Bodhi 6.0 pre-alpha release

Hello there

Maybe it should be useful to show you a list of newly added features to new Bodhi release. After a testing phase we will create an official announcement with all stuff around

Moksha changes

- Notification gadget added (you can place it on the shelf and set up in settings. This catches all notifications to history with icon, date, time, app name and app message).
www.enlightenment.org/ss/e-5f8843d4975d81.68253801.jpg
- Clipboard module new features: lock, remove, edit history item, ignore adding clipboard content to history.
www.enlightenment.org/ss/e-5f884407cb0e79.20994061.jpg
- Week numbers in the clock calendar for arc_green theme.
www.enlightenment.org/ss/e-5f88443750b110.93834589.jpg
- Menu: submenu parent items hilighted (thank raster for this) 
www.enlightenment.org/ss/e-5f88445ec68539.47168252.jpg
- Tiling: floating window menu item (E port)
i.imgur.com/tsdmZlQ.jpg
- Adjacent iBar label popup (an alternative to overlapping one)
i.imgur.com/Rh5gYt6.jpg%EF%BF%BD
- Menu: disable icons in menus option added (for super slow PCs)
- Moksha wizard: reverted the possibility to set up the language and keyboard layout after Bodhi installation and first run
- Moksha wizard: set up the keyboard layout automatically if set in installer
- Quick Launcher: Run with sudo fix 
- Language module enabled by default
- EFM: Auto-mount devices in EFM enabled by default
- Mixer module: maximum limit set up to 153 % by keyboard.
- Mixer module: Range limit notifications added
- Mixer module: keyboard "Esc" Escape and "M" mute shortcuts added
- Temperature module: animation and limit alert added
- CPUfreq module: move in drag mode seqfault fix
- iBar: icons on/off flash animation added to settings
- Iconic windows once again remain iconic across restarts
- Primary monitor windows placing fix
- Battery status popup on mouse click for better visibility
- Battery alert by default (5 mins or 5%)
- Borderless window menu item added (E backport)
- Menu: items without callback do not deactivate menu after click or Enter key (comfortable for touchscreens)
- Backlight: issue fix related to the first letter in capitals in VM
- Systray gadcon spacing related to Moksha scale factor or user defined (env_variable: MOKSHA_SYSTRAY_SPACING)
- Tasks "Shrink to fit" feature added
- XKBswitch module option group names fix
- GTK and Icon set selecting confusion fix (no need to uncheck "Match Moksha if possible")
- Icon set preview fix
- Clock module: Date & Time manual settings available
- Clock calendar: years change with mouse wheel
- Screen lock/unlock apps list save fix 
- Clipboard history list issue for small screens fixed
- Quick launcher zoom saving possiblity (use CTRL 3 or everything_configuration->geometry tab)
- Quick launcher popup size geometry increased to 2000x2000
- Quick launcher: single mouse click mode (right click for switching to action tab) 
- Shelf: maximized windows adjust shelf size
- Shelf: maximized windows adjust shelf orientation
- Border focused frame on/off option added for Arc themes

Themes

ArcGreenDark theme tunings:
- new semi transparent analog clock
- new start button animation with antialiased icon
- focused window with green border frame
- clock calendar week numbers support
- notification text visibility fix
- border bottom size fix after unshade
- some of greened apps icons added
- arc_green_dark theme autohide shelf issue fixed
- calendar module edc added
- shelf overlap issue fix 
- and more

All maintained themes:
- Themes adjusted to new EFL 1.25 relese
- Themes scaled for Full HD resolution
- Temp module support
- Themes ready for manual date change
- Left border controls (min, max, close) support for 7 themes. Possible to set up in border settings
- Notification gadget animation support
- Moksha Japan lots changes
- ArcDark theme maintained again and updated to all Moksha features
- Moksha and theme fix for shaped image objects
- Orig Radiance theme fixed and added
- E17 ViceVersa theme fixed and added

Modules

- New Wincontrol module created for controling windows from the shelf
- Desktitle module added (for showing the current desktop number or name)
- Forecast module based on wttr.in data
- Launcher Dictionary plugin improvements
- Engage module hide label fix
- Compton module reworked with compton fork called picom 
- Calendar module fix

Design

- New animated Bodhi wallpaper
- New Plymouth Bodhi theme
- New LightDM theme
- New splash screen 
- PNG icons instead of SVG for arc_green_icon set for better menu performance in case of very slow machines

We hope you will like it

Stefan

Just out of curiosity, does 6 use a different kernel than 5?

