Post by ppc76 on Jul 9, 2020 9:31:22 GMT
I'm a Linux entusiast- since I found out about Linux, some 25 years ago, when a disk with Knoppix live cd came with a magazine I bought. It looked great, even smother that the Windows version I had installed. If already came with some cool looking games. I had only a dial up connection at that time, and liked Linux so much I even bought an external modem, because the "winmodem" that I had in my desktop didn't work with Linux.
I went with dual boot for a very long time. Booted to windows for some games and if I needed Ms Office, all the rest, I used se timeveral Linux distros over time.
Now I only use Linux, I've been using it for work for about 15 years now. I'm fortunate that all office work I do has to be in PDF format, so, I can use LibreOffice without worries...
How did I get to Bodhi?
Long story. A few years back I noticed my home computer (running Mint) was slow, so I began looking for lighter alternatives. Used Xunbuntu and Lunbuntu for a while, found out about antiX, installed it on a old netbook I got and it made it quite usable!
When I gave my parents this HP 32bits laptop, in 2016, I searched for a distro to make it run fast. My test was opening youtube on firefox and test how smooth it played. For some reason Bodhi did better than antiX at this particular hardware and I went with it- sure it Moksha looks much better than IceWM with a comparable memory footprint, it has many kinks that are sometimes hard to get used to, but considering only the user standpoint (and not the configuration part), Bodhi is ideal for senior users even on very old computers!
It's true thar the latest Enlightnment does have some more eye candy and it's not much more resource heavy- but we can notice that Bodhi's tiny dev team does put lots of love and care into it- in every detail... It may be strange to configure, but it's very intuitive to use!
It was not just good stuff, updating Bodhi in this very old computer, and I even gave some suggestions in the LQ forum.. I don't like to critizise other people's work, mainly when it's really, really good. So, when I point small Bodhi shortcommings, I do try to help and present solutions that the Dev's may (or may not) take.
I know that this distro's take on Linux is minimalist- just the bare minimum, and the user installs what's needed (or installs the the version already loaded with many apps) But being minimalist does not have to push users to use the terminal, particulary on something as essential as having an up to date system (or set the right date)- so I wrote a script that just performes apt update and upgrade but without any need to interact with the terminal or type any commands.
Another thing I noticed is that there is no GUI way, out of the box, to set time. This is particulary important to me because, many months a year internet time servers do get my portuguese timezone wrong by an hour- so I have to adjust time settings by hand. I collaborated on getting a GUI that's ugly but efficient and allow users to manually set time, date, choose the correct timezeone or try to automaticly set time and date (that's now included on another distro) - for most users this last two options are the way to get the correct time on their systems. I addaped the script to run on Bodhi and published it on the LQ forum... I put my work where my mouth is- the Dev's should not have to do everyhting for themselves! We use something for free, it's our duty not to just complain but also try to help!!!
P.
