5 ms·

Custom windows shells (I know this is just a window manager, but still) in the year of our lord 2025? This takes me back to the days of installing bb4win and li

Custom windows shells (I know this is just a window manager, but still) in the year of our lord 2025? This takes me back to the days of installing bb4win and litestep in XP. I'm a kid again!

insin 1y ago
TIL bbLean [1] still works in Windows 11! Currently digging through my archives for my old BB4Win styles repository [1] https://bb4win.sourceforge.net/bblean/ https://bb4win.sourceforge.net/bblean/
- 90s_dev 1y ago
  Wow, bb4win and bblean take me way back. In fact, they were a huge inspiration for my shells[1] feature, which are just userland programs that happen to be able to manage panels (windows). [1] https://90s.dev/technical/architecture.html#shells https://90s.dev/technical/architecture.html#shells
reddit_clone 1y ago
>litestep Brings back memories !
piskov 1y ago
Oh shit yes: Rainlendar
scbrg 1y ago
flashback, 2001. I'm 25, sitting in the office with litestep installed (which honestly was the only alternative to Linux or resignation). My five years younger colleague steps up to my desk and says "hey, cool desktop!" I start explaining, very carefully, like I'm talking to a child, that this is an alternative shell, which replaces the standard Windows Explorer et cetera, und so weiter... it's very complicated you know... Guy says, "cool... hey, why don't you check out this URL?". I do. It's the litestep contributor page. His nick is on it. Near the top. Ow.
- leviathan 1y ago
  First part of your story reminded me of when I once trolled a non-tech savvy friend by running Windows in a VM on Linux, and told him "have you ever seen what's behind windows?" then I exited full screen to reveal a desktop full of terminals running the matrix digital rain.
philsnow 1y ago
Sloop manager for replacing progman.exe in windows 3.1, for me..
wredcoll 1y ago
Is it just me or did not a single one of those "l33t haxker shells" ever produceable a single ui innovation that lasted? I mean, I remember there being a whole ton of wildly customized windows shells with menus and floating terminals and so on, but not a single thing stuck around?
- II2II 1y ago
  I'm not sure about the Windows scene, since I only toyed around with one or two shells nearly twenty years ago, but the motivations for creating windows managers in Unix varied. Quite often they were about the appearance, customization, ease of customization, lack of customization, or low resource usage. I suspect that most of them were made for the learning experience or simply as a form of self-expression. They were never really about innovation. When there was innovation, it was usually in the form of small things like how we size and position windows (e.g. think about how it is possible to tile windows in Windows these days). Besides, the term innovation is used far too much with respect to software, in the sense that a lot of stuff can be traced back much further than the so-called innovators will suggest. Many ideas have deep roots, but it took several (often independent) attempts until the technology or its users were ready for it.
- Fnoord 1y ago
  Well, I installed Litestep as default shell on a 80486 laptop with Windows (I think it was Windows 98 SE, debloated). It replaced explorer.exe and performed better, IIRC I had more RAM free. I gave the machine away eventually, and they probably ran Linux on it. But because the machine was for my mother, it had to be able to run MSIE.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

Custom windows shells (I know this is just a window manager, but still) in the year of our lord 2025? This takes me back to the days of installing bb4win and litestep in XP. I'm a kid again!

insin 1y ago

TIL bbLean [1] still works in Windows 11! Currently digging through my archives for my old BB4Win styles repository [1] https://bb4win.sourceforge.net/bblean/ https://bb4win.sourceforge.net/bblean/

90s_dev 1y ago
Wow, bb4win and bblean take me way back. In fact, they were a huge inspiration for my shells[1] feature, which are just userland programs that happen to be able to manage panels (windows). [1] https://90s.dev/technical/architecture.html#shells https://90s.dev/technical/architecture.html#shells

reddit_clone 1y ago

>litestep Brings back memories !

piskov 1y ago

Oh shit yes: Rainlendar

scbrg 1y ago

flashback, 2001. I'm 25, sitting in the office with litestep installed (which honestly was the only alternative to Linux or resignation). My five years younger colleague steps up to my desk and says "hey, cool desktop!" I start explaining, very carefully, like I'm talking to a child, that this is an alternative shell, which replaces the standard Windows Explorer et cetera, und so weiter... it's very complicated you know... Guy says, "cool... hey, why don't you check out this URL?". I do. It's the litestep contributor page. His nick is on it. Near the top. Ow.

leviathan 1y ago
First part of your story reminded me of when I once trolled a non-tech savvy friend by running Windows in a VM on Linux, and told him "have you ever seen what's behind windows?" then I exited full screen to reveal a desktop full of terminals running the matrix digital rain.

philsnow 1y ago

Sloop manager for replacing progman.exe in windows 3.1, for me..

wredcoll 1y ago

Is it just me or did not a single one of those "l33t haxker shells" ever produceable a single ui innovation that lasted? I mean, I remember there being a whole ton of wildly customized windows shells with menus and floating terminals and so on, but not a single thing stuck around?

II2II 1y ago
I'm not sure about the Windows scene, since I only toyed around with one or two shells nearly twenty years ago, but the motivations for creating windows managers in Unix varied. Quite often they were about the appearance, customization, ease of customization, lack of customization, or low resource usage. I suspect that most of them were made for the learning experience or simply as a form of self-expression. They were never really about innovation. When there was innovation, it was usually in the form of small things like how we size and position windows (e.g. think about how it is possible to tile windows in Windows these days). Besides, the term innovation is used far too much with respect to software, in the sense that a lot of stuff can be traced back much further than the so-called innovators will suggest. Many ideas have deep roots, but it took several (often independent) attempts until the technology or its users were ready for it.
Fnoord 1y ago
Well, I installed Litestep as default shell on a 80486 laptop with Windows (I think it was Windows 98 SE, debloated). It replaced explorer.exe and performed better, IIRC I had more RAM free. I gave the machine away eventually, and they probably ran Linux on it. But because the machine was for my mother, it had to be able to run MSIE.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]