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Alternative Shells for Windows

Post reviews, recommendations and questions about other software.
CybOrSpasm
Posts: 146
Joined: January 8th, 2011, 7:12 pm
Location: Tennessee

Re: Alternative Shells for Windows

Post by CybOrSpasm »

So depressing.. Litestep is virtually dead, last official version was released in 2009 and never did support vista or higher... Hell, I used Litestep for many years.
I just looked at the BB4Win site.. they are dead as well now, no more development planned.
Working my way through the list, but this is sad. }:[

SharpE a.k.a Sharp Enviro... http://sourceforge.net/apps/phpbb/sharpe/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1 also dead...
Alex Becherer

Re: Alternative Shells for Windows

Post by Alex Becherer »

i thought you use Windows XP? so the last LS version is a lot more recent than your os and should work perfectly for you. LS is not completely dead though. i can run it here on Windows 7 (except for the system tray). people have even been able to run it on Windows 8.
http://forums.litestep.info/viewtopic.php?id=131

if you want something under active development (why would you if you are using Windows XP?), have a look at Emerge Desktop.
pretty cool, as it's components are stand-alone executables, which can be used even with explorer set as shell. (the system tray is almost perfect with Windows 7)

the problem for alternative shells is that Microsoft did an awesome job with explorer in Windows 7. personally i no longer see a need to replace it as that would be downgrading.
User avatar
FoxyXII
Posts: 32
Joined: October 27th, 2012, 5:58 pm
Location: SWUK

Re: Alternative Shells for Windows

Post by FoxyXII »

There's also CrystalXP which has bricopacks which can turn various version of Windows into different versions of Windows (XP to Win7 for example) and they also have a Win7 to Mac version. These change the internal files of Windows for a complete shell. I used to use the Vista to Mac one and had no problems whatsoever with it.
CybOrSpasm
Posts: 146
Joined: January 8th, 2011, 7:12 pm
Location: Tennessee

Re: Alternative Shells for Windows

Post by CybOrSpasm »

I downloaded the last Litestep version, and then the good old Obsidian theme... as soon as I tried to install the theme, I received error after error when it tried to download the necesary .dll files, and could no longer find the repository... as it is no longer there... As I said, dead. I am sure that with some searching I can get it to work, but it's just a reminder that the "scene" is dying.