Alternate shell?

[Dan Kegel]

For a maximal dogfood experience, I was looking around
for a way to use a replacement Windows shell with
Wine as my desktop environment instead of gnome
or kde.

So far, all the ones I've found are either broken, hard to use,
or just plain weird.

I've been working through the list at
http://www.dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Operating_Systems/Microsoft_Windows/S...

http://www.astonshell.com/aston/ - couldn't figure out how to run it?

http://www.emergedesktop.org/ - kind of works, but very minimal, no start menu

http://www.labyrinth.net.au/~mosses/rob/liteshell.html - works, but
very minimal, no start menu

http://purels.org - no help, just exits, saying "ha ha, you didn't
configure me".  Obviously not meant for me :-)

http://www.lighttek.com/talisman.htm - pretty, but no Programs menu?!
(Maybe that's there but broken, wine bug?)

http://www.sky.franken.de/explorer/download.html - ROS explorer -
prebuilt binary
there is 3 years out of date, doesn't work too well

Anyone have a favorite I should try?
- Dan

[Pau Garcia i Quiles]

Quoting Dan Kegel :

Wine + XPde (http://xpde.com) is probably the most Windows-resemblant  
environment I can think of. Sadly, XPde seems to be stalled.
> For a maximal dogfood experience, I was looking around
> for a way to use a replacement Windows shell with
> Wine as my desktop environment instead of gnome
> or kde.
>
> So far, all the ones I've found are either broken, hard to use,
> or just plain weird.
>
> I've been working through the list at
> http://www.dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Operating_Systems/Microsoft_Windows/S...
>
> http://www.astonshell.com/aston/ - couldn't figure out how to run it?
>
> http://www.emergedesktop.org/ - kind of works, but very minimal, no   
> start menu
>
> http://www.labyrinth.net.au/~mosses/rob/liteshell.html - works, but
> very minimal, no start menu
>
> http://purels.org - no help, just exits, saying "ha ha, you didn't
> configure me".  Obviously not meant for me :-)
>
> http://www.lighttek.com/talisman.htm - pretty, but no Programs menu?!
> (Maybe that's there but broken, wine bug?)
>
> http://www.sky.franken.de/explorer/download.html - ROS explorer -
> prebuilt binary
> there is 3 years out of date, doesn't work too well
>
> Anyone have a favorite I should try?
> - Dan

[Austin English]

On Thu, May 22, 2008 at 5:16 PM, Dan Kegel  wrote:
> For a maximal dogfood experience, I was looking around
> for a way to use a replacement Windows shell with
> Wine as my desktop environment instead of gnome
> or kde.
>
> So far, all the ones I've found are either broken, hard to use,
> or just plain weird.
>
> I've been working through the list at
> http://www.dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Operating_Systems/Microsoft_Windows/S...
>
> http://www.astonshell.com/aston/ - couldn't figure out how to run it?
>
> http://www.emergedesktop.org/ - kind of works, but very minimal, no start menu
>
> http://www.labyrinth.net.au/~mosses/rob/liteshell.html - works, but
> very minimal, no start menu
>
> http://purels.org - no help, just exits, saying "ha ha, you didn't
> configure me".  Obviously not meant for me :-)
>
> http://www.lighttek.com/talisman.htm - pretty, but no Programs menu?!
> (Maybe that's there but broken, wine bug?)
>
> http://www.sky.franken.de/explorer/download.html - ROS explorer -
> prebuilt binary
> there is 3 years out of date, doesn't work too well
>
> Anyone have a favorite I should try?
> - Dan

Could try Ulteo's Virtual desktop, to virtualize Linux inside Wine :-P
http://www.ulteo.com/home/en/virtualdesktop?autolang=en

[John Klehm]

