RaspberryPi* (ARM-based) version of Elive, HOW?

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I wanted to open this thread to discuss something that, apparently, I'm the sole one to not understand, so help me to understand what I don't, by using this example

There is a proposal to make an Elive version built for RaspberryPi-like devices

Yes, I like the idea, why not? sounds good...

Now I need to know: How it is meant to make this a reality?

If im not wrong, seems like asking for donations by difficulting the cost-free download is something that hurts elive, yes of course it hurts in a percent (~4x), its made this way in order to avoid the simple death of the project

Maybe this is already (more or less) understood, but the thing is how to make this better?. It is easy to think that maybe by making the downloads more accessible can get more users, and of course it does, but the result for the project is worse, and I have already tried that. I have tried many different things over 15 years, and of course I'm using the ones that worked best.

To summarize:

  • developing elive requires a gigantic in-human amount of time, like working the entire nights with the minor distractions possible, brainstorming and optimizing every aspect in every sense to take less time in every step, getting rid of every "normal life" thing that uses any amount of time in our 24h-limited/day life...
  • to make the system with enough quality (this means, "no ugly hacks to make it just work") in order to maintain it stable, compatible with updated changes in other packages, rebuilt them, etc... requires even more time
  • so basically Elive it is not possible to be done as a hobby distro, a hobby distro is what most of them already are (a changed wallpaper with a different name), and in a funny way, if they had enough marketing they succeeded better
  • to pay all this work, the only actual way is from donations, and they are not even enough, so they needs to be a little forced in order to be enough, and it's still not enough...

It is easy to live in this monetary-based world with so few money that is not even enough to survive? no, its not...

And even without any common-sense reason to exist, Elive still exist...

The last published release (64bit), which generated a few more donations, took almost one year of development without public announcements, during that time, elive had much less donations due to the low public activity, so an entire year of work, for less than 400 $ of donations?

This one-year work for 400 $ means 33 dollars per month (if we remove the other donations per month when no-"release boom")

As you see, there's no coherent reason for Elive to exist as how it is made (unless it switches to a hobby-based project with a much worse result), and it still exist...

Yes of course there can be hobby-projects to spend a few hours per week if that person has this "hobby-wanted" passion, or these projects can be funded by an enterprise which puts the money to develop it all, or it can be organized by a ton of novice volunteers like ubuntu does... all those things already exists in the form of other distros (ubuntu, mint, bodhi, manjaro, endless, redhat, whatever...), everyone with its own structure, developers, way of work, etc...

Palemoon is a nice web browser which has been added recently, it supports the old firefox extensions (which I missed too much one of them), and it uses a fork of the old gecko engine... A web browser is like another level, not a distro for a few ones, but a world-wide browser for anybody in any computer with their any OS running inside... This guy probably receives much more funding support than what a distro can have, let's see that: Patreon , no, aparently not...

Definitively donations its not a way to live, to make money, or to survive (and it has been like this for 15 years), but without these donations Elive simply won't exist, this way of living is not healthy, requires a ton of pressure, stress, work, asleep nights, no-social life, worries, constant things to fix, users to assist, dealing with ergonomic issues that forces you to search alternatives due to the strong amount of continuous work (between 30-60 thousands keystrokes per day: Redirecting... ), I didn't had any real work for the last 15 years and so I don't have any future for when i became old, and due to my very limited economy I have been living in difficult situations and dangerous places which put my life in danger, Elive is, against any rule, an unrealistic-to-this-world project that closes the eyes and ignores the real world difficulties to still exist

But im not complalining saying these things, because it was my decision to continue making it

mentions: @Rebel450, @triantares, @yoda, @maxinou

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The thread title is a bit confusing but I can understand why. :wink:

There are some things in your account that don't really make sense ....especially the economic ones. But then you already know that.

I think your main mistake, if you can call it that, is to think that something as good as Elive will show itself to the world and everyone will jump on the bandwagon.

Well they wont ! .... it's a thing called publicity, bluffing, pulling the right strings, knowing the right people and knowing when to grab the opportunity. There's a reason why the USA monopolizes the whole digital ecosphere/business ....... It's because they know how to sell hot air and aren't scared to do it big time.

If Elive wants to continue to exist and you as the main maker/founder want to make any kind of living out of it (other than a nice CV) it has to be handled as any other business.

A coherent business-plan with goals, financing, intended customers and products.....not "just" an art project.

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One day, a businessman told me :

The man : JF, to succeed you'll have to make decision that will be good for your business and not for you..

Me : I don't understand, "I am my business", if the decision is good for my business, it'll be good for me, no ??? How can a decision good for my company not be good for me ?

The man : not necessarily... You'll see, to move forward and make things happen, you'll have to make decisions that will be good for " your company" but very uncomfortable / not good for you... But some sacrifice will have to be made.

That conversation seem simple but I think it relates to Elive ....

JF

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So, the basic question I read is:

  • Does ARM (RasPi) need as much power as 64bit?
    And I say: No, it needs much more.
  • Is an ARM (RasPi) worth it?
    I can't answer in one sentence:
    The Raspberry got the Noobs Installer and a great Raspian base system. And a few very specialized Systems for Multimedia (LibreELEC/OpenELEC), for Home Automation and other purposes.

In an ideal world, most Parts of Elive 32bit/64bit should be easily portable to ARM. But the system is needy when it become to fine tuning. Even the core team is waiting for new (hopefully open) graphic drivers and other.
On the other hand there are only a few platforms to support, most of them very similar. Pi 1, Pi 2, Pi 2B, Pi 3 and Pi 4 (Maybe Pi Zero)

And the people who are using the RasPi want it fast and cheap. I don't think donations for a great system are in their focus. And the users, I was in contact with, are much more of the 'Hobby users'. As you explained well, this is not your goal with Elive.
The 'Gaming in Elive' approach is much more promising, I think.

Even if it would really cool, I don't think the Raspberry Train isn't taking you further in marketing and/or extended user base.
It is good to see you are standing on the ground and know the risks. And you take it all. I couldn't your passion.
Please keep enlighten 17 us in future, too :slight_smile:

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I don't disagree with any comment or opinion, but basically it all can be a summarized in a simple thing: unless there's a better way to fund the project, there's no other way to do it, because otherwise, the project will simply die :man_shrugging:

Btw to still talking about the strategy & "this issue" I just updated added a post here:

https://forum.elivelinux.org/t/big-promoting-everywhere/1541/4?u=thanatermesis

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Yes, it's extremely popular for tinkerers and money-savers. (Its really cheap)

In my opinion it's definitely worth it :slight_smile:

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Sorry, i cant donate atm (at the moment) but i will as soon as i can (in a few years :confused:)

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I agree, about the greatness of the RasPi. But here we have to decide if the new audience values the extra work or just double it.
For fully FOSS Systems it could be a improvement, because everybody has the chance to contribute. But here @Thanatermesis is still the only developer, and there is no such thing as the eltrans tool for the rest of the system.
Please correct me, if I'm wrong on this side.

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That's a very good point, @Thanatermesis is the only developer. I guess that unless someone else does it it's an unnecessary development, especially when we're cramming for the next Stable version.