I searched the forum and didn't find anything about it. Just thought I'd see what people thought.

Jepp, I'm using LiteStep for ages...
It's fast, flexible, and fully customizible...

I prefer the more minimalistic themes though..

I'd been using LiteStep since a long time.

But not since we started moving to XP. Because having XP demands a pretty good spec, and if you have such good spec why'd you want to not enjoy the graphics. Found XP and its own visual-styles and WindowBlinds and such to be better than litestep. So not re-visited it much - more so, since its development stopped for some time last year.

Litestep now looks not as good as it used to (I mean, "feels" not worth it). Because if you want your desktop to look good, there's better alternatives than LS. And if you want your interface to be minimalistic and consume lesser memory, again there's better alternatives. Moreover, there seems to be infighting and different distros of it and very infrequent updates of it (and the paid versions and compulsory registrations, and cash-crunches.... bah!).

But its linux cousin, AfterStep is still a good choice according to me.

...So that's the story.

I've tried it for a few hours and removed it.
It took to much system resources for my taste, so I stick to aston, which is extremely light on resources

ive used it, but didnt care for it

Well, generalmandible asked for this, but I'm posting this here for the benefit of everybody:

A. The forums has lot of posts with people swooning and praising their favourite desktop shell. So a search will show up alternatives. But most of those (except for litestep) are paid utilities.
And just a word of opinion - *NEVER* go for DesktopX (stardock) - its a massive memory-eater.


B.
Now, as for the question of whether its worth using those to replace the explorer shell, the answer is not a straight-forward one. It goes like this:
1) If you don't keep using windows explorer all day to browse through your file-system, then its worth.
2) If you don't browse web-pages using IE (or a derivative like maxthon/Avant), then its worth.
3) If you don't like the way windows looks, then its worth.
4) If you want more control over the interface (example: you don't want employees to access the "Run" dialog) then its worth.
But what can make the entire purpose of using these shell-replacements redundant, is some people's tendency to browse thru their file-system (folders/files) all day. Now, what I mean is, by using those shells, you have wanted to throw away explorer.exe - but if you run MyComputer or WindowsExplorer or IE, you are effectively bringing it back and loading it into memory. Therefore making no memory-savings. Instead, if you have a complete alternative plan:

1. Desktop shell like aston/talisman/desktopX/litestep.
2. Browser like opera/firefox (whatever except IE).
3. File manager like PowerDesk/TotalCommander/DirectoryOpus/xplorer2.
That is when you see the full effect and power.


But then, you notice that the combined memory usage of using 3 utilities in place of 1 explorer.exe takes up more space on memory usage - you can bring down mem-usage by putting in place appropriate policies. Last of all, consider one thing - many of the utils I suggest above are paid utils (if its good enough to replace, its paid ) - so that is a problem too. But still, its needed for some organizations (or PC-beauty enthusiuasts ).

initially i had some issues on my thinkpad but after renaming my explorer shell and one more thnig which i don't remember it worked like a charm.

I've used it, but I didn't really see any advantages to it. I guess on my computers, I've got enough crunching power to handle explorer as it is.

Can't... wait... for... 1 GB...Ram chip... for .... laptop....

I used litestep for a few days. It was good and there were no problems with it, but I just personally prefer explorer shell. I couldn't get used the the right clicking the desktop to open the equivalent of the start menu.

It also works great for imitation (Linux/Mac)

I just started looking at alternative file manager and shell to get rid of explorer.exe seeing how it always gradually eats away more and more memory until it gets to 20 MBs. I think that's ridiculous. You have to open Windows Explorer and minimize it to make the memory usage go way down again but it gradually climbs right back up again in like 5 minutes. I like Xplorer2 Lite for a file manager but now not so much because I am unable to delete folders directly from the tree view. I found one minimalistic theme for LiteStep which works the first time I use it but once I reboot, certain modules for it fail to be found and the Task Menu (aka system tray) doesn't work and it irritates me. All I really want is an explorer.exe-similar shell that doesn't increase memory usage over time. I use this website for looking at different themes: http://skins.deviantart.com/themes/litestep/
Can anyone recommend any other cool minimalistic shells?

I still use.

If you want to customize XP there is no better way than using an alternative shell.

Also it uses less resources than Windows shell and in my opinion is much more stable.

Old poll...

Litestep all the way! I couldn't be happier with it.

I absolutely love litestep, I actually have it installed on my 98 box custom made interface

I'm not that intrepid. Instead, I just searched around for a theme that fit my tastes and then modified it bit. Wallpaper, bar modules, scripting, etc.

Did you publish your theme?

No I didn't publish my theme, I'll compress it and post it on here for ya ... Just PM me if you don't hear from me for a while, I'm very busy some days

No problem, no hurry. I was just curious. Litestep themes can be very appealing (to me) so I was just going to take a look if you had it at deviantArt or similar.

You may be interested to hear the Litestep theming is experiencing something of a revival these days due to some innovate new modules.