On Thu, May 22, 2008 at 5:37 PM, Austin English  wrote:
> On Thu, May 22, 2008 at 5:16 PM, Dan Kegel  wrote:
> > For a maximal dogfood experience, I was looking around
> > for a way to use a replacement Windows shell with
> > Wine as my desktop environment instead of gnome
> > or kde.
> >
> > So far, all the ones I've found are either broken, hard to use,
> > or just plain weird.
> >
> > I've been working through the list at
> > http://www.dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Operating_Systems/Microsoft_Windows/S...
> >
> > http://www.astonshell.com/aston/ - couldn't figure out how to run it?
> >
> > http://www.emergedesktop.org/ - kind of works, but very minimal, no start menu
> >
> > http://www.labyrinth.net.au/~mosses/rob/liteshell.html - works, but
> > very minimal, no start menu
> >
> > http://purels.org - no help, just exits, saying "ha ha, you didn't
> > configure me".  Obviously not meant for me :-)
> >
> > http://www.lighttek.com/talisman.htm - pretty, but no Programs menu?!
> > (Maybe that's there but broken, wine bug?)
> >
> > http://www.sky.franken.de/explorer/download.html - ROS explorer -
> > prebuilt binary
> > there is 3 years out of date, doesn't work too well
> >
> > Anyone have a favorite I should try?
> > - Dan

I haven't tried these in awhile but they worked decently enough a
couple years ago on xp/2000

Blackbox window manager for windows
(dont worry desktop icon/system tray plugin is included by default)
http://www.bb4win.org/news.php

Litestep (highly customzieable, tons of plugins afterStep/NextStep clone)
http://www.lsdev.org/doku.php

--John

[Dan Kegel]

On Thu, May 22, 2008 at 4:02 PM, John Klehm  wrote:
> Blackbox window manager for windows
> (dont worry desktop icon/system tray plugin is included by default)
> http://www.bb4win.org/news.php

Development stopped a couple years ago, even the forks look dormant
> Litestep (highly customzieable, tons of plugins afterStep/NextStep clone)
> http://www.lsdev.org/doku.php

LiteStep of any flavor just laughs at me, saying "Learn my language,
write a config file, then maybe I'll talk to you".

I did also just try SharpE, but it crashes and is just as inscrutable as any of
the others.
- Dan

[John Klehm]

On Thu, May 22, 2008 at 6:16 PM, Dan Kegel  wrote:
> On Thu, May 22, 2008 at 4:02 PM, John Klehm  wrote:
> > Blackbox window manager for windows
> > (dont worry desktop icon/system tray plugin is included by default)
> > http://www.bb4win.org/news.php
>
> Development stopped a couple years ago, even the forks look dormant
> > Litestep (highly customzieable, tons of plugins afterStep/NextStep clone)
> > http://www.lsdev.org/doku.php
>
> LiteStep of any flavor just laughs at me, saying "Learn my language,
> write a config file, then maybe I'll talk to you".
>
> I did also just try SharpE, but it crashes and is just as inscrutable as any of
> the others.
> - Dan

I just tried the bb fork xoblite bb3 rc1 on server 2008 and it seems
to work alright.  The default menu generation looks a little off
(duplicate entries) but you can just edit the text file it makes
(listed right on the menu itself) other than that it seems to be
equivalent to start->programs.

No desktop icons by default though, Ill see if I can find a plugin
that does that.

--John

[Dan Kegel]

On Thu, May 22, 2008 at 4:31 PM, John Klehm  wrote:
> I just tried the bb fork xoblite bb3 rc1 on server 2008 and it seems
> to work alright.

OK, now try it on Wine.  A recipe in the appdb would be nice.

I just built ROS explorer from source, and ran its explorer.exe.
It runs, and shows things like My Computer and desktop icons, and
shows a context menu on background.
Oddly, it doesn't show a Start menu.  Perhaps this is a bug in wine,
as the doc claims the start menu is there.

