5 ms·

Bodhi, A minimal, enlightened, Linux

73 points by jancona 16y ago

simonsarris 16y ago
That's funny. I never even knew Bodhi was a Sanskrit word that is usually translated as "enlightenment." In the 2000 RPG-of-the-year Baldur's Gate II, Bodhi was one of the major villains, a sadistic vampire character. http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Bodhi http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Bodhi So the name has always had an eerie/negative connotation for me.
- TY 16y ago
  And Bodhi was the name of Patrick Swayze's character in "Point Break", so in a mind of a movie geek it makes total sense to think of this distro as Linux for (web) surfers...
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
- idonthack 16y ago
  you should point out the flash, because i'm having trouble finding it
- ceejayoz 16y ago
  What Flash? Their carousel appears to be entirely JavaScript based.
- planckscnst 16y ago
  There is no flash, but there is a huge JavaScript slideshow that takes up space even when JavaScript is turned off, leaving a huge gaping hole in the page.
  - adrianN 16y ago
    Ah, I wondered why I have to scroll down to see the "Welcome" and why there are no screenshots!
planckscnst 16y ago
I see nothing good here. It is Ubuntu stripped down to nothing more than Enlightenment (with a butt-ugly theme, of course), Midori (a light-weight WebKit/GTK+ browswer), Leafpad (a poor excuse for an editor), PCManFM (a file manager), a terminal, and a package manager. You can get the same system by spending 10 minutes on a base Arch install. If they really want to do something significant, they should make an good Enlightenment theme (if that's even possible - I can't seem to find a good one), and make a desktop-suitable version of Eve (a WebKit browser made with Enlightenment's toolkit) as well as other Enlightenment-based tools. P.S. Sorry to the folks who contribute to this project about the negative tone. I hope you only use it as motivation to do something more than pollute the Linux distribution space.
- wewyor 16y ago
  For those who prefer the ubuntu package release cycle (or overall system) there is a minimal ubuntu installation: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/MinimalCD https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/MinimalCD Needs an internet connection to install (I think wired).
  - u48998 16y ago
    That minimal CD wouldn't be as same as minimal install, would it?
    - liuhenry 16y ago
      The minimal CD is the same as the netinstall, and only installs the base (command line) system. There's also an alternate CD for text-based install - with the option to do a minimal system - but by default, it installs the full system (Gnome and default programs).
- wtracy 16y ago
  Enlightenment 0.16 had a ton of themes (some quite gorgeous) up on Freshmeat and that alone I considered a reason to stick with Enlightenment 0.16. Then Freshmeat decided that they no longer wanted to be a repository for themes, and deleted everything. Gaah!
exch 16y ago
I'm not a big fan of Ubuntu spin offs, but this one at least has the merit of booting very quickly. The 'lightweight' label is not misplaced. I did find some bugs in the UI. Most notably the layout of the "Run Everything" menu (tab headers) was a bit messed up. Which brings me to the name of this menu item. Seeing something labeled "Run Everything" does not inspire me with confidence and zest to click it. Of course I did anyway and was relieved to find that it did, in fact, not actually run everything, but just let you pick a specific application to run. I will have to play with it some more for a better feel. It definitely needs polishing, but it's not a bad start. I do agree with the choice of editor and file manager pointed out by a poster below me. I'm sure there are some other applications I would have changed, but to be honest, that is all mostly a matter of taste.
spudlyo 16y ago
I can't read "Enlightenment: the lightest desktop manager there is" without smirking.
- sceadu 16y ago
  Maybe they're only going after the non-power users who never venture beyond KDE or Gnome and don't know any better. :)
  - u48998 16y ago
    I'd agree. I'm a windows user for many years (XP) with couple of old machines laying around. I have recently tried PeppermintOS, Joli, Lubuntu. I think I have found Peppermint to be better than all of them and I think there is a market growing for lightweight Linux distros. With a lot better software manager, file manager, windows' look-alike environment and simplicity, I think it is time for a linux comeback with all these distros competing with each other.
- dkersten 16y ago
