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.
"I hope you only use it as motivation to do something more than pollute the Linux distribution space."
If there weren't all these extraneous niche Linux distributions, maybe promising ones like http://nixos.org/ would actually get the attention they deserve.
Now there is an interesting project! That's going to be the next OS on my netbook.
I love that the package manager makes it trivial to have multiple versions of the same program. There are always some programs I like to have a stable distribution-maintained package of as well as the latest development version.
And this:
$ nixos-rebuild test
This builds and activates the new configuration, but doesn’t make it the boot default. Thus, rebooting the system will take you back to the previous, known-good configuration.
An even nicer way to test changes is the following:
$ nixos-rebuild build-vm
$ ./result/bin/run-*-vm
This builds and starts a virtual machine that contains the new system configuration (i.e. a clone of the configuration of the host machine, with any changes that you made to configuration.nix).
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).
That is being fixed "right now"[1], they seem to have most of it implemented (yes, obviously testing and documentation is still needed before its ready for non dev-branch release).
I just don't understand how a distro can call a package manager with unsigned packages ready for a stable branch. It's irresponsible, and if they don't care about that kind of basic need for a package manager, I don't want to put myself in a position where I'll discover (too late) what sort of other obvious oversights they've made.
How that? You cannot even properly search for packages by name. It always searches the description too. Try searching for opera or even only packages that start with opera*.
I've been using Arch for almost two years and its always worked. I guess your argument may have been slightly wrong (no s after S or something perhaps).
I would, however, recommend using a wrapper like yaourt which can install from AUR too. With yaourt, iirc (I don't exactly install packages very often these days, since I have everything I need), I can just go:
Isn't this the point of open source though. They have a vision of making a fast lightweight desktop based on linux and they did it. If people don't like it, they won't use it.
In that case there is no reason for any distro of linux to exist. Just one should be enough. There is a lot of reinventio in the space of linux and that is a good thing IMO.
This is just a beginning. A first attempt at what they want to do. Future iterations might bring out something nicer. Again as I said, if it doesn't market will tell them so.
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."
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.
The other comment was a joke, and I think you're taking this way too seriously. Software does naming like this all the time: "Gee, our WM is called 'Enlightenment'? What words related to that concept can we use?" It doesn't matter which "enlightenment" the WM is referring to, as that's the nature of word play.
Why does it matter that this distro is named Bodhi? It's just a word.
>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?
Why can they do this? Because there's no one stopping them. It's some text on a website.
> 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.
It's not different. And neither are a big deal. I don't see what's shallow about it: "I like the way this character looks (and perhaps like what it means) so I'll use it." You think it's shallow, but how deep does aesthetic desire need to be to be valid? The culture police aren't going to come and arrest someone for appropriating a concept.
To you. You're assuming that it's not a big deal to people who invest in those concepts too. Or worse, you're presuming to tell other people what they should and shouldn't value, and how much they should value them.
This passage from the Wikipedia article on cultural appropriation says it better than I can:
"A common sort of cultural appropriation is the adoption of the iconography of another culture. Examples include sports teams using Native American tribal names, tattoos of Polynesian tribal iconography, Chinese characters, or Celtic bands worn by people who have no interest in, or understanding of, their original cultural significance. When these artifacts are regarded as objects that merely 'look cool', or when they are mass produced cheaply as consumer kitsch, people who venerate and wish to preserve their indigenous cultural traditions may be offended."
I'm not a buddhist scholar, but of the things that's always interested me about buddhisms path through the world is how adaptive the underlying concepts can be to new cultural contexts. I think, in a lot of ways, that the western cultural context is just a new adaptation on that trend. You have people who sincerely try to get at the heart of the religion/philosophy and you have people that co-opt the names for their own uses, commercial or otherwise.
I'd wager that if we looked at the history of buddhism as it entered japan, there would be similar trends of it being used politically and secularly (but don't quote me on that if I turn out to be horribly wrong).
I think I get more bothered when I see things like mini cubicle zen-gardens, or anyone else profiteering off of a barely there gloss of the cultural history.
As for open-source software, and people trying to instill their distro with an ambiance of 'zen', I think it's a little silly, but I don't think it was done maliciously, and ultimately I don't think it will do a whole lot to really water down the deep and expansive annals of buddhist history.
I think it's good to be sensitive to this sort of thing, and to be aware of who you might be offending. Maybe I'm not being as considerate of the issue as I should be. I suppose I just think that realistically, buddhist culture as it stands in the world is going to go on, largely unaffected by the west and our views, but perhaps greatly impacted by inexorable march of modernity.
I personally like buddhism because if they're right, I get a bunch more chances to figure it out. Kidding, of course... kind of.
Speaking as a practitioner of Buddhist meditation, get off your high horse, Jesse. It's just a name. "Buddhist" is just an identity, and a core goal of the practice is to bring an end to such things.
People value elements of their culture and would like them not to be debased or conflated with the mundane. I'm glad you were able to glean something valuable from an ages-old culture. Try giving back some time.
> "Buddhist" is just an identity, and a core goal of the practice is to bring an end to such things.
First, this is not even the point of the comment.
Second, this is so inane, and a typical attitude of Western admirers of Eastern traditions. Like somehow, Buddhism couldn't manage itself until you came along and told everyone what it really meant.
Try this: go to India, go stop at Bodh Gaya and urinate on the Bodhi tree.
Before the monks who tend the tree beat you up, let them know that they're mistakenly identifying with concepts like "trees" and "cleanliness." But never fear, you have come to set them free and let them know the true meaning of Buddhism, by bringing an end to identities!
If it wasn't for that about.html, I would've thought it was named after a Baldur's Gate II character, and was prepared to make a joke about sucking blood..
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.
For a more minimal system, one might want to check out SliTaz: 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.
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? :)
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.
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 :)
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?
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...
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.
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.