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#5 Ease change of the desktop environments

I mean a complete change, not just like a theme. I really like to replace the whole Windows desktop with KDE.

You should know better than that. Also, here.

Googling for "geo windows shell clone" and the first result eventually got me to GeoShell. Is that what you were thinking of?

Indeed. I used to change my shell every other week or so for a few months, just to try something new and tinker.

I found that LiteStep was a PITA to use. Too much playing with config files.

SharpE was a decent and simple to use. Same with geOShell.

AstonShell is a nice shell with lots of features, but it costs money and it can't do anything that LiteStep can't.

I tired BlackBox for windows when it was first released and liked it quite a bit. Very minimalistic.

There is quite a lot of shells to choose from, though, sadly, not as many as there used to be. DarkStep was a stripped down LiteStep shell that I REALLY liked, but the maintainer abandoned the project many, many years ago. Seranade looked promising, but the site doesn't even exist anymore.

You could try one of the shell replacement programs. I've used Geoshell for years. It allows modification of the desktop menu.

Why did you have to install Win98SE 3 times a month? Seriously. I don't think I ever reinstalled my Win98SE install. I ran it with few problems. It did what I wanted it to do, and when it wouldn't, it was usually a hardware hindrance, not a software one (P166 w/ 96 megs EDORAM and a 2 meg video card only does so much. I ran old hardware for quite a long time).

I ran my P166 into the ground and had installed, over time, Win95, then 95B, then 98, then 98SE. When it would no longer do what I wanted, I built my own system and continued to run 98SE until I bought XP (got a discount- fiancee was in college at the time). One caveat: I was not using the Windows shell for the majority of the time. This may have a real effect on the usability and stability of the operating system. I used Geoshell and was able to run the above-mentioned system for 7+ weeks without a reboot.

Might I suggest, for more minimalistic needs, Geoshell?

This topic shows up about once a year, and I always make it a point to pimp my favorite productivity enhancer, GeoShell.

GeoShell is a shell replacement, which means it runs instead of your taskbar and start menu. You can easily replicate those if you really like them, but I much prefer the flexibility of having individually-docked "GeoBars", which are completely customizable. For instance, along the top of my screen I have a GeoBar showing all my drives for easy access, a GeoBar with system and network traffic monitors and a clock, and a GeoBar with my QuickLaunch folder. Add the GeoBar in the bottom-right corner for running tasks and the system tray, and I'm set. You can also create menus which can be triggered by GeoBar icons, mouse clicks, and even keyboard shortcuts, such as my running tasks menu (Win+T) and my QuickLaunch menu (Win+Q).

I apologize; I tend to ramble. Feel free to ignore what I was saying, but do go check out the Screenshots archive to see just how flexible and customizable you can get. =)

P.S.- If anybody knows of a window manager for Linux that affords this level of customization, please drop me a line. I've tried Kahakai, Fluxbox and XFCE, but none of them are quite what I'm looking for.

This topic shows up about once a year, and I always make it a point to pimp my favorite productivity enhancer, GeoShell.

GeoShell is a shell replacement, which means it runs instead of your taskbar and start menu. You can easily replicate those if you really like them, but I much prefer the flexibility of having individually-docked "GeoBars", which are completely customizable. For instance, along the top of my screen I have a GeoBar showing all my drives for easy access, a GeoBar with system and network traffic monitors and a clock, and a GeoBar with my QuickLaunch folder. Add the GeoBar in the bottom-right corner for running tasks and the system tray, and I'm set. You can also create menus which can be triggered by GeoBar icons, mouse clicks, and even keyboard shortcuts, such as my running tasks menu (Win+T) and my QuickLaunch menu (Win+Q).

I apologize; I tend to ramble. Feel free to ignore what I was saying, but do go check out the Screenshots archive to see just how flexible and customizable you can get. =)

P.S.- If anybody knows of a window manager for Linux that affords this level of customization, please drop me a line. I've tried Kahakai, Fluxbox and XFCE, but none of them are quite what I'm looking for.

Actually, you can replace the shell in XP. I messed around with GeoShell for a while. It's actually pretty nice.

GeoShell

Geoshell is a GPL shell-replacement program for Windows.

Here we go...

for instance showing the login screen for Windows 2000 and its successors BEFORE the system has finished loading and all daemons have started running.

