Bodhi Linux 0.1.6 RC2 Released - 02/19/11 - Page 3

Jeff91 · 09. Mar 2011, 06:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dedoimedo

Hello all,
I still don't see why my review should be viewed as an affront.

The review was in poor spirit because you came at Bodhi Linux from the perspective that all those applications it lacks where suppose to be there, but weren't.

It is like doing a review of a compact car and complaining the entire time that it is different from your pickup truck. Yes you should mention that certain things are missing by design, but complaining that they are not there should not be the focus of the review.

At least thats my opinion on what a distro review should be... Projects are created with different goals in mind.

~Jeff

wdhpr · 10. Mar 2011, 01:32 AM

Hello Dedoimedo
I have also read many of your reviews and find them informative and at times entertaining

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dedoimedo

I am not frightened or discouraged by anyone not liking my work. Especially considering what I view to be the "average" or "standard" compared to what a typical Linux user, if such a thing exists, might think.
Dedoimedo

With two years of Linux experience I am probably your quintessential average user. When I was a newcomers first trying Linux, I just needed things to work out of the box. I also needed all those apps that were part of the initial install. I needed them because I had no Idea what did what. Other than Firefox and Thunderbird pretty much every thing else was brand new to me.
A newcomer would have been lost trying to use Bodhi. The average user with a couple of years experience would of or should of have been able to Install the applications as to their needs. I guess Its how to measure what is average or typical.

In my opinion Jeff was upfront as to the nature of Bodhi.
For example:

Quote:

~Jeff Hoogland
__________________
Bodhi Linux - Minimalistic & Enlightened - http://bodhilinux.com/

Wdhpr

Dedoimedo · 10. Mar 2011, 07:34 AM

I don't dispute the nature of Bodhi.

When reviewing software, there are two approaches: 1) try to understand what the software does, sympathize with its cause and then present the software 2) use a set methodology and pit everything against it.

The first approach does not offer a reference. In other words, everything will be tested with its own set of tools, ideas, etc, allowing no comparison. To give you a radical example, and totally not related to software, it's like saying, let's try to judge what Stalin did, but see it through his eyes. If you go that way, you can justify anything. I'm sure that Gentoo makes sense for people who need Gentoo, just as Ubuntu makes senses for people who need Ubuntu. Both cater to different crowds and therefore the term easy, available, stable, beautiful become entirely related to how you look at things. But this leaves no room for comparison at all. In other words, each software product becomes its own world.

The second approach is about setting a baseline. In my case, the baseline is my own subjective interpretation of how I perceive software should be and what it should behave like. Again, I might be deluded and think that I understand what newbies want or need and so forth. But I try to present an universal approach of use the way I like things to be. In this regard, I hope my approach co-aligns with what you'd might call the average user. And remember, everyone perceives average to be something else.

Comparing a compact car to a truck is wrong, if you go by 1. But if you're looking for a comfortable and affordable transportation unit, then you can compare the two.

I'm looking for easy to use, well integrated, aesthetic, robust operating systems. The kernel version, the application stack, the themes, everything else, are components that build the overall picture.

I approach the reviews from Y -> X. What do I need, first. Then, how do I get there. If I understand some of you correctly, you use the classic approach X -> Y. I have a set of variables, let's see what the outcome is.

This is like classic experiments versus statistical engineering. Your possibility space is much larger. Mine is narrow. The first approach also permits more leeway to interpretation, which is similar to what is done in the academy - like outliers this, outliers that. My approach forces you to focus on the specific outcomes and judge the inputs against them.

So without trying to preach on how experiments are done, I have one goal in mind: being able to enjoy the computer with ease, pleasure and stability. The rest is cosmetics or lack thereof.

To sum it up, if I were to say: for people looking for a minimalistic distro with an enlightened desktop, then a minimalistic distro with an enlightened desktop makes sense indeed. But that means you're coming to prove what you wanted to prove. On the other hand, if I were to say: I want 30 sec. boot time, no crash on suspend and resume, codecs out of the box, compiz effects, ext4 filesystem, and gmail desktop integration, then the objective becomes different.

It's the matter of options degeneracy. Any distro can potentially match my criteria. But not any criteria can match a specific distro.

Regards,
Dedoimedo

bk_7312 · 10. Mar 2011, 02:31 PM

I would like to try and evaluate Dedoimedo's review of Bodhi Linux. The conclusion of the review is that Bodhi Linux is "Minimalistic and pointless". Being minimalistic is one of the features of Bodhi Linux but saying it is pointless is quite a bold statement.

