Windows Shells

What's That?

A Windows shell replacement is basically a refreshing change of looks from the standard look and feeling of Windows we're all used to. A shell replacement takes over the work of explorer.exe, that's the actual standard shell for windows, not the file explorer or Internet Explorer. Those you can still use as normal, all your programs can be used as normal in fact, and they all look just as usual. Changing the shell doesn't change the OS itself, and no harm can be done to the OS by changing the shell.

Are They Dangerous?

Well, not unless you're running Windows ME it seems ... If you look in your Windows folder you'll find the file explorer.exe there, that's the one working as default shell. What a shell replacement does is it takes over the job of that file. This is done by setting the exe file of the shell to load instead of explorer at startup. Doing this takes all the work of changing one line in the file system.ini. The line, by default, goes "shell=explorer.exe" and will be changed to point at the new shell instead. Simple as that! And removing a shell is no more difficult than changing the line back to point at explorer again. Most shells can even do these settings by themselves, even better if you worry about editing system files!

... which brings us to the problem I found with Windows ME. I did a prefectly legal install of LiteStep on Kristofer's computer, and after reboot the stupid Windows went "couldn't load this file. You need to reinstall Windows." That wasn't the case of course, re-editing system.ini fixed everything again. Only we couldn't get into Windows of course, and ME has got rid of DOS, so we had to use an old Win95 bootdisk to get to system.ini ... So, there can be problems, but they're nothing you can't get around. Since I don't have ME myself I haven't conducted any research in getting around that problem, but I do know all other Windows flavours will happily run under other shells.

Learning to Use/Configure a Shell

This is the most interesting part. As most shells are considered beta or otherwise unfinished, not to mention completely ideal projects, a certain lack of information is very common. When experiments don't go far enough, following links from the official sites and digging around can often provide the help you need. LiteStep is the best I've come across so far information-wise, since the download includes a pretty extensive guide to configuring the whole thing. On the other hand, some other shells are easier to configure and use in the first place, not requiring as much knowledge of configuration hacking and stuff.

Stability?

Well, I'd like to just shout out a big "You bet!" or something here, but unfortunately that wouldn't be quite true. I've had some crashes, lockups and stuff. After expanding my RAM it seems these problems have disappeared, but I'd like to think that's not the direct reason since most programs should be able to do well within 128 Mb of RAM ... In the case of LiteStep, modules with some kind of bugs might be a reason for problems as well, I seem to recall it being a lot more stable when I first installed and began to explore it than it was just before getting said extra RAM.

So?

.. you say. They're different from Windows, they take some getting used to, they come without the documentation and support of Windows, and it seems they can sometimes be less stable than Windows as well. Why get them?

Well, I'd like to list the first thing above as a reason. Difference is cool, and differences are often improvements as well. Most shell replacements liberates the start menu from the annoying start button and put it one click on the desktop away, along with additional goodies as well. Virtual window managers very common in different shells gives you lots of extra desktop real estate without requiring a larger, better monitor. Advanced command prompts gives you the power of the run prompt squared, with aliases for your favourite programs (type icq to start ICQ and so on).

Configuration is another huge advantage. The amount varies from shell to shell of course, but most have lots more of it than explorer. Hordes of different plugins or modules can be loaded and configured to make exactly the interface you like. How about nothing but a command prompt on a black background? No problem. Sixteen virtual desktops, a system resource indicator, quick Winamp controls and skinned shortcut buttons on the right side of the desktop? You name it, you can have it! All it takes is a little more interest in shells than you had before :-) ...

Another important point is that a different shell has a much higher geek value than boring old explorer :-) ...

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