Arch Linux

Cippa Lippa

Member

From: Toronto, ON

Registered: 2007-04-12

Posts: 159

Arch with E17 or Elive?

Hi all

this is my first message to this forum and I am a newbie to Linux in general. I would like to congratulate witth all of you for the work you are doing. I am an admirer of Linux developers and users.
I know you guys are in the majority gurus so please be patient. I hope this forum is better than other linux forums I have seen recently.
My question is: I am planning to nuke my windows and to switch to Linux after having tried Ubuntu and Kubuntu. I saw E17 and I think I want to use that DE. Now, the options I seem to like is to use Arch with E17 or Elive. Both would be E17 and they are both reportedly very fast distros.

Honestly, what would you suggest me? Elive seems to be stable (Debian-based) and born with E17, but have really few people taking part in the forums and they are not really helpful, while Arch seems to be more difficult, maybe less stable but the community seem better. Also what are the longtime prospects for both distros in your opinion? I mean I wouldn't like to switch distro in one year from now just because the developers can't make it anymore... I also like that Arch is famous for its good documentation... I really like to have something read.

Any opinion would be appreciated, but please no rtfm

Cheers from Toronto

Cippa

Mikko777

Member

From: Suomi, Finland

Registered: 2006-10-30

Posts: 837

Re: Arch with E17 or Elive?

Heh i tried Elive once, I don't think it's a real "Distro" just a enlightenment showcase with very very noobish looking configuration applets.

Can't even compare Arch to Elive, only use of elive would be if you wanted E17 preconfigured and installed easily.

Then again I don't like e17 either. Guess ppl would like to use E17 because its pretty but time has passed it by and Gnome+compiz/beryl beats it almost hands down nowadays

So summasummarum if your not looking for e17 easily and like freedom to choose and not afraid of learning -> Arch.

Edit: Oh Arch ain't known for great documentation but Gentoo is. Arch docs are pretty sufficient tho ^^

Last edited by Mikko777 (2007-04-12 15:52:33)

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Cippa Lippa

Member

From: Toronto, ON

Registered: 2007-04-12

Posts: 159

Re: Arch with E17 or Elive?

well I tried E17 on ubuntu and it gave me the feeling to be more suitable to a quick way of working. Things are not difficult to access. But that might be just my inexperience. I never tried XFCE.
I am not afraid of learning otherwise I wouldn't be switching to Linux and if I would be afraid I would be REALLY bad at my job :-)

Cheers and thanks SO much foor the quick reply. You guys rock!

P.S. what do you think about the longevity of Arch??? I hope it is going to last...

Cippa

_alexmyself

Member

From: france

Registered: 2005-09-18

Posts: 90

Re: Arch with E17 or Elive?

i'm agree with Mikko777, elive is not a "real" distro

for arch longevity i think it's not really a problem, admit that arch stop next year everything, or majority, you'll learn stay right for others distro
i think arch is really good to learn, maybe you could try many distro to make your choice and then keep the one wich is better for your taste, it's like this i, and certainly most of people here, have become archer

KerowynM

Member

Registered: 2006-06-04

Posts: 78

Re: Arch with E17 or Elive?

I have no experience with Elive, but used Debian for some time.

The development cycle in Debian was TOO SLOW!  Debian's quest for stability, while noble and effective, leaves users with ancient versions of software for far to long a time for my taste.  Arch often times has new versions ready before I even knew they were released.

Add in 'package hell' with old versions of packages and libraries trying to mix with newer and user built packages, and it leaves me foaming at the mouth

Arch not only is way ahead of the pack when it comes to keeping current, it's package management is top notch.  I can't imagine living life in Linux without pacman now that I have been using it this long.

As a long time distro-hopper, the fact that I have used the same flavor of Linux for over a year is a testament to the power Arch has.  It is certainly worth taking for a spin.

Edit: Also, Arch was the first distro that I used that made me feel comfortable enough to take windows clean off of the system.  All the other ones made me cling to the security blanket.  After using arch for a month or 2 I realized I never booted windows anymore, and it was simply wasting disk space.

Last edited by KerowynM (2007-04-12 17:21:25)

Cippa Lippa

Member

From: Toronto, ON

Registered: 2007-04-12

Posts: 159

Re: Arch with E17 or Elive?

wow guys this forum rocks! And I think this is why I will go straight into the Arch!

Unfortunately I have to keep windows for Flash and for my MBox which requires ProTools to work... (damn it)

Awesome... Thanks guys. Really appreciated!!!

Cippa

Stalwart

Member

From: Latvia, Riga

Registered: 2005-10-18

Posts: 445

Website

Re: Arch with E17 or Elive?

Arch is hard to configure (for total noob), but when everything is set up it's not harder to use than other distros. If you have archer friend in RL - ask him to install and configure box for you.

