OpenVision

[ele5125]

Recently I learned how to change the default shell that Windowz uses. For those who dont already know, the default shell that windows uses is explorer.exe

The shell from what I understand is a combination of a windows and file manager. Anyway I just tryed out a few shells and I am very happy with the free shell OpenVision found at

http://207.134.67.174/OpenVision/index.html

I also tryed litestep at www.litestep.com and one called blackbox. Although OpenVision takes a bit more work to set up since it uses tcl, it has a very pleasing interface, very customizeable and easy to use. It loads some barf objects when it starts, but you can simply right click them click unload, and click dont start the object at astartup and it will leave you alone. Compared to all the other shells I have tryed, this one is the fastest, prittyest, and most easy to use in my opinion anyway. For those who are interested in giveing windows a new look I highly recomend you visit

http://207.134.67.174/OpenVision/index.html

For a list of other wounderfull shells go to:

http://shellcity.net/

[cwk9]

Neat; I knew you could change the shell but I didn’t know anyone made any half decent alternatives. Of course it’s not a true shell conversion windows is very much tied to the GUI unlike Linux. All you’re really doing is getting rid of the desktop icons and start menu but the windowing system is still the same.

On a related note here’s a tip for anyone who has ever had to setup a computer in a public area that only needs to run one program.

Go into the system.ini and change the line that says shell=Explorer.exe to = what ever you want. Thats on windows 95,98 and ME not sure about XP.

[ele5125]

It is also a good way to check for hidden trojans. I have read that some trojans get themself to startup with the computer by modifying the shell line in system.ini

shell=explorer.exe trojan.exe

[cwk9]

www.litestep.com go there and try it. All I can say is that my desktop looks way cooler than 99.3% of desktops out there.

[var_x]

hmm... sounds like its only the desktop appearance that gets changed?? If the File Manager is still the same I dont think you get anything better out of a secondary shell.. Unless you're "one of those" people that like to have their **** look pretty ( not me )