Posted on 12/04/2017 8:47:44 PM PST by dayglored
Long a mainstay of the old-fashioned Windows interface fan club, Classic Shell’s developer Ivo Beltchev has thrown in the towel, releasing the code to SourceForge
Hundreds of millions of downloads just doesn’t cut it, apparently. Ivo Beltchev, who first released the Start Menu replacement in 2009, has decided it just isn’t worth the effort any more. Yesterday he posted this on his official web blog:
After months of deliberation, I have decided to stop the development of Classic Shell… There were few factors that led to my decision:
- Lack of free time.
- Windows 10 is being updated way too frequently
- Each new version of Windows moves further away from the classic Win32 programming model… The new ways things are done make it very difficult to achieve the same customizations
It seems that the Win10 upgrade treadmill has claimed another victim.
I wrote about Classic Shell two years ago. It was, and is, a valuable crutch for folks who want to stick with the Win7 (or even WinXP!) way of working with Windows.
What will become of Classic Shell? Looks like Beltchev is going back to his roots: Classic Shell started as an open-source product. He pulled the source code and turned it into freeware after discovering that people were selling it with little or no modification. As of yesterday, the source code has been posted once again to the SourceForge site, where it’s available under the terms of the MIT license.
As for support, Beltchev says:
I will keep the MediaFire download mirror for another 6 months. The forum on http://www.classicshell.net/forum/ will stay open until the end of 2018, however I will not frequently participate in the discussions.
(Excerpt) Read more at computerworld.com ...
At work, I agree. I use and support Win10 there, because, as you correctly point out, that's where the software is going.
My objections to the new UI are private, not professional. And at the point where I'm forced to cut over and abandon Win7 at home, I hope that Win10 will have "evolved" to a better place.
Incidentally, other than the UI, Win10 is a great, solid, operating system underneath. If not for the UI, I'd probably be using Win10 most of the time, for convenience. Who knows, maybe someday someone will graft Gnome onto it. :-)
> People have been insisting MS lost their way for over a quarter of a century. Apparently that is their way.
Yeah, you're right. The amazing thing is, they can stumble around like a drunk on a 3-day bender, bumping into things, falling down, picking themselves up again, and 90% of the world not only follows their stumbling path, but subsidizes it.
Ain't 90% marketshare just freakin' AWESOME? Ya can make any d@mn cr@p you want, and people HAVE to buy it. Where does a 900-pound gorilla sleep? Anywhere he wants.
I've used Windows as my main home system more years than any other, probably more than all the others combined. And I have a lot of hope that Microsoft will survive long enough to sober up.
I think a lot of it is people just get used to whatever it the UI is. We really don’t know until a few years have gone by if a UI was good. People even found ways to keep the 3.1 UI on 95 and the Program Manager SUCKED. But people got used to it. I haven’t played around much with 10, I certainly don’t like the UI, but whatever. I’ve dealt with many different Windows UIs, a few Apple, even some Nix. They all have their things that I don’t like. Even the really good ones find some way to be annoying. Keeps the brain flexible though.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.