Moving toward nirvana with Enlightenment distributions

There are not that many mainstream Linux distributions that come with Enlightenment E17 as their default desktop environment. There's Elive (we looked at its 2.0 release last year), which is a Debian derivative with Enlightenment, but users have to pay to install it to a hard drive and it's already rather dated. OpenGEU, another Enlightenment-based distribution, seems to have stalled. But in the last few months, two new Enlightenment-based Linux distributions have appeared: the Ubuntu-based Bodhi Linux and the openSUSE derivative Petite Linux. We'll take a look at both distributions and their contrasting approaches to bring an Enlightenment desktop to users.

Bodhi Linux: enlightened Ubuntu

Bodhi Linux ("bodhi" is the Buddhist term for "enlightenment") claims to be "a minimalistic, enlightened, Linux desktop". The system requirements are modest: a 300 MHz x86 processor with 128 MB RAM and 1.5 GB disk space should suffice. Bodhi Linux, which published its 1.0.0 release on March 25, is built on top of Ubuntu 10.04 with some packages backported from Ubuntu 10.10, such as the 2.6.35 kernel and the newer Ubiquity installer. For now, there's only a 32-bit release.

The developers promise that Bodhi Linux will follow the release cycle of Ubuntu LTS, which means that there will be a new main release every two years. So the 2.0.0 release will be based on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and is aimed at mid-late 2012. There will also be minor point releases roughly every three months with current software packages. For instance, Bodhi Linux 1.1.0 will have a 2.6.38 kernel and is expected toward the end of May. Because Enlightenment is still under heavy development, new Enlightenment updates are pushed out to the Bodhi repository at least once a week.

This all sounds very professional for such a small distribution, but there's an important security issue in the way Bodhi Linux uses its repository: the packages in the Bodhi repository are not signed (apt-get warns you about this when you're on the verge of installing such a package), so its users are vulnerable to a man in the middle attack. For now, the main developer Jeff Hoogland doesn't seem to think this is a serious issue, as his reaction to a question from a user shows:

After starting the live CD (which is only 380 MB), it gives you the choice from six different profiles: Bare, Desktop, Ecomorph, Fancy, Laptop, and Tablet/Netbook. If you click on a profile, Bodhi gives you some information about the use cases it is meant for. For instance, Bare is for advanced users that want to create their own customized Enlightenment configuration. Most users will want to install the Desktop or Laptop profile, or the Ecomorph if they want Compiz effects enabled (which may require proprietary graphics drivers). The Desktop profile will get you something KDE-like, to try to make those coming from KDE feel at home, by moving the default shelf (actually, a panel) to the bottom for example. In the next step, users can choose a desktop theme. If you click on one of these themes, Bodhi shows you a preview. After this, the live environment starts up with your chosen profile and theme, so that you can give Bodhi Linux a try.

To install, just click on the install icon in the quick launcher at the bottom of the screen. This will fire up Ubuntu's familiar Ubiquity installer. After the installation, a reboot is required. It's immediately clear that Bodhi Linux starts up fast, and the user's session starts up blazingly fast after login as well. The first time, you have to choose the profile and theme you want for your session. After this, you can choose which applications to add to the quick launcher at the bottom, but this can also be done later.

Your author didn't undertake an extensive benchmark, but his gut feel says that even applications start up significantly faster than on plain Ubuntu (with GNOME). In his review at TechRepublic, Jack Wallen experienced the same and did some measurements on two different but equally equipped machines: on the machine with Bodhi Linux, GIMP started two times faster than on a standard Ubuntu 10.10 machine. Exactly why this is happening is uncertain, but the cause could be that E17 just uses much less resources than GNOME and that Bodhi Linux is running fewer services in the background than a stock Ubuntu install.

While the first focus of Bodhi Linux is creating a minimalistic Enlightenment desktop, its second core idea is that user choice is paramount. The only pre-installed applications are the web browser Midori (a lightweight Webkit-based browser), the editor Leafpad, LXTerminal, the file browser PCManFM, Synaptic, and, of course, some system configuration tools. So after installing Bodhi Linux, your system is not cluttered with applications that you'll never use, and you can make your own decisions about which software you want to install.

Installing software can be done with apt-get or with the Bodhi Software Center. The latter is a web site that lists some popular packages and lets you install them directly from the browser. Furthermore, if you click on the download button of an application, you get a package that includes the application and all of its dependencies, so you can install it easily on another machine without an internet connection.

