Hi, guys,

There is a discussion of the Ubuntu's future here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xy7v5tdfSZM

Is there any reason for Bodhi users to be concerned?

Thank you,

BM

Can't believe I actually watched all that. But as far as bodhi is concerned there is nothing to see here. No need to worry. Ubuntu is not going away anytime soon nor do I expect its popularity to drop regardless of what decisions Canonical makes. And regardless of all that Bodhi is truly not dependant upon Ubuntu. We use it as a base because it has advantages but any linux distro could be used as a base.

If there is anything Bodhi users should be concerned about it is changes in efl by the e-devs. This is an ever present challenge for us, and by us I mean Štefan and I. This changes break our applications and bork our themes and we have already reached a sad point in time where moksha will not compile with efl from git and just as bad efl 1.21.1 breaks our systray. And even worse changes in efl's focus manager have created an unsolvable issue with epad. This is with the efl version found in BL 5.0. The issue still exist in latter versions of efl but it is not as bad. It is extremely time consuming to deal with these problems and often above our current knowledge of how efl and or moksha works.

That is my major concern for Bodhi.

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I guess that is why i had asked a little while ago about debian as a base like mint has experimented with. however, not knowing what ylee and waiter know maybe that would be the same set of challenges.

as an aside. i have to say tha bodhi has been and still is my most stable and favorite distro and desktop environment. I couple (i will not mention) haav a lot of issues and also seems to be going down the tubes and also making things harder as opposed to easier for new users. If i had to i would have to opt for another DE but i would do it becasue i had to. no bs but bodhi has been the most stable of all of them that i have seriously tried and used.

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Debian makes a great base. I have played around with bodhizing debian and never had many issues doing so. Jeff prefers Ubuntu because of the simplicity of Ubiquity (the installation program on the live iso) and our BodhiBuilder program, I think anyways, relies upon Ubiquity. As ubuntu is really a form of Debian and considering the following quote:

I would think one could get Ubiquity working in Debian. Behinds the scenes it use d-i (the debian installer) anyway. The fact as far as I know no one has did so just means no one has taken the time to do so. Honestly I am about 98% sure I could do it ... But please don't ask I lack time for that...

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thanks Robert.

i scratched it off my list - heh heh!!!

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Hi, rbtylee,

Thank you for the reply.

I apologize if I ask a stupid question because I do not know what is efl. Still, if efl in Elightenment is creating so much trouble and makes maintaining Bodhi so time and effort consuming, would it be better to switch to an alternative? (I even do not know what the alternatives are).

Would Bodhi be still Bodhi with a different DE such as XFCE? Would it be still as lightweight?

From the logistic standpoint, as far as I can see from what you are saying, Bodhi is a high maintenance distro with limited developer resources (only two developers).

There are only two possible solutions:

1. make it easier to maintain

2. get more developers on board to have issues fixed.

Any thoughts?

Thank you,

BM

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I think Bodhi will be still Bodhi with different desktop. Bodhi is not just a SW but also a community. Anyway current equation is Bodhi = Ubuntu base + Moksha desktop. The main purpose is to have a lightweight distro on resources (LXDE or LXQT could fulfil our needs but XFCE is heavier and not so suitable for older PCs), attractive look and minimum apps installed.
EFL is really complicating the situation little bit as Ylee posted but from my POV we can also stay on the current EFL (unfortunatelly with some bugs and with the same elm apps without update. I mean ePhoto mainly) as we stayed with E17 in the past and forked to Moksha. The situation with Moksha code is better. We both devs can change the code (fixing the code or adding a new code) to some limits, but in case of EFL it is hard to modify the code. At least I haven't written a single line in EFL.
Anyway, the world is changing and maybe one day we need to decide what to do.

EDIT: Elive distro (also based on E17) is still here with obsolete efl version. There is also an alternative to switch to E22, desktop under heavy development. Unfortunately all our code improvements will be gone. As ylee told me E22 is not very stable and has many glitches. This was also the main reason why Jeff (leader) stopped continuing with E19 and higher E versions.

And yes, the situation about distro maintaining is not as good as needs to be. Despite this fact we work hard almost everyday on it. Not only fixing the issues, but adding new features and improving some themes. Some new guys would be nice to have around

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Not a bad question at all, efl is Enlightenment Foundation LIbraries. This is what moksha uses instead of some other library like gtk or qt or whatnot. It is designed to be low on resources and fast. How much it lives up to that claim to fame is debatable. BUT it almost certainly does better than gtk or qt in the things it does with respect to resources. It is MUCH harder to program in tho, IMHO. Regardless, one of Bodhi's main claims to fame is that it works on older hardware and on machines without alot of memory and whatnot. And it works well, fast and responsive at least to the point to where ya end up with too much crap in swap.

