Dr. John v. Kampen

Linux dark autumn clouds - Bodhi Linux is there!

Friday, October 7, 2011 10:59:56 AM

users, Ubuntu, people, Mint, distro, desktop, Bodhi, Linux, tips, computer

Not only for Windows, but also for Linux the hour of truth comes near. October-November are months with new releases and upgrades. Let's forget about Windows 8 for now; it's still an early Beta. However Ubuntu 11.10 and Linux Mint 12 will come out soon. So are updated desktops: Gnome and KDE to name but two. It's no secret that I am still not convinced that the Gnome based Gnome 3 shell and Ubuntu's Unity desktops are matured enough to compete with either Windows 8 Beta or Apple's OSX. What's more, I still don't like either of the two. So do many more Linux-users. The one UI fails this here, the other is messy there, which isn't inspiring and inviting me to even test these releases. I am running Mint 11 for now and will continue to do so with its 'old', but for me far more productive, more flexible Gnome 2 desktop, better suited to run production software.
But now, virtually out of nowhere, comes Bodhi Linux. Guess what? It's based on Ubuntu 10.04 in a most minimalistic set-up that can be extended in an optimum way to your own desire, software wishes and insights. It can run on tablets and on production units. It's what you make of it. It has a different, sleek, nice window manager, Enlightenment, that does its job nearly perfectly. Gone is all 'bloat' of the bigger brothers. Gone are the too many clicks of Unity and the 'non-intuitive' feeling of Gnome 3 shell. It's now just what you make of Bodhi. For all of them however applies that driver support (f.ex. ATI, NVidia, Wifi) is becoming more and more a problem. Even Bodhi needs a new user to find "Synaptic Package Manager" to install them. So, where do we go from here? Bodhi makes some heat under the leading distros, Mint and Ubuntu, for sure. Otherwise it wouldn't have become such a success in a matter of months.
Take a look at Bodhi, Unity vs. Gnome 3 and Windows 8 Beta...

Url movie: http://youtu.be/zew22fRREQ0

Url movie: http://youtu.be/4WW_gg0wosU

Url movie: http://youtu.be/cH1WHCEJ9Q8

Url movie: http://youtu.be/SaAQGPcbVlo

John

Meltdown - how we got in and how we might get outDaniele Gottardo guitar, nextly YOU: "Slippery Thing"!

Comments

Mad Scientist (عادل)qlue # Saturday, October 8, 2011 9:26:05 AM

Enlightenment sounds promising.

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I switched to Crunchbang because it uses the Openbox window manager which is equally minimal and customisable.

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I find that I actually like the 'old' way of editing text files. I understand what I've done a lot better that way.

Dr. John v. Kampennepmak2000 # Saturday, October 8, 2011 4:11:23 PM

Very good, Aadil. You must feel comfortable with it.

floweringmind # Sunday, October 9, 2011 11:47:20 PM

Personally I can't stand either Unity or the Gnome 3. It is the horrible minimalism mentality. They both want to be OSX. Thus it pushed me away from using Ubuntu standard edition and using Gnome. Mint Linux will most likely gain more people and so will Xubuntu.

Dr. John v. Kampennepmak2000 # Monday, October 10, 2011 4:27:15 AM

I agree with you - both are horribly inefficient for editing audio and video, combining them in one production stream, or making a magazine and editing images on the fly using CrossOver and Photoshop, to give some examples. But it is nice for my wife who wants to 'tweet' and 'chat' with some lady-friends, or browse nice houses and decorations. The latter activities are precisely what the production environment hardly needs...

Allan ShandCowboy79 # Monday, October 10, 2011 4:08:33 PM

Hi Dr Kampen I've been using Bodhi since just before Christmas and have seen it mature quite well over the last half year. I originally put it on a home built system with an old celeron 1.1ghz with 512mb of ram. I now use it on a little netbook its quite different from either gnome or KDE and is way lighter. I think its great that there are so many distributions and desktops to choose from. There are a lot of people grumbling that having all these different choices turns people away from linux..... are you mad choice is always good pushing your self to try something new is what makes life interesting. I have had a lot of fun with Bodhi its been educational (dabling more with configuration files than gui's) and I still have things to learn.

Dr. John v. Kampennepmak2000 # Monday, October 10, 2011 7:48:33 PM

Hi Allan, excellent to hear this! Yes, experimentation and thinking beyond the box is important in all respects. Since we have Live-CD's those grumblers should simply test an ISO on a CD and decide if it is good for them or not and stay f.ex. with Xubuntu or whatever they liked so far.
Keep me posted if you will on Bodhi experiences!