On a side note: the developers are really serious about user choice. They are even considering an RPM-based Bodhi version. At this moment, they have been working on a Fedora disc using the Enlightenment desktop as a side project, and they even plan a version based on Arch Linux. It will probably take some time, but Hoogland has already assembled a small but growing team, with, for example, Chris Bolton who will build an Arch Linux based Bodhi.

But this user choice doesn't mean that Bodhi Linux leaves its users in the dark after installation: there's a wiki with installation instructions, a quickstart (which will be opened the first time you launch Midori), and some tips and tricks. Because Bodhi Linux is quite minimalistic after installation, these online documents are really helpful to make some things work that other distributions already do by default or that they have a GUI for. There are also some introductions to get up to speed with Enlightenment.

Petite Linux: enlightened openSUSE

Petite Linux takes a completely opposite approach, which is easy to see when you start it up: it boots much slower than Bodhi. Petite Linux is built with SUSE Studio, so the minimum hardware requirements are the same as openSUSE: a Pentium III 500 MHz processor with 512 MB RAM and 3 GB available disk space. Version 1.0.0, based on openSUSE 11.3, was released in February, and apparently can only be downloaded as a torrent (the ISO file is 651 MB). An openSUSE 11.4-based Petite Linux should be right around the corner.

While Bodhi Linux is all about choice, the idea behind Petite Linux is to "just work". So it makes a lot of decisions for you, with the result that it's not as minimal as Bodhi Linux is. For instance, it installs a lot of applications, like GIMP, OpenOffice.org Base, Impress, Calc, Writer, and Draw, the Eye of GNOME image viewer, the instant messenger Empathy, the Transmission BitTorrent client, the Google Chrome web browser, the media player SMPlayer, the CD/DVD burning program TkDVD, GNOME Terminal, Wine, and some system configuration tools. However, that doesn't mean that Petite Linux is bloated. For instance, with respect to Enlightenment, it only includes the default modules, which are known to be stable, and for each type of work there's only one application installed. CUPS is not installed by default, nor are the proprietary graphics drivers for Nvidia and ATI.

Petite Linux installs Wine primarily for playing Windows games. The online HOWTO page about games even explains how to run Windows games in Wine and lists some games that are known to work. For more information about compatibility issues, the web page refers to the Wine Application Database. The HOWTO also lists some steps to install Steam in Wine, and even how to re-use the Steam games you have already downloaded in Windows on the same computer, so you don't have to download them again in Petite Linux. Of course there are also Linux games: Petite Linux refers to openSUSE's Games repository for this.

Although Petite Linux shows you a nice Enlightenment desktop, you should take the idea that everything "just works" with a big grain of salt. This begins on the live CD: there's not even an icon in the menu or on the desktop to install the distribution. Users have to read the online HOWTO to know that they should hit Alt+Esc for the "run command" window, then type "live" and choose the live installer. This opens openSUSE's YaST2 live installer. Users should also know that the live CD comes with a root password "linux", which they will need to run the live installer.

But even after installation, the distribution shows a lot of quirks. The first is that Petite Linux automatically logs in the user, although your author explicitly unchecked that option in the installer. Moreover, it didn't honor his settings for the user and the keyboard layout: Petite Linux does an auto-login with the user "alfa" (the same user as the live CD runs). The HOWTO page gives some explanation about how you change the autologin user and copy the Enlightenment configuration, but even this explanation is incomplete and won't "just work" for the distribution's target users. In addition, if you want to install extra Enlightenment modules, you need to check out the module code from the Enlightenment Subversion repository and compile the code yourself, which is not so user-friendly and certainly not very maintainable.

From enlightenment to nirvana

Enlightenment proves that users can have a nice looking desktop without eating up all of their computer's resources. While there exist other lightweight desktop environments like LXDE and Xfce, Enlightenment does the same but with more style. So if you have an older computer or a slow netbook that you'll want to make use of as efficiently as possible, an Enlightenment distribution could be the way to go.

If you're an experienced user and want to have your own choice, Bodhi Linux is currently the best candidate, but if you'd like an Enlightenment distribution that makes decisions for you, have a look at Petite Linux. Unfortunately, both distributions still have some issues: due to the lack of package signing, Bodhi Linux will make security-conscious users wary, and Petite Linux is not polished enough to deserve the status of a "just works" distribution. As well-meant as both projects are, both 1.0 releases show that it takes much more than slapping a desktop environment on top of a base operating system to create a new distribution. Of the two, Bodhi Linux seems the most promising distribution: with some work on the package signing, it could find a niche and reach the nirvana of Enlightenment distributions.