First
of all, what is it? Litestep is a shell replacement for windoze.
A shell is just what it says. Like a programing teacher once said that
windows 95 is just another shell for dos. yeah it's true win 95 and win98
are still 16 bit unlike windows NT or IBM OS/2 which are true 32 bit OSs.
But i'm missing the point here. For instance: the Audi TT is a shell for
the Volkswagen Golf. So shell is like the appearance or look from outside
or the surface.
So if you get boring of the windows standard look, you can always use
different themes which come with microsoft plus or those which are already
in windows 98. And there are also many shareware and freeware theme creators
or free themes to download and try. The things which you change are usually
such as the desktop background, the color schemes, the mouse cursors,
the desktop icons and the fonts.
But what if ya wanna change more than just those? If you really wanna
change the appearance of your windows 95/98 or NT mashine? In that case,
you'll need a shell replacement.
This is where Litestep comes in. Litestep is one of the oldest and probably
the best shell replacement for windoze there is. A french guy started
it because he got bored of the windoze desktop?
Anyway, I think the first was Apple with NEXTstep, then came AFTERstep
for Linux users, then came LITEstep for windows.
It is really very customizable, so if you have time, patience and like
doing it, ya can change everything to suite your preferences.
There are also ready made themes which you can download, but this is different
than the normal themes you would have for MStheme for instance. With Litestep
themes, although most is ready, you still have to change the STEP.RC.
This step.rc, which can viewed and edited in in Notepad contains all the
settings for litestep that you can edit as much as ya wanna.
OK, the basics: The litestep program files aren't many, and when you download
the zip file, it'll be less than 2mb in size. I downloaded ls-024.zip
which was the latest full version of litestep at the time and 1.6mb in
size and later got the update (ls-0_24_4.zip) which was only 93kb. Make
sure you download the full version which contain all litestep files, and
not only an upgrade for litestep.
And you'll also need a theme to help you get started. for instance you
can try out the Gnome them (2.8mb).
There will be talking a lot about the step.rc. A step.rc file is normally
included in every theme, so you don't hafta start from scratch. Normally
the step.rc files should be in the root litestep directory such as C:\Litestep\.
So what files do you need to get started:
- - Litestep (full version)
- - a theme (for the start):
- - a working windows 95/98 boot diskette (will explain why later)
- - Litestepenabler (switches between explorer shell and Litestep shell without rebooting)
- - LSCP (a great tool to configure litestep without having to edit the step.rc by hand
To enable
litestep at all you'll have to edit the system.ini file by pressing the
win-key-r or start-run and type sysedit and press enter. select the system.ini
window and write REM on front of shell=explorer.exe and type shell=C:\LiteStep\LiteStep.exe.
So next time you restart, the litestep shell will load instead of the
exploerer.
The reason why it's good to have a boot disk is when for some reason or
another, litestep doesn't load, as a result, you'll see only your desktop
background and nothing else works except ctrl-alt-del. if that's the case,
you'll have to reboot with the boot disk to dos and edit the system.ini
by hand (at the dos prompt type edit C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM.INI, add a REM
on front of the shell=C:\LiteStep\LiteStep.exe and put back the explorer
line (shell=explorer.exe)). Now you can reboot back to the explorer shell.
The REM simply makes anything which comes after it be ignored.
Anyway, you still need to read the complete user guide which is included in the full version Litestep. And did I mention that this is all freeware?
The sites:
- http://www.litestep.org starting point
- http://www.litestep.com when you got familiar
- http://www.litestep.net when you got more familiar
Another site which is very cool in customize.org. Here you can find all kind of ways to personalize you personal desktop/windows/personal computer. This is one of my favorite sites of the moment.