http://www.osnews.com/story/15954/Elive_0_5_Released Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2009, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Fri, 11 Dec 2009 06:17:34 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com http://osnews.com/thread?165183 http://osnews.com/thread?165183 If I really want to impress someone with Linux, I give them this. Enlightenment 0.17 may currently be unstable, but Thanatermesis seems to have done his stuff getting rid of the worst of it.


The only real problem with Elive 0.4.2 (besides its lingering instability) was the install-to-disk icon on the launch bar, which wasn't clearly marked (or obvious to me, at least- I accidentally clicked on it thinking it was the file manager) and for some reason hard to cancel out of.

Other than that, this looks great. Looking at the changelog, this seems to be a huge step forward: Thunar (never liked XFE- it was ridiculously slow), X.org 7, a new distro base, more drivers for autodetection...Edited 2006-09-24 17:46 Sun, 24 Sep 2006 17:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (DigitalAxis) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165185 http://osnews.com/thread?165185 So I decided to donate $5. One of the advantages of doing so is that you can then download the ISO from a faster server. Except that once I was done paying, there was no option anywhere to download the ISO.Edited 2006-09-24 17:57 Sun, 24 Sep 2006 17:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (adamk) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165186 http://osnews.com/thread?165186 I mean I like E17; it is easy to use, beautiful (with the right theme) and fairly functional. And yet I can not stand using it for more than half on hour or so. I don't really know why. The E apps behave a bit different from what I expect, and my "normal" but perhaps a bit boring but functional KDE apps just look like s**t as compared to the surrounding E17 aesthetics. Like a piece of modern art I do not understand.

Maybe I am destined to be a fluxbox-ogre forever. Sun, 24 Sep 2006 17:51:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (korpenkraxar) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165190 http://osnews.com/thread?165190 E17 looks nice. It's got some good eye candy for those lower end systems that won't have a 3d-GPU driving the desktop. I just hope it makes it out sometime in this century. I might try this out on the ancient thinkpad that lives under my bed.

Rasterman used to work at RedHat and I sometimes wonder what the open source desktop world would look like today if they would have kept funding Enlightenment. Sun, 24 Sep 2006 17:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Lambda) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165191 http://osnews.com/thread?165191 It's probably worth mentioning that you will be running and E17 beta with this disc and not E17 since E17 won't be shipping until they finalize their bundling deal with duke nukem forever. Sun, 24 Sep 2006 18:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (setuid_w00t) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165194 http://osnews.com/thread?165194 Here is faster download link: http://files.akl.lt/Linux/Elive/isos/stable/Elive_Revolution.iso Sun, 24 Sep 2006 18:22:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Nicram) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165199 http://osnews.com/thread?165199 The sad thing is that when I read "...won't be shipping until..." I got excited, until I saw the punchline and realized it was a joke.

E17 would be amazing today, maybe ahead of its time. But it has to ship before I'll be excited to actually use it. Sun, 24 Sep 2006 18:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (ma_d) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165200 http://osnews.com/thread?165200 Thanks!

Adam Sun, 24 Sep 2006 18:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (adamk) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165211 http://osnews.com/thread?165211 Yes, I want to feel differently, but every time I try it I come to the same conclusion as you. Not to take anything away from them however, they are doing a great job. Sun, 24 Sep 2006 20:24:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (alcibiades) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165213 http://osnews.com/thread?165213 But I can't get FAM to install on OBSD. Sun, 24 Sep 2006 20:46:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (openwookie) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165224 http://osnews.com/thread?165224 ...E17 is a bit overrated. Everyone raves about how beautiful E is compared to other window managers, but to my eye it is flashy, inconsistent, and just generally painful to look at after a while. Sure, it's unusual, and I certainly don't mean to rain on anyone's parade who uses or likes it. It just seems like it tries too hard. In my view, beauty comes from functionality, and like others here I just can't use E. It's not functional. It's all about glitz, but when compared to the staid old Gnome or KDE desktop, it really doesn't compare. Trying to work in it just makes you feel edgy and uncomfortable.

Some questions (these might have different answers to the ones I'm implying; I don't know):

1. Why did Red Hat stop funding development of E in favor of Gnome?
2. Why are there so few people working on E now?
3. Why are there so few people using E?

I hope that E improves; I really do. More choice on the Linux desktop is a bonus, and a good-looking desktop environment is great for showing off what open source software can do. But unlike others here, I definitely wouldn't use E to show off the Linux desktop to people who are considering switching to get work done. I would show it off to geeks who appreciate unconventional and quite possibly useless ways of doing things simply for the cool factor (the sorts of people who think LCARS looks cool despite how hopeless it is from a utility standpoint). There's nothing at all wrong with cool factor. It just seems to me like E has a lot of fanboys, but no real users; and Gnome and KDE are employing eyecandy functionally, while E just plays around in the sandpit.

