Best Way for Litestep (on XP) newbie to get started?

Tuesday, July 9, 2002 by geekboy2000 | Discussion: WinCustomize Talk

I grabbed the latest indie distro, but I'm a bit queasy about trying it without a "failsafe" shell swapper of some kind. Any recommendations? Thanks!
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Jafo
Reply #1 Wednesday, July 10, 2002 12:56 AM
ShellON is the 'best'...I think its site is down at the moment...but you 'should' find it on http://www.shellfront.org [shellfront]....if not, I could email it...

joetheblow
Reply #2 Wednesday, July 10, 2002 1:58 AM
is LiteStep free? I saw that somewhere... and is it really good? How is it deferent then NeXTStep?

What about TweakShell by stardock. would that work with Litestep?

geekboy2000
Reply #3 Wednesday, July 10, 2002 2:09 AM
I just grabbed shellon v2 (there's a beta 3, but hmmm, I don't know. Anyway, I'll give it a shot. Thanks!

Z71
Reply #4 Wednesday, July 10, 2002 3:51 AM
Mark, here is my recommendation. Where ever you got the litestep Disto, go there and look for shell swapper. Download. Next, put it in your LS folder and click on it. You will get a dialog that will prompt you to you're LS. Make sure the path is correct. (Now this is the important part) what ever you do, don't log off. Just click on LS and it will change you're screen. check to see if you have a popup menu, when you right click the screen. If you don't, go to you're LS folder and switch the shell back to explorer. Then log off. everything should go back. LSDistro is pretty reliable for beginners. good luck, I hope that helps a little.

geekboy2000
Reply #5 Wednesday, July 10, 2002 4:01 AM
Thanks Z71. I'll give that a shot in the morning. I tried Shellon (both versions), and it didn't do anything at all. I had it set to act as the shell, and prompt me, but it regardless of how I had it set, XP just booted up normally. I'll look for the shell swapper. Thanks!

moshi
Reply #6 Wednesday, July 10, 2002 6:29 AM
joetheblow: LiteStep is not only free, it is Open Source as well. LiteStep is an excellent program, it is a replacement shell. it will replace explorer.exe that is your usual shell (desktop, start menu, taskbar, shortcuts, systray, ...). it is the most advanced desktop, you could imagine. there are literally hundreds of modules for it and combined with scripting, you can do everything you can imagine. big disadvantage: LiteStep is configured with text editing and not the usual MS point and click. so LiteStep is very demanding, but the results you will get from learning it are worth it.

geekboy2000
Reply #7 Wednesday, July 10, 2002 4:42 PM
Does anyone know which specific shell swapper is "safe" to use with XP? I grabbed a few, but the executables are dated 1998 or 1999, and I can't imagine how they'd work with XP. Thanks

moshi
Reply #8 Wednesday, July 10, 2002 5:06 PM
try Snafkin: http://digilander.libero.it/alphaos/snafkin/snafkin.html

but also be sure, that you should have read the Shell-On documentation at least twice.

shell manager article at Tek: http://teknidermy.com/news/artshellmanagers8.php

Jafo
Reply #9 Wednesday, July 10, 2002 5:50 PM
ShellON works painlessly in XP, 2000, ME, 98, 95.....

geekboy2000
Reply #10 Thursday, July 11, 2002 12:30 AM
I appreciate everyone's help, but I just tried ShellOn v2 again, and again, it does nothing at boot/start-up. I have read and re-read the configuration instructions (they're not all that complicated), but it's as if it's not there at all, and it *is* set as my default shell. Another odd thing, the "reboot" button does nothing - maybe related. In any case, for me on XP Pro, ShellOn isn't doing anything. I found a few other alternatives at the site mentioned above, but the Carapace link is down, so that's out too. Damn... maybe this is an omen.

geekboy2000
Reply #11 Friday, July 12, 2002 12:52 PM
Well, I manged to boot into LiteStep via LiteSpawn, but it took forever to load the LiteStep theme, and it imcomplete, odd looking, etc. I have a feeling LiteStep's more than I'm up to right now, but on the other hand, Talisman looks very cool and easy to work with.

