Elive 1.9.35 (Unstable)
Brian Masinick weighed in with another good suggestion recently for a distribution review. This time he recommended Elive so I snagged a copy to check it out. Elive is based on Debian and uses the Enlightenment window manager rather than KDE or Gnome.
The version I picked for this review is the 1.9.35 release which is currently labeled as unstable.
Pay? I Have to Pay For Elive? WTF, Jim!
Before I get into this review, Elive is not a “free” distribution in the sense that it’s like free beer. In the past there has been a charge (in the form of a donation) for you to be able to download the stable version of Elive. Unstable releases remain free to download.
This seems to be changing though as the Elive site now says that you will be able to download Elive for free in the next release and can run it as a Live CD but you will be required to make a donation if you want to install it to your system.
So is it okay for a developer to require a donation to download their version of Linux? Absolutely. I have no problem with it whatsoever as “free software” does not necessarily mean free as in “free beer.” Developers probably spend a significant amount of time on their distributions so it’s perfectly fine if they want to charge some amount or another for users to be able to use their distro.
I understand that some people dislike this idea intensely. That’s fine, there’s plenty of room for disagreement. Suffice to say that if the distribution in question has enough value for you and you wish to purchase it or make a donation then go for it. If nobody makes a donation or buys it or whatever then chances are that distribution ultimately isn’t really necessary anyway as people are clearly using other alternatives. Ultimately it’s up to you to decide if a distribution has enough value for you that you are willing to pay to support it.
With all of that said, on now to the rest of the review.
Installation
As I noted earlier, Elive is a Live CD. So just pop it in and boot your computer. Booting into Elive is very quick and you have the option of installing it to your hard disk by clicking on the Install Elive icon on the desktop panel. When you click on it you’ll notice a pop up window will come up with the choice of 3 different experience levels:
1. Auto. Most automatized install.
2. Easy Mode. Just a few questions.
3. Complete Mode. User can access all features of the installer (for experienced users).
(4 votes, average: 3.75 out of 5)
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Thanks for the review. I never did DL this as it seemed to be just another version of DreamLinux with a few different apps. Now that I know what it is about, I will definitely not DL it.
Not that I have any qualms about paying for good software as I used to purchase retailed boxed Linux distros, have donated to Ubuntu, and various other projects from time to time.
Ultimately, I do not think this business model will work out. Downloading a purposely crippled but working version is one thing, ala shareware, but you will not get many return customers with an unstable version.
I think Elive probably gets just enough revenue to keep the developer’s server running, and if he is fortunate, enough to feed his belly.
Joseph Cheek had a pretty nice distribution in Lycoris, and it fed his belly and a few others part time, but it was not a sustaining model. I do not believe that distro sales alone are a sustaining model for anyone.
However, subscription models, coupled with services, training, support, application stacks, and so forth, can be, and are, a very profitable endeavor. This guy ought to take some queues from Red Hat in that space – but since this is a desktop, he ought to see if he can get his software packaged with a few OEM vendors like Xandros does. That is a self supporting, self sustaining model – at least for a while, but you have to create and re-create, you cannot just sit still or it will not last very long at all.
Elive could have a spot in netbook environments, and it may have been one of the best netbook OS of all if this guy had an early start with it. However, it seems like when it comes to business plans, he’s clueless – a lot like Joseph was – awesome developer, very little business planning knowledge.
Regarding the tab key, Jim, it could be that the mapping of that key is a bit different than we are used to – this distro is natively developed in another country, true? The other day, I found a few quirky mappings of keys in Crunchbang Linux too – probably could have avoided them by providing some boot flags indicating a US language – not an expert at Virtualbox yet though so I did not know how to do that. The other possibility is that some keymap entries are either erroneous or missing – but most likely that is language specific as well – I’ve worked with keymaps in the past, though it has been a decade since I did a lot of work with them.
Sounds like this is another one of those distros that is great to tinker with. I could have some fun with it – I’ve had fun with past releases. At the end of the day, it did not hold enough to have me keeping it for long term use since I already have a LOT of Debian systems that can give me the same thing – and I can always install Enlightenment on them – and if I were so inclined, steal the menu mappings from this distro – though that probably would not be necessary.
Thanks again for doing this review, Jim! Glad you are appreciating my suggestions. I hope to have a few more for you soon!
Thanks for this review , although I do not agree with anything you have written.
Elive 1.9.35 (Unstable) I have not had any problems.
Elive 2.0 = (Pay)I have no problem.
In truth I tell you that Elive is a very good distro.
Greetings:
Agust
Thanks. Good review. Elive’s weakest spot is that it doesn’t have an updated repository. I installed Open Office using Synaptic, and it threw OpenOffice 2.4 at me. Secondly, it is overblinged that mundane tasks become complex. Try changing the hotkeys for Ecomorph, you’ll probably be lost.
In order to move from the login name to password, you need to press the enter key. Yes this differs from what people are used to, but a little research by a reviewer on something they have never used is not a bad thing, especially with something so trivial.
Fred, thanks for the heads up. I just tried it and you’re right, hitting the enter key works.
Any idea why Elive’s login screen is set up that way? It seems odd to me and also odd that you can’t simply use your mouse or trackball to place the cursor into the password field.
I’ll make an edit in the article letting people know about your tip. Thanks again.
Elive uses Enlightenment’s “Entrance” login/display manager. I think it is mainly a matter of the enlightenment developers never thought to allow using the tab key to ’submit’ the username (like other login/display managers like xdm, kde’s kdm or gnome’s gdm).
I think it would mostly be a matter of submitting an issue to Enlightenment’s tracker requesting the use of the tab key to switch between the username and password in Entrance.
I am one of those noobs who got nailed by the need to download the Install module. I tried to install 3 or 4 Unstable releases, each attempt ending with “Installation module missing” error. For what it’s worth, I think requiring the download of an Install Module is kind of cheesy.
I agree with you on the panel. It is very annoying but only because we are not used to it. Most of us are used to KDE, Gnome or XFCE.
In regards to the funky signon boxes, there is at least one other distro (whose name I do not recall) that uses a similar process. It uses the same box for both the userid and the password. The box has a caption of “userid”. You enter your id, then hit Xmit. The caption on the box changes to “Password”, which you then enter. After you hit Xmit the second time, you are logged in.
It is a great Distro. Perfectly builded even for unstable.
I using it and i will use it. And i will donate to developers of Elive because I Love It. It is only distro that work Perfect on my Toshiba Satellite. And it is Perfect for netbooks (i’ve eeepc 1000H..)
Now it is 1.9.50
P.s. Ubuntu is another M$. You’ll see soon.