I used to love Litestep. You know if there was an OS that took the lead in making customization and skinning accessible, it would be quite a great step forward. Instead we have third party programs and customizations that don't quite cut it.
KDE is famous for making everything customisable. But the market for skinning software isn't that big - most people will never go looking for that feature. So it's much more important that it looks good by default.