Thanks for all you've done for the LiteStep community Rachel!

It was a full 25 years ago that I first heard about Litestep and joined #litestep on efnet, back when I still did not have regular dial-up access. Some how I got into running FPN, and then created ShellFront, created a Windows 3.1 theme for WindowsBlinds that was distributed with the software for a while, created regular LS dev builds, etc. ShellFront was mentioned on TechTV and was listed in a few magazines, when they were talking about Litestep. Pretty good times.

I was kind of young and dumb.. as many of us likely were. I was 17 in the beginning. I spent as much time on my computer as I did anywhere else, and I know I said a lot of rude/dumb things over the years. I was never very emotionally connected, and it turns out that I also have ADHD, which further delays some brain development. I didn't feel fully an adult until my late 20s, and, now into my 40s, I've learned a lot more about myself. It's been a journey.

Getting into everything related to this helped me learn about running web sites and servers, which eventually led to me working in the field and started a career that's going on nearly 20 years.

I also met a lot of people. I met a few people on my drive to Iowa and back in 2001.. including staying at the house of someone who eventually made a lot of people very angry. I met many LS dev team members over the years, including Visigoth and MrJukes. I met Nexter and Blkhawk in German in 2009 as well. I know I met so many more people over the years. It was always a good experience, if not also awkward.

I switched to Linux for nearly everything several years ago and haven't looked back. I had talked about doing this for many years before that. I use FreeBSD on many of my servers, and have MacOs provided by work. I hate Windows. Honestly, the only reason I was ever able to tolerate Windows was because of LS. I'm glad that I'm done with Windows... other than that it's installed on my desktop and I could technically boot into it to play games. I don't, though.

To anyone seeing this, thanks for being a part of a now-ancient community that was once very active and quite effective. Litestep is still unmatched in its flexibility and power.. and we did it on one of the worst OSs (IMO). Pretty great.

Hi! I'm one of the unwashed masses that used and loved LiteStep but never really joined the original community in any way. LiteStep was a big part in pushing me into my current career of design, helping me deconstruct and understand how and why interfaces were made.

I've been getting back into it over the last few months for some retro computing builds and rebuilds I'm doing, and in the process digging up every shred of documentation, executables, and code that I can because it seems to be eroding away at an ever more rapid pace. I don't know exactly what I can do here yet besides hoard data—running a community is a bit much for me—but if there's LiteStep data to be shared for me to hoard (and importantly share further on) I can raise my hand to roll up a server and put things out there, especially in concert with others doing the same (redundancy seems like the best way to reduce costs for everyone *and* maintain data availability).