Here's the recipe, in case anyone else wants to try, adapted from
http://www.sky.franken.de/explorer/index.html#compile

sudo apt-get install mingw32
sudo ln -s i586-mingw32msvc-windres /usr/bin/windres
svn co svn://svn.reactos.org/reactos/trunk/reactos/base/shell/explorer
cd explorer
vi Makefile-MinGW
change three lines:
-CC = gcc
-CXX = g++
-LINK = g++
+CC = i586-mingw32msvc-gcc
+CXX = i586-mingw32msvc-g++
+LINK = i586-mingw32msvc-g++

make -f Makefile-MinGW

This fails because windres can't find windows.h.  I hacked around it like this:
 cd ~
 mkdir w32api
 cd w32api
 wget http://internap.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/mingw/w32api-3.11.tar.gz
 tar -xzvf w32api-3.11.tar.gz
 cd ~/explorer
 windres -I ~/w32api/include/ -DWIN32 -D__WINDRES__ -DNDEBUG -DUNICODE
-o explorer.coff explorer_intres.r
 make -f Makefile-MinGW

And surprisingly, that built explorer.exe.

The menus are messed up (they contain garbage text), and
as I said earlier, there's no start menu.
- Dan

[Steven Edwards]

On Thu, May 22, 2008 at 8:59 PM, Dan Kegel  wrote:
> The menus are messed up (they contain garbage text), and
> as I said earlier, there's no start menu.

You should look at explorer-new. Its in the ReactOS source tree and
being developed by Thomas Weidenmuller as a real Windows compatible
shell replacement. Unfortunately it does not work on Windows or
ReactOS at this time. The old ReactOS explorer will be removed when
explorer-new is ready.

[John Klehm]

On Thu, May 22, 2008 at 8:09 PM, Steven Edwards  wrote:
> On Thu, May 22, 2008 at 8:59 PM, Dan Kegel  wrote:
> > The menus are messed up (they contain garbage text), and
> > as I said earlier, there's no start menu.
>
> You should look at explorer-new. Its in the ReactOS source tree and
> being developed by Thomas Weidenmuller as a real Windows compatible
> shell replacement. Unfortunately it does not work on Windows or
> ReactOS at this time. The old ReactOS explorer will be removed when
> explorer-new is ready.
>
> --
> Steven Edwards
>
> "There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and
> that is an idea whose time has come." - Victor Hugo

Just thought since I probably will be gone all weekend I'd report
before next week.

I'll try and write up something more useful after this but here's my
dogfood process so far:

wget "http://download.mozilla.org/?product=firefox-2.0.0.14&os=win&lang=en..."
wget "http://www.xoblite.net/files/xoblite_bb3_rc1.zip"
mkdir xoblite && cd xoblite && unzip xoblite_bb3_rc1.zip

ubuntu logout and change session to failsafe terminal
bring up wifi
$wine ~/xoblite/Blackbox.exe
$wine ~/Firefox\ Setup\ 2.0.0.14.exe

The main problem seems to be lack of windowing and keyboard input,
nothing has a title bar.I wonder if that is because bb4win seems to
call RegisterShellHook which is a stub in wine?

On the upside I was able to launch firefox from bb4win and browse to
some sites fairly easily. =P

[Dmitry Timoshkov]

"Dan Kegel"  wrote:
> For a maximal dogfood experience, I was looking around
> for a way to use a replacement Windows shell with
> Wine as my desktop environment instead of gnome
> or kde.

Built-in Wine explorer does a lot of things which the replacements
won't do, like desktop window management and HAL support.

[Dan Kegel]

On Thu, May 22, 2008 at 8:44 PM, Dmitry Timoshkov
 wrote:
> > For a maximal dogfood experience, I was looking around
> > for a way to use a replacement Windows shell with
> > Wine as my desktop environment instead of gnome
> > or kde.
>
> Built-in Wine explorer does a lot of things which the replacements
> won't do, like desktop window management and HAL support.

