Bodhi Linux 2.2 review - Square peg for round hole

Time for the weekly dose of love and tolerance in the Linux world: a long, negative review of Bodhi Linux 2.2 64-bit edition, a Ubuntu-based minimalist distribution with Enlightenment 17 (E17) desktop, covering live session, installation in a quadruple-boot configuration, and post-install usage, including look & feel, desktop profiles, Wireless, Samba, applications, package management, resources, and many problems like styling inconsistencies and difficult customization, manual Wireless configuration, no Samba support, no multimedia codecs out of the box, no applications out of the box, messed-up application menu, buggy package management, malfunctioning software, and more.

http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/bodhi-2-2.html


Cheers,
Mrk

 

It was an honest review
what do you think of the latest precise puppy?

 

Honest is a loose word. I find it hard to believe a "Linux Systems Expert" doesn't know how to read actual RAM usage VS RAM + cache usage.

But then that is just one of the many things he clearly doesn't know how to do.

~Jeff

 

I'm disappointed in you, Mrkvonic - eos Luna (with Pantheon Shell) is much better from a minimalist point of view. e17 looks ancient. The newest operating system is a couple of months old. And you can change file managers and what not and really beef up the system! I can run it on a very elderly netbook. Quite simply, its GNOME 3 with its least user friendly elements stripped out.

 

Why are you disappointed, Norman, what have I done to deserve such scorn. Oh humanity.
Mrk

 

Are we really going to have that discussion? Down to that level? Do you really honestly want to discuss the memory management on Linux?
Mrk

 

"Bodhi allocated 1.62GB, of which 1.34GB was cached, so it comes down to about 280MB RAM on idle"

Are you referring to this statement (as it seems fine to me) ?

Based on what evidence (or it is this a troll attempt) ?

Cheers, Nick

 

I don't think he is trolling..

JeffHoogland:

http://www.jeffhoogland.com/

http://jeffhoogland.blogspot.com/

Anyways, I would like some clarification from Jeff as I didn't understand what is wrong with the quoted Mrk's statement:

 

A quick boot of a live CD, install a graphical tool and run it and Bodhi is still barely over 100MB of RAM used:

http://www.enlightenment.org/ss/e-510cca23de5d22.24947628.jpg

If you are getting 250+MB at start up I'd recommend you check what extra start up applications you added to the system.

All I'm asking is that you don't lie.

~Jeff

 

That's a virtual machine screenshot. A different resource set. The hardware is different, and so is the list of drivers loaded in memory. For starters, you can do lsmod and check and compare with my machine. The laptop has far more peripherals, including bluetooth, two network adapters, a graphics card, four usb ports, a firewire port, a vga port, audio port, sd card, two hard disks, and more.

Moreover, it was a 64-bit install, I do not know what the virtual machine spec was, except that it has only 0.5GB RAM and a single core. Besides, I only looked at the top report and subtracted, I did not invent those numbers. I do not see how that invalidates my resource usage claim. I am certain that if I booted Bodhi on my HP laptop, it would take still more, and if I booted it on my desktop and activated the Nvidia driver for the GTX 570 card, it would take still more.

If you look at my screenshot, you will see that e17 and xorg alone have an RSS of 100MB, and that is without all other apps and kernel. Furthermore, all other processes shown in that screenshot are kernel threads, which means most if not all belongs to the kernel.

So I do not see how I am lying.

You cannot compare apples with uranium and hope to get any meaningful results. The only valid comparison are installations I performed on the same hardware and compared the different distros among them there.

Mrk

 

Cheers


Instead of resorting to ad hominem attacks maybe you should of provided your counter evidence in the first place and try to work out the discrepancy and be constructive ?

Mrkvonic also showed a screenshot with figures. He isn’t lying.
Why is there discrepancy between yours and Mrkvonic memory usages ?

Edit: Mrkvonic has provided some possible reasoning, Jeff what are your thoughts ?

Cheers, Nick

 

please correct me i guess mrk isnt lying nor you are just its a difference of opinion

i used xubuntu long time back see what minimum ram it uses i run few apps or say only firefox or chrome and then close it and check the idle ram it increase a lot its not same as fresh install bootup but thats what real ideal is no

edit: also at bodhi startup we have lot of different environments maybe Mrk using not same as your which shows clearly on photo and last its does not necessary what you have stats on system same on others system as well

and i can understand you are a main developer behind bodhi linux and its like a baby for you

 

Could also be a memory leak in E17, there have been a few of those historically.

Note that I'm using Ubuntu 12.04 with Fluxbox at the moment, and idle RAM usage is more like 110 MB. E17 isn't as minimal as Fluxbox, but it's light enough that I'd think RAM usage would be in that ballpark.

 

Your review of the standard version of Bodhi Linux is fair. But you might want to revisit the issue now that the developer has released a 32 bit "bloated" version in response to your justified criticism. It has all the codecs pre-installed, the applications most users need, etc - in short an e17 desktop that is far from being minimal and comes with all the required functionality most people want in a desktop. You can download it here -

http://sourceforge.net/projects/bodhilinux/files/bloated/

More testing is desirable and necessary. At any rate, Dedoimedo must simply take a second look to be sure it deserves a better rating. And the Linux Gods do answer your prayers. Cheers!

 

I will definitely explore that.
Mrk

 

Hi, I was just wondering if anyone has used Juniper Network Connect VPN with Bodhi? I am partly asking as it needs Java Runtime and when I saw that is now included in the Bloated version I wondered if everything is included to now run it successfully.

Also, with Bloated version around 1.3g in size does that not make it a good choice for older pc's with either 512k or 1g ram? Or does it still work well and fast on those?

Thanks.

 

e17 is a good fit for older computers and doesn't use much in the way of resources. I'd recommend Pantheon Shell Luna in elementaryOS which is much more modern and is an energy miser - and if you can't wait for e18 to mature - e17 should run blazingly fast. The developer has no intention of compiling a 64 bit version of the "bloated" edition but its a matter of recompiling the kernel and someone could do it. If you want to build up e17 from scratch, go with the minimal build but the "home" version as the developer calls it, should be sufficient for most users.