Submitted by The Elive project has released the first beta build of the upcoming Elive 0.5 Enlightenment live CD. “New live CD system – Elive has moved from Morphix to DSS; new kernel 2.6.15 with a lot more hardware support, also for wireless networking, take a look to the list of new drivers added; new installer features; Elive has new system of elive-skel, you can select ‘night look’ or ‘elive look’ in the boot of the live CD system; introductory tutorial to Enlightenment hot keys on E16; Unionfs version 1.1.4; Evidence doesn’t crash any more; email client integrated with the system.” There’s a screenshot tour.
One thing of this desktop doesn’t fit in the whole picture. And that’s the Elive Panel or something. I mean the configuration screen thingie you can see on the screenshots. I’m sure someone’s very proud that he made that. And that the other devvers don’t want to hurt his feelings by not putting it in. But c’mon, that thing is hideous compared to all the other simplistic things of this desktop. Just look at the border around that thing…
I’m sorry to be such a flamer, but this is really something that makes me not want to try this…
Hey somebody’s app has to test the functionality of having a weird shaped window, better it being the control panel or some app you only run once in a blue moon than eterm.
I hate to agree, but you have a point. The whole thing is too flashy to be seriously taken as a setup tool. Enlightenment always strived to be somewhat minimalistic on its approach without compromising style in a way that doesn´t fit that weird panel with big widgets/window decoration/whatever…
This is definitely a step backwards.
Yes, you are right, the panel is utterly hideous. Don’t know why, though, I have however a real soft spot for these guys. When in one of the earlier versions you started an app from the panel, this THING seemed to come out from the side in a cloud of flames, then the icon in the panel bounced up and down. You had to laugh aloud.
There’s a bar in Brussels called The Ultimate Hallucination. E-live brings back fond memories of it…
Remember, they are a very small group, and have done amazingly well with the resources at their disposal. And as the other poster says, its not like you have to look at the panel often. They were the first with an E focussed distro. Its very fast, and very different.
They are an example of what makes open source a joy. So more power to them.
That has to be the most hideous environment I’ve seen in a while.
The Enlightenment guy (or guys) seem to come up with some cool tech, but they have no artistic taste at all.
Ironically the project started by gfx artist(s) if i’m not mistaking
I think most e16 themes used look like one another or are very limited because most people did not bother to find out all the possabilaties. Rather just see how stuff is done and copy/alter it to their own tastes.
Given the lack of documentation back then, i cannot blaim them. Hopefully E17 + EWL will fix this, especially when themeing tools are created.
You have no idea what your talking about. Elive is a heavily customized livecd that uses Enlightenment. The way it looks is completely the fault of the people who make the livecd, NOT the people who create Enlightenment. Enlightenment 17 is one of the most beautiful things going for the desktop. Get your shit together before you go smearing an excellent project that you know nothing about based on screenshots from a completely unrelated project.
The screenshot looks familiar… OSX? Nah! Can’t be!
Yeah, true.
I often read these blogs where people are saying “Vista looks like OSX” – which is wrong (in oh so many ways). But this Elive distro really, really does actually look OSX-ish. Almost to a ‘copyright infringement’ degree – the dock items appear to bounce and jiggle (haven’t tried this disc yet, so I’ll do a follow-up) and if you just gave the widgets a Mac skin, most people wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.
Good and bad in my opinion, but regardless – it looks like a great Linux.
yeahhh… it looks like some poor quality copycat of OSX. Or perhaps, even worse than that 🙂
The recently posted screenshots of Ubuntu drapper make me think a lot more about Windows Vista than this makes me think about OSX.
The only thing that connects it to OSX is the fact that you have a starterbar with icons, which dynamically grow in size as you hover the mouse pointer over them. Not the standard OSX color scheme, not the minimise-resize-close buttons from OSX, and not the menubar+system tray on the top of the screen.
