Alternative windowing shells?

[spamhog]

I see there is a good number of windowing shells that replace the original windowing infrastructure of Windows.

I think they are related to both the old X-windows of the DOS era and to today's X server used in Unix.

I have the impression that very few people use them, and just for the hell of it & the looks (nothing wrong with that) as opposed to for the purpose of improving performance and/or stability.

Am I right?

Or are there shells that are substantially lighter / faster / less sickly than the stock "windows" in "Windows"?

TIA!



Filippo / spamhog
Computer Victim (as in "fashion victim&quot - Milan, North Poldavia -

http://filippo.ru.ru

40% WinME, 40% Linux (Debian, Libranet, Vector, Lycoris), 20% Win98, trace amounts of Win2k, xBSD, QNX

 

[mattjurado]

Not sure about shells, there is a product called 98lite that strips out all the web and IE stuff, makes 98 faster. They have a new utility that supposedly modularizes 2000/xp, so you can strip whatever you want out.

http://www.litepc.com/

Matt J.

 

[spamhog]

Thanks! I had heard about that one. I never use the Internet Explorer infrastructure, neither directrly through the IE interface nor through IE-based "alternative" browsers.

Right now I am using Opera, which I strongly recommend and just selected as default browser - relatively fast, very light on memory, much more configurable and easier to secure than IE.

Re. the shells, this is not the 1st time I post on this subject. I deliberately post away from shell-centric sites, to have a more detached response.

So far I got either no info (from mainstream users) or mini-flames from shellheads whom I had frankly *baited* by asking if there were any "normal" PC users who changed shells for sake of speed, power, stability.

I am quite tempted to conclude that reshelling is just experimental, fringe, & visual-spice-adding.

Nuthin' rong with that, but no thanks, I have nuf problems olradie.

But I'd love to be proved wrong!



Filippo / spamhog
Computer Victim (as in "fashion victim&quot - Milan, North Poldavia -

http://filippo.ru.ru

40% WinME, 40% Linux (Debian, Libranet, Vector, Lycoris), 20% Win98, trace amounts of Win2k, xBSD, QNX

 

[spamhog]

Forgot to mention...

I might have eradicated IE, but I reckon I need it to do Windows Update.

I know of no other browser that can trick the WU site into believing it's a genuine MSIE.

I just use IE as a dedicated WU utility.

This is another concern regarding alternative shells. How deep does IE integration reach? So far, it looks like an alternative browser is separate enough from the IE bugbase, but I don't know if this is the case with alternative shells.

Obscurity... I quite like the Windows UI, but I can't say that much for its mysterious-source-model guts.




Filippo / spamhog
Computer Victim (as in "fashion victim&quot - Milan, North Poldavia -

http://filippo.ru.ru

40% WinME, 40% Linux (Debian, Libranet, Vector, Lycoris), 20% Win98, trace amounts of Win2k, xBSD, QNX

 

[jokersmild]

Thank you mattjarado! That litePC site is awsome. So very cool.