Testimonials

Elive has been installed on my PC for several months now. Everything works, it's fast and intuitive.
I think I've found my perfect distro.


Blighty.

I am excited at what Haiku will become I am Excited about what syllable will become I am excited what Reactos will become Elive has already become


pencilneep.

I like Elive, used it on an off for a while but stills awesome, keep up the good work! I just need to get the newer stable again lol beter than windows lol


anonymous.

A while back I came across elive after finding the wonders of enlightenment and searching Wikipedia for an Enlightenment based Distro. I liked the features that elive offered, and decided to install it. After a while, I foolishly switched to it


kmason.

I love elive, e17 is beautiful and fast. I used elive gem 1.0 and I hadn't any kind of problems!!!! :D


ClauCookie.

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Booting Elive from USB


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Development Versions (alpha/beta)


If you are using the stable version please scroll down for boot in the old mode

From MS Windows

You can use a known tool like unetbootin, or rufus usb, or the universal tool by pendrivelinux, or also the one by linuxliveusb.

From MacOSX

You can use a known tool like unetbootin, or follow these simple instructions.

From Linux

Since the version 2.1.25 we are using syslinux instead of a grub boot, which is more compatible with any computer

First you need to know the name of your device in /dev/sdx, run the command "mount" having it mounted and in the last lines you could easly identify it.
Now, by having the device and know the exact name (run "fdisk -l" for make a last verification) dump the iso image to the device, it should be a command similar to: dd if=elive_something_version.iso of=/dev/sdx and wait until it finishes, it is very important that you don't confuse your "sdx" devicename, note also that all your data will be removed, entirely on that device.

Bonus, persistence: if you want to store things on the usb that could be re-used in other boots, open gparted to your created usb and format the remaining space to reiserfs, with the label persistence, after to create this partition mount it, open a root terminal on this directory and run: echo "/ union" > persistence.conf, that's all! when you want to use the persistence feauture you need just to type the persistence word in boot parameters each time that you want use it.





Stable Version (2.0 Topaz)

If you are using a development version please scroll up for boot in the new mode

Booting Elive from a USB stick is a good idea, it is much faster (USB2) and a lot less error-prone, by other side not all the computers support the boot from USB.

You have 2 different ways to put your Elive system on a USB device, the easyest is by using the unetbootin application from a Windows machine, please use the special Elive version of unetbootin. You can also try linuxliveusb instead of unetbootin.

Is possible to use the bootoption changedevice in order to switch between other devices... this is useful when your computer can't boot from a USB and you want to do it, so that you will boot first from a cdrom and then change to the USB (warning: it needs to be the same version of elive, the differents kernels will conflict)

It is strongly recommended to use the Linux Mode instead of Unetbootin, because unetbootin may fail. If you install it on the USB using the Linux Mode it will work without problems on all the computers



Unetbootin


  • Download the special Elive version of unetbootin and install it in a windows machine, you should be able to use a specific ISO file for it or it will download the last iso automatically from internet
  • Optionally you can also try linuxliveusb instead of unetbootin.
  • One time is installed, Reboot and press the bios key for selecting the device where to boot from. It is usually F12, F10, F8, F2, or ESC


  • Linux Mode


    It is recommended to do this from an Elive system and specially the same version that you want to put on the USB, also from the same machine
  • Create a partition in ext2 or fat32 in the USB of at least 800 Mb so that you can copy the ISO contents on it
  • Open the ISO file and put all the contents to the USB
  • Install grub on your USB: grub-install --recheck --no-floppy --root-directory=/media/your_usb_partition_mounted /dev/your_usb_device.
    • You can use the command mount to found these values, if you run it you have on the first column, the name of the partition, and in the third column you have the point where it is mounted, if for example the partition of your USB is called /dev/sdb1, the number means the number of the partition and the device is /dev/sdb (entire device), on the same example, if /dev/sdb1 is your partition of the USB, the command that you need should look very similar to that: grub-install --recheck --no-floppy --root-directory=/media/sdb1 /dev/sdb . Warning: Do not confuse your partition name or device name, in such case you will delete a different device, like your hard disk, and this could be very bad. Note: If your mount-point has a name that includes a space, you need to add quotes to look something like: ...--root-directory="/media/JOHN 4GB" /dev.... in order to interpret it as a single parameter.
  • One time is installed, Reboot and press the bios key for selecting the device where to boot from. It is usually F12, F10, F8, F2, or ESC


  • Note: If you are in a recent version of Elive you can try the package usb-bootable-elive (already installed) where you can build USB bootable sticks with Elive on it





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