I think we're going to want to add a start button and taskbar
to our builtin explorer.   None of the replacements seem
to look anything like Windows XP, which is kind of what I'm
after.
- Dan

[Steven Edwards]

On Fri, May 23, 2008 at 12:12 AM, Dan Kegel  wrote:
> I think we're going to want to add a start button and taskbar
> to our builtin explorer.   None of the replacements seem
> to look anything like Windows XP, which is kind of what I'm
> after.

Again, I think you should look at explorer-new. Its pretty close to
working, I think the StartMenu and friends work. It is designed for
Windows XP, does the Desktop, Start Menu, Taskbar, etc, is written in
C, is LGPL and is written by a ReactOS developer that has not been
blacklisted by Wine. I don't think it would be much trouble to merge
the two. Except of course shell32 is where most of the explorer really
lives and there is a lot of functionality missing in wine. Due to the
ReactOS embargo, shell32 has started to fork quite a bit on the
ReactOS side.

http://svn.reactos.org/svn/reactos/trunk/reactos/base/shell/explorer-new/

[Dmitry Timoshkov]

"Steven Edwards"  wrote:
> Again, I think you should look at explorer-new. Its pretty close to
> working, I think the StartMenu and friends work. It is designed for
> Windows XP, does the Desktop, Start Menu, Taskbar, etc, is written in
> C, is LGPL and is written by a ReactOS developer that has not been
> blacklisted by Wine. I don't think it would be much trouble to merge
> the two. Except of course shell32 is where most of the explorer really
> lives and there is a lot of functionality missing in wine. Due to the
> ReactOS embargo, shell32 has started to fork quite a bit on the
> ReactOS side.
>
> http://svn.reactos.org/svn/reactos/trunk/reactos/base/shell/explorer-new/

Since ros explorer uses an undocumented shell32.LogoffWindowsDialog as
reported in http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10006 it should be
enough to blacklist its developer.

[Steven Edwards]

On Fri, May 23, 2008 at 12:37 AM, Dmitry Timoshkov
 wrote:
> Since ros explorer uses an undocumented shell32.LogoffWindowsDialog as
> reported in http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10006 it should be
> enough to blacklist its developer.

"ROS explorer doesn't count as a real world application that uses undocumented
Windows APIs. Besides the question remains where ROS explorer developers has
acquired a not published information."

Yes because we all know that developer had to work very hard to
reverse engineer that function with its many arguments and obfuscated
naming.

[Martin Fuchs]

Hello,

what about asking the developer where he got his information?  ;-)

If I remember correctly, I found this logoff dialog function using  
Google on one of those "undocumented Windows 95" web pages when adding  
it to the original ROS Explorer.

Regards,

Martin

Am 23.05.2008 um 06:37 schrieb Dmitry Timoshkov:
> "Steven Edwards"  wrote:
> > Again, I think you should look at explorer-new. Its pretty close to
> > working, I think the StartMenu and friends work. It is designed for
> > Windows XP, does the Desktop, Start Menu, Taskbar, etc, is written in
> > C, is LGPL and is written by a ReactOS developer that has not been
> > blacklisted by Wine. I don't think it would be much trouble to merge
> > the two. Except of course shell32 is where most of the explorer  
> > really
> > lives and there is a lot of functionality missing in wine. Due to the
> > ReactOS embargo, shell32 has started to fork quite a bit on the
> > ReactOS side.
> >
> > http://svn.reactos.org/svn/reactos/trunk/reactos/base/shell/explorer-new/
>
> Since ros explorer uses an undocumented shell32.LogoffWindowsDialog as
> reported in http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10006 it should be
> enough to blacklist its developer.
>
> -- 
> Dmitry.

[Rolf Kalbermatter]

Dmitry Timoshkov [mailto:[e-mail]] wrote:
> Since ros explorer uses an undocumented 
> shell32.LogoffWindowsDialog as reported in 
> http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10006 it should be 
> enough to blacklist its developer.

If you google for LogoffWindowsDialog you find entries for a Wine hard stub
and then two patches to ROS, one implementing a soft stub in ROS and the
other
adding a call to ExitProcess to this stub so the shutdown process can
continue.