This is true. True more so for XP than 2000. But that doesn't make it any faster because there's still a couple of seconds where you can't do jack shit even though the screen is already "drawn". Never fooled me, really. But then again, I've never seen Linux (any distro with any window manager or not) boot faster than Windows. I'm sure you can boot Linux in about 3 seconds if you spend 4 months tweaking it and that's been done as a cool geek experiment, but the average Linux user (if there's ever such a thing) probably won't go there anyway, and neither will the major user-oriented distros.

And also we have the thing with IE and lots of other MS software being loaded in the background wether you ask or not

OK, let's do a little experiment. Load up Windows. Download Geoshell and reboot. Now, load up Process explorer and try to find a single instance of a process mapping the IE render library (mshtml). No? OK, now load IE. How fast was that? Now load Mozilla or Firefox. This whole "oh teh M$ is teh cheat" is absolutely bogus. IE is simply fast, and Mozilla is simply slow. Period. That doesn't make one a better browser than the other, but I'm not going there.

and only hiding the icons instead of unloading them when the user tries to "close" them thereby sacrificing memory to gain percieved speed for the user.

What exactly do you mean? When I close a window I expect the process to go away and be unloaded. If anything the executable image will remain in memory and it will load without swapping next time, but are you saying that Windows "hides" windows instead of unloading their processes when I ask it to? That's nuts. Or are you referring to this? Heh. You really don't believe the argument that this problem is a Microsoft issue, right? Because the only application that has that problem happens to be Mozilla.

>>If I don't like the windows manager, I can choose another one. > >Why can't you do the same in Windows? I've recently used Geoshell a lot and it was a real cool minimalist (much more so than KDE or Gnome) Explorer replacement. There are dozens more, and this community is actually thriving in these days. :-) Cool. I didn't know that there was so much activity in that area these days.

I love geoshell. I also used Aston shell untill my free trial wore out, and I loved it too. Here's some links:

geoshell (free)
Aston Shell (cool, but less free)

And I'm sure there's plenty of others if you look for them.

Using the 'explorer' shell, which is heavily intergrated into the Windows OS, is the fastest, and should be the default. Then if people want to change it to look pretty they can, by sacrificing speed (in slower machines).

Windows shell replacements, as opposed to skinning apps like WindowBlinds, usually run faster, not slower. The secret seems to be choosing an alternative browser and file manager, thereby using Explorer as little as possible.

My Win2k box runs a lot faster with Geoshell/Servant Salamander/Firefox than with Explorer/Explorer/Explorer.

I have ACPI suspend-to-disk working quite nicely on my Dell Inspiron 4000, running Gentoo and 2.6.4-ck2.I've never tried suspend-to-RAM; I'd rather be certain that my batteries won't die while my computer is unattended.

It certainly took a while to get there, especially since I originally attempted to use the Dell/RedHat suspend-to-disk-partition-building tools, which did not work at all, but now I've got it saving to swap and I'm golden.

In fact, I dual-boot Windows XP and Linux on my laptop (for games, you know), and I set up Windows to hibernate with its page file so that I can switch between them with ease. Hibernate one, rouse the other, etc. etc. The only problem I have with that scheme is that my shell replacement in Windows tends to crap out after a few reboots and requires a full restart to repair. The hardware itself is all good, though.

I can't stand the default Windows Explorer setup.

Then ditch Explorer and use geOShell (free [beer, and I think speach]) or Aston (cheap, and easier to use).

...but first thing I stick on a Windows machine is Geoshell, presuming it's a personal machine (e.g. I don't have to share it or use it at a job or something). If you've not heard of it, Geoshell is a fantastic shell replacement. Stabler, takes less memory, and much more configurable (custom hotkeys galore) than Explorer. Besides that, your list looks pretty good, though personally I'd replace SmartFTP with WinSCP (SFTP client), throw in Putty (SSH client), Irfanview, DC++, and AVG Antivirus. Oh, and probably Adaware for good measure, even though you can avoid spyware if you just have a brain about what you install.

Besides that, I still run Ultimatezip instead of WinRAR, frankly I'm going with it because it's the status quo and it works fine. And I run Zonealarm, even though it's become a bit bloated. Oh, here's one thing you forgot: a good codec package. And BSPlayer to play videos... oh and Quicktime and an old version of RealPlayer (preferably RP8 or something). And then Cygwin for a nice *nix command line, and Nero to burn cds. There, I think that's about it.

