Enlightenment
Enlightenment is a rather unusual desktop environment. It is in fact, more of a Window Manager as it lacks taskbar, panel and even menu. Yet, unlike many lightweight environments, the Enlightenment desktop is full of eye candy features one would expect from a full blown environment but using only a fraction of the resources. There are subtle animations tucked in almost on every element of the desktop widgets.
The desktop has a first boot wizard that enables one to select various aspects of the desktop that define its behaviour and appearance. For example, one gets an option to select the text size in the windows, which is a really useful feature and even more so, if one is running Enlightenment on a high DPI (means how many dots per inch or pixels per inch it supports) display.
Enlightenment, also known simply as E, is a compositing window manager for the X-11 window system.
Since version 20, Enlightenment also supports Wayland and is shipped with some Linux distributions such as Bodhi Linux and Pentoo.
Enlightenment includes functions to provide a graphical shell and can be used in conjunction with programs written for GNOME or KDE. When used together with the Enlightenment Foundation Libraries (EFL), Enlightenment can be referred as anEntire Desktop Environment.
Elive CD
Some reflection, on Binary System and early computer environment is worth mentioning. I started with Live Linux CDs, that is after having being fully fed up with Microsoft Windows. I had to run 42 Floppies to get Windows 95 running on an IBM Computer with 512MB RAM and 4 MB Video RAM. I still have it in Ceylon but not in working order. When we were building our house,
I used to give the Mason Bass, the old metal gadgets for our indoor steps’ alignment in 90 degrees, as a form of concrete reinforcement. One of them was Commodore 64 Computer. I would have give even our first computer for similar reinforcement of concrete but my son did not agree. That is why it is still surviving and unlike the desktops of today, they were heavy and metal framed. The motherboard was huge unlike a motherboard of a NUC with an integrated Graphic Card. They consumed lot of electricity and needed lot of ventilation fans to keep them cool.
Coming back to installation floppies, the most common 3.5-inch floppy disk can hold only 1.44 MB of data, while the earlier 5.25-inch disks commonly held 360 KB or 1.2 MB. These, along with 8-inch disks (initially 80 KB), were the standards, respectively, the 1990s, 1980s, and 1970s, before being replaced by higher capacity media like CDs and USB drives.
Installation Floppy for Windows System were;
Windows 3.0/3.1:
6–11 disks (3.5" or 5.25")
Windows 95:
13 Distribution Media Format (DMF) disks
or 26–28 standard 3.5" disks.
Windows 98:
39 DMF disks.
Windows NT 3.1:
22 disks
After one day of toiling, with the help of CachyOS and Reborn OS, I got the GRUB in working order of my NUC. Now, I have 9 distributions including ELive running. There are 3 Debian, 2 Testing (Forky), 1 Stable Trixie and also Emmabantus running Trixe.
Warning
Choose this distribution if you have only and old hardware. It would run with 500MB (Conky showing the RAM use) but it shoots up to 1.5GB, if you are running programs.
Minimum RAM I recommend is 2GB.
It is old Bookworm kernel and compatible only with Debian. By the way, it is based on Debian. It is incompatible with all the ARCH distributions. It ruined my GRUB and I have reinstalled CachyOS and REBORN OS. No bother, I can install 4 ARCH derivatives, in the time I spent installing Elive. Besides, I can install Enlightenment Desktop on top of GNOME of DEBIAN. There is also Enlightenment Organization which promote this Desktop.
After several look up for the Live USB for free iso image download, I found a torrent file of a folder consisting of 6.9GB with two images of 32 bit and 64 bit.
DEBIAN also takes a long time to install since it supports many Desktops on the first install. One can avoid this by downloading only one Live image say, GNOME, KDE or XFCE. Do not download Source Code images and they cannot be installed. DEBIAN Testing images are released every 2 weeks and the last one I downloaded was faulty and I could not use it to install Testing Debian. It is less than 4GB and it carries some fault. There are no torrent files for Testing images but the image I downloaded some time back is working fine.
In the meantime, I lost all my Linux images, saved in a NTFS Partition. I have now converted this to EXT4 and installed another instance of Debian GNOME.
Installation details of Elive.
It started at 13.32PM.
At 13.42 I formatted /partition 9 which had second instance of REBORN OS.
It is detecting the 18 partitions in my NUC.
It is already a bit of a pain but I am not yet annoyed.
At last I got the layout of my Partition Table.
Selected partition 9 with 16.7GB.
It is still brewing grog or alcohol but this is the Month of Wesak and I do not consume alcohol at all.
It wants a password for a new keyring.
