and Findexer, he's really tricked out Windows XP. Get closeups of each of his two main desktops—shown here in a rotating cube—after the jump.

Windows tip: The How-To Geek weblog details how to set up a simple keyboard shortcut to show and hide your desktop icons in Windows. To accomplish this, you'll need to download a very simple application called HideDesktopIcons (available from the post), set up a shortcut to that app, and then simply assign a keyboard shortcut to it. It's very simple to set up, but head to the Geek's post for the full low-down. This app is similar in function to our own desktop-hiding application, Dropcloth, so if you liked the idea behind Dropcloth but weren't happy with the execution, this simple shortcut provides a great way to quickly declutter your desktop.

ICONlook offers a pretty handy interface for searching and downloading icon files, whether for replacing out-of-place icons on your system or adding some graphical polish to a site. The engine's reach is somewhat limited at this point, but it helpfully provides a link to the licence type for each result, when known, and seems to lean toward free and Creative Commons sources to begin with. Until Google adds icon files to their filetype:x capabilities, ICONlook is a good bet for designing your desktop.

Windows only: Donationware application Desktop Teleporter automatically moves files and folders from your desktop to user-defined folders to keep your desktop clean and neat. Desktop Teleporter is serious about keeping your desktop clean, moving any file that you don't add to the exclude list. If you want more advanced options and support beyond the desktop, check out Lifehacker's very own Belvedere. If all you want is a clean desktop and don't need more advanced options, Desktop Teleporter looks like a winner.

Blogger Jeff Kelley prefers his windows take up specific areas of his screen, regardless of the monitor he's plugged his MacBook Pro into. His solution? An AppleScript that determines his screen size and arranges his windows appropriately. Whenever he wants to rearrange his desktop to those specifications, he just runs the script. Geek factor aside, the script can be easily modified to maximise your screen real estate to fit your tastes. Windows users have apps like WinSplit Revolution and Sizer, but if you've been looking for similar functionality for your Mac, Jeff's script is a good starting point.

You've just finished carefully control-selecting all those files you need to move off your desktop and into a container folder, and then, one hand slip later, you have twice as many to deal with. The How-To Geek finds the fix, both inside Microsoft's Swiss-Army-Fixer, TweakUI, and in two registry values you can find inside the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop key. Change DragHeight and DragWidth to somewhere North of 10, and you'll get far fewer accidental copies. Hit the link for a pre-compiled fix and detailed instructions.