At the beginning of the review, Dedoimedo says and I quote "I remembered that I did not really like E17." Of course everyone has their own personal opinions so we can't blame the reviewer on this. During the course of the review, Dedoimedo raises a few issues which are summarized below. Hopefully I didn't miss anything too important.

1. There is a lack of softwares installed by default, eg. no screenshot utility, no samba, no media player, no plugins (I assume he means Flash Player and etc.) and no text editor. Only Firefox 4 and the terminal (and Vi) are installed by default, therefore making it a bit too minimalistic.

2. There is a small minor Firefox bug, which according to Jeff, has been fixed.

3. The default theme is "written in white on white, bad contrast, offset toward the top in an annoying manner, has weird shadowing, the bad font choice and it's four sizes smaller than Firefox own menu, which uses a completely different font." "Consistency wise, there's nothing here. For OCD people, this is bad."

4. Bodhi Linux is not worth 400MB, Puppy Linux did better with around 100MB (I rephrased it a bit, hope the meaning is still the same).

5. The repositories are unsigned.

6. Audio doesn't work.

7. Annoyance issues such as no Alt-Tab, no focus on active window and also, a fully maximized window covers the entire desktop which is "cumbersome and counterproductive".

8. There appears to be a bug in mounting and labeling of partitions (not too sure what the problem here is).

9. Too much work has to be done to turn Bodhi Linux into something more of a "typical desktop" (Again, slight rephrase).

Now to evaluate the reasoning and see how these issues (or reasons) support the conclusion that Bodhi Linux is "pointless".

1. The definition of 'minimalistic' varies from person to person (just like the different opinions about window managers) and different people have different needs and criteria to satisfy when choosing a Linux distro. Thus the problem here is likely to be the target audience, whether the user in question wants a more 'out of the box' desktop or a more minimalistic one. In the review, Dedoimedo seems to consider the target audience as the former and this slightly undermine the conclusion of Bodhi Linux being "pointless".

2. Not much to be mentioned here.

3. The default theme (first impression) can really turn a potential user away. Although themes can easily be changed with a few mouse clicks, having a default theme that isn't consistent and has a bad design to it is not a good sign.

4. This is rather strange as one would expect such a minimalist distro to be much much more smaller in size. Puppy Linux has more pre-installed softwares and more functionality than Bodhi Linux and yet it only weighs around 100MB. Almost 4 times smaller in size than Bodhi Linux!

5. Having an unsigned repository can potentially scare users away from installing softwares for fear of security risks and etc so having a signed repository would make a lot more sense but in can sometimes give users a false sense of security if the repository is compromised (although it rarely happens). Installing softwares is the user's responsibility and common sense must always be applied. This is more of a security issue.

6. Could be hardware specific, not much to be said.

7. Universal shortcuts such as Alt-Tab and some common settings being absent can compromise the user experience as the user will either have to set the shortcuts and settings manually or adapt to the new shortcut and settings (which can sometimes cause confusion to friends or when using a different OS). In my opinion, this is a big usability issue and can annoy some potential users.

8. Don't have sufficient knowledge to comment on this.

9. Not everyone wants a 'fully featured, out of the box' distro, some users may prefer to have more control over what is installed in their OS. Again, this is a question of target audience.

Note: It should be taken into consideration that Dedoimedo in his review, viewed the distro in the perspective of the "average user" and it would seemed that the definition of "average user" used is the average Linux convert or someone who don't know much about Linux, given that he questioned "Do you expect the average user to hunt for hundreds of missing programs and be able to tell the difference between Shutter, Shotwell, Openshot, and F-Spot?".

In conclusion, for the "average user", Bodhi Linux may seem to be a bit pointless when compared to the other available distros but if it is addressed to the proper target audience, then the review cannot conclude that Bodhi Linux is pointless.

Disclaimer: I have never used Bodhi Linux before but the point of this whole post is to evaluate the review, not the distro.

Wow, that was a long post. I think it's the longest one I've ever made, ever.

Now I can't remember why I did all this in the first place...

__________________
A lot can change in a short period of time.
What do you think changelogs are for?

Jeff91 · 10. Mar 2011, 07:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bk_7312

3. The default theme (first impression) can really turn a potential user away. Although themes can easily be changed with a few mouse clicks, having a default theme that isn't consistent and has a bad design to it is not a good sign.

4. This is rather strange as one would expect such a minimalist distro to be much much more smaller in size. Puppy Linux has more pre-installed softwares and more functionality than Bodhi Linux and yet it only weighs around 100MB. Almost 4 times smaller in size than Bodhi Linux!

