Emerge Desktop is a replacement windows "shell" (the desktop environment normally provided by Windows Explorer) for Windows 2000 and above. In order to replace Windows Explorer as a shell, it provides a system tray (the area that collects the icons collected at the lower right corner in Explorer), called emergeTray. It will also provide access to the users programs (normally accessed with the windows "start" button) via a right-click on the desktop, via emergeCore.

Emerge Desktop is implemented with MinGW which is an OpenSource implementation of the GNU C compiler and utilities. Up to this point, closed source commercial projects have mainly been used (Microsoft Visual C++, Borland Delphi) to develop alternate shells as they use proprietary Microsoft API features. With Microsoft releasing more detailed information about these API calls, the MinGW win32api is now quite complete. Additionally, several web sites on the internet have started to include documentation and code that illustrate how to access and use these functions.

Emerge Desktop has an open API, which allows for applets to be coded with compilers other than MinGW if someone wishes to do so.

Emerge Desktop is written in C++, primarily developed with MinGW and is licensed as OpenSource (under the GPL). All the source is available in Subversion at Sourceforge. Emerge Desktop can be developed using Code::Blocks, an IDE for MinGW.

From a design point of view, Emerge Desktop applets are capable of being run as both standalone as well as being integrated. In order for Emerge Desktop applets to communicate with each other, emergeCore must be running. Without emergeCore, each applet will run independently (if, for example, you wish to use them in conjunction with another desktop shell).

If you want to participate in this project there are forums and an irc channel (#emergedesktop) on FreeNode. Please feel free to try Emerge Desktop, and provide feedback!

Latest Forum Posts:

Topic: EmergeTasks text mode :?:
By: mizu.taifux
On: Tue May 13, 2008 5:41 pm

Topic: Some icons not appearing in the Start Menu
By: Step666
On: Tue May 13, 2008 4:14 pm

Topic: Feature Request(s)
By: MeToo
On: Mon May 12, 2008 12:54 pm

Topic: native 64 bit
By: MeToo
On: Sun May 11, 2008 9:08 pm

Topic: Release 4.1.2
By: ironhead
On: Sun May 11, 2008 11:49 am

Topic: Showing the clock
By: Brunn
On: Sun May 11, 2008 11:36 am

Topic: Windows Live Messenger/MSN shows status Busy
By: ironhead
On: Sun May 11, 2008 1:17 am

Topic: Screenshots of Emerge Desktop in action :-)
By: MeToo
On: Thu May 08, 2008 10:56 am

Topic: Release 4.1.1 - ToolWND positions resetting on VWM switch
By: ironhead
On: Mon May 05, 2008 3:45 pm

Topic: Emerge and Vista
By: dpcdpc11
On: Sun May 04, 2008 9:54 pm