I actually didn't know about elive till Switched to Linux's terrible review of 3.0.3. I tried it in a VM but it was too slow. then I signed up for the mailing list, a few months later 3.7.x came out, but didn't download (slow wifi much) Then 3.8.2 came out and, intrigued, I tried it out. Now it's my daily driver. Thanks so much @Thanatermesis!
But @Thanatermesis actually how popular (downloads and donations) was 0.3? Im just curious
back in the day I wasn't an elive user just an enlightenment enthusiast running off the live ...svn? repo stuff tryin to hang out with the big boys
showed up here just today, hoping to find a copy that can decompile a few old e17 themes ive got my hands on, but don't work or even decompile anymore. didnt expect a history reminder and a trip down memory lane, though! great post
and i have a feeling i'm really going to appreciate you guys being here shortly
To decompile E17 themes you can use almost any version of enlightenment but tor re-compile you will (in most cases) need the version it was meant for.... Or change the specs to work nicely with the new version you've got.
Stable has E17 ..... Beta does not, it uses E16 (and optionally E23)
Thanks for the articles, I have added them in a list for the future "testimonials" page
Unfortunately I don't have these numbers, but what I can tell you is that in 2006 Elive was pretty popular, it ranked up to the number 26 in distrowatch too if im not wrong, "how much than now" ? mmh, maybe around 5-6x times more (speculative number)
easy tip to be able to decompile them with the compatible EFL versions: download an old version of elive which dates in similar dates to these themes (you can check the efl version too, or the date of the binaries, etc...), so there's a torrent with the old versions available, then boot in live mode, decompile your theme, copy somewhere this result and then back to an updated EFL you can recompile them again, but it will very-probably require some fixes in the code to make it compatible