Software Alternatives & Reviews

BB4Win VS Open Shell

Compare BB4Win VS Open Shell and see what are their differences

BB4Win logo BB4Win

BB4Win (Blackbox for Windows) is an alternative shell for Microsoft Windows.

Open Shell logo Open Shell

Open Shell is a fork of the Classic Shell project for Windows that getting back the classic start...
  • BB4Win Landing page
    Landing page //
    2019-04-14
  • Open Shell Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-02-07

BB4Win videos

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Open Shell videos

Classic Menu for Windows 10 with Open Shell

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to BB4Win and Open Shell)
Image Optimisation
100 100%
0% 0
Note Taking
16 16%
84% 84
OS & Utilities
25 25%
75% 75
LMS
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, BB4Win seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 3 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

BB4Win mentions (3)

  • I Still Use Windows 95 (archived, 2008)
    I used this Windows port of Blackbox many years ago. Perhaps time try again. https://bb4win.sourceforge.net/. - Source: Hacker News / 12 months ago
  • Alternative Windows Desktop
    Cool, that still exists. Some years ago I was into all that desktop customization and tried this, LiteStep [0] and Blackbox/bb4win [1] but ended up with BlackBox. Nowadays, all the customization I need is a tool to fix the taskbar position that someone who probably uses a portrait mode monitor moved to the wrong spot [2] and a launcher [3] [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiteStep [1]:... - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
  • Riced out my desktop a bit - who says Windows isn't customizable?
    You can go farther but it might become buggy http://bb4win.sourceforge.net/ I have not tested it for along time but it was fun to play with. Source: over 1 year ago

Open Shell mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of Open Shell yet. Tracking of Open Shell recommendations started around Mar 2021.

What are some alternatives?

When comparing BB4Win and Open Shell, you can also consider the following products

Cairo Shell - Cairo is a desktop environment for Windows.

Classic Shell - Classic Shell was developed for Windows 8 since that was the first version of the popular operating system to forgo the iconic Start menu.

WindowBlinds - WindowBlinds is a computer program that allows users to skin the Windows graphical user interface.

StartIsBack - StartIsBack returns Windows 10 and Windows 8 a real fully featured start menu and start button, behaving exactly like the ones in Windows 7. It's totally awesome and easy solution for your new Windows woes.

bbLean - Alternative Windows shell

Start Menu X - Start Menu X with Start Button. Power users know how inconvenient and time-consuming it is to launch programs from the system menu.