5. Having an unsigned repository can potentially scare users away from installing softwares for fear of security risks and etc so having a signed repository would make a lot more sense but in can sometimes give users a false sense of security if the repository is compromised (although it rarely happens). Installing softwares is the user's responsibility and common sense must always be applied. This is more of a security issue.

7. Universal shortcuts such as Alt-Tab and some common settings being absent can compromise the user experience as the user will either have to set the shortcuts and settings manually or adapt to the new shortcut and settings (which can sometimes cause confusion to friends or when using a different OS). In my opinion, this is a big usability issue and can annoy some potential users.

3 Bodhi comes with 7 different default themes the user chooses from on startup... So if you don't like the default theme odds are it is your own fault

4 The innards of the OSes are 100% different. Bodhi runs on Ubuntu and Puppy is well... Its own thing. Ubuntu with X alone is around a 300meg ISO

5 apt-get's keys signing is a joke that provides a false sense of security to it's users and Ubuntu PPAs have only furthered this issue - but that is a rant for another day

.

7 Alt-tab... Works? Never had anyone else say otherwise and none of the 2 dozen + systems I've run Bodhi on personally have had an issue with it.

~Jeff

Ritho · 10. Mar 2011, 10:10 PM

Actually alt-tab does not seem to work on my netbook. But I had not noticed because I rarely use alt-tab. I have the forward and back buttons on the bottom bar, and that works fine for me. On a desktop I might use alt-tab more often.

lonny · 10. Mar 2011, 10:20 PM

Wrong

http://wiki.debian.org/SecureApt

Jeff91 · 11. Mar 2011, 02:55 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ritho

Actually alt-tab does not seem to work on my netbook. But I had not noticed because I rarely use alt-tab. I have the forward and back buttons on the bottom bar, and that works fine for me. On a desktop I might use alt-tab more often.

Oh - yes I don't have alt-tab enabled by default on just the tablet profile because of the application switcher at the top and then nav buttons on the bottom - it works across all the desktop/normal profiles.

Perhaps if people really need it I can add it by default to the tablet as well.

@lonny What prevents someone with an apt-key though from putting code the destroys a system or steals information into one of their packages?

~Jeff

wdhpr · 11. Mar 2011, 05:32 AM

bk_7312 wrote:

Quote:

Wow, that was a long post. I think it's the longest one I've ever made, ever.

Now I can't remember why I did all this in the first place...

I know.....had to get another cup of coffee to finish reading it

Wdhpr

MidnightCowboy · 11. Mar 2011, 08:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by wdhpr

bk_7312 wrote:

I know.....had to get another cup of coffee to finish reading it

Wdhpr

It's great to see these contributions though and the (relatively

) civil manner in which the different arguments are being presented.

Remember it's the contribution that is important, no matter whether you happen to agree with its content

10. Mar 2011, 10:10 PM	#26 (permalink)
Ritho Senior Member Join Date: Apr 2008 Location: Planet Earth Posts: 1,379	Actually alt-tab does not seem to work on my netbook. But I had not noticed because I rarely use alt-tab. I have the forward and back buttons on the bottom bar, and that works fine for me. On a desktop I might use alt-tab more often. __________________ The smallest good deed is better than the greatest intention.

10. Mar 2011, 10:20 PM	#27 (permalink)
lonny Full Member Join Date: Aug 2009 Posts: 68	"apt-get's keys signing is a joke"... Wrong http://wiki.debian.org/SecureApt

