Advanced skinning, individualized desktops, animated icons, shiny colors and flashy windows: which alternative shell (for Windows) is the best? 
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what ever happened to it?? Probably we were hoping fr too much
Together we will fight the good fight against those au trolls.
They are Desktop replacements! there is no filemanager with them!
(My own Shell project has one....
http://scops.l53.lokai.net/pics/metal.jpg
http://scops.l53.lokai.net/pics/panther.jpg
http://scops.l53.lokai.net/pics/jaguar.jpg)
cya
scops
Impressive. Looks like you're his #1 fanboy.
And now... Does that have something to do with the current topic?
OTS to me is Open Text Summarizer and not open theme scheme. 
What was the whole point of this article? Comparing which one installs better? The author didn't even mention what kind of functionality LiteStep brings in addition to providing eye-candy. I mean what does Windows not have that these programs can bring (other than fancy icons and stuff)?
LiteStep is very stable, you can 'make' your own desktop, you can integrate your MP3-player (Winamp, foobar2000) in the desktop, improved productivity, ...
Then I moved to Linux, and all the bonuses of Litestep were standard *g*
Seriously, one bonus to Talisman is that Litestep is still undergoing the bloat that started when I left and started working on PureLS - http://www.purels.org/ (A 'clean' rewrite of LS back-in-the-day) - with Jugg (another former LS developer). I really think that whilst the theming and eyecandy is nice and certainly shouldn't be overlooked... people forget the real reason that Litestep (and so many other shell replacement projects) were started: The Three Essees - Speed, Stability and Sanity 
I just love how you mentioned all the other windows shells out there, particularly the more active ones, such as bb4win, or carbon6, etc.
ENDY!@^)@#^$(@*#^_!(#*$%_@(#&%@)#%
*stalk*
How can you have an article about this stuff without screenshots!?!
dont you just hate writeups that dont pick a winner? all that reading for nothing. 
The themes/pictures i have seen from the website are real bad,
icons are not smooth and crispy has (s)hell.
Themes are dull and very unoriginal. Boring!
Glad you do not have to pay for this stuff...
Karamba!
I wasn't able to install other themes other than the default with Litestep and Talisman wouldn't even display the Windows XP theme at all on my laptop (Windows ME). I am not an ordinary user. I installed Mandrake on my own in 1999 and used Linux for graphic/web design for 2 years.
>I installed Mandrake on my own in 1999 and used Linux for
>graphic/web design for 2 years.
Why did you stop after 2 years?
I found that Litestep installed several new features, mostly involving new and interesting ways of terminally f***ing up a computer
The installer doesnt mention that it will make a stock install of Win98SE unbootable unless you first download and install Visual C++ libraries
There is no way of uninstalling it from a commandline and a commandline is all you can use after you install it thus.. you have to find system.ini and edit it from DOS to restore Explorer as the default shell
I used Litestep on Win95 and it was beautifully light and fast. The current version is an appalling insult to the great code it is based on.
Without screenshots it's hard to judge, but those two pieces of software sound like being primarily (and secondarily) eye candy without any serious functionality...
If they are more, then why isn't Directory Opus (http://www.gpsoft.com.au) in this article? Because that one has a feature list several pages long in addition to providing eye candy...
The current codebase is almost done for, as Litestep 0.24.7 (which has been in development for the better part of 2 years) is almost ready. The plugins available for litestep are numerous. There are many of each to choose from, seeing as this is an Open Source project.
The code as it is (0.24.6) is fast, small and stable. Litestep is the application which unlike everything else in Windows, doesn't crash. The expected uptime of LS, is the expected uptime of Windows.
Too bad there isn't Litestep for Linux. It would be awesome to have a WM that is as versatile, and extendable as LS. (windowmaker is my current WM)
I'd like to run an alternate shell, UNINSTALL Internet Exploder, and get rid of all the crap that Microsoft deems necessary for life in a Windows world. Since I can't use Linux (too many reasons to list, don't need a flame war) it'd be nice to have an alternative that will run my programs perfectly. LiteStep, however, doesn't quite work properly yet IMO and Talisman brings immense overhead - speed drop of 30% IMO.
The article was "OK", but I think it's somewhat ridiculous to write an article like this and post it online without any screenshots whatsoever.
...people whoring themselves to the extent of pissing all over the purpose of hyperlinks, by making [url]computer[/url] be nothing but the link to a vendor...
Good luck, and don't curse when you find some apps stop working properly.
I'm quite an active memeber of the alternative shells scene, and was greatly disapointed when I came accross this article. Covering two shells, one of which hasn't had code updates for a long, long time (LS) and the other one costs money beyond a 30 day trial.
