LDE(X) was one of the most mature

LiteStep LiteStep is a Windows Shell replacement for Windows 9x and up, licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL). LiteStep replaces the Windows Shell which provides access to the graphical user interface on Windows-based computers ...

distributions, being developed almost continuously since 1999. It made its public debut with LDE R4 in October 1999 and the LDE-X R1.0 release marked a significant change in approach during 2000. It has always been provided according to the terms of the

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and, currently, only runs on the

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2000/XP operating systems. LDE was originally styled to give

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users a familiar-ish environment to work with

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systems within both University and commercial facilities. Over subsequent versions, it evolved to be much more complex and to be based around a framework, named Core, comprising Microsoft Windows Script (

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) code and LiteStep-supported script code. There is also support for

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and

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code to be run in this framework. This wide-ranging support was a deliberate aim of the developer team because it allowed contributions and encourages extensions to the system. Localisation support is also provided within this framework, although it is not ideal due to limitations from the LiteStep system. The framework simplifies common tasks with a suite of individual scripts that were designed to handle commonly occurring events. An example of a typical basis for this framework to exist is that each traditional LiteStep theme (user interface) author has historically either had to write his or her own code to save settings to files, or has, in the worst case, had to ask the user to directly edit the code. The LDE developers considered this to be an ease-of-use issue and for this and other cases, scripts were coded that eventually formed the LDE(X) Core framework. The framework also provides support for the current in-vogue Open Theme Standard (version 2), OTS, used by the LiteStep community. This was a requested feature and also allows for such themes (user interfaces) to use parts of the LDE(X) SDK to extend their abilities when run on LDE(X). The user interface was able to be chosen from a list of installed systems and is then loaded on top of this framework. User interfaces could load extensions (plugins) from a common repository. Each user using LDE(X) has their own configuration tree which is located in their own OS-provided 'Documents and Settings' folder, with the entire system being designed around multiple user operating systems. LDE(X) was accompanied by a programme called OpenLDE, designed to allow for forks of the main distribution to (if they wish) be quickly recognised as an LDE(X)-derivative. This never saw adoption within the wider community, however. The project was ended in May 2007. The 6.4.4 and 6.4.5 updates remain beta status, and only affect one feature in the system. It is not expected that there will be future updates, primarily due to the size of the community and also the system's dependence on components that were never open-sourced by developers and are only available for 32-bit Windows. The web-site went offline in September 2016.

References

External links

Main Website

Project Website

Open Theme Standard
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lde(X) Desktop shell replacement

See also

References

External links