I haven't run any tests comparing LXDE, XFCE and other 'lightweight' Window managers, but it has been reported by a few that have tested such things that moksha does marginally better than either LXDE and XFCE on resources and speed. I would link to the posts but all that was on our old forum. And without me personally testing it myself or at least reviewing how the test were done I would take it with a grain of salt. If I had to put forth a semi-educated guess I would say Moksha does outperform these two ...

However and for the record there are certainly linux window managers that outperform Moksha. For example DWM, that is only 2000 lines of c code. You know it rocks, but it also lacks many things ppl expect out of an Operating system. I used it for a few years myself.


Regardless tho Bodhi without Moksha or at least enlightenment would be quite different. Our enlightenment base is what makes us unique and honestly without an enlightenment base I prob would move on, either continue using moksha even if i compiled it myself or go to using e22 or what version of e was stable enough for me at the time.

As to the solutions, staying with efl and moksha or at least enlightenment:

Well I am trying to do that one by anticipating changes coming down the line and making the needed changes to Moksha beforehand. For example I mentioned Moksha will not compile with efl from git, I already have that fixed locally. I have not committed my changes yet but this is adapting to an unreleased version of efl and when released 3 versions ahead of what Bodhi currently uses. I am also trying to stay on top of what changes are happening in EFL as well as changes in Enlightenment. As moksha is based on enlightenment some enlightenment issues and changes moksha can utilize and/or learn from.

I have also had to learn a whole new bag of tricks to simplify debugging issues and still learning. Hope to get Štefan to learn to use these tools as well.

Would love to, any ideas how? We used to have a few more and a few semi developers but for whatever reason they have went their own way to other things. In all likelihood a few more will come around in time. But who knows. A few e-devs help us on occasion altho that also has been some time ago. Again who knows.

I have been offer the choice of helping with EFL but currently there is no way I can find time. Maybe one day.

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thanks both of you. xfce is not too swift from my experience. lxde seems to look nicer at least - xfce just lloks old and ragged to me. almost tried lxde debian though.

as you both know i know so little so no way i could help. wish i could somehow.

i believe i tried e19 at the time or maybe a newer version and it was buggy and some of the stuff i needed to work re: network stuff etc. could not get or was not there in the version i tried using.

charles being gone also doesn't help.


best wishes!

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Hi, rbtylee,

First of all, I would like to say that many Bodhi users and I personally appreciate what you are doing. That is a huge amount of work and it is highly appreciated!


I suggest the Bodhi Team is a little bit more explicit on their website that they need talented programmers.

I am sure that there are many ambitious people that are open to the challenge. They would need to know that it is a volunteer job, and they need to be aware of the ultimate goal to keep Bodhi:

1. requiring minimal hardware resources

2. run on old machines

3. be aesthetically pleasing

4. remain minimalistic

If someone is interested, you may also provide an insight of the challenge of having Moksha being based on Enlightenment.

This message needs to standout. I do not think that a statement like "Need something to do?" is very appealing. It should be "WE NEED YOU!"

Who knows, working on Bodhi might become someone's Master's or PhD project in the IT field.

If nobody knows that you are looking for help, nobody would offer it.

Just an idea. I wish I knew how to develop Linux distros. I would help.

Thank you,

BM

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Used to be a MacPup team member.
Now a AntiX team member.

Yep. This week end testing xdelta patches. I feel ya. Hope you don't mind a non Bohdi user posting.
I learned E17 pretty good in MacPup.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKE79qSv_eQ


After Enlightenment and Puppy started to be too hard to co-exist together. It was decided to disband the team. My eeepc 701SD loved that distro.

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that's not a discussion, that's a monologue.
the first 5 min of which were sheer ego stroking, after which $PERSON seems to be regurgitating some of the info about ubuntu that's been going round for - well, years already...

that said, yes, ubuntu's changing, i don't believe they have the same vision anymore they had during their first years, but i don't see it going away as a desktop distro for a very long time.

so, no reason to be concerned. and don't even consider believing everything you see on youtube.

PS: i am surprised that some involved folks here say they can imagine bodhi without moksha. moksha was made for bodhi, no? bodhi was always enlightenment-based, no?

Everything was explained.

Of course we want to stay with Moksha as long as possible. But if you read carefully EFL is under massive development and following the current version is more and more complicated.
I also remember the BL 4 release when EFL 1.18.4 was completely buggy and caused seq faults or Moksha desktop freezes. Jeff switched to XFCE desktop just because Moksha was unable to use and he needed to work.
And yes, Bodhi Linux has been always E/Moksha based. That is the main goal. Attractive look, rich in features. It could be a pity to switch to another desktop for many reasons. At least because our energy/time we devoted to this project. But we can always speculate on what if ...

Štefan

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