So I gave up my lovely Dapper config to try out the Beta release of Edgy, and man oh man was that not a pleasant experience, do we have a repeat of Breezy there? In either case, I took the opportunity to try out something new, first I tried Suse 10.1 again (why? dont ask) and after it failed to impress me I tried Sabayon, better than Suse but not what I am looking for, and then i landed with Elive. So far I am really liking it...i think.
For those of you who don't know, the latest elive (i am using devel btw) is based off Debian etch, and uses a rather recent snapshot of e17 (and latest stable release of e16) as desktop environment options. Overall its a very light-weight, snappy and fun distro to use.
The Installation:
----------------
Elive boots as a livecd so that you can play around with it. on the bottom of the screen you have an "installer" icon which you click and it takes you throught the install. How the installer functions is instead of giving you a screen with a million blanks to fill out and having to press "next" a few times, instead it gives you one question at a time in form of a pop-up dialog. The steps are still the same as always... partition --> copy files --- > install grub --- > root password ---> user account. After reboot, apt-get reconfigures all the packages for your system (will take a while...go have a cookie while you wait).
Hardware Support:
--------------------
I think this is one of the best light distros in terms of hardware support. During booting the livecd it detects if you're running ati or nvidia and gives you an option to install the latest fglrx/nvdia drivers, wireless support is also really good. I would rate this part of elive on par with ubuntu.
Software Selection:
-------------------
Because the 700mb image is not raped by a 300mb KDE or Gnome package, it left lots of room for lots of sexy packages. Openoffice was also excluded because of its 120-ish mb size. Not exactly a 1-app-per-task, but you won't find 5 apps that do the same thing either (like you would in suse or fedora). It includes the basics like Firefox, Gaim, GnomeBaker, Mplayer, Kino, Cinerella, Gimp, XMMS, Thunderbird.. and a few other neat things. Not to mention that most media codecs are also included (and firefox plugins like flash and java) so you're ready to go out of the box.
Look and Feel:
----------------
Its E17...really uber-sexy...what else do you expect? Granted its a bit more minimalistic than what ubuntu users are used to with gnome, but the benefits of added speed and sexiness are factored in
What went wrong:
------------------
although the livecd has a grubsplash and bootsplash, the install didn't have either. Some googling, tweaking, and a broken initrd later fixed that issue. Another issue is that i'd like to load some extra modules on boot (powernowd-k8 fan battery)....I added the command to modprobe for it in rc.local but its still not doing it..... any help? Another issue is that gimp freezes while loading on the part where it tries to load the xane plugin
What went right:
------------------
fglrx, wifi, etc... all configured and ready to go on first boot.
Overall I'd rate this distro
Edit:
-----
solved gimp issue, it was a faulty xsane that was causing all my troubles, one "apt-get remove" later gimp is happy. still looking for module solution though...
For those of you who don't know, the latest elive (i am using devel btw) is based off Debian etch, and uses a rather recent snapshot of e17 (and latest stable release of e16) as desktop environment options. Overall its a very light-weight, snappy and fun distro to use.
The Installation:
----------------
Elive boots as a livecd so that you can play around with it. on the bottom of the screen you have an "installer" icon which you click and it takes you throught the install. How the installer functions is instead of giving you a screen with a million blanks to fill out and having to press "next" a few times, instead it gives you one question at a time in form of a pop-up dialog. The steps are still the same as always... partition --> copy files --- > install grub --- > root password ---> user account. After reboot, apt-get reconfigures all the packages for your system (will take a while...go have a cookie while you wait).
Hardware Support:
--------------------
I think this is one of the best light distros in terms of hardware support. During booting the livecd it detects if you're running ati or nvidia and gives you an option to install the latest fglrx/nvdia drivers, wireless support is also really good. I would rate this part of elive on par with ubuntu.
Software Selection:
-------------------
Because the 700mb image is not raped by a 300mb KDE or Gnome package, it left lots of room for lots of sexy packages. Openoffice was also excluded because of its 120-ish mb size. Not exactly a 1-app-per-task, but you won't find 5 apps that do the same thing either (like you would in suse or fedora). It includes the basics like Firefox, Gaim, GnomeBaker, Mplayer, Kino, Cinerella, Gimp, XMMS, Thunderbird.. and a few other neat things. Not to mention that most media codecs are also included (and firefox plugins like flash and java) so you're ready to go out of the box.
Look and Feel:
----------------
Its E17...really uber-sexy...what else do you expect? Granted its a bit more minimalistic than what ubuntu users are used to with gnome, but the benefits of added speed and sexiness are factored in
What went wrong:
------------------
although the livecd has a grubsplash and bootsplash, the install didn't have either. Some googling, tweaking, and a broken initrd later fixed that issue. Another issue is that i'd like to load some extra modules on boot (powernowd-k8 fan battery)....I added the command to modprobe for it in rc.local but its still not doing it..... any help? Another issue is that gimp freezes while loading on the part where it tries to load the xane plugin
What went right:
------------------
fglrx, wifi, etc... all configured and ready to go on first boot.
Overall I'd rate this distro
Edit:
-----
solved gimp issue, it was a faulty xsane that was causing all my troubles, one "apt-get remove" later gimp is happy
. still looking for module solution though...