To say this overview was incomplete would be an enormous understatement. I've produced a series of reviews of varying alt. shells on a site ( http://shells.loose-screws.com ) which might give people wishing to try them out a better insight. Projects such as bb4win, carbon and geoshell are under active development, and offer users much more of an experience (In my opinion, of course) than LS or Talisman could ever offer.
I'm all for an alternative shell especailly if it is more stable, but I think the whole skinning things is a wast of time. Personally if you like the look and feel of an OS that you are not running then you need to switch to that OS.
I think that its kinda foolish to want Windows to look like NeXT, Aqua, or OSF/Motif. If you want your Windows system to work like *NIX then move to a *NIX platform. If you want it tool look like Mac, BeOS, OS/2, etc... Move to that platform. If you are unwilling to give up your MS Applications, deal with the GUI they provide. You'll find that your productivity goes up if you focus on using the computer vs. trying to change its appearance.
No screenshots? You've got to be kidding me, right?
...screen shots that came with this review. It really makes me want to rush out and download those replacement shells!
Holy cow! I have never seen such colors before! It is especially awe-inspiring to see how the clutter can be removed...
/end sarcasm (if you didn't know)
I can understand not submitting screen shots if you were discussing a Linux Distro, without talking about the eye-candy, but to leave out the eye-candy when you are talking directly about eye-candy. That's just plain wrong...
i don't get it. for what do i need to install this useless stuff? it's mainly eye-candy and i guess it's even not a good one (didn't see any screenshots).
i'm really amazed that the open-source community cares more a about nice looking icons and windows decoration than about the human computer interaction.
can anyone give me an example for open source software with a very good (innovative / usable) GUI?
Why is everybody complaining about "no screenshots"? If you'd think for a change you'd know posting screenshots doesn't make any sense at all: The themes are all different, so I'd have to post a gazillion screens. Want screenshots? Go to deviantart.com, go to customize.org, go to any skin/theme site on the web.
If I would've posted screens I probably would've gotten commentary like: "You should've used Theme XYZ instead af Theme ABC. XYZ better shows off the possibilities."
But, you know, not everyone can be satisfied.
I could've taken other shell replacements into account as well, but I took two of the major ones, in my opinion the most popular ones. Another thing I found important was that one is OSS and the other CSS.
I'm one of those wierd users that spends all his time running and working on linux, and ports over to win32. I played with trying to install litestep but I never got a working configuration. Lost a bunch of icons and shortcuts, got it to the point that menus wouldn't come up, etc.
I just killed it all and run cygwin's xfree server mostly now.
Thom, I thought the review was conducted well, and a comparison between two shells is a good thing. I was only dissapointed because the fact that other shells existed wasn't even mentioned, and some may get the impression that these two are the only ones worth trying - a lot of Windows/Linux users still don't know about the alternative shell "thang".
I actually praise your lack of screenshots, it avoids people saying "OOO, pretty, I'll use that" instead you get people actually reading the words. But judging by peoples reaction such as "litestep crashed and destroyed my computer" there aren't going to be a huge amount of people absorbing the text.
This doesn't seem like something people should be doing with Microsoft solutions. I'm quite sure you are going to run into stability/upgrade problems.
how about geoshell http://www.geoshell.com its very stable and quite good.
slash, You sound like you're speaking with not too much experience in the matter, you don't experience any kind of upgrade problems as alternative shells don't mess with any of the system libraries, think of them as a layer above Windows, they have no affect in the way the system is run, just change the way it looks and adds a few more features. Most shells just access undocumented features that are in the dll libraries, nothing harmful...
idvah :p
It's kind of funny that people are bellyaching about screenshots, since there are links to the product websites that contain scads of them. But to make things look pretty I added a couple of representative shots.
" alternative shells don't mess with any of the system libraries, think of them as a layer above Windows, they have no affect in the way the system is run, just change the way it looks and adds a few more feature"
Install the latest LiteStep build on a clean install of Windows 98SE then come back here and retract that statement.
Chris, wow, that's a great tone of text, demanding the retraction of my statement. Firstly, (I'm not going to do either of the things you demand of me) Windows 98 is now officially unsupported software, deal with it. Secondly, there are a multitude of Litestep users who run it on Windows 98 apparently without problem - try having a look around various support forums, read through the documentation, look at known issues, and if all else fails, try a slightly older LS build.
Put on the service packs before installing LS and you'll be fine. Go a step further and get a current OS.
And who in their right mind would happily use Windows 98/98se in the first place? You cannot please everyone, i think the amount of ppl still using Windows 98se who would even be interested in something like LiteSTEP is so nominal these do not even warrent consideration. If there are avid users using Windows 98, then they can certainly write themselves an installer to automatically download and install the MSVC libs. OSS is good that way, lets everyone get involved. So i say to you, spend this time that you have been using to complain about this to write an installer of your very own.