1. GeoShell - I find the Explorer shell to suck and GeoShell is rather stable, quick to install/configure, and highly usable.
   
2. Firefox
   
3. Thunderbird
   
4. Winamp - I enjoy that 5.x comes with Milkdrop standard.
   
5. Miranda-IM - I used to have stability issues with older builds of Miranda but after that went away I haven't looked back at Trillian or the stand-alone apps.
   
6. Zoom Player - I don't quite like Winamp for movies, Zoom Player is excellent.
   
7. PowerDVD - for the codec.
   
8. MSYS and MinGW
   
9. SciTE - I used Editplus for some time until I found this.
   
10. WinRAR - I like the interface, for the most part, and it handles most formats.

Ok, I just reinstalled two days ago, for the first time in years and years. Here's what I had to do to make it useable:

0) Install all my drivers (I ended up adding this to the list after the fact)
1) Install all service packs and hotfixes
2) Install McAfee and update it
3) Download and install Opera and import my old mail
4) Download and install geOShell to stop using explorer ;)
5) Download and install gaim
6) Download and install MUSHclient (gotta mud!)
7) Download and install winamp
8) By this time I really needed to put Battlefield: Vietnam on ;)
9) Ok, I haven't gotten to this step yet since I installed BFV, but I need to install exceed (not-so-free X server), and map all my network drives, then I should be at a completely usable state.

Is this basically like everyone does?

In addition to what the sibling posted above, there's also GeoShell

LiteStep
Geoshell

Or you could run Task Manager, Internet Explorer, even Mozilla. Any program that is capable of starting an app. Open regedit, go to HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon and create a new string value of Shell with the name of the executable. Logout, then log back in and explorer is out of the stack.

there are free desktops for windows available.

And with litestep no Linux WM can compare, cause it's real customizable.
And maybe kahakai can compare, when it has more snipplets to make things easier.
Geoshell is from the Programmer of the Explorer, because he need something to debug the Explorer during development. And the concept of bars is just like the concept behind gnome.
There is also a blackbox port for windows.
And there is much more.

just my 0.02

Sorry 'bout that.

Win98SE + Geoshell on a P166 with 96 megs EDO RAM and a 1 meg video card + many, many, many programs run (including multiple sessions of MSIEvil 5.x, Mozilla 1.x, Photoshop 4.0, etc etc etc) = rock solid stable for over 7 weeks. I finally had to reboot because my dialup connection would no longer connect (something about no available something or other, it's been a while, I don't recall exactly what it was). Win98 not stable? Maybe if you use the standard Windows shell. Not the way I used it.

of the whole article was when he tried to tell me that using a mouse is faster than using the keyboard. Cut and paste in windows is vastly superior to that of linux systems running X. Not only is it unified, it works everywhere. In X, maybe it works, and maybe it doesn't. Some applications don't take kindly to the clipboard, while others tend to try to impliment their own method. I don't care what anyone says, linux isn't all that hot as a desktop system. Like the author complains about windows, it's the little things that make it awful.

In fact, most hardcore linux/unix users i know do everything they can to get away from using their mouse. Guess this guy doesn't use vi/vim.

While we're on the subject of mice, why do i *STILL* have to hack in support for my wheelmouse manually in the conf? Are we not at the point yet where X can detect this automaticly? Making buttons 4 and 5 on my mouse is a pain as well.

The author also fails to mention that you are not strapped to applications like IE and Outlook, they can be replaced, or simply not used. I mean, what is wrong with using firebird and thunderbird? IMHO this is strong evidence that he didn't really explore his options much. The desktop can be replaced as well, with any one of dozens of explorer replacements. Hell, you can even get blackbox for windows or another favorite, geoshell - there are many more if you look. He also failed to mention that installing programs is almost always hassle free, while with linux you're into a horrid mess of library dependancies, un-unified packaging formats, and software that doesn't compile for whatever reason. If windows is so inferior, why is it past all this?

To me, linux users are just like windows users who swore by the 9x series, you're just used to the way things are, and you're past the point of objective thinking. Windows 9x users didn't like how their machines crashed all the time, they just accepted it. Linux users don't admit all the hassles that linux causes them, because they are used to it. When put on the defensive, most people will argue in favour of whatever they're using.

