Sunday, March 31, 2013

Bodhi Linux for Raspberry Pi

Today I saw a Google+ post on Bodhi Linux.  Bodhi Linux is a linux distribution leveraging the fast, customizable, and elegant Enlightenment Desktop. Based on Ubuntu, it is available for the Raspberry Pi (hard floating point).

The minimum requirements to run Bodhi Linux are only: 300+ MHz CPU, 128 MB RAM, and 2.5 GB hard drive space.

Minimalism is one of Bodhi Linux's two core ideals. The combination of Enlightenment and the core utilities included in a default Bodhi Linux install lead to exceptional speed and low system requirements, while providing a usable  and customizable desktop experience.  User choice is another important feature embodied in Bodhi Linux. By only including a small set of default utilities, the user is free to make Bodhi Linux their operating system. Users can install applications from our extremely easy to use AppCenter, apt-get, or Synaptic to suit their individual needs.

Bodhi is based on the very efficient NeXTStep design, invented by Scott Forestall, the former Apple chief software architect.  It still runs very fast even on oldest computers, e.g. a 68030 with only 32 MByte RAM. And it natively supports OpenGL hardware.  See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXTStep for more.


Small drawback: It's written in Objective-C. Objective-C is pure C, plus Smalltalk pipes for interprocess communication, for sharing data. Smalltalk is a communication oriented language, where 'state' is kept in small 'objects'. What these 'living objects' can understand or send, is coded in 'classes' and 'methods'. The language itself consists of just 5 elements - extremely easy to learn. Porting apps from MacOS X or iOS is simple. Included in EFL (Enlightenment Foundation Library) is the complete SDK with GUI builder.

If you're a person who wants to decide themselves how to run your Pi, this distro may be the one for you.
Download link: http://www.bodhilinux.com/downloads_mobile.php (scroll down to Raspberry Pi version)

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