"Oh yes, every theme has its own shortcuts. Damn."
Not really. A major point of the Open Theme Standard for Litestep is that there is a "personal" directory as a single place to define hotkeys (shortcuts) and menu items. An OTS compliant theme will use those, thus you have the same hotkeys no matter what theme you use.
>I installed Mandrake on my own in 1999 and used Linux for
>graphic/web design for 2 years.
Why did you stop after 2 years?
There weren't any fully featured illustration programs for Linux as there still aren't. I now use OS X as it has delivered on Linux's promise of stability and is secure as well as it has many easy to use and unusually featured illustration programs (ie Expression). I have used open source applications though since I have heard about them and I still use some although I use different ones on OS X. I use Mozilla Composer, Safari, Text Shop (which uses Ghostscript and teTeX) and Meteo and I have experimented with LyX, Abiword, and GVIM on OS X. I tried installing Open Office but I needed to compile something and I wasn't able to get MySQL up and running (although I installed it fine on Linux and Windows.
I have an extra relatively new Toshiba laptop I am not using, so I will probably install SUSE on it soon.
I second idvah's post above (#32) about Geoshell ( http://www.geoshell.com ). I've been using it exclusively for almost three years now. It's full-featured and doesn't force you into a certain paradigm the way LS does with the dock. You can even run your shell without any user interface widgets at all, working entirely through hotkeys and menus if that's your fancy. It also has a wide variety of plugins, such as system monitors, network traffic monitors, a weather tickertape, an RSS parser, several VWM managers and an interesting task switcher plugin. All this and more in a 2-3 MB footprint! It's definitely worth checking out if you're tired of Windows' drab appearance and lack of customizability and aren't interested in LS's bloat.
Disclaimer: I've never used Talisman, but from the screenshots I've seen, it appears to be similar to LS in the "lots of random UI widgets you can't get rid of" sense.
Adam: check other litestep themes instead of the default one and youll see how extensible it is, and you CAN have no user interface widgets, just load only the hotkeys module. My ls is runing at 4-5mb with some shortcuts, a cpu monitor, lock, deskicons, popup, hotkeys and foobar controls.
Interesting, if rather short. I know I would like to see a longer article comparing the features of several replacement windows shells, and I'm sure a lot of other people here would too. Maybe someone could write one?
Anyway, here's my story:
Here I am, stuck at work with Windows98se, which my boss won't let me get rid of. Explorer was having some problems, so I surfed over to my old friend Talisman's webpage. I used to use Talisman at home back in the 1.x days, and was wondering how much it had improved. After a week, I still wasn't happy, and it was crashing a lot. (Part of that is this machine... I'm hoping to throw it out the window soon...)
I used litestep a while back, but it just never has appealed to me. So I went surfing around... I found bb4win, and a few others... then I ran across Aston. I'd never heard of this shell before. I've been running it for a couple weeks now, and it performs nicely. Lots of themes, blah blah blah. http://www.astonshell.com is the website if any of you want to check it out. It's not for everybody, but some of you might find it exactly what you need!
Lots of complaints here, with very little real information or real feedback...
First off, Litestep is still being actively developed, in the form of LS .24.7. Litestep .24.6/indiestep hasn't been updated since earlier this year because .24.7 is now good enough to use as a replacement.
Before you start using Litestep, please take some time to visit (and bookmark) the related sites. The Litestep Mail List is the best place to receive help and information (http://www.wuzzle.org/list/litestep.php). The LS FAQ (http://lsfaq.shellfront.org/) has a lot of information worth checking out as well. For themes and screenshots, check out the Litestep sections on any of the Windows skin sites or visit litestep.net or lsthemes.com. You will also want to check over the .24.6 documentation at http://lsdocs.shellfront.org/ .
Litestep is not something you can just install and configure without delving into the .rc files. There are around 400 modules (plugins) for Litestep that allow you to create your own interface, from scratch, if you wish. Of course, you can use someone else's theme, but you won't make use of the real power of LS without editing an existing theme or creating your own. Sure, you can use the shell and have a great looking desktop (eye candy).
However, best thing about Litestep is really its flexibility in both the interface and the functionality. Anything you want to do can literally be done thanks to the multitude of modules that are available. For module information and downloads, check out http://www.loose-screws.com/ and http://www.shellfront.org/modules-list.php . The first link will provide categorized downloads and a small description for the modules. The latter link gives you a one-page list of all the modules (minus all the most recent updates.. sorry) and their available versions.
Now, there are other very useful alternative shells out there. My two favorites, outside of Litestep, or bb4win and bluebox (http://www.bb4win.org/ and http://www.blueboxshell.org/ respectively), both of which are Blackbox clones for Windows. geOShell (http://www.geoshell.com/) is another shell you may want to check out. See http://shells.loose-screws.com/ and http://list.shellfront.org/ for more shells to check out.
