The Fried Squire Inquires about a Mac Mini Mire

Elive System Installed
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Greetings and salutations all ye fanciers of digital fanciness,

This message is meant as a distress call, and I plead with ye that a noble e-liver might help me steer my ship away from catastrophe.

This mayhem began way in 2021 when I, the Fried Squire Tuck, acquired a Late-2012 Mac Mini and installed upon it E-live e16 1.0.27. I was born in 1065 A.D., so don't ask me how I installed it. I threw rocks at it until something happened, and now... E-live is A-live on what was once a perfectly walled garden of a computer.

Now, here comes the trouble- I will soon visit the King, and he is expecting me to impress him with the fanciest of graphical trickery, or else, it's off with my head.

My question, specifically, is- did I install the wrong version of E-Live for this purpose? I could've sworn that when I was researching this distro, I saw all sorts of videos of windows that would jiggle and wiggle when you move them, and a 3d cube window manager. One video I even saw a new window appear in a flash of flame!! These tricks would make the king absolutely giddy, and my head would remain attached, but none of these appear to be a part of my E-Live experience. Again, I was born in what you call the "middle ages", so, please explain to me in terms I can understand, but, I've read on these forums here, words like "Compiz", "Wayfire", and even "Enlightenment". I quite frankly cannot tell up from down anymore, or why there is seemingly an E16, an E17, then we skip E18-E24, and go straight to E25. Lord help me..

it's got me asking the forbidden question on this forum... is E-live even the right distro for me? o.o ... I take it back!! I really like the charm of this community, but please, help me me make my machine fancy.. I am so lost. I need tricks! I need 3d!! I don't wanna die!!!

Late-2012 Mac Mini

  • Intel i7-3720 @ 2.6Ghz
  • 16gbs of ram
  • Intel HD4000 graphics

Some videos of fanciness:

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Welcome to the forum!

Those effects likely come from the Stable version. At this time, the Beta version does not have the eye-candy of the Stable version as the developer is focusing first on getting a solid base to work from.

You can download it here: Elive 3.0 Stable - Download
Make sure you enable Compiz or Ecomorph when it asks - that software is what enables the animations.

Note that the software in the Stable version is quite outdated and cannot be upgraded without some serious work.

Regarding the E16-E26 thing: the number next to the E is a version number. However, E16 to E17 was such a huge jump that E16 still receives occasional bug fixes. Because of that, E16 is incredibly stable (I've never personally seen it crash), and it's what's used in the Beta and Retrowave versions.

If you don't want to be on Stable due to its outdated software, but you still want animations, you can try installing the latest E on your system (with api enlightenment in a terminal), making sure you're on Wayland, and setting up Wayfire. Wayfire is basically a version of Compiz that isn't broken on modern systems. If you want to go this route, let us know and we'll be happy to help. Alternatively, E26 provides some basic compositor animations built-in (without figuring out Wayland and Wayfire), but they're not terribly interesting if I remember correctly. Note however that Wayfire and E26 are both still unstable, and Wayland still has some kinks, so it might not work very well.

Good luck with the King!

1 Like
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A thing to keep in mind: The latest versions of Elive come with 'impermutable mode' available at boot.
Booting into that mode allows all sorts of experiments without the risk of permanently damaging your installed system.

When mucking about with window managers I'd definitely advise doing that as a safe playground. :madness: