"Run" Linux Functionality in Windows?
 

One of the things that I miss the most when I'm using Windows is being able to hit alt+F2 and type in the name of the program I want to have run.

Have any of you ever stumbled across a program that enables this kind of thing in windows?
e.g. win+R "photoshop"

I'm aware that you can run programs like "notepad" and "calc" this way, but I'm pretty sure it's only because they're inside the system folder.

Such a program would make the start menu unless for me :D

Any insights are welcomed!

what kind of keyboard do you have?.. just wondering because i have the logitech elite.. and it has all the shortcut keys on the top and the iTouch software from logitech will let you specify what you can do with each key.. even have 1 key bring down a menu that you can select from a list of programs.. i use that for my messaging programs..

I've seen them, but not for free. Here's a sample:

http://www.keyboardexpress.com/

You can also go to download.com, and type "keyboard" in the search, see what else is out there.

You can actually do this within Windows, just takes a small amount of work on your part. Make a shortcut of the EXE file you want to run. For instance, if you wanted to quick access photoshop, navigate to your photoshop folder, right click the .exe, and click "make shortcut". What you can do from there is paste it into your system32 folder. It'd be a good idea from there to rename it to something easy like "photoshop" rather than "shortcut to photoshop".

Once you've done this you can hit windows key + r, and type in photoshop and voila, there you go.

Or you could do it the same way Linux does and add the paths to the programs you want to run into your PATH statement. Then a command from run would open anything you wanted.

cool tips glytch and Cryptie.

Just tried the PATH trick, works :thumbsup:

(for those wondering, PATH is in your Environment Variables ;) )

How do you modify your PATH statement in Windows? That's pretty interesting, I wasn't aware that you could do that.

*EDIT: Nevermind, SiN and I must've been posting at the same time. Thanks!

That's more of less what I wanted to know. Thanks guys! :p

The reson this doesn't work well in windows is that programs generaly don't install hemeselves into the $PATH which is a list of directories that an operating system looks in when you run a program without expelicitly specifing it's location.

Try Slickrun. That seems pretty close to what you're trying to do.

Slickrun is damn nice. I liked it, once i got the right programs in there, I never used the Windows key or my quick launch bar at all.