LinuxQuestions.org - Bodhi - an escape route from Unity & Gnome, or more?

We've been playing with Bodhi since 1.0, more seriously with 1.1~1.2.x over the last six months.

Part of our motivation has been the User Interface controversy over at Ubuntu and elsewhere. We've tried, but the new stuff is still not working for us, the obese interfaces overload our ancient/low power hardware and deliver less than we like in terms of usability.

We're old hands with Xubuntu, have installed a half-dozen Lubuntus happily, but LXDE depends on some Gnome 2 stuff, allegedly,so it would be good to find something lighter than Xubuntu has become.

A big part of my own motivation has been the exceptional configurability of the Bodhi 'Enlightenment' desktop - E17. And, of course, the bling!

A case in point is my old Compaq C300 - Celeron 420, Intel graphics sharing the 768MB RAM with the CPU, and a 4200 RPM hard drive. :o

So not a speed machine, but well built and reliable.
It was a gift from a kind friend who'd moved to a newer laptop with our help.

I have had a couple of Mint Fluxbox CE releases on it, as well as the original Win XP in case my mate needed access to it again. So it was a bit crowded, and I had to wipe the Mint 8 partition in order to install Bodhi.

Well, what an upgrade! This from me, a Fluxbox enthusiast with my own hand-crufted desktop <grin>. (The secret with Fluxbox is to edit the config files directly, ignore the GUI tools....):Pengy:

Bodhi took up a whole 86MB of RAM, which is outstandingly low impact.

At that time the Bodhi Composite module was enabled, Conky was on the desktop with a full top bar and the 'Engage' wobbly dock bar at the bottom. This is the Bodhi 'Laptop' configuration that you choose when installing, or when booting a live CD.

Very good looking, and so snappy! Responses slightly better than the hand-massaged Fluxbox installations, which surprised me.

Yes, the stability is not yet quite as rock solid as (say) Ubuntu Lucid Lynx LTS, but it's miles better than Ubuntu Natty and a bit better than Oneiric, on our hardware.

We've only run Oneiric live, admittedly. But we had Natty on a partition of the desktop for a couple of months before wiping it for crimes against stability.

Bodhi took its place, and what an improvement! The super-cheap desktop has a shiny new AMD K325 2-core with nVidia 9200m graphics and 2GB RAM. Really goes well and looks stunning on a 22" LCD TV.

We now have 4 Bodhi installs running, 3x 1.2.0, 1x 1.2.1

Like all installations of any OS, your mileage may vary. But on our hardware Bodhi rocks - the E17 choice of appearance (and ability to reconfigure easily) makes it highly desirable. Oh yes, and it is supported right here in LinuxQuestions, as well as the friendly Bodhi forums

The stability of Bodhi on our hardware has us looking at it seriously for the inevitable crunch day when Ubuntu Lucid reaches end of life.

The bling is a big bonus!