  I like my "desktop manager" to.. not have a desktop (I have a desktop background image, no icons, no menus (that are always visible)) and my window management to be as simple and automatic as possible. I also want the mouse to be 100% optional. Its nice to use it when I'm pointing and clicking anyway, but when I'm not, eg, when I'm coding or in a terminal, I want to be able to control everything without leaving the main keyboard. As such, my window manager of choice is, of course, a tiling window manager (musca), and it is truely lightweight - a few K lines of C code, a few KB compiled binary, very fast, very low memory usage. Hell, it delegates its menu to dmenu (which I find to be an awesome little program - useful, very fast, tiny, easy to use and no dependencies besides xlib). I run Musca on an Arch install (on an eee PC) for true lightweight minimalism :)
- nicpottier 16y ago
  Ya, I did the same thing. I remember first messing with Enlightenment in '95 or so. And it was the bleeding edge, the realm of "latest hardware only". I think my overclocked pentium 120 did an ok job of it, but only barely. But I guess fast forward 15 years and it is pretty fast. Kind of like Emacs eh? :)
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
rch 16y ago
"we are sure you will be impressed!" I'm not. So, what now?
jessedhillon 16y ago
I'm glad we had a 3000 year old spiritual tradition that is sacred to millions just lying around, waiting to be plumbed for names that are exotic-sounding to Western ears. It just wouldn't do to call your OS "Salvation" or "Revelation" would it? I'm sure some would interpret this as admiration; is it really admiration to take sacred concepts and redefine them to have profoundly dull associations? And, is it admiration for the people who devote their lives to pursuing these concepts, or for idealized representations of Eastern spiritual traditions? (written as an atheist, FYI) EDIT: From /about.html: "Bodhi comes from the Buddhist term for 'enlightenment'. It is also a type of sacred tree, thus the leaf used in our logo."
- res0nat0r 16y ago
  Oh, I just thought this was named after Patrick Swayzes' character from Point Break.
- andrewvc 16y ago
  Well, since it uses 'Enlightenment' as a WM it makes sense. I'll tell you what, as an Atheist, if any Christians want to name their next bible reading app Secular Humanism v3.0 it'll be fine with me.
  - jessedhillon 16y ago
    I haven't seen anything that suggests the Enlightenment WM is named after the Buddhist concept. The Bodhi distro could easily be called Locke or Descartes if you consider that the WM could be named after the age of enlightenment in Western philosophy instead. And if it is named after the Buddhist concept, then my question still stands: why can the names of significant concepts from other cultures be appropriated and applied to utterly mundane notions like software packages and OSes? How is this different than when people who know zero Japanese or Chinese get tattoos of CJK characters -- I think most people can see how that is an example of shallow fetishization of a culture, appropriating superficial symbols and detaching them from the significant context and value that they are assigned in other cultures. If it's a serious comment, witness the sibling to your comment where a person thought that the only significance of "Bodhi" is the name of a character from a movie.
whalesalad 16y ago
Hideous.
socksy 16y ago
For a more minimal system, one might want to check out SliTaz: http://slitaz.org/en http://slitaz.org/en Under 30mb (compressed, in RAM — just over 100mb uncompressed), and quite fast. No Ubuntu distribution, but packages available for it should be at least adequate for most users.
andrewflnr 16y ago
This was the first thing I thought of when I saw the website: http://theabyssgazes.blogspot.com/2010/03/teal-and-orange-hollywood-please-stop.html http://theabyssgazes.blogspot.com/2010/03/teal-and-orange-ho... They need some help with design.
- ramchip 16y ago
  That was quite an interesting read. I don't know if it has been on HN before, but if it hasn't you should submit it.
  - andrewflnr 16y ago
    It was originally a comment here, on the post about a site that had reduced movies to a big color band.
limmeau 16y ago
For minimalism, I still prefer grml[1], the live CD with zsh. 1. http://www.grml.org/ http://www.grml.org/
- gimpf 16y ago
  The live CD with an actually really cool configuration of zsh. Whatever linux distro you're using, get the zsh config from grml!
yannickmahe 16y ago
Side question: how many users can these minor linux distros hope to get? Linux is still not mainstream for desktop computers (i.e. non geeks are a very small minority of users), and there are dozens of distros with very little differences between them. With the majority of the user base using the major distros (Ubuntu, etc.), what is left for small distros such as this? Thousands, hundreds, dozens of users?
tjavailable 16y ago
Bodhi Linux is an Ubuntu-based distribution that uses the Enlightenment desktop in place of the usual desktop environment. Check it out http://ubuntumanual.org/posts/274/bodhi-linux-the-enlightened-distro http://ubuntumanual.org/posts/274/bodhi-linux-the-enlightene...

