14 DAY TRIAL // The Elive Team proudly announced the immediate availability for download and testing of a new Beta version of their Elive computer operating system, based on the highly acclaimed Debian GNU/Linux distribution.
Elive 2.5.4 Beta brings various interesting changes, such as an updated Wine 1.7 installation, allowing users to install the latest and greatest Windows applications and games on their GNU/Linux computers. Yes, Wine 1.7 is a development branch, but so is Elive 2.5.4.
HDD failures can now be detected automatically
Additionally, the distribution comes with automatic detection of possible hard disk drive (HDD) failures via the S.M.A.R.T technology (if available and enabled), notifying users immediately about it.
The built-in file manager received a new feature, allowing Elive users to effortlessly mount and open ISO images browsing their contents. Besides ISO, various other virtual image formats are supported. The functionality will automatically mount the images on a temporary directory.
Support for PPA style repositories has been added
Another interesting feature implemented in Elive 2.5.4 Beta is support for PPA style software repositories. For this function to work, the applications you want to install must have native packages for the Debian-equivalent version of the operating system in DEB file format.
The Elive Installer has also been improved in this new Beta. It is now capable of listing encrypted partitions, and the default filesystem offers greater performance when using the automated partitioning mode.
The Chromium web browser comes with lots of improvements
Last but not least, the Chromium browser has been updated, brings a pre-installed AdBlock plugin, better Gmail support, support for restoring last used tabs on startup, as well as various other UI tweaks.
An interesting thing about this Debian-based operating system, which is distributed as a Live DVD ISO image of approximately 2GB in size, is the fact that it allows you to use different kernels. The Live DVD comes with Linux kernels 3.16.0, 3.14, and 3.2.0 (for very old computers), all of them supporting PAE (Physical Address Extension).
You can download the Elive 2.5.4 Beta distribution right now from Softpedia, but please keep in mind that it is available for testing purposes only and it should not be installed and used on production machines. In the meantime, please enjoy our Elive 2.5.4 Beta screenshot tour below!
