Alternative Desktops for Win32? 62
BRock97 asks: "After having made Linux the default desktop on my laptop, I have gotten into the mode of wanting to make all my desktops pretty, including my Win32 gaming machine. There are commercial programs out there (such as Object Desktop), but at a price tag of $50, I want to do a little more research before I toss down that chunk of change for eye candy, which leads to my question. Anyone use such freely available shell replacements such as geoshell or LiteStep? Comments on stability, speed, and such? The themes look impressive and the available modules (especially for LiteStep) looks extensive. For that matter, anyone use Object Desktop" Microsoft offers some UI tweaking tools, but I'm not aware of that many all-desktop replacements out there. Are any other projects in the works aside from the ones listed? How difficult are such projects to work on given Microsoft's attitude on control of the Win32 desktop?
Progman (Score:2, Interesting)
shell=Explorer.exe
to
shell=progman.exe
for that nostalgic win3.1 look, with the added bounus that ur machine boot loads faster, and since progman dont load/run all the stuff in reg, it has less crap loaded, and to me is far more stable.
ofcoure i found a better way, and now run debian, but i still do this on uni machine. as well as set the background to c:\windows\logos.sys (stretched) just to confuse the luser who uses the machine after me >:)
geoShell (Score:2, Interesting)
I see some comments about liteStep's installation. for one, I couldn't find anything on LiteStep, and geoshell's install was effortless. I'm very happy with it.
Comments from a long-time LiteStep user (Score:3, Interesting)
The biggest problem comes with the step.rc and individualization of themes. Simply put, the author creates a theme to his tastes, with his layouts, with his setup. When another person installs this theme, they are required to use his layout, or modify it themself. So basically, you have to understand how to use the step.rc to fix any quirks you don't like about it. Thankfully, this process has gotten a lot easier with standardization of themes, though LSDistro and more recently OTS. The entire setup is moved away into personal
Another problem is the community itself, which has had it's ups and downs in the past few years. Currently, the main LiteStep site is down and the LiteStep theming community has floundered. This is the second time this has happend in the last few years and it sets us back when it comes to innovative theme development. We've also seen a bunch of our influential users/developers drop out of the scene from stupid users abusing them.
As long as you can get over the learning curve of modifying a step.rc file and you can adapt to the new shell enviroment, you should do fine with LiteStep. However, until litestep.net comes back up, don't expect to find a ton of themes or help setting it up.
On the horizion, we're looking at litestep.net coming up in a few months or so, as well as the much antisipated release of version
Litestep (Score:2, Interesting)
I do find the modules a little annoying and unstable sometimes but the Litestep core is solid as a rock (as far as i can tell). Ther are only two other things that bug me about Litestep.
Apart from that I highly recommend it to anyone who is a wee bit computer savvy and likes to be able to change EVERYTHING about their desktop.
PS I'm not really a coward, Slashdot just wouldn't let me sign up.
:: trankillity
More props for Litestep (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Serenade and others (Score:1, Interesting)