Microsoft has a habit of tweaking the user interface of Windows every time the company puts out a major new release. Windows 8 replaced the Start Menu with a full-screen version called the Start Screen. Windows 10 brought back the Start Menu, but with a brand new design.

Folks who prefer things the way they used to be have been running 3rd-party tools to customize the look and feel of Windows 10 for ages, including StarDock’s Start10, StartIsBack, and Classic Shell.

That last option is a versatile tool that lets you tweak the Windows Start Menu, File Explorer, Internet Explorer, and more. But the developer behind Classic Shell announced this weekend that he’s discontinuing development of Classic Shell. The good news is that he’s made the source code available for anyone who wants to pick up where he left off.

The source code is available at SourceForge, and the Classic Shell forum will remain online until the end of 2018 for folks that want to continue discussing the project.

It’s unclear at this point what kind of future the project will have. One of the key reasons the developer is dropping support is that every time Microsoft releases a major update to Windows 10 it “changes something that breaks Classic Shell,” and that new versions of Windows 10 come out about twice a year at this point.

via ComputerWorld

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6 replies on “Classic Shell goes open source (after developer abandons it): Customize Windows 10 and make it work more like Windows 7”

    1. The chaos and reliability issues with Windows 10 has driven me back to Windows 7 and 8.1. I haven’t experienced as many random issues with Windows since Windows 98. My Ethernet connection will randomly disable, my screen will go randomly black, the system randomly reboots itself, I get a blue screen about once a month, the “updates” have seriously bloated up the OS and it’s become sluggish, and that’s not everything. I wish I could say that it has driven me to Linux, but I’ve had issues with Linux as well. Ubuntu 14.04 was rock solid and I never had any issues. 16.04 has been problematic for me (with Ubuntu and Xubuntu). Updates break the system, random system error messages, WiFi stops working, etc. (And it happens on more than one system, so I know it’s not a hardware issue). I don’t like Gnome, so I guess I won’t be upgrading to 18.04. I need to try some different distros, Solus looks nice, and I may give Mint another try. I might even try Debian again.

      It seems quality control has degraded with many major operating systems. Quality control is lacking in Windows 10. Microsoft is more interested in adding features that will only benefit a small percentage of users. In my experience, Ubuntu and some of it’s derivatives have been struggling lately. (Maybe now they’ve switched back to Gnome and stopped working on mobile, they will have more resources focused on the desktop). Even the mighty and untouchable MacOS has been experiencing quality control issues. It seems like we’ve all become beta testers for unfinished software.

    2. Somewhat, but mostly it’ll stop people from buying new PC’s if they forced to get Windows 10. Smart users are going to cling to windows 7/8 as long as possible, maybe when they reach EOL, we’ll see linux users finally go up.

  1. Aww – thats bad news. I upgraded to Windows 10 just because I was able to change the Start Menu to this.

  2. Hopefully it continues to live on as an Open Source project…

    I use it daily, as I’ve had so many issues with the Cortana service hanging and preventing the Start Menu from launching. Classic Shell is how I’ve managed to stay productive.

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