Just please remember that Litestep requires that you do a little research before you take the plunge. Since a theme can create an entirely new interface, don't be surprised when your familiar Explorer interface isn't there. Remember that shells are a complete replacement for Explorer. Act like you're installing Linux for the first time and you should have the right mindset. Read up on the shell first... make sure you're familiar with how to set your shells, or better yet, use a shell switcher/manager (Carapace, http://shells.loose-screws.com/ and ShellON, http://www.dx13.co.uk/ ), and make sure you know what you're doing. If you know a little more about what you're doing, you should have a more enjoyable experience.
Once you enter into the world of alternative shells you'll find out how limited you were by the Explorer shell. It's much more enjoyable to only have to deal within the limits of Windows itself rather than the limits of its default interface.
HTH
hmm, cant get Linux to look like windows then why not make Windows look more like Linux;)
"Install the latest LiteStep build on a clean install of Windows 98SE then come back here and retract that statement."
The problems you must be experiencing must be dependency issues, which are really unheard of in linux isn't it. Also editing C:WindowsSystem.ini and changing Shell=Explorer.exe to Shell=C:Litesteplitestep.exe is also really hard, edit is the most complicated text editor around. /sarcasm
Point is like everything else there is a manual, it's there to be read before diving into something. Without reading the manual you come up with these asshat comments that just makes you sound like an ignorant bastard.
Also the talk about if you want your desktop to look like *nix or a mac, install *nix or buy a mac. Lets get real, if someone wants to make windows look like something else, why not ? After all, isn't there fvwm 95 that looks like Windows Explorer ? If a users chooses to make his desktop look like afterstep, blackbox, or windowmaker, it's his system, who cares what he does ?
If you don't like the current theme with LS, there are 400+modules, many many themes, you can either make your own or find one you like.
Also there is no problems with upgrades, just like every other software, close it out and extract the upgrade and start it up agian and you are all set.
Litestep and other shells are not as hard some of these guys make them out to be. Just like a *nix window manager, as long as you read the readme and other docs that come with it, you should know what is going on.
Here's another place one can look for some more shell reviews: http://shell-shocked.org/shells.php
http://shells.loose-screws.com/ is also excellent, and perhaps more useful because all the reviews are done by the same person.
While somewhat simplistic in approach, it allows for multiple pages of desktop space (plus a virtual desktop), it comes with a calculator and filemanager, and it lets you lock down individual icons with passwords (nice for LAN parties).
http://www.neosoftware.com/qm4.html
LiteStep is very stable, you can 'make' your own desktop, you can integrate your MP3-player (Winamp, foobar2000) in the desktop, improved productivity, ...
Strange...LiteStep seemed more unstable on my system than explorer. I wonder what the problem is.
XP Pro, P4 1.7 Ghz, 256 MB RDRAM, 64 MB NViDIA GeForce 2 MX
if LS is truly unstable on your system, it likely has something to do wit the build you're using or a specific module you're using. Some older modules have known memory leaks or other weird problems. And older builds often had weird bugs. If you're using the latest Litestep Installer (there's a new one as of Aug 7) with the default installed theme, and you're having stability problems, it's not Litestep itself. It's always possible that another app you're running is hardcoded to work with the Explorer shell though and that might be causing you problems.
Rootrider, you have cleared up most of the misunderstanding of Litestep mentioned here.
Kudos!
Oh, btw, developers of Litestep: "Keep up the good work!" *w00t*
In first reading of this review I was very happy with how it was written. It was a short and to the point description of a users somewhat blind jump into the world of Windows Shell Replacements.
I personally have used LS for over 5 years and moved through the ranks of LS geek'dum. I have always held the position though that LS is not for the average user, or a user that is not willing to learn. Shell replacements are all about getting away from the norm and putting the user in control and many people seem to want to make that the easiest thing in the world and it isn't. If someone is not willing to put serious time into learning how to use a shell replacement, no matter which one it is, don't waste your time with the download. To this day I continue to learn different things about LS usage and I expect to learn something new tomorrow.
Please take note that Thom A. Holwerda is a person who did not pay the 25$ for Talisman. He compares a freeware product to a illegal (non-licensed) product. It's like comparing your illegal cracked WinXP to some Linux distribution. Next time let someone who actually pays for his software do a comparison. Also, Thom A. Holwerda has spent much more time on LS than he has on Talisman. But because he is so mild in his judgement nobody will care about that, right? Good article for the rest. Too bad people can't learn to stop using illegal software, there is more than enough potent freeware software out there.
Eugenia/David, I would appreciate it if you could moderate the last post made down.
I have no idea who this character is. First I thought maybe one of my friends messing with me , but I forgot, they aren't really into computers .
Thank you.