73 points by jancona 16y ago

That's funny. I never even knew Bodhi was a Sanskrit word that is usually translated as "enlightenment." In the 2000 RPG-of-the-year Baldur's Gate II, Bodhi was one of the major villains, a sadistic vampire character. http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Bodhi http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Bodhi So the name has always had an eerie/negative connotation for me.

TY 16y ago
And Bodhi was the name of Patrick Swayze's character in "Point Break", so in a mind of a movie geek it makes total sense to think of this distro as Linux for (web) surfers...

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

idonthack 16y ago
you should point out the flash, because i'm having trouble finding it
ceejayoz 16y ago
What Flash? Their carousel appears to be entirely JavaScript based.
planckscnst 16y ago
There is no flash, but there is a huge JavaScript slideshow that takes up space even when JavaScript is turned off, leaving a huge gaping hole in the page.
- adrianN 16y ago
  Ah, I wondered why I have to scroll down to see the "Welcome" and why there are no screenshots!

planckscnst 16y ago

I see nothing good here. It is Ubuntu stripped down to nothing more than Enlightenment (with a butt-ugly theme, of course), Midori (a light-weight WebKit/GTK+ browswer), Leafpad (a poor excuse for an editor), PCManFM (a file manager), a terminal, and a package manager. You can get the same system by spending 10 minutes on a base Arch install. If they really want to do something significant, they should make an good Enlightenment theme (if that's even possible - I can't seem to find a good one), and make a desktop-suitable version of Eve (a WebKit browser made with Enlightenment's toolkit) as well as other Enlightenment-based tools. P.S. Sorry to the folks who contribute to this project about the negative tone. I hope you only use it as motivation to do something more than pollute the Linux distribution space.

wewyor 16y ago
For those who prefer the ubuntu package release cycle (or overall system) there is a minimal ubuntu installation: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/MinimalCD https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/MinimalCD Needs an internet connection to install (I think wired).
- u48998 16y ago
  That minimal CD wouldn't be as same as minimal install, would it?
  - liuhenry 16y ago
    The minimal CD is the same as the netinstall, and only installs the base (command line) system. There's also an alternate CD for text-based install - with the option to do a minimal system - but by default, it installs the full system (Gnome and default programs).
wtracy 16y ago
Enlightenment 0.16 had a ton of themes (some quite gorgeous) up on Freshmeat and that alone I considered a reason to stick with Enlightenment 0.16. Then Freshmeat decided that they no longer wanted to be a repository for themes, and deleted everything. Gaah!

exch 16y ago

I'm not a big fan of Ubuntu spin offs, but this one at least has the merit of booting very quickly. The 'lightweight' label is not misplaced. I did find some bugs in the UI. Most notably the layout of the "Run Everything" menu (tab headers) was a bit messed up. Which brings me to the name of this menu item. Seeing something labeled "Run Everything" does not inspire me with confidence and zest to click it. Of course I did anyway and was relieved to find that it did, in fact, not actually run everything, but just let you pick a specific application to run. I will have to play with it some more for a better feel. It definitely needs polishing, but it's not a bad start. I do agree with the choice of editor and file manager pointed out by a poster below me. I'm sure there are some other applications I would have changed, but to be honest, that is all mostly a matter of taste.

spudlyo 16y ago

I can't read "Enlightenment: the lightest desktop manager there is" without smirking.

sceadu 16y ago
Maybe they're only going after the non-power users who never venture beyond KDE or Gnome and don't know any better. :)
- u48998 16y ago
  I'd agree. I'm a windows user for many years (XP) with couple of old machines laying around. I have recently tried PeppermintOS, Joli, Lubuntu. I think I have found Peppermint to be better than all of them and I think there is a market growing for lightweight Linux distros. With a lot better software manager, file manager, windows' look-alike environment and simplicity, I think it is time for a linux comeback with all these distros competing with each other.
dkersten 16y ago
I like my "desktop manager" to.. not have a desktop (I have a desktop background image, no icons, no menus (that are always visible)) and my window management to be as simple and automatic as possible. I also want the mouse to be 100% optional. Its nice to use it when I'm pointing and clicking anyway, but when I'm not, eg, when I'm coding or in a terminal, I want to be able to control everything without leaving the main keyboard. As such, my window manager of choice is, of course, a tiling window manager (musca), and it is truely lightweight - a few K lines of C code, a few KB compiled binary, very fast, very low memory usage. Hell, it delegates its menu to dmenu (which I find to be an awesome little program - useful, very fast, tiny, easy to use and no dependencies besides xlib). I run Musca on an Arch install (on an eee PC) for true lightweight minimalism :)
nicpottier 16y ago
Ya, I did the same thing. I remember first messing with Enlightenment in '95 or so. And it was the bleeding edge, the realm of "latest hardware only". I think my overclocked pentium 120 did an ok job of it, but only barely. But I guess fast forward 15 years and it is pretty fast. Kind of like Emacs eh? :)

