I was curious about Mike's comment that his friend had to pay to download the elive distro so had a look at the site:
http://www.elivecd.org/Download/Stable It states the following: ******************************************* Why request a donation ? Elive is free and made with pleasure for your pleasure, but free does not mean "no cost" . I spend all my time developing Elive. It is my choice. Your choice is whether or not downloading Elive is worth a donation. You decide the value Elive has for you. What do you obtain ? You maintain the future of Elive and you also receive faster downloads. No Money: If you can't possible to donate for Download Elive, we propose you those solutions: The better option is to use our invitation codes system You can try Elive from a development version. Note: For the next stable release, it is planned to allow the download totally free. Instead of pay for the download you should pay just for the installation. This means that the live mode is entirely free and you should pay only if you want to install Elive in your hard disk. ******************************************* They have another option which they are calling 'Invitation': ******************** What is an invitation code ? * The invitation code is a simple way to invite everybody to download the stable version of Elive Gem (note that there are no invitation codes for the bonus disks) * A code works only one time Where can I get a code ? If a friend gives you a code, you can use it directly to download the stable version of Elive. But if you don't have a code, there are different ways to obtain it: * Give us the name of some linux magazines in your country and especially the contact email added, send it to us and we give you 3 codes for every contact, more info about this in this news article * Write an article about Elive on any website you like, we give you at least 6 codes for this, depending of the importance of the website and how good the article is (if it is a big or well known website with a lot of visitors) we can give up to 30 codes !! * Moreover, for each of your codes shared on a Linux message-board, mailing list, or forum, we will grant you 2 new ones!!! (please provide a link for verification) * If you need Elive for using in educational environments please contact us from the institutional email of your teacher, and we will be more than happy to provide you with as many free codes as you need. That's all ? Yes, when you have what you need simply contact us at To use the codes you simply put (or paste) it in the invitations page ******************** It's an interesting approach. It would appear you can pay less than $15 - the minimum is 10 (of your currency). I can understand why they believe they need money to continue. I'm just not certain how they manage to distinguish their service distinctly enough to cause people to want to pay them. The market is limited I would think given you can get some great distros for free. I wish them the best - though I haven't tried their distro and am not likely to pay for one which is not apparently better than the one I currently use. Regards, Patrick 2009/11/14 Mike Andy <[email protected]> > > I know a novice user who was using Mint and was pretty happy with how it all > just worked for him. There's no loss just trying the live CD and seeing how > you like it at face value. > > I don't remember why but he ended up changing to Elive > http://www.elivecd.org/ It uses LXDE. It's debian based and probably works > very much like *buntu, he said it was easier to install and configure and > even more stuff just worked out of the box. You have to pay something like > $15 for the download though. > > > It's just another option I guess. > > Have you done any research to make sure that your hardware will work fine > with Linux? No doubt you'll have to set up printing if it's going to be in an > internet cafe. > > > On Sat, Nov 14, 2009 at 8:34 AM, elliott-brennan <[email protected]> > wrote: >> >> Hi John, >> >> Linuxmint is dead simple. All the additional bits and pieces are installed >> at, well, install. I think all the major 'nix's are easy to use and install, >> it's really just multimedia and other bits that some people have trouble >> with. Mint makes this a non-issue, as do Mepis and others (names not readily >> available to my mind this early in the morning). >> >> Regards, >> >> Patrick >> >> >> John wrote: >> >> >> >> > Subject: [SLUG] Newbie alert and Community Net cafe >> > Hi all >> > >> > First of all I need recommendations on what would be good and simple to use >> > for the average end user, I've been looking at >> > http://www.linuxmint.com/and and then >> > https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Lubuntu has been recommended by a friend of mine. >> > >> > >> > >> -- >> SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ >> Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html > -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
