Bodhi Linux v1.0.0 Distro Review with Enlightment Desktop

Bodhi Linux v1.0.0 Stable is a gorgeous looking minimalistic distro which uses Enlightenment E17 desktop environment. Instead cramming your system full of unnecessary programs, Bodhi provides you with just Midori web browser, PCManFM, LXTerminal and Synaptic. You can select the applications you want easily via Bodhi's website or Synaptic Package Manager.

Theres a nice easy to use Setup Wizard to customise the Enlightenment desktop, it lets you to choose from: Basic, Fancy (Compiz enabled), Laptop, or Netbook styles desktops.
Theres also some lovely looking wallpapers / themes supplied, with more available via the website.

Enlightenment has very low system requirements making this Distro ideal for older lower spec machines. However its only available in 32bit version, which makes it less suitable for higher spec machines.

It certainly is one of the best looking lightweight Ubuntu based Distros available. Its based on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS with an updated kernel - 2.6.35.

Website: http://www.bodhilinux.com/
Download: http://sourceforge.net/projects/bodhilinux/

Review done in Virtualbox 4.04. Would like to have done a full system install, but Im currently testing out latest Ubuntu development release on my spare harddrive.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Bodhi
• Bodhi Linux
• 1.0.0
• Minimal
• Minimalistic
• Bare Essentials
• Basics
• Enlightenment
• E17
• Lightweight
• Fancy
• Gorgeous
• Customisable
• Customise
• Desktop
• Environment
• Easy to Use
• Firefox
• Midori
• Synaptic
• LTS
• Long Term Support
• Screencast
• Tutorial
• Demo
• Demonstration
• Open Source
• FOSS
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• ISO
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• Quids
• Quidsup

[250tegra]

Update - We've been running Bodhi for 6 months now, mostly 1.1.0 and 1.2.0 but have just downloaded and tested the latest 1.2.1 release on live CD. It's good on our hardware.

Bodhi really does use 90MB of RAM, even with compositor transparency and other eye candy and this ancient Compaq (Celeron 420 and shared Intel graphics) is entirely happy doing 720p Flash video. Surprising!

The website has been polished up nicely, too! We like it.

[quidsup]

@250tegra Thanks for the update, I've been meaning to try it out, but am a bit swamped with the latest Ubuntu releases at the moment.

[julenissen123321]

is it a kde distro?

[quidsup]

@julenissen123321 No it uses lightweight E17 desktop environment

[thehmmmm]

90 MiB? How the hell does this run at half the resources as when I run Lubuntu? It even looks prettier.

Are there any notable hiccups? I feel like there should be a catch here.

[quidsup]

@thehmmmm A very well made desktop environment to have such a low memory usage.

The catch is it takes quite a bit to understand all the features. I barely scratched the surface with what this system has to offer.

[eldersprig]

They have a PAE kernel available now.

[iyntx]

effects on the icons look ridiculous, and are slow. The very same interface has a bunch of ugly problems with shadows and rendering speed.

[250tegra]

@quidsup Know what you mean! At least Oneiric is not as crashy as Natty was on our hardware. Had to wipe Natty, and Bodhi is taking the place of the Ubuntu 'testing' releases for the time being. Lucid is still our mainstay for daily use, but Bodhi was so tempting that it's on that Compaq now. It just works....

[Frotty33]

@Wtown06tt true

[Wtown06tt]

i really like linux but all these linux makers seem like they have no idea what most users want, just make it fast and really good with internet, you dont need all those bullshit programs who nobody uses, and flash problems thats fucked up, make shit easy to install, every time i have a problem i need to read a ton of shit that i dont really understand, im sick of it