Elive

Elive is an open source Linux distribution built around the Enlightenment desktop environment and based on the Debian GNU/Linux operating system. It’s main goal is to demo the main features of the Enlightenment project on a stable and reliable base.

Features at a glance

The distribution supports a plethora of Wireless devices, and can be tested in a virtual machine inside Microsoft Windows or Mac OS X operating systems. It includes a wide range of open source application for common tasks like web browsing, emailing, music playback, etc.

Another interesting feature is the ability to install other operating systems and run them on the same machine. Furthermore, you can automate tasks, run games and game emulators, share folders or access remote ones, and much more.

Distributed as a dual-arch Live DVD

It is distributed as a single ISO image that should run well on both 32-bit and 64-bit architectures. Supports multiple languages and automatically detects most of your hardware components, as well as the timezone and language, based on your IP address.

Built around the modern Enlightenment desktop environment

As mentioned, the desktop session is powered by the lightweight and modern Enlightenment desktop environment. The Elive project provides users with an ISO image bundled with the current stable release of Enlightenment, and a Beta version, which runs the current development branch of the popular window manager.

The desktop is comprised of a pager, so you can organize your workspace much better, and an applications bar from where you can launch your favorite applications. In addition, the OS supports multiple audio cards at the same time, and comes with many options, allowing users to configure the Enlightenment session as they see fit. You can customize everything!

Designed for low-end computers

With Elive and Enlightenment, there’s no need to buy a performance video card, because all the desktop effects are software-rendered. Therefore, we recommend it to those of you who want to transform old computers into modern workstations.

What is new in this release:

• Keyboard typing to support special languages like Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese. If you need an extra Ibus configuration contact us with the details needed
• Network access to your local machines using hostname.local
• Numpad always enabled option in installation
• Desktop right click is assigned to an amazing launcher
• Designs shadow fix, borders more white, less pixelated icons in menus, much improved menus and userfriendly, misc overall improvements
• Userfriendly better organized menus, more friendly icons and names, improved description for the dock launchers

What is new in version 2.0 / 2.9.16 Beta:

• Performance is now almost twice as responsive and smoother, videos also plays faster
• Designs improved buttons, window borders, and faster effects
• Desktop automatic scaling, font selection and sizing based on your screen, organization of elements are more accessible too
• Installer has a lot of improvements, fixes, fine-tuning and options to choice for the installed system, included privative drivers like Nvidia / Ati

What is new in version 2.0 / 2.9.8 Beta:

• System: thanks to lots of improvements in the installer you can free up to 3 GB of the installed system and make the memory usage lighter up to 100 MB only, with the full desktop running
• User Manager: includes now autologin features and sudo configuration
• Fonts: added a perfect selection of fonts for different purposes, also other ones for programming and small sizes, improved selection of international languages compatibility and removed unneeded ones
• Desktop: improved gadgets distribution and compatibility, the disks gadget only shows the removable devices by default now
• Installer: lots of bugfixes and improvements, extra options to remove unnecessary things, it supports now SSD over PCIe (nvme) hard disks, blank boot fix, automated partitioning and encryption options improvements, integrated tool to automatically report bugs, better reliability, upgrade mode from older Elive installations improvements and fixes, installing without internet available.
• Persistence: lots of bugfixes and improvements, includes usage statistics
• TMUX: includes a much more friendly way to switch between windows and creating new ones
• Developers: GDB is greatly improved with default options, colors and features
• Vim: includes a new colorscheme with the gorgeous and yummy colors by Molokai, the theme is a hacked version of it which includes some improvements.

What is new in version 2.0 / 2.9.2 Beta:

• Persistence is now featured in Elive where you can save your personal files, configurations, passwords, extra software installed, etc. It includes unique features like guided setup, the option to encrypt your persistence partition, statistic of usage, automated cleanup of temporal files when the persistence partition is full, desktop settings saved in unique profiles per machine to improve the compatibility among different computers.
• Netsurf as an ultra-light graphical web browser, a very good alternative for low resources.
• Improvements: Automatic disabling of touchpad taps for one second while you are writing text
• Bugs fixed: Thunar unmounting devices without show an error of device busy. Eltrans has the counter of translated sentences fixed. Installer bugfix in automated partitioning

What is new in version 2.0 / 2.9.0 Beta:

• Persistence is now featured in Elive where you can save your personal files, configurations, passwords, extra software installed, etc. It includes unique features like guided setup, the option to encrypt your persistence partition, statistic of usage, automated cleanup of temporal files when the persistence partition is full, desktop settings saved in unique profiles per machine to improve the compatibility among different computers.
• Netsurf as an ultra-light graphical web browser, a very good alternative for low resources.
• Improvements: Automatic disabling of touchpad taps for one second while you are writing text
• Bugs fixed: Thunar unmounting devices without show an error of device busy. Eltrans has the counter of translated sentences fixed. Installer bugfix in automated partitioning

What is new in version 2.0 / 2.8.8 Beta:

• Screenshots can be uploaded and shared again, now in our specific Elive servers
• Designs: The amazing old dark theme Lucax is back and included by default, with the fonts for the menus fixed.
• Nvidia graphic cards installation improved and some fixes for the ATI (fglrx) ones
• Windows applications compatibility greatly improved by switching to a recent version of Wine
• Geolocated automatic time configurations improved
• Newer versions of: Libreoffice, darktable, cpu microcodes, git, printer configurations, wine
• Improvements: Default audio volumes increased. Default messages and translations. Elive translator tool. Xterm default configuration and colors improved.
• Elive Menu: A new menu of applications has been added for all the Elive specific things, and a submenu on it for Extra features where you can found helpers, installers, or anything extra that can improve even more your Elive system without the need to include it by default in the system. Right now you can found on it a guided installer for the SilverLight browser plugin
• Installer: Fixed a bug in the automated partitioning, the /boot partitions are now more reliable in booting your system
• Fixes: If your desktop is started with a wrong configuration of icons, which was a very rare case, now it is detected and fixed on the fly. Color in the shell for the console mode fixed.

What is new in version 2.0 / 2.8.6 Beta:

• Incredible improvements in live performance making it twice fast!
• Designs: Updated designs with a redesign of the menu, a pager less obtrusive and more handy, redesigned the animated stars wallpaper, bigger shadows with a three-dimensional effect when they are focused, the dock has now better readability with smoother effects to have a more friendly usage.
• Compiz: Improved stability and configurations to have good eye-candy in combination with speed and useful features, a very old and important bug was finally fixed making it a stable environment for daily work
• Audio cards configuration fixed
• Integrated gadget in the desktop to have a more handy access and use of your inserted media's like an USB or CDROM
• Improved boot menu with more user-friendly and understandable options

What is new in version 2.0 / 2.8.0 Beta:

• Designs preview feature included
• Gimp much improved with a more intuitive and useful interface, expanded navigation and direct access to handy tools
• Fixes in the desktop stability and performance bottleneck that was caused by a small cache
• Ebook creator tool from web articles greatly improved(cli)
• Thumbnails for Epub and Mobi files
• Welcome panel with multiple fixes
• Timezone and Time compatibility with shared Windows systems and improvements in the detection and re-using of configurations

What is new in version 2.0 / 2.7.8 Beta:

• Fixed an important segfault that made the graphical system to restart randomly in the previous version
• Font sizes improved and fixed a bug that made the fonts to display very big in some computers
• Blender Works again including the last version of blender available with the correct Glibc version
• Links2 web browser included for old computers and set the configuration to not be the default one when opening urls
• Extra Packages included to improve the final system, like improved GL drivers and rendering, printer configuration, i386 optimizations, better fonts for asian languages, screen blanking recovery from suspension
• Stronger structure to login in the graphical system on the live mode
• Desktop icons improved and fixed a very old bug that displayed them broken in previous versions
• Included torrent to download all the history of stable versions of Elive and other special ones

What is new in version 2.0 / 2.7.6 Beta:

• elive welcome panel included for the live mode
• amazing speedup when launching some applications (read notes)
• new applications included by default: hardare information viewer, links2 (much more lightweight web browser)
• fixed bugs: terminal hangs, eltrans (translator accounts requesting), an old bug in e17 which started with wrong icons set, live boot misc auto-detections and configurations like qemu
• installer improvements: shell for installed mode is now zsh and not bash, detection of windows and other operating systems listed when installed, internet connection asking experience improved

What is new in version 2.0 / 2.7.2 Beta:

• Spotify works directly on the fly on your Elive system!
• Designs: much much improved designs for the icons and theme, see details at continuation
• fixes: thunar opens terminology as default terminal, admin mode works back too
• Gimp includes a much better and improved default configuration like single window mode or an increased number of undeletes

What is new in version 2.0 / 2.7.1 Beta:

• Audacity (audio wave editor) included by default
• Timezone detection improved
• Detector of systems improved and updated to detect last windows installed systems
• Linux Kernel updated with a lot of new patches for new hardware, bugfixes and improvements
• Google Voice search on internet using your microphone