Because it's so easy to get caught up in the KDE vs. Gnome debate, the Enlightenment window manager often goes overlooked. And for good reason - there are very few distros available that utilize Enlightenment as a default WM. As a former KDE user myself, I was hesitant to try anything different. However, like so many other Linux users, I am always willing to try something new. Enlightenment captured my attention.

One distribution, E-Live, comfortably mixes Debian with Enlightenment on a Live CD that may be installed as an alternative. I was able to install every program that I needed and am impressed at how quickly programs load. Even more captivating are the finishing touches applied by E-Live's developers complete with animated backgrounds (twinkling stars) and multimedia codecs preloaded.

If you love speed and power - you owe it to yourself to check out E-Live. It's fast, takes up less system resources as other WMs, and it may be installed on any machine that meets the following minimum system reqs:

"The minimum hardware for running Elive is a 100 Mhz CPU and 64 MB of RAM, but the minimum recommended hardware is 300 Mhz and 128 Mb of RAM. You don't need any special graphic card or 3D acceleration to run E-Live."

You are able to choose between E-16 (stable) or E-17 (default) when booting. Choose E-17... you won't be disappointed.

For some amazing screenshots of this rising star distro check out:
http://www.elivecd.org/Main/Screenshots/

Watch the Developer's YouTube video at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCJ8QDfA95U&eurl=http://www.elivecd.org/Main/About