DonsDeals Blog: Bodhi About

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Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Bodhi About

Bodhi is a minimalistic, enlightened, Linux desktop.

System Requirements:

Minimum -

300mhz i386 Processor
128megs of RAM
1.5g HD space

Purpose

Bodhi mainly is about two things:

The Enlightenment Desktop
User Choice

Enlightenment is not just a window manager for Linux/X11 and others, but also a whole suite of libraries to help you create beautiful user interfaces with much less work than doing it the old fashioned way and fighting with traditional toolkits, not to mention a traditional window manager. It is fast in addition to elegant. Enlightenment is currently under heavy development. To ensure that our users always have the latest Enlightenment desktop we push out Enlightenment updates to the Bodhi repository at least once a week. We believe Enlightenment is the best desktop Linux has to offer because of it's elegance, modularity and high level of customization.

Unlike some other distributions that try to make all the decisions for you, Bodhi thinks the end user is smart enough to make their own decisions. We let you choose your default theme and system layout as well as applications for completing your computing tasks. The only applications you will find pre-installed on your Bodhi system are Midori, LXTerminal, PCManFM, Leafpad and Synaptic. Beyond this you can easily find and install an application for any task you may have in mind via Bodhi Software Center. We do not see the need to clutter your system with extra applications that you may never use.

What powers Bodhi?

Bodhi is built on top of an Ubuntu 10.04 core, using the latest, elegant Enlightenment desktop, all accessed by the light weight LXDM login manager. Bodhi uses dpkg and apt-get for package management.

What will Bodhi's release cycle be?

Bodhi's Ubuntu base will have a new "main" release every two years (following Ubuntu LTS releases). It will also have "point" (aka minor) releases every three months to provide an ISO with current software packages.

Why Ubuntu? Have you considered a Debian base or "distro X" base?

Ubuntu in general provides a solid base and has lots of resources available to it. For these reasons (among others) the Bodhi team feels Ubuntu is the best base for the time being.

We would LOVE to have an RPM based Bodhi version at some point. Currently we are leaning towards, and have been working on, a Fedora disc using the Enlightenment desktop. This is a side project and not the main focus of Bodhi. We very much love the choice that FOSS software offers. It is because of this that we would like to one day make an RPM powered Bodhi a reality.

Rationale:

Why are we making Bodhi when there are hundreds of existing Linux distros? Is it redundant? Bodhi sets itself apart from other Linux distros due to it's use of the Enlightenment desktop. Examining all the Linux distros, you will find fewer than a dozen that use Enlightenment.

Why use Bodhi over other "light weight" distros such as LXDE or XFCE? Enlightenment-- It is superbly designed, gorgeous and extremely fast on a wide variety of hardware. Screen shots do not do it justice.