Elive is a Debian based Linux distribution for legacy and commodity hardware. Elive uses the Enlightenment X window manager instead of more memory intensive GNOME or KDE. Elive is a fully functional distribution with a Live CD counterpart that allows the user to sample the distribution before installing it on the system.
Elive can be used like any Live CD or installed to the hard drive to have access its fullfeatures. Elive utilizes UnionFS, which allows users to install software packages using Synaptic and/or APT, while the user’s computer is running from the Live CD.
Administration of Elive is centralized by its flagship application Elpanel, which was developed explicitly for Elive. Elpanel is an animated Administration applet that is written in Edje.
Elpanel is a virtual launchpad to various other administration tools which are nested within Elpanel via labelled custom icons.
Elive utilizes the Iceweasel browser and the Icedove mail client with pre-configured GnuPG extensions to encrypt and digitally sign emails. These tools allow the user to effortlessly digitally sign, encrypt and decrypt correspondence with minimal effort.
Elive has support for multimedia codecs of various audio and video formats. The following formats are supported by Elive:
WMA, Real Media, MP3, WMV, MID, Ogg, AVI, MOV, WAV, QT, ASF, MPEG, SWF, AU, M3U, MP4, MPGA
Below is a short list of other notable pre-installed and configured multimedia applications on Elive:
XMMS, Mplayer, Oxine, Stream Tuner, ReSound,GtkPod, GIMP, Blender
Elive developers ask for a payment to download the live CD or users can apply for invitation codes. Users may download the development version for free and without effort, but the site labels this as “More than unstable, we can call it not usable, we are switching to debian testing and there is a lot of testing needed before it will be usable on a daily basis”.
A Live USB of Elive can be created manually or with UNetbootin.
System requirements
Minimum requirements:
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100 MHz CPU
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64 MB of RAM
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At least 2,5 GB of disk space (for full installation and swap space)
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VGA graphics card capable of 640×480 resolution
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CD-ROM drive
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Recommended requirements:
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300 MHz
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128 Mb of RAM
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At least 2,5 GB of disk space (for full installation and swap space)
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VGA graphics card capable of 640×480 resolution
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CD-ROM drive
For more information on Elive visit www.elivecd.org