The kernel version in these ISOs is 5.4.0-51-generic. And the EFL version is  1.24.3.

This is not set in stone and I plan to update the EFL version to 1.25 and on the Enlightenment ISO also update e to 1.25 before the final release. The kernel version I will update to the whatever is the latest stable kernel in the Ubuntus 20/04 repo. 

Bodhi started off as an enlightenment distro. One of the very few at the time as currently there still are very few. Enlightenment then was at version e17 and it was in a rather alpha stage. Bodhi now uses Moksha but moksha is an e17 fork. Jeff decided to fork e17 and removed some stuff he considered problematic. Since we have forked e17 we have a number of improvements and customizations. Not to mention fixing as many bugs as possible that Moksha inherited from e17. Most of these bugs were of course fixed in enlightenment and we 'backported' them. Some bugs tho came from the way stuff was removed from e17 initially and some came from our own changes. When Jeff decided to fork Moksha he did so mostly because e18 and latter e19 were too unstable for our usage. There was also the additional problems of latter versions of enlightenment breaking our themes as well as nearly all our modules.

So to answer your question, enlightenment is going to be missing some features Moksha has. Such as the ability to set a background to a solid color in the settings, or our clipboard module, or Stefans latest notification changes. But Enlightenment is going to have some new features such as an improved ibar and most likely minor improvements in other modules that we haven't backported yet. This includes some serious improvements to the shot module making it more like our screenshot module.

Enlightenment also has native compositing build in, as did e17 originally. Jeff removed this as he claimed it was buggy and I know for a fact it did not support all hardware (my netbook for example). I am curious as to how much this Enlightenment compositing has improved and whether it does a better job now of supporting various difference combinations of video cards. Raster assures me it should.

As to resources, I have not tested this but I would expect the resource usage to be similar to what moksha provides. Perhaps even better than moksha as enlightenment has went through a much more intensive effort to fix memory issues such as leaking. When appropriate I backport these of course but there is no way Štefan and I match the development that goes into enlightenment without more help.  But regardless resource usage should be about the same as Moksha. All the 'heavy lifting' is done by EFL and it is the same library Moksha uses. As to stability I am going to leave that to the users to decide. I have been using e24 very heavily the last few months and while I have discovered one way to make it segfault I have found no other stability issues. As I haven't tested this particular segfault fault issue with enlightenment with the latest code from e-git I have not reported or investigated this issue. 

The reason for using pure Enlightenment as opposed to Moksha would be personal, mostly a matter of preference. I am releasing this for three reasons, one I get asked to do quite often. Two, to see how popular it will be, how many of our users migrate to it. And three, to give enlightenment better exposure, better testing and perhaps attract more users -- those that prefer enlightenment. Maybe even gain more support from some of e-devs themselves.

I will be like a kid in a candy store playing with these - just wish I had some technical skills to help out with.

Two thoughts keeping in mind opinions are going to range all over the spectrum.

1.) I am very very happy with Bodhi Moksha so for me I don't see an Enlightenment version as a benefit. I would have no issue with a Bodhi Moksha only release . . . I mean Moksha being a fork of Enlightenment why do the extra work of two DEs? Just the same I plan to check both BL6 versions out and will try to keep an open mind.

2.) I am of the opinion to keep Epiphany as the default browser. I think the Bodhi Standard at least should remain as light and nimble as possible which is why I really like the current approach. Right OOB Bodhi will run pretty well on some really resource challenged systems - I know first hand. I have nothing against FF, as a matter of fact I run it on my daily driver and will run it on my daily driver when I go to Bodhi. And that is the point - Bodhi starts out very very light and the user can judiciously decide what to add or replace keeping performance implications in mind.

On FF, I have had the curious experience that I can't log in directly to my router with FF but epiphany works fine.