Is this reverse engineering?

Rolf Kalbermatter

[Remco]

On Fri, May 23, 2008 at 6:12 AM, Dan Kegel  wrote:
> I think we're going to want to add a start button and taskbar
> to our builtin explorer.   None of the replacements seem
> to look anything like Windows XP, which is kind of what I'm
> after.
> - Dan

This sounds a lot like my idea:
http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=11629

I first posted it on this list, and the consensus here was that Wine
should not have a "usable interface" as I called it, because the right
direction would be to strive for maximum integration. Then I was told
I should have instead posted it on BugZilla, which resulted in the bug
above.

Remco

[Ove Kaaven]

Dmitry Timoshkov skrev:
> "Dan Kegel"  wrote:
> > For a maximal dogfood experience, I was looking around
> > for a way to use a replacement Windows shell with
> > Wine as my desktop environment instead of gnome
> > or kde.
>
> Built-in Wine explorer does a lot of things which the replacements
> won't do, like desktop window management and HAL support.

Last time I checked, the HAL stuff was handled by mountmgr.sys

[Pau Garcia i Quiles]

Quoting Dan Kegel :

Not exactly wine but quite close: some people are trying to use KDE4  
as the desktop for ReactOS:

http://kde-reactos.sourceforge.net/

... which mutates KDE into the "operating system", able to run with a  
Linux, BSD, Win32, Solaris, etc kernel.Crazy.
> For a maximal dogfood experience, I was looking around
> for a way to use a replacement Windows shell with
> Wine as my desktop environment instead of gnome
> or kde.
>
> So far, all the ones I've found are either broken, hard to use,
> or just plain weird.
>
> I've been working through the list at
> http://www.dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Operating_Systems/Microsoft_Windows/S...
>
> http://www.astonshell.com/aston/ - couldn't figure out how to run it?
>
> http://www.emergedesktop.org/ - kind of works, but very minimal, no   
> start menu
>
> http://www.labyrinth.net.au/~mosses/rob/liteshell.html - works, but
> very minimal, no start menu
>
> http://purels.org - no help, just exits, saying "ha ha, you didn't
> configure me".  Obviously not meant for me :-)
>
> http://www.lighttek.com/talisman.htm - pretty, but no Programs menu?!
> (Maybe that's there but broken, wine bug?)
>
> http://www.sky.franken.de/explorer/download.html - ROS explorer -
> prebuilt binary
> there is 3 years out of date, doesn't work too well
>
> Anyone have a favorite I should try?
> - Dan

[Detlef Riekenberg]

On Do, 2008-05-22 at 15:16 -0700, Dan Kegel wrote:
> For a maximal dogfood experience, I was looking around
> for a way to use a replacement Windows shell with
> Wine as my desktop environment instead of gnome
> or kde.

Wow.
> So far, all the ones I've found are either broken, hard to use,
> or just plain weird.
> Anyone have a favorite I should try?

http://www.calmira.net
Examples:
http://www.calmira.net/screenshots/stephan.htm
http://www.calmira.net/screenshots/chris_p.htm
http://www.calmira.net/screenshots/pcfreak2.htm

Related work:
Calmira_XP: http://www.abzone.be/calmira_calxp

Calmira_Longhorn: http://calmira.co.nr/
Example: http://www.postimage.org/image.php?v=aVBPR4r

######### Test Calmira_Longhorn:
cd <wine_c_drive>
wget http://calmira.kyblsoft.sk/dwnlds/callh36.zip
unzip callh36.zip
cd CALMIRA

To avoid, that the explorer.exe from calmira is used for the desktop,
you need the full path to explorer.exe.so

wine
<your_build_path>/programs/explorer/explorer.exe.so  /desktop=xxx,800x600 
 CALMIRA.EXE

Sometimes, http://www.calmira.org is referenced, but that is outdated
and give you an advertising website