I've used both as primary operating systems before, and hands down, windows is much easier to use, the software is easier to install, and most times, you don't have to follow some cryptic manpage or readme that was designed for other programmers to understand it. My theory is Linux fails not because it's inferior, but because it's written by programmers for programmers. This tends to make it confusing, awkward and just plain hard to use, let alone set up. Just try to set up a pppoe or dialup connection, it's hours of frustrating fun if your distrobution doesn't include something to help you out.

I apologise if i come across sounding like a troll, but this guy's article is laughable, at best. It just goes to show you that you have as much chance of locating an unbiased article about windows on newsforge.com as you do finding an unbiased article about linux on microsoft.com.

I suppose the bright side of the argument is that he was not 100% negative about windows like most linux zealots, but make no mistake, this guy is a zealot. From the very start, he's setting this up to be a negative review.

In the end, i use windows. I want to work, get paid, and live a happy life, not wade through an operating system that tries to make my life hard at every turn.

There are a couple of applications for Windows that support multiple desktops. I replaced my Explorer shell with Geoshell, which includes a plugin for that. I would never go back to the regular Explorer shell again.

There are a few:

• Litestep
• Geoshell
• Shell City has a few links

There's also progman.exe*, shipped with windows. I've heard tell of a "winfile" also supposedly built in, but I don't know anything about that.

I've tried a few of these, but some of them (Blackbox) seemed to take more resources than Explorer! Another caveat, the ports of *nix windows managers retain the *nix settings system, so setting them up can be a pain if you don't have experience with them.

*Yes, that is progman of Win16 fame.

For a lot of people. Thats why there is a little bit of a push to emulate it. I'm not saying its the best, but it's fairly easy to understand and a lot of people have been trained to use it.

Different strokes. The Linux community really seems to get that.

A large part of the reason I switched from using Windows was so I could customize my operating system to better suit me (the explorer shell felt "clunky" to me). Although I did try things like Geoshell and Litestep it still felt "heavy" to me.

I preffer Blackbox (the older sibling of your own Fluxbox).

Anyhow, I seem to have drifted off. My point is a Windows style desktop manager would be great on Linux and let them complain. You and I know all we really need is a fast menu and a good background (and stuff). ;-)

There's LiteStep, and there's Geoshell.

• Windows is not very changeable partly because the standard windows user will learn to use the interface given to him/her.

I've had ZERO problems with XP since week one, when I stopped using explorer ("exploder") as a shell.

I've run webservers, fileservers, gameservers, done sound and video editing, played games, encoded movies, watched DVDs, image editing, rendering, etc etc, all in various combinations without any trouble - and had month long uptimes. (Choosing to shut down every time) I'm not going to go saying that it's as stable as Linux can be... this is all just my experience. I still choose to have Linux on other computers.

If you dont like stuff crashing, I'd highly suggest an alternative shell. (look for a 4.10 version in the boards if you're bleeding-edge-inclined).

For Win32, I use an alternative desktop shell called Geoshell. (Or ge0Shell, whatever.) It's really nice...cuts down on resource load, etc... And it's opened source. Basically, it puts "geobars" on your desktop that you add plug-ins too that can do nifty things.

With it, I have little to no desire to see Gnome on a Win32 desktop (other than for the geekiness of it ;) and I now have a nice, quick, personalized Win32 desktop.

Links:
http://www.geoshell.com/
https://sourceforge.net/projects/geoshell

You can find many of the popular unix tools for windows at http://www.gnusoftware.com.

You'll find bash, grep, cygwin, emacs ...

They've got some nice things there, look at geoshell's screenshots, you wouldn't believe it's windows.

Geoshell is a replacement for the standard Windows Start Bar, Task Bar, and System Tray. In addition to making Windows more efficient (both from a user viewpoint and from the system resource viewpoint) it also removes many many explorer crashes.

It really is a nice user interface, one that I miss when in Linux. In fact, when I learn to code, I would like to port this interface to a wm for X. (It's GPL'ed, by the way.)

Head over to here. That link was in the news archives, of all places. It isn't the direct download, but will supply you with the download area and a cool on-line cumistization thing.

If you hack it
and hack it
and hack it
and hack it. . .

I guess this comment would be a good place for a geOShell plug.