Elive 1.9.35 (Unstable)
Problems & Headaches
After the install I ran into a very small but annoying problem. At the login screen my Tab key wouldn’t work and I was unable to place the cursor into the password field so I could login. I was able to type my login name just fine but after that I could not, for some strange reason, get my cursor to go into the password field.
So I was not able to use my installed system to test Elive. Such a small bug but such an annoying one. Anyway, I decided to boot Elive in VirtualBox and see how well it worked there. It may have been a VMWare keyboard problem so I won’t hold the login problem against Elive though it is the first time I’ve ever seen it happen.
The install went fine on VirtualBox but I ran into the same login problem. I could not tab to the next field nor could I use my trackball to move the cursor. Oh well. I booted back into the Live CD to finish the rest of the review.
I did not like having to download the Installer Module. While it wasn’t a problem for me it has the potential to throw newbies off or otherwise intimidate them. They may not understand why they are being asked to do this or how to proceed. I think the install routine needs to be changed so that downloading that module is not necessary.
I also did not particularly care for the Elive Panel (Elive’s control panel). When you start it you’ll see three icons and an odd scrolling ticker type thing at the bottom. When you pass your cursor over an icon it tells you what it does by scrolling text in the ticker at the bottom of the panel window. Ugh. I detest scrolling text and I particularly don’t like it in a control panel. It’s not cool, it’s just annoying.
Clicking one of the icons will take you to more choices in the control panel. And, again, if you put your cursor over the icon you’ll see the text scrolling at the bottom. I just don’t like this at all. It would make much more sense to have simple text under each icon so you could easily see what it does without having to sit through scrolling text.
One last gripe, OpenOffice is not installed by default. One of my pet peeves as readers who have read my other reviews know by now.
(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.
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.