// Retired

ViOrb

The start orb changer.

ViOrb swapped the Windows start button for whatever you fancied — an Ubuntu logo, a Firefox orb, a skull, a snowflake at Christmas. It was a small thing that people got weirdly attached to, and for a few years it was everywhere.

It's retired. Version 4.0.0.21 was the last build and there won't be another. If you've landed here from inside a copy that's still running, that's why.

Why there's no download

Every surviving installer from the archives carries an ad-downloader from the era when that's how free software paid for itself — it fetched a second program during install from a domain that's long dead. The installers are inert now, but Windows Defender still flags them, and rightly so. I'm not putting that back on the site under my own name. The source is on GitHub if you want to build it yourself or just read it.

What to use instead

The orb work carried on inside ViStart, which is still maintained and can put the start button wherever you like on the desktop — there's a write-up of how that came about. The orb skins themselves are still here too, recovered from the archives:

• Ubuntu Black
• Firefox
• Halo Reach
• Christmas Red
• Xbox
• Skull