FAQ

Hey, This is not FREE !

If you are a truly defender of the free software you must know better what are you defending, you can start from here. Free software has no relation with gratis, please read this explanation from gnu.org. You need to know also that due to this confusion of terms, the word free software has changed to open source software in 1998.

After that you know that free has no relation with cost. This payment is required to pay the development of Elive, that is the full time work of the Developer 'Thanatermesis' and also to pay external development and/or services. Think that more money is made and more development can be possible to pay and so, a better final product (Elive). But in any of the cases, you are not obliged to pay for Elive, nobody obliges you to use Elive. Without any cost, Elive would not be the same, at least not with all its features, usefriendly things, and the lot of work involved. By other side, if your problem is that you can't possibly pay for any personal reason, we don't want to prevent anybody from using Elive so we propose alternatives which are described in the payment process.

The cost of the Installer Module

The cost of the Installer Module is a selectable value by the user, but the minimum is set to 15 $

When will the next Stable version be Released?

A problem with Elive is the perfectionism that it strives to achieve. However Elive does not simply focus on perfectionism, as you may have undoubtedly noticed a lot of work goes into adding features which result to a 'never-finished' stable release. We are constantly trying hard to come up with more fast stable releases with or without these features (there's no problem to try to put them on the next stable release), actually it is a lot of hard work to finish implementing the remaining features and fix the bugs for the next stable version.

But to answer this question better, you should trace these events, timelines and percentage completed:

Bugs remaining to fix
Tasks remaining
Also there are a few things that are not listed on these websites, like FIXME and TODO lines in the source codes, notes, xpad's, ideas, and surprises !

Installer Features

Modes: It include the easy, the automatic, and the complete mode, we strongly recommend to use the complete mode since the installer of Elive is not hard at all, it will include all the features.
Reinstall: If you want to reinstall an old Elive system, it will ask you for a special upgrade mode, this mode will maintain all your users and passwords, all his files, and also a lot of configurations and to reinstall your favorite extra packages too (see the next features for that).
Migration: If you want to install Elive under another Linux OS in a easy way, there's a special feature in the installer that migrate any Linux OS to a Elive one, this will save all your users with passwords and all their files, also some configurations.
Packages to maintain installed: In the complete mode only, you can add a list of your favorite extra packages, they will be reinstalled at every time you reinstall a new Elive, you can also edit this list at any time too.
Packages to remove: There's a few packages that the user may not want to have, you can select which ones you want to remove of your installed system (complete mode only).
Raid (soft/hard): You can use your RAID partitions as normal partitions to install Elive on it
It is a lot more recommended to reinstall than upgrade your system, just because some features will be not included by a simple upgrade, also, you will have a clean system, with all your users and files, packages, and configurations, in 10 minutes of installation :)
A really lot more of features, specially internal ones, but these are the most importants that i remember right now :)

What version of Debian is Elive based on?

This can change, but actually:

Gem uses Debian ETCH (old-stable)
Development versions use Debian Lenny (stable)
After the next stable comes out, the next development versions will use Debian Testing

Debian Repositories

Debian repositories are enabled by default in Elive On the other side, since the newer versions after Gem, Elive uses snapshots of the debian repository in order to not have "surprises" about packages that may not co-exist correctly with the Elive ones (this doesn't change anything to the end-user, apart of better stability)

Elive has its own repository too that coexist in a compatible harmony with the debian (a snapshot of the debian) at the same time in order to have all the packages of debian available too.

What kernel does Elive come with?

Every development version of Elive comes with the last version of the kernel used, (see the kernel version in the News Announcements), you can see also the available kernels for Elive in http://us.repository.elive-systems.com/pool/drivers/l/

Is there support for nVidia/ATI?

Of course, the user may select the nonfree (3d accelerated) drivers or the free ones.

What are the minimum and recommended system requirements?

Every piece of the software grows, even the linux kernel (firefox, the graphical system, every application, etc etc). This means that every new version of Elive will need more resources, even if Elive want to be small and some applications/parts of Elive are rewritten in order to be more light. So for that, we recommend to use oldest versions of Elive for a better performance:

More than 200 Mb of RAM: Any version of Elive
Between 128 and 200 Mb of RAM: Gem version will be sufficient
Less than 128 Mb of RAM: Maximum Elive Revolution* version or older
Compiz Version: Requires at least some 3d acceleration (not really much) and 200 Mb of RAM, with a processor of 600 Mhz will be OK

Will Elive boot on netbooks?

A lot of netbooks such as eeePC, msi wind, acer aspire one... are "specially" supported with extra configurations/features/drivers. If it does not work for you, please report it to http://bugs.elivecd.org

You should take a look at the article about how to boot Elive from a USB stick (no cdrom ?)

Where can I find more help for Elive?

Is my wireless card xxx supported?