On the other hand, the gnome desktop on Ubuntu has similar minimise-maximise-close buttons as Windows Vista. Desktops like gnome and kde also use the same style of starter bar with a “start menu” and which provides also a place for active applications.
For me, typical gnome and kde installs look much much more similar to Windows than this is to OSX. I think “similar to a copyright infringement degree” and “poor quality copy cat” (as mentioned in other comments) is a bit exaggerated. Or otherwise you must feel the same about the gnome and kde starterbar with start menu with regards to the Windows starter bar.
Edited 2006-05-30 20:45
Ok maybe not ALL of OSX, but definitely the DOCK 🙂
It’s a rip-off, and that’s a fact. And a bad rip-off, at that…
And the dock isn’t even that great a design. So you end up with a bad rip-off of a bad design, which cannot be good.
Of course it looks familiar! Unfortunately your lack of historic knowledge makes you look at the wrong plate! Let me give it to you.
Rastaman, the main Enlightenment guy is an old Amigan, he started E because he missed his customized Workbench when he was forced to use Unix at his University. Part of his customization was a taskbar (or whatever you want to call it) that was inspired by NeXT. Now where dose MacOSX get its bar from? That’s right NeXT!
What do we learn of all this? Besides that MacOSX is not the center of the universe we learned that ideas often originate outside of the 3 big OS’s, Mac, Unix and Windows.
Yes, some of these comments are correct… Raster is the father of the enlightenment windowmanager/desktop manager.
Elpanel is the work of the ELIVE developer, Thanatermesis. And the looks of it WILL change, it is already in the works… it is still the first version, and for being in the first version, it works very well!
Elpanel is just a way to make it easier for the users to configure the system, since enlightenment lacks that feature. A couple of distro’s using e (like Ebuntu, and also the Ubuntu package managers, it’s VERY popular to try e on ubuntu) are VERY interested in the features and functionality of it.
Unfortunately, it will not work well at all on other distros, because Thanatermesis made it as a test, and it lacks documentation.
And yes, the elive team is very small… it’s only Thanatermesis! a few ppl help with the site and stuff like that.
I am using elive since 8 months, and i am very pleased with it… and everybody that has tried it has been amazed by it’s speed and eye-candy even on low-end machines.
Elive will run pretty well on computers a slow as 200mhz/64MB RAM… try that with gnome/kde!
Edited 2006-05-31 03:03
and the incredible chock it was to run E13 using Eterm and
xriple (do you remenber, this lootle tool who was making you screen display looking like a wave)
Actuallly I used to use the E13 small theme on e16
argh, f.uck I miss e16 so much (shiny blue everyone) on my powerbook
….
have they been making an progress? I check every now and then and peek at their news section and nothing new ever really comes up.
Elive with E17 is what a Linux desktop should be.
(yes I think Elive Panel is a little bit flashy and crap looking, if it had a minimalist skin it would be great)
Those monkeys saying “OMGz, OSX rippoff!!!” have you even downloaded and tried it out? Screenshots are meaningless.
This does not feel like, Gnome, KDE, Windows, BeOS or damn OSX, there is something very cool about E17; it has its own feel.
It feels Elegant for a better word.
Rasterman is the Man.
This is one distro I’ve been keeping a close watch one for a long time. I seriously does have potential, of course there are MANY things that need to be worked on and little bugs that need to be worked out as well. As for E17: I love it! Eye candy galore.
/2 pesos
How can anyone resist a distro whose lead developer is called Samuel ‘Thanatermesis’ F Baggen? You know right away this is something quite special! And indeed it is.
I’m glad some people have made the distinction that Elive is not E17; Elive is a debian based distribution that uses E17 as its window manager. The control panel that people are bashing on is not part of Enlightenment. I’d encourage anyone to download the E17 source and see what it has to offer on their system. I’m currently running slackware 10.2 with E17 as the window manager and my system is running great. Are there things missing and things I’d liked changed? Of course, it is still in the development & testing phases, but what a great opportunity for somebody to get involved and do something about E17’s short-comings.