Jafo
Reply #12 Friday, July 12, 2002 9:19 PM
LiteSTEP normally takes longer to load at boot-up than Explorer....I think because it's not a 'first-party' exe, like Explorer...loading after the kernel 'loading' is complete, and not simultaneously.
When using ShellON, your OS recognises ShellON as the Shell first, loads it and that gives you the options to load either Exploder or any other shells you have configured. It's quite straight-forward [though the newer beta crashes], and it's built-in crash-recovery is great for de-bugging miscreant LS shells...

But...as you discovered, shell changing/modification 'can' be hazardous...it's not the same as changing MP3 players...

moshi
Reply #13 Saturday, July 13, 2002 5:06 AM
for the log in delay problem in XP scroll down this page of the LSFAQ: http://lsfaq.shellfront.org/xpprob.html

what theme are you using, that looks incomplete?

sure Talisman has to be user friendly. they charge money for it, so if it would be rather stupid if they would make a program that is hard to use



Juggal0tus
Reply #14 Saturday, July 13, 2002 10:07 PM
im using XP, and i just change the shell from the registry if i want to switch from LS back to explorer. also, I am using LiteStep Installer from http://www.beyondconvention.net/ohussain/ it seems to work very well, and it is really easy to install, and set uoi your evars.rc

geekboy2000
Reply #15 Sunday, July 14, 2002 10:59 AM
Jafo: Yes, it's definitely a bit more than installing an MP3 player. Still, I do frequent drive images, backups, etc, so I'm not all that worried. It's just frustrating more than anything else.

Moshi: Thanks for the link on the logon delay. I was attempting to load (and specified) "simplicity" as the default theme, and really, only about 3 elements were visible on the screen, with black areas where parts seemed to be missing.

Juggal0tus: Thanks. That's the link from which I grabbed the installer . . I think, but I may have grabbed a later indie distro at some point. I'm going to start over again.

Phar0e
Reply #16 Sunday, July 14, 2002 2:22 PM
Recently I had to format the hard drive of my work computer. So it was the first time I had to install Litestep from scratch in years.

I used the newest version of Omar's Litestep installer (2.0 I think) and it worked like a breeze.

Then I downloaded the newest version of "Indie" builds. I opened windows explorer. Then killed litestep with the !Quit command. Copied the indie build over my existing build (the one that comes with the installer). Restarted Litestep and away I went.

Very clean with no hickups. Later I added a shell manager (shell on) but with win2k or winXP its not really neccesary as you can always call up the task manager and navigate from there.

Jafo
Reply #17 Sunday, July 14, 2002 7:23 PM
Phil....with 3 OS drives to boot with on this one comp, and not counting the other 4 comps....I tend to 'Install LS' quite a bit.....only once did I try out an installer....usually I copy/paste the whole directory/tree from another comp, running ShellON as the reg-handler and that's that....no Install needed...

geekboy2000
Reply #18 Sunday, July 14, 2002 7:34 PM
YES! LiteStep running! I started over, and just let the installer (2.0.1) set it up as the shell. I also found something called ShellEnabler that I may try if I need a swapper. But - bottom line, it looks good! Now, how to get things like a systray that will show running processes would help, so I guess I am off to do some reading and grabbing more themes. I guess I can install and switch themes from within LiteStep? Whoa! This is most cool. Thanks for everyone's help. It kept me motivated.

geekboy2000
Reply #19 Sunday, July 14, 2002 8:54 PM
Hmm. This is strange, but I have LiteStep working fine with Simplicity, but I can't find a shell swapper that does a thing - still! Interestingly, if I use the shell swapper that comes with Aston or Talisman to get back to Explorer, that works fine, but ShellOn doesn't do anything, nor does this latest ShellEnabler I grabbed. I wonder if it's something to do with my logon screen? I only have two logons (me or "administrator"), but who knows. Also, I see that the systray module in Simplicity only shows the speaker. I ended up using Ogject bar to see the rest of the tasks, but isn't the systray in simplicity supposed to show all running tasks that would normally be in the tray>

geekboy2000
Reply #20 Sunday, July 14, 2002 9:17 PM
Okay, I got ShellOn working! But, I had to do something undocumented. I executed shellon.exe from within LiteStep (after doing all the config.exe stuff), and from the shellon icon, I selected explorer and logged off. When I logged back on ShellOn was there as my shell selector! But - I saw that process nowhere, and just stumbled over it. Now, to see if I can/should just overwrite my LiteStep with the 5/15 stable idie build. Just copy it over, eh? Hmmm..

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