Saturday, February 19, 2011

Bodhi Linux RC2 & Updates

After three weeks of user input and a few bugs reports the Bodhi team and I are happy to present our second release candidate (version number 0.1.6). This version features package updates such as Firefox beta 11 and a number of small changes that make the system feel a bit more seamless. For a full change log see here.

The colors scheme of many things on the disc now matches our new website colors:

Plymouth


Login Screen


We have also improved the process a user goes through when first starting Bodhi. Instead of having a copy of each profile for every theme, a user now selects from our six profiles:


And then choose from one of seven themes:


That means with six profiles and seven themes a user has forty two different configurations to choose from on their fresh install of Bodhi!

Don't worry if you don't care for any of the default themes on the disc. The Bodhi Art website is now live, it is still being fleshed out fully - but once it is fully completed users will be able to easily find and install a selection of Enlightenment and GTK themes, as well as icon sets and Bodhi wallpapers. Speaking of icon sets, as of the 0.1.6 release the default icon set for Bodhi has been changed to MaXo ReMix:


Our software center recently got a make over as well, it looks cleaner and now features software application sets - so users that are new to Linux can easily have a fully functional Linux desktop with a single click. The software center isn't the only thing that has been growing in the Bodhi community. Our development team is now in the double digits! We are happy to welcome three new team members:

Mark Sumter & Gregory Sandoval will be aiding in disc development.

and

Stephen Houston is the second Enlightenment developer we are welcoming to the team. He is the creator of ephoto and other E-Goodness.

You can find the new disc available for direct download at source forge or via high speed torrent download. Please give the disc a download and let us know what you think by dropping a comment below or by stopping by our forums.

~Jeff Hoogland

20 comments:

  1. giant LOGIN letters are terrible on login screen

    ReplyDelete
  2. Applause Jeff. Beautiful, beautiful work. Glad to be a part of the Bodhi dev team!

    ReplyDelete
  3. i think giant login letters are really cool looking :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Congratulations Jeff and the devel team.
    The timing for the release was very well chosen, as I'm downloading now and will have all Sunday to play with it.
    The login letters aren't that horrible. They steel focus to the brand name/logo, but just that.
    Thanks for the good work.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I set to auto-login anyway, so the login letters hardly matter.

    That said, the phrase "Ubuntu-based" on a new distro does rather make me sigh.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Where's the 64 bit? Another distro Id love to try out without full support for my hardware.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Since this is enlightenment based distro why not use entrance instead of gdm?

    ReplyDelete
  8. Thats actually LXDM, Entrance code is no long maintained and the new EFL login manager Elsa is not feature rich enough to be our default.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Grats to you Jeff and all on team Bodhi! **thumbs up!**

    Question:- How many RCs till the stable release?I must have missed the memo?

    Gave 0.1.5 a whirl and despite what some critics have said about this being just another *buntu rehash I'm well bowled over.Tried other E17 works from PCLOS and Sabayon (not to rag but to me both are a mess with the network applet drove me up the wall and general sys performance.Total opposite with Bodhi.), suffice to say that both aren't as E17-laser focused as what you guys have accomplished so far.Decent minimal install approach.Software center's setup are friendly for noobs like me.

    In terms of aesthetics I have no complains.Just stick this one a bit longer though it's a nice progress.

    Hopefully in the future the team can consider a Debian Sid base too and a more people-friendly Arch experiment.Not that I'm pushing ;p **hint**

    Looking forward to the stable debut! Good luck.

    ReplyDelete
  10. The current plan is one more RC the second weekend in March and then a "stable" release at the end of March. The team and I decided we would rather wait the extra month and ensure most all the bugs where out. Can always find our targeted release dates here:

    http://www.bodhilinux.com/forums/index.php?/topic/93-release-dates-and-installer-testing/

    Don't let the fact that more releases are coming discourage you from using Bodhi now though - you can easily upgrade to the latest release via your package manager.

    ReplyDelete
  11. I'll do a follow-up on the next RC, let me know when it's ready.

    I like the changes you made between .5 and .6, very pretty.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Do I need to do a dist-upgrade or will regular apt-get upgrade work? I'm already using Bodhi, and I like it a lot.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Just apt-get upgrade Dan - don't ever dist-upgrade with Bodhi - that will try to upgrade you to a different Ubuntu base - You do NOT want that.

    ReplyDelete
  14. sorry, my english isnt good
    i tried on low spec pc and works great, maybe just need few more themes and all will be excelent

    ReplyDelete
  15. @Ejecutivo Around a dozen or so themes can be found here - http://art.bodhilinux.com/

    More are adding each month :)

    ReplyDelete
  16. I really enjoyed this linux but how can I change the base language for European Portuguese or Portuguese of Brazil, like the keyboard configuration.
    Thanks

    ReplyDelete
  17. Hello!

    Bodhi look like a really beautiful distribution and I am going to go back to Linux with this distribution, but before I do this, I can't find any information whether it is 32 or 64 bit and the question is whether 32 bit version will see 4 Gb of RAM?
    This might be me being not very good at catching the details, but could you please post a link to instructions how to boot Bodhi installation from USB drive? I am considerably new to Linux and the last time I tried to boot Linux from USB ended up with me go to the shop and buying a CD.

    I would be grateful for your help and thank you for your time and finally providing a good free to use E17 Linux distribution.
    Best regards.

    ReplyDelete
  18. http://www.bodhilinux.com/wiki/doku.php?id=installation

    ReplyDelete
  19. Hello Jeff

    I am a newbe in Linux.. I have been trying out with pclinuxos for a month now and now I would like to switch to bodhi..reading from the reviews and enthused by enlightment I am downloading the distro...I am hopeful that atleast my laptop will match the driver specs..I am more interested in the latest kernel 2.6.37.X... hopefully you and your team would update the kernel as we go towards the release date and will be available on the repository?

    ReplyDelete
  20. NK - we currently ship the 2.6.35 kernel by default, however you will find an early build of the 2.6.38 kernel in our repository. Once that kernel is officially released we plan to change to it.

    ReplyDelete