Sorry to sound like a naysayer..just seemed to me like a less enthusiastic opinion was needed ;P Sun, 24 Sep 2006 22:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Bnonn) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165234 http://osnews.com/thread?165234 You know what, I always thought that way, too, but recently I have realized that if linux ever will get recognition on the desktop as more than a me-too system it needs something like enlightenment. That is not to put down kde or gnome; both are adequate enough systems. The fact still remains, however, that if it is the desire of those developing desktop environments to grow their install base, they will have to provide something that is more than "windows++ but with longstanding unfixed issues."

Sorry if this post is a grammatical nightmare. Sun, 24 Sep 2006 23:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (thebackwash) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165240 http://osnews.com/thread?165240 Yeah, it seems they didn't make the right choices. It looks like they decided based on their own tastes instead of trying to find out if there would be people interested in their distro. Nothing wrong about that, but I see nothing appealing in this distro. Good luck to them. Mon, 25 Sep 2006 00:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Joe User) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165243 http://osnews.com/thread?165243 It's a small (50MB) Live CD distro based on Latvia:

http://cyti.latgola.lv/ruuni/index_en.html

Seems nice for what it is, but I don't see any way to add much to it. It's based on Slackware from what I can tell. Mon, 25 Sep 2006 01:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (rcsteiner) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165267 http://osnews.com/thread?165267 I haven't tried to use it for a long period of time recently, but yeah, I know what you mean. It's fantastic to show off to people like I said, but usage... not so great.

It's kinda like in the movies where the computer is always blinking and beeping and all the applications are cool looking animated things flying around. It looks cool, but a constantly beeping and flashing computer would be incredibly distracting.

E17 is the same. I don't doubt it could easily be improved with a more subdued theme, but for now E17 is the blinking, beeping "Hey, look at what we can do!" that so impresses the casual observer and demonstrates just how powerful E17 IS.

E17 is demonstrably a feat of coding (all that, and FAST, on a Pentium II), and Rasterman may or may not be a genius (he's certainly principled, to have trashed at least one E17 to start over from scratch and do it better) but what it isn't, is finished.

I didn't like how windows did/didn't snap, I'm not used to operating without some sort of taskbar (middle click? or right click?) and the animated everything is distracting.
For instance: the Elpanel in 0.4.2; it did let me configure tons of stuff, but waiting for the animations to finish started getting on my nerves while playing with it.
Using the shiny panels to customize that launcher (rather than presenting a list of choices and, say, letting me drag the icon to the launcher) was troublesome enough that I didn't do it much.

On the other hand, I don't know if anyone's mentioned the software he's bundled, but when your desktop environment is as small as Elive, you can fit a lot more stuff in, and the Elive people have made great use of that. (I was particularly impressed with the range of plugins XMMS came with)

I dunno, soon I hope to see what Elive 0.5 has to offer. Mon, 25 Sep 2006 04:30:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (DigitalAxis) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165274 http://osnews.com/thread?165274 Jut thought I'd set some facts straight. don't tke it too personally

1. Redhat didnt fund E - they funded gnome. gnome developers decided they didn't need a wm - despite being offered one. finally at the last second they realised they needed one (despite constant advice that they did for a year) and e was given grace to add support for gnome - that was about the level of funding/support. gnome/rh and e clashed - gnome/rh wanted everything turned off and everything mimicking windows. i did not. e's pager was better, more integrated etc. but they didnt want e to have pagers, iconboxes, root menus etc. - so they all got neutered. gnome and e just dont get along. too much overlap.
2. VA Linux supported e - and that was probably its most active development period in its history. the majority of code was done by me - still, mandrake did the nextlargest lump, and others did some of the rest.
3. There are actually more people working on E and related code now than ever before - though it's much mroe spread out now than focused. cvs contains just shy of a million lines of code.
4. more people use e than you might think - just more people use gnome now due to growth - e just hasn't grown because we haven't done a release of e17 which people are witing for. our aim is not to go growing user numbers - but to make something to be proud of. in fact - right now, the fewer users, the better. we are in the quality game, not the quantity game. if you are judging us by quantity - then you are not using the metric we are, and that doesn't bother us much

thanks for the encouragement - we are working on it. what we don't want to do is release prematurely then disappoint people who have been waiting. by releasing we then imply a level of stability and support - and we aren't ready to take on such a burden yet with stuff still left to do. we have an open development policy - all code is always availale at all times - for those willing to accept that things can and will change - overnight somtimes, without notice or backwards compatibility. we save the hassle of all that work by not releasing until we have it in a state we know we can build on and move forward with.

