4 ms·
Ask HN: Is there still a Windows shell replacement scene?
About 15 years ago or thereabouts there was a fairly thriving Windows shell replacement scene/community... I think I remember Litestep being one of the more popular shells.
Is this sort of thing still going on these days? Is it even possible with W10?
- nabaraz 6y agoI have been using ConsoleZ[1] for the last five years or so. It is a fancy wrapper on cmd with lots of features like tabs and shortcuts. You need to install cygwin, git, ssh etc and set the environment variables and it works as similar to Unix shell. I have since moved to the new Windows Terminal Preview. 1. https://github.com/cbucher/console https://github.com/cbucher/console
- alltakendamned 6y agoMicrosoft themselves are making some progress improving / consolidating the cmd.exe shell and Powershell. it's named Windows Terminal and actively being developed on https://github.com/microsoft/terminal https://github.com/microsoft/terminal
- anfilt 6y agoI think the term shell is confusing, as here they mean something more akin to a Linux window manager.
- indigodaddy 6y agoThanks for the comments guys. Not talking about terminal replacements here. The actual explorer shell. Basically so you have a completely different desktop. Check out Litestep for more info. Anyway, I’ll do some digging to see what the scene is like these days. Was just wondering if anyone on HN remembered the scene or knows if it’s still a thing/active...
- cpach 6y agoI remember reading about Litestep back in the day but I never tried it. I haven’t heard about any such project that is still under active development. I guess these days people who want that kind of customizability tend to run Linux or *BSD.
- anfilt 6y agoYou can see most of them are stalled or discontinued. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_alternative_shells_for_Windows https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_alternative_shells_for...
- Jaruzel 6y agoI've been playing with writing various shell (explorer.exe as the desktop) replacements, on and off, over the years. It's still definitely doable on Windows 10, but a little bit harder. For example, enumerating open windows is little bit more complex now due to the nested way Windows reports them. Also, a fair amount of what you'd think would be part of explorer.exe (as the desktop) now run as their own apps - you have to disable them as well so as not get conflicts with your replacements. But in short, any replacement shell written in the XP/7 era will probably not work that well under Windows 10 due to the under-the-bonnet changes. For non Windows people: In the Windows registry there is an attribute that defines the 'shell' that loads after you login. By default it's explorer.exe. Explorer.exe looks to see if it's the only copy running, and runs in 'desktop mode' - creating the taskbar, putting icons on the desktop, and reacting to system-wide keypresses and mouse clicks. Because MS called the registry attribute 'shell' this is what Windows Devs call the 'desktop'. By contrast the command line prompt is referred to (incorrectly) as the console. Launching further copies explorer.exe results in only the File Browser part of it appearing.
- non-entity 6y agoWheres a good place to learn what one would need to to write a shell for Windows 10? Assuming no previous shell experience, and a little Windows programming experience.
- indigodaddy 6y agoNice summary! It looks like the latest shell hotness that some people have had success with on W10 is bbzero (some sort of derivative of Blackbox for Windows)... https://www.google.com/search?q=bbzero+site:www.reddit.com https://www.google.com/search?q=bbzero+site:www.reddit.com
- JDW1023 6y agoThere's also the Cairo Desktop Environment[0]. [0]: https://cairoshell.com/ https://cairoshell.com/
- agent008t 6y agoBlackbox is the one I used back in the day; looks like it is still active.