Snowlinux 4 "e17" Review: Good but not good enough compared to Bodhi 2.2.0

Enlightenment is definitely one of the best looking lightweight desktops that I have used. Thanks to Rasterman and team for creating and nurturing this amazing desktop. I would place it somewhere between Openbox and LXDE both in aesthetics as well as performance. Openbox runs on the least resources of the three but looks a bit blank whereas LXDE consumes a bit more RAM and CPU but can be customized to look absolutely stunning! E17 is somewhere intermediate, capable of running on modest resources and capable of looking very attractive. Bodhi 2.2 is the best example of a great looking E17 distro.

Last month I reviewed Bodhi and found it to be one of the best lightweight distros that I have used. Seriously beautiful and functional. So, when the Snowlinux 4 e17 release note came out in Distrowatch, I was interested to use and review it having used and impressed by the Snowlinux 3 e17, released in 2012.

Snowlinux 4 32-bit e17 ISO is about 884 MB in size. This assessment is done entirely by me. My assessment is based on installation on Asus K54C laptop with 2.2 Ghz Core i3 processor and 2 GB RAM and experience of using it for the last 3 days. As the name suggests, Enlightenment (e17) is the desktop environment here with Linux kernel 3.5.0 and it is based on Debian Wheezy. Enlightenment and Thunar 1.6.2 are the file managers provided here. I found quite a few limitations in Enlightenment file manager though it is very lightweight. Hence, thanks to the developers for providing Thunar, it is absolutely helpful.

Aesthetics

Obvious comparison will be with Bodhi 2.2.0 for any e17 distro. Though Snowlinux 4 "e17", with black panels and white background, looks way better than its XFCE counterpart, but it is no match for Bodhi. With so many catchy themes in Bodhi, Snowlinux with a single theme looks pretty bland. One good thing is that in Snowlinux, the effects are subtle and doesn't interfere with productivity.

From Snowlinux 4 e17 http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.com

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Review: Bodhi Linux 2.0.0 Alpha with Enlightenment desktop

Somehow I really like Enlightenment desktop because of it's extremely light but stable feel while using it. I have used MacPup and Puppy Linux earlier but never gave a shot at Bodhi Linux.

Today I downloaded daily build of Bodhi 2.0.0 from http://bodhilinux.com/  to test it from Pen-drive. The installation file is about 540 mb and can be downloaded from Sourceforge. It uses Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin as base.

However, it beats in the minimum specs requirement -  300mhz i386 Processor, 128 MB RAM & 1.5 GB HD Space!

With Start-up disk creator it was 5 min. job to create live-usb and it took about 5 minutes to boot (booting from live-usb takes a bit of time than regular hard-drive boot).

Enlightenment desktop is functional and simplistic. It uses the lightweight PCManFM file manager. The walking, flying & running penguin animations also add to variety on the desktop.

Application-wise, the default install has light-weight Midori browser along with Leafpad text editor, LXTerminal, Archive manager, GDebi Package installer among others. But, no office suite or internet tools are provided by default. However, the Bodhi AppCenter hosts literally all the useful apps that we use / like to use.

Users who like customization can choose their apps of choice from the list provided in the app center.

 However, newbies may like to install either Pratibha or Nikhila application set.

Pratibha Application Set is a trimmed down version of only essential apps and it has lightoffice (abiword, gnumeric, inkscape) for word processing, Claws for email and spreadsheet and pinta as image editor along with VLC player and X-chat.

Nikhila appears to be a complete suite with LibreOffice, Firefox web browser,  Adobe PDF Reader, Openshot video editor, Rhythmbox for music, VLC player, Pidgin for chat, Thunderbird as email client, etc. Pretty much all the things you expect from a complete linux distro. Synaptic manager is also available in case you are more comfortable with it.

By clicking install now button, user can easily download and install the application suites or preferred application without hitting the terminal, just like how we do in Ubuntu Software center.

Since Bodhi uses Ubuntu Precise as base, users can access all their preferred Ubuntu applications from the Bodhi AppCenter.

Further, I am impressed with the speed and multitasking ability here. I checked the CPU & RAM usage with Midori, Terminal and File Manager running, it came to a stunning 7.4% CPU and 133 MB RAM. Note: I am using a P4 single core.

Also, Bodhi is quite customizable. I haven't tried any customization at this stage but the gallery pics are quite impressive to say the least. Link to gallery http://www.bodhilinux.com/gallerydotw.php


Performance-wise it is comparable to Xubuntu & Lubuntu Precise for sure. I am typing this article from Bodhi only and pretty impressed with its performance.

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