Elive - Your out of the box MacOSX like Linux distro

Elive is a Debian based linux distro, so all of you Ubuntu fan boys its the same basic distro with noticable enhancements and tweaks to the UI.  Some major points to point out here is that the desktop manager is leveraging Enlightment which is Gtk based and very quick, light on resources, and customizable till no end.  The menu system is left and right mouse click driven similar to that of fluxbox.   The Application Dock is an actual portion of the Enlightment Desktop Manager.

I have been running Elive in a VMWare environment for 2 weeks now and am very pleased with how it is working and how quick and easy things were to pick up with the distribution.  The great thing is everything that you WANT installed is installed from the get go (mp3, flash, dvd, etc)  This is definitely more of a desktop driven distribution, but to throw it through the rings I went through some quick tests to make sure nothing was outa the ordinary with the build.  To do this I planned on setting up a mail server with virtual hosts, a LAMP environment and install Roundcube, vtiger CRM, and of course Drupal 6.10.   After that I made sure that I could properly backup the machine leveraging BackupPC.

Since Elive is based entirely on the Debian the software was an apt-get away. You can use basically use any Debian or Ubuntu walkthrough and the commands and directory structure is laid out exactly the same.  if you aren't a Ubuntu or Debian person here are some quick linkage to get you down the right path if thats what you're looking for.

HowtoForge - Perfect Debian Lenny Server

HowtoForge - BackupPC Configuration

For you that are really wantting the "Mac Experience" and want the TimeMachine type backup utility here is the alternative which I think works pretty slick, but since I like to backup multiple machines at once BackupPC is my first choice.  -- HowtoForge --  Installing TimeVault

Ok, I'm done with the gorey details and here's what people like... the sweetness of GUI awesomeness.  Here is a video showing off what an out of the box Elive installation can be like.

Elive E17 Compiz from Thanatermesis on Vimeo.

I've decided that I'm going to be using Elive exclusively for my media center machines as they are the ones that get shown off the most so its fun to have the extra flashy GUI there without the headaches.   I will be following this distro much closer and will be hosting the isos on my server for direct download as they haven't gotten many fast US Mirrors quite yet.

You might be curious, and be asking "I want this on my laptop, but I hate the linux wireless compatibility issues" --- According to the elive website they have all the wireless drivers already built into the core installation and you shouldn't have to mess with them to get your wireless card working.  They have the EeePC Atheros wireless card working, so that covers my Toshiba laptop which unfortunately I'm not in a place with I can test it properly, hopefully at the end the month tho.

Here is the Development Download which is what I tested and played with -- http://www.elivecd.org/Download/Development

Here is the "Compiz Testing" Download -- http://www.elivecd.org/Download/e17-compiz

If you are looking for a fun desktop replacement OS or a media center OS, this is definitely a distribution to use.