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. Emerge Desktop also provides access to the users programs (normally accessed with the windows “start” button) via a right-click on the desktop, via emergeCore.

Emerge Desktop is written in C++ and is licensed as open source (under the GPL). The entire source is available in Mercurial at Sourceforge. The program can be developed using Code::blocks, which is an IDEs for MinGW. The program has an open API, which allows for applets to be coded with compilers other than MinGW if someone wishes to do so.

On the downside, the publishers didn’t provide information on how this program can be run or installed by its users. That might as well be one of the biggest setbacks for Emerge Desktop that needs to be looked into or corrected on the website. However, that should not take anything away from Emerge Desktop. It is compatible with Windows 7, 2000, 2003, Vista, and XP.

Want to check it out? Visit EmergeDesktop.

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