About windows - check out Wine and virtualisation software. According to appdb Wine runs Flash8 very well: http://appdb.winehq.org/appview.php?iVersionId=3673

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Cippa Lippa

Member

From: Toronto, ON

Registered: 2007-04-12

Posts: 159

Re: Arch with E17 or Elive?

well.. that means I will have to learn something! :-) I tried wine on Flash 8 and I think needs some tweaking. The alpha channel is not working.

Thanks again!

jethomas

Member

Registered: 2007-06-18

Posts: 2

Re: Arch with E17 or Elive?

Also, the e17 used in elive is quite out of date.

pecan

Member

Registered: 2007-04-06

Posts: 93

Re: Arch with E17 or Elive?

I was considering the same thing a while back before I tried arch. I'm a huge fan of Enlightenment, I only just swapped to E17 from E16 but thats another story. Elive doesn't compare to arch, the only disadvantage arch has going for it is the fact you will have to install E17 from pacman and then configure it to your liking, if you don't mind learning how to do that (its pretty basic, you might even already know how) then arch is probably the better choice. Also rc.local is why I love arch over any debian based system, you might find the same thing.

Origynet

Member

From: France - Cannes

Registered: 2007-05-03

Posts: 101

Re: Arch with E17 or Elive?

Just to jump inside the chat... this is my opinion :
Just choose Arch... The reasons have been for most already mentionned :
- Elive is more of a showcase than a distro...
- Arch may still be hard to configure the first time if you're new to Linux though there are so many tutorials that will help you... I'm sure that it'll go smoothly for you (many people will be here to help as well)
- It's far more satisfying to get a working arch system than a working Elive system
- In the end, if you end up with not liking E17 anymore, you'll be able to change more easily...
- You'll learn more with Arch than with Elive...
- Guys here are nice...

So many more reasons to choose Arch... I hope you're convinced !

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Piou Piou

Mhyrraner

Member

From: South Germany

Registered: 2007-02-14

Posts: 33

Re: Arch with E17 or Elive?

hm ... arch is faster than elive was when i tried it, and elive is quite blown (2-3gigs installed), in my opinion.
well, more important: there are quite a lot changes in e17 in the last time, and thakis e17 repo is up-to-date, and well mantained, as far as i can say. new features would be desktop icons or the extended theme-configurator (mix elements of different themes), just as an example.
@e17: - it's very fast, even on older systems
          - good looking
          - quite flexible and themeable
          - fast to work with
          - (i cant imaging it will take a long time until e17 has some kind of 3d-module; there are already 
             some projects around...)
   but: - not too stable; stil under heavy development (it sometimes crashes, but thats not a big
            problem since you can simply restart e17 and programms etc. stay opened)
          - few themes
          - not as comfortable as KDE, Gnome or XFCE

i would suggest doing some "wm-hopping" if you have the time and motivation, to find which one fits your needs best.

MyR
(sorry for mentionig things already said)(...using e17 for some time now)

kishd

Member

Registered: 2006-06-14

Posts: 401

Re: Arch with E17 or Elive?

Cippa, welcome, Arch is a very fast and stable distro. You may want to install arch with one of the larger desktop environments like kde or gnome. You will find that arch runs these environments much faster than most other distro's. After you are comfortable with arch you can experiment with the other wm's

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kel_p

Member

From: De Kwakel

Registered: 2007-05-10

Posts: 65

Re: Arch with E17 or Elive?

Choosing your dist shouldn't be dependant on your prefered WM.
1- Find your distro.
2- Find your WM.

mcrae

Member

From: Brunswick, GA

Registered: 2006-06-21

Posts: 88

Re: Arch with E17 or Elive?

Plus, the Elive download site turned me off completely. I believe in donating but they are going about it in a way I didn't like.
I used it a while back but ran into problems with it and as you mentioned the forum isn't used by many people.
I was able to use e17 here in Arch and the guys doing it answered all of my super newbie questions politely and were really helpful. I mean, they even explained how to add the repo to my pacman.conf
I've learned more here with arch then any distro I've used....that's why I'm still here:cool:

McRae

Obi-Lan

Member

From: Finland

Registered: 2007-05-23

Posts: 179

Re: Arch with E17 or Elive?

After gentoo installing arch first time wasn't hard, just different. And I got arch installed in a LOT shorter time than gentoo . I like Arch, things are logical in /etc and Arch doesn't make too much ready choices for me unlike ubuntu or others.  I have tried quite many WM:s but always come back to Gnome. Dunno why, I just like Gnome.

Kenetixx

Member

From: /unvrs/mlkywy/earth/aust/home

Registered: 2006-09-09

Posts: 258

Website

Re: Arch with E17 or Elive?

Im running e17 on my desktop at the moment and am loving it, it is very fast and looks good aswell.

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