PS DigitalAxis: things like dnd to ibar are supported - from the app menus these days. when i finish dnd from the filemanger then it will work from moe places - we are puting together all the building bocks to do what you want - thats why we haven't released. these things are still in progress. taskbar modules exit - but aren't up to snuff (nb - i have never used a taskbar and don't see their use. taksbars are when you don't organise apps on virtual desktops - you can find things easily if you use enough virtual desktops and don't overlap windows), but a taskbar is on the TODO before e17 release. Mon, 25 Sep 2006 05:24:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (raster) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165278 http://osnews.com/thread?165278 It does - the previous version used openbox. Now that was visually extraordinary. Not flashy or anything, but just really aesthetically extraordinary. Haven't tried the new one, but the screenshots on OSDir seem a bit drab considering they are using E. Mon, 25 Sep 2006 05:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (alcibiades) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165279 http://osnews.com/thread?165279 Thunar looks like gnome to me? Mon, 25 Sep 2006 06:06:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Tuishimi) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165281 http://osnews.com/thread?165281 I'm working on Elive right now.

Elive with E17 beta boots nicely. Even on my laptop, is does a great job recognizing my old nvidia video card, starting the network, attachning my external hard disk and providing a graphically appeasing login screen.

When started up, I just love the beautiful desktop and the nice graphical effects which are not overdone. Still, I have the idea that working on this system is tiresome. I have noted some things wich I did not like.

1. Maximizing (or just starting up) an application makes the dock (launch pad, IBar) invisible. The same goes for the pager.

2. The configuration tool is nice, but the scrolling text is barely readable. Configuring the system is possible, looks nice, but is no simple thing when one has to search for the right icon.

3. Choosing a high resolution renders most text and icons barely visible.

4. Choosing another background is not easy, because the background of each theme is stored in another directory - or so I suspected.

5. The tool to install Elive on the hard disk should be easy to cancel. It is not.

So, Elive is beatiful but still has some usability issues. That being said, there is huge potential. Even when starting from cd-rom, the system responds fast and feels right. I like the looks, it just needs some more user feedback.

Evert Mon, 25 Sep 2006 06:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (evert) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165306 http://osnews.com/thread?165306 E17 would be more at the technical state of the art, I didn't know that it doesn't support real transparency and the fancy stuff KDE offers. Anyway E17 is the most beauthiful WM for Linux I know. As mentiont already I would like to see more people contributing to Enlightnement.

Linux needs a DE which offers something new, none which is trying to copy nice features of two commercial operating systems. E17 is a little step in this direction, even if the app bar is working like Mac OS X's Dock Enlightenments look and feel is unique. Mon, 25 Sep 2006 08:18:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (inetman) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165360 http://osnews.com/thread?165360 I've been using E17 on 3 desktops for 10 months or so now. Occasionally you have some 'interesting' things happen but in general it has proven to be a very easy to use and solid desktop shell. Thankfully, it isn't anything at all like KDE & Gnome. Why do I need a menu anchored to a taskbar anyway? My mouse doesn't live there. The Win32 style UI is simply unintuitive, outdated, difficult to use and completely hinders me from actually getting anything done. To use E17 in a productive way you must forget what you expect from a window manager and try to see something new and different. This ain't yer grandmas desktop. Mon, 25 Sep 2006 12:30:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (mzilikazi) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165375 http://osnews.com/thread?165375 Thanks man, it's still the best and getting better, from a daily user. Mon, 25 Sep 2006 13:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Sphinx) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165376 http://osnews.com/thread?165376 XFCE actually. Mon, 25 Sep 2006 13:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Sphinx) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165378 http://osnews.com/thread?165378 I too find it incredibly productive. If cvs is broken I use twm until it's up rather than either of the market leaders. E17 rules. The run command alone is worth the extra effort. Mon, 25 Sep 2006 14:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Sphinx) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165379 http://osnews.com/thread?165379 Although the beautifully transparent, shadowed and layered windows don't wiggle it offers even fancier stuff than kde and it's not copying when you do it first!Edited 2006-09-25 14:13 Mon, 25 Sep 2006 14:12:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Sphinx) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165622 http://osnews.com/thread?165622 As far as I know E17 only offers 'fake' transparency, which means that you can see your wallpaper but not underlying windows. KDE is supporting 'true' transparency (even if it's not looking better than E17 when using it). Tue, 26 Sep 2006 05:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (inetman) Comments