That is what Elive wants, but if it's not supported, please request it at the Elive BTS with all the useful/needed information (driver name, download link of the driver, etc)

Specific Applications

Just browse your Applications menu and play with them, if you don't find the desired application (such as a PDF viewer), just open the file-manager and click on the PDF so that you can see it. By right-clicking on a specific file you can find all the available applications for this type of file. In Properties you can change the default application assigned to this type of file (like by opening MP3 files with a different application), and also you can see which available applications you have.

If this is based off of Debian, does it use their installer and/or the netinstall?

No, Elive uses his own Installer and own way to install, that also includes a lot of special and unique features like migrating (convert) any linux system to an Elive system and an upgrade mode install of a clean reinstall. Also can install under RAID disks, clean and very fast installation (10 minutes), check integrity of the install system, removing not-needed packages like raid daemons, preconfigure some pieces of the installed system, fix of Grub problems, automated install, automated partitioning, etc...

The Elive installer is totally and entirely different of the Debian installer, using a totally different way to install (for example doesn't unpack packages but dump a clean base system). This made the Debian Installer totally uncompatible with Elive.

E17 Themes / Wallpapers

If you are using Elive Gem, the version of the edje lib (and also the version of E17) is uncompatible with the (actual) available themes/wallpapers, BUT you have the best ones available at 'apt-get', so just search the packages in your package manager

Otherwise yes, you can use E17 themes and Wallpapers, you can search in google some websites, the most important is actually located at the E Exchange website.

How do I add applications to my Favorites / Bar ?

The Favorites section is disabled by default in Elive, but you can enable it in the E17 configurations. You can add applications to it also in the configurations

What more easy than drag the icon that is in the borders of the window to your Bar in order to have it ? :). Another way you can manage the applications in your bar is by right-clicking on the bar.

I can't live without my Icons on the Desktop !!!

What do you expect ? The desktop is not your trash to put all your temporal files, the desktop is a nice place to work, it needs to be organized, clean, beautiful, and with a nice wallpaper... the desktop is for the applications, and also for parts like the pager, the bar... The files needs to be on their correct directories (or do you want to found after some days a ton of unsorted files that you even don't know what are they for ?), so just put your files on their correct directories, when you want to access to them you can simply open the File Manager and go to it on its correct directory, is even more fast than trying to found them under the disorder.

Elive still doesn't understand the 'nice' point to have icons on the desktop, this is why they are not available, they are disabled... by other side if you like the disorder, you can enable icons on the desktop at your own risk :), going to the E17 configurations -> Files -> Admin of files -> (2º option) -> Show Icons on the Desktop

I want to be informed about version of Elive

The best way to be informed about versions of Elive is by the simple way to be suscribed to infomail, where you can configure it to receive only stable releases annoncements, all of them, also the Blog entry's, etc...

I want to Collaborate, what I can do?

If you want to collaborate just fill up this form, you will receive an email with all the needed information

If you want to be a Translator for Elive, you can do it too from the same form

Thank you for your collaboration !

Payment Questions

The payment of Elive will change in the next versions: It is not needed to pay anymore for the download, just for the installation, on this way, the user will use freely the live version (stable or testing) all the time that he want's, also he can try the product (could be unhappy to pay for it and to found that there's any uncompatibility with the hardware or something like that), then when the user would like to install, will need to pay for it.

Since the next Stable version, if you lost what you have download, with the ID of the transaction you can download it again

If you are unable to pay the small price (remember that Elive doesn't want to restrict anybody to use it, just want to support the project), you can request a invitation code by doing any of the listed jobs, that should be pretty equivalent to the price of the payment

After to pay for the installation, you don't need to pay per EVERY TIME you reinstall your Elive, it will be compatible under the rest of the versions (development, compiz, etc...) until the next Stable Release

Sudo

Maybe you have noticed that 'sudo' not works for your installed mode but it works on the live mode ? This is just because sudo is NOT very nice for security, we have just disabled it by default, we do NOT recommend to use it, if you want to be root, just type 'su' instead of sudo.

By other side, If you really want to use sudo, you can configure it for your user, for that, type from a root terminal 'adduser yourusername sudo', then re-login again in the graphical system in order to have it working, you can also edit the file '/etc/sudoers' in order to fine-tune it, like not requesting the password (do it at your own risk)

Compiz version: How do I remove the translucent effect from Iceweasel?

The transparencies are better set in the newest Compiz versions. You can configure the 'fade' options in the E17 Ecomorph module (for compiz settings) or by running the command 'ecsm' if you use the OLD version of Elive-compiz

Compiz version: Will Elive-Compiz become a Stable release?

Depends of its stability, but for that the author will need some help by maintaining (update) it and also by fixing possible bugs (with bugs, no stable release will be possible), for that, you will need C knowlege, specially with the X11/GL/Compiz Api's. If you really feel capable to help with this open xChat and join #e from freenode.net

Testimonials

Srikar.

pier.

davidcc6.

dammitjim.

Martinwprior.

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