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

rch 16y ago

"we are sure you will be impressed!" I'm not. So, what now?

jessedhillon 16y ago

I'm glad we had a 3000 year old spiritual tradition that is sacred to millions just lying around, waiting to be plumbed for names that are exotic-sounding to Western ears. It just wouldn't do to call your OS "Salvation" or "Revelation" would it? I'm sure some would interpret this as admiration; is it really admiration to take sacred concepts and redefine them to have profoundly dull associations? And, is it admiration for the people who devote their lives to pursuing these concepts, or for idealized representations of Eastern spiritual traditions? (written as an atheist, FYI) EDIT: From /about.html: "Bodhi comes from the Buddhist term for 'enlightenment'. It is also a type of sacred tree, thus the leaf used in our logo."

res0nat0r 16y ago
Oh, I just thought this was named after Patrick Swayzes' character from Point Break.
andrewvc 16y ago
Well, since it uses 'Enlightenment' as a WM it makes sense. I'll tell you what, as an Atheist, if any Christians want to name their next bible reading app Secular Humanism v3.0 it'll be fine with me.
- jessedhillon 16y ago
  I haven't seen anything that suggests the Enlightenment WM is named after the Buddhist concept. The Bodhi distro could easily be called Locke or Descartes if you consider that the WM could be named after the age of enlightenment in Western philosophy instead. And if it is named after the Buddhist concept, then my question still stands: why can the names of significant concepts from other cultures be appropriated and applied to utterly mundane notions like software packages and OSes? How is this different than when people who know zero Japanese or Chinese get tattoos of CJK characters -- I think most people can see how that is an example of shallow fetishization of a culture, appropriating superficial symbols and detaching them from the significant context and value that they are assigned in other cultures. If it's a serious comment, witness the sibling to your comment where a person thought that the only significance of "Bodhi" is the name of a character from a movie.

whalesalad 16y ago

Hideous.

socksy 16y ago

For a more minimal system, one might want to check out SliTaz: http://slitaz.org/en http://slitaz.org/en Under 30mb (compressed, in RAM — just over 100mb uncompressed), and quite fast. No Ubuntu distribution, but packages available for it should be at least adequate for most users.

andrewflnr 16y ago

This was the first thing I thought of when I saw the website: http://theabyssgazes.blogspot.com/2010/03/teal-and-orange-hollywood-please-stop.html http://theabyssgazes.blogspot.com/2010/03/teal-and-orange-ho... They need some help with design.

ramchip 16y ago
That was quite an interesting read. I don't know if it has been on HN before, but if it hasn't you should submit it.
- andrewflnr 16y ago
  It was originally a comment here, on the post about a site that had reduced movies to a big color band.

limmeau 16y ago

For minimalism, I still prefer grml[1], the live CD with zsh. 1. http://www.grml.org/ http://www.grml.org/

gimpf 16y ago
The live CD with an actually really cool configuration of zsh. Whatever linux distro you're using, get the zsh config from grml!

yannickmahe 16y ago

Side question: how many users can these minor linux distros hope to get? Linux is still not mainstream for desktop computers (i.e. non geeks are a very small minority of users), and there are dozens of distros with very little differences between them. With the majority of the user base using the major distros (Ubuntu, etc.), what is left for small distros such as this? Thousands, hundreds, dozens of users?

tjavailable 16y ago

Bodhi Linux is an Ubuntu-based distribution that uses the Enlightenment desktop in place of the usual desktop environment. Check it out http://ubuntumanual.org/posts/274/bodhi-linux-the-enlightened-distro http://ubuntumanual.org/posts/274/bodhi-linux-the-enlightene...