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LiteStep is a Windows shell replacement under the GPL, for Windows 9x and up. It was inspired by AfterStep, which in turn was inspired by NEXTSTEP. LiteStep was initially developed by Francis Gastellu as a closed source project until April of 1998 (version 23b), and was then entirely rewritten (versions 24 and up) by the newly assembled development team. LiteStep later inspired DarkStep and PureLS for Windows. The former supported scripting.
LiteStep is one of the oldest Windows shell replacments. Over time, and due to the rise of popularity in freeform skinning, LiteStep desktop designs have tended to drift away from the Afterstep layouts seen under pre-24 versions.
Like most of the commonly known Windows shell replacements, LiteStep is based on the idea of a small core that loads configurable modules (DLLs). LiteStep has the biggest number of modules and this allows all Windows users to configure their enviroment to be rich and full-featured or minimalistic. When needed, additional modules are now downloaded and installed automatically from the internet.
A theme for LiteStep is a collection of configurations, scripts and images stored in a .zip or .lsz file that, when installed, change the visual style of the desktop. When using recent themes with a recent version of LiteStep, installation is automatic.
LiteStep has been known to please to people that like their desktop to be visually appealing, to people that like to configure their environment, to Unix/Linux users and to everyone that is tired of the Start button interface that comes with Windows.
In 1999, Phil Stopford started LDE(X) which is now a complete and production-stable LiteStep-based Windows interface replacement.
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