Obliged.
I did not want Google Chrome to snooping.
234 dollar contributions in 10 days.
I decline any contributions because I do not have an account in Australia.
I would have obliged, if I was in CEYLON.
It is configuring the installation.
I hope it would not ruin my GRUB.
I declined Chrome Browser and SNAP of UBUNTU.
It is running the Terminal and removing redundant stuff.
I am a patient retired doctor and I have gone through this rigmarole from 32 bit time. Hence no major mishaps along the way.
THANK You Elive.
Long Live Linux is my motto.
I would have an account on ELive in my book Linux Essentials. No reservation intended.
I have already Enlightenment Desktop on top of GNOME, IceWM, Blackbox and Openbox window managers included.
I loved Enlightenment Desktop from 32 bit time. With all the animations I cannot resize the Terminal Window to read what is going on the background. This is something, I learned from ARCH Linux. Iread every comment made in the Terminal.I take seriously every comment they make in the Terminal on Python 3 plus.
It is 14.17PM and already one hour gone.
Not yet finished.
REBORN OS finished installation in 12 minutes and that is why I use ARCH instead of Bookworm of ELive. However, I am going to keep it as the 9th distribution in my NUC.
It is finally doing the GRUB and Init.
Anyway it is better than Prism Linux and GARUDA Linux that ruined my GRUB.
Finished at 14.28PM, 2 minutes short of 1 hour.
Did It ruin my GRUB?
Yes, it did.
By the way, I had the Elive Image in a 8GB SD Card and it would remain there for sometime.
It is saying it is updating my GRUB.
It has only one user but others can be added.
No Root User but a Sudo.
This violates the Linux Principle.
Well it got the GRUB in order with a beautiful Plymouth but ARCH derivatives not booting.
I am booting it now at 14.38PM.
Thank You again.
My NUC has no Audio but I jacked, my son's USB Audio Jack and I am currently listening to a random sample of music.
Thank You for the Music Elive Linux.
I have no hesitation in recommending it to Newbies but read my above comments.
One has to learn to be patient in LINUX Installation.
That is a cardinal rule.
It (ELIVE) has come a long way.
I am going to install AbiWord now.
It already has Audacity.
Added Lmms (Grand old Linux Audio Studio Utility) and AbiWord.
AbiWord accessed my current working book on Linux Essentials.
Thank YOU.
Linux ROCKS on ELIVE Linux.
15.00PM and my it is my Tea Time.
Coffee I made at 12PM has gone cold but I would have it now, like some ice coffee.
It is bit cold in AUSTRALIA.
It is 16.04PM and I am still listening to music.
THANK You for the MUSIC.
The video quality is poor and they are old time music when video technology was very poor. Transferring them to digital tend to loose quality anyway. My eyesight is poor anyway.
By the way, MPV Player of Linux is excellent.
The Elive project has published a new stable release of its Debian based distribution featuring the Enlightenment desktop. The new version uses Debian 12 (Old Stable) as a base and offers both versions 16 and 27 of the Enlightenment interface.
The unique features on this release include OpenRC as an optionalInit System available during installation for users who prefer a SystemD alternative that adheres closely to the UNIX philosophy. Synthwave Player is an impressive new music player developed for months by Elive is included as a default. An extremely light weight application forVoice Control forhands free interaction (no-AI), and is optional. Desktop Clock: A simple, lightweight desktop clock that we made for the E16 desktop. Enlightenment 27: A preview of the last Enlightenment E27 with a few Elive features included is included by default to use and play.
This will be the last build of Elive including the very solid Debian 12 back ports and with all the stability needed. It is in an extremely polished system, a perfect LTS snapshot of Elive Stable."
Elive 3.8.50 runs SystemD by default, but users can optionally run SysV Init instead with the selection made during the installation process. When SysV init is selected, OpenRC runs as the service manager on top of SysV init.
Elive, or Enlightenment live CD, is a Debian based desktop Linux distribution and live CD featuring the Enlightenment window manager. Besides being pre-configured and ready for daily desktop use, it also includes "Elpanel" - a control centre for easy system and desktop administration. Elive is a non commercial, cost free operating system designed for everyday use, and it offers a much faster, friendlier and feature rich alternative to an expensive proprietary OS.
With Elive, computers up to 15 years old can be transformed to high performance machines with a stunning interface fully customisable.
I think Elive tried become a commercial entity but failed. It is now crowd funding its project which is a good thing. It looks like the Project Leader who started it has joined the team.
It keeps on supporting 32 bit computers.
Its 64 bit version is 4.2GB.
