elive - best Linux distro I've ever tried!

[FulciLives]

Well I got this ELIVE LINUX installed ... created 2 partitions on a 2nd HDD ... one is ths SWAP file for LINUX and the other is for LINUX and actually there is a 3rd partition with my NTFS WINDOWS files.

Problem is I have no idea what I am doing and cannot seem to browse through my D: drive NTFS partition nor my C: drive.

I wanted to try and play some DivX or XviD or something but I can't see my Windoes NTFS drives.

What the ****!

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[hrlslcbr]

You may have to mount the volumes for them to work (still don't know exactly how to do that, though... ).

FulciLives: If you want Linux for internet and just office work, I suggest PCLinuxOS. It's a live cd too, and it's the easiest linux distro I've tried.

[danboid]

Fulci

Try this:

Click on the T-shaped hammer icon on the elive shortcuts bar- this opens Thunar, the file manager

In the left hand column of Thunar, double-click 'File System'

Double-click on /mnt then go into /mnt/hda1 - if elive has auto-mounted your C: drive this is where it would be. hda is the 1st IDE device, the 1 showing you it is the 1st partition on hda. The first partition on the first SCSI or USB disc device name would be /dev/sda1 and would normally get mounted under /mnt/sda1 or sometimes /media/sda1

You probably won't be able to write to it though- I dunno as I don't have an NTFS partition to test it with. You can do it somehow but I've never had the need.

[danboid]

Also, try this under elive:

Left click on the desktop, go to Configuration/ Configuration Panel

Go into 'Module Settings'

Choose 'ibar' from the list on the left, the click 'Configure'

Go into the advanced sub-menu and move the 'Icon Size' slider up to the right a bit and click 'Apply'. Voila! Big fat vector icons with impressive lighting effects and other eye candy!

Another cool thing to try-

Go to the Module Settings list again.

Choose 'Clock' from the list on the left then make sure it is enabled on the right then click 'Apply'

The clock should appear on the desktop. Right-click the clock and go into edit mode and drag the sliding bars on the side of the clock to scale it or drag it to position it.

Impressive eh?

[danboid]

Also make sure you download some of the many amazing e17 themes you can get through the package manager (synaptic, it linked under the elive control panel)

Push the middle mouse button (or both L+R together on a 2B mouse) on the elive desktop to get a list of all open windows

Hold ALT then push F1 - F4 to switch between desktops 1 - 4

Hold CTRL. ALT and then either + or - to cycle screen res

You will see the 4 virtual desktops in the top right of the elive desktop. Open a program then try dragging that window on the virtual desktop monitor onto another desktop.

Right-click on USB and optical disks under Thunar to unmount (eject) them. This ensures the data cache for that disk is flushed so you don't lose any data you may have wrote to it (in the case of USB disks)

How great is enlightenment? I took elive into work today and booted it on a clunky old P3 and blew everybody away with it- everybody wanted a copy who saw it.

I still can't believe it runs in only 64MB RAM!

Also check out SUSE 10.1 which features hibernate if your motherboard supports it. On my dads machine the boot time from power on is

Windows XP - 45s

SUSE 10.1 - 27s

This is from power off to having a useable desktop (KDE 3.5, in the case of SUSE here), all drivers loaded, so these times include POST etc. Vista may be better? I can't wait to see more distros (like Debian/ elive) introduce hibernate- it vastly reduces the Linux boot time.

[Robert Simandl]

Can this distro output a 720x480 signal through the S-video output of an old PC that will be hooked up to a TV in my exercise room?

The PC in question is an Athlon 1.2Ghz machine that came with Windows ME and a TNT2 video card. I'd like to hook it up to the TV in the above fashion so I can stream internet radio stations while I exercise. Local radio sucks and so does WinME.

I just got done trying Freespire on this PC today. Lowest resolution it can output is 1024x768, which leaves important buttons on the setup screens OFF screen so I can't finish the setup process.

Thanks!