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10. Mar 2011, 07:34 AM	#23 (permalink)
Dedoimedo Editor Join Date: Mar 2011 Posts: 90	I don't dispute the nature of Bodhi. When reviewing software, there are two approaches: 1) try to understand what the software does, sympathize with its cause and then present the software 2) use a set methodology and pit everything against it. The first approach does not offer a reference. In other words, everything will be tested with its own set of tools, ideas, etc, allowing no comparison. To give you a radical example, and totally not related to software, it's like saying, let's try to judge what Stalin did, but see it through his eyes. If you go that way, you can justify anything. I'm sure that Gentoo makes sense for people who need Gentoo, just as Ubuntu makes senses for people who need Ubuntu. Both cater to different crowds and therefore the term easy, available, stable, beautiful become entirely related to how you look at things. But this leaves no room for comparison at all. In other words, each software product becomes its own world. The second approach is about setting a baseline. In my case, the baseline is my own subjective interpretation of how I perceive software should be and what it should behave like. Again, I might be deluded and think that I understand what newbies want or need and so forth. But I try to present an universal approach of use the way I like things to be. In this regard, I hope my approach co-aligns with what you'd might call the average user. And remember, everyone perceives average to be something else. Comparing a compact car to a truck is wrong, if you go by 1. But if you're looking for a comfortable and affordable transportation unit, then you can compare the two. I'm looking for easy to use, well integrated, aesthetic, robust operating systems. The kernel version, the application stack, the themes, everything else, are components that build the overall picture. I approach the reviews from Y -> X. What do I need, first. Then, how do I get there. If I understand some of you correctly, you use the classic approach X -> Y. I have a set of variables, let's see what the outcome is. This is like classic experiments versus statistical engineering. Your possibility space is much larger. Mine is narrow. The first approach also permits more leeway to interpretation, which is similar to what is done in the academy - like outliers this, outliers that. My approach forces you to focus on the specific outcomes and judge the inputs against them. So without trying to preach on how experiments are done, I have one goal in mind: being able to enjoy the computer with ease, pleasure and stability. The rest is cosmetics or lack thereof. To sum it up, if I were to say: for people looking for a minimalistic distro with an enlightened desktop, then a minimalistic distro with an enlightened desktop makes sense indeed. But that means you're coming to prove what you wanted to prove. On the other hand, if I were to say: I want 30 sec. boot time, no crash on suspend and resume, codecs out of the box, compiz effects, ext4 filesystem, and gmail desktop integration, then the objective becomes different. It's the matter of options degeneracy. Any distro can potentially match my criteria. But not any criteria can match a specific distro. Regards, Dedoimedo

10. Mar 2011, 02:31 PM	#24 (permalink)
bk_7312 Senior Member Join Date: Feb 2009 Location: 3rd largest island, smallest country there. Posts: 229	I would like to try and evaluate Dedoimedo's review of Bodhi Linux. The conclusion of the review is that Bodhi Linux is "Minimalistic and pointless". Being minimalistic is one of the features of Bodhi Linux but saying it is pointless is quite a bold statement. At the beginning of the review, Dedoimedo says and I quote "I remembered that I did not really like E17." Of course everyone has their own personal opinions so we can't blame the reviewer on this. During the course of the review, Dedoimedo raises a few issues which are summarized below. Hopefully I didn't miss anything too important. 1. There is a lack of softwares installed by default, eg. no screenshot utility, no samba, no media player, no plugins (I assume he means Flash Player and etc.) and no text editor. Only Firefox 4 and the terminal (and Vi) are installed by default, therefore making it a bit too minimalistic. 2. There is a small minor Firefox bug, which according to Jeff, has been fixed. 3. The default theme is "written in white on white, bad contrast, offset toward the top in an annoying manner, has weird shadowing, the bad font choice and it's four sizes smaller than Firefox own menu, which uses a completely different font." "Consistency wise, there's nothing here. For OCD people, this is bad." 4. Bodhi Linux is not worth 400MB, Puppy Linux did better with around 100MB (I rephrased it a bit, hope the meaning is still the same). 5. The repositories are unsigned. 6. Audio doesn't work. 7. Annoyance issues such as no Alt-Tab, no focus on active window and also, a fully maximized window covers the entire desktop which is "cumbersome and counterproductive". 8. There appears to be a bug in mounting and labeling of partitions (not too sure what the problem here is). 9. Too much work has to be done to turn Bodhi Linux into something more of a "typical desktop" (Again, slight rephrase). Now to evaluate the reasoning and see how these issues (or reasons) support the conclusion that Bodhi Linux is "pointless". 1. The definition of 'minimalistic' varies from person to person (just like the different opinions about window managers) and different people have different needs and criteria to satisfy when choosing a Linux distro. Thus the problem here is likely to be the target audience, whether the user in question wants a more 'out of the box' desktop or a more minimalistic one. In the review, Dedoimedo seems to consider the target audience as the former and this slightly undermine the conclusion of Bodhi Linux being "pointless". 2. Not much to be mentioned here. 3. The default theme (first impression) can really turn a potential user away. Although themes can easily be changed with a few mouse clicks, having a default theme that isn't consistent and has a bad design to it is not a good sign. 4. This is rather strange as one would expect such a minimalist distro to be much much more smaller in size. Puppy Linux has more pre-installed softwares and more functionality than Bodhi Linux and yet it only weighs around 100MB. Almost 4 times smaller in size than Bodhi Linux! 5. Having an unsigned repository can potentially scare users away from installing softwares for fear of security risks and etc so having a signed repository would make a lot more sense but in can sometimes give users a false sense of security if the repository is compromised (although it rarely happens). Installing softwares is the user's responsibility and common sense must always be applied. This is more of a security issue. 6. Could be hardware specific, not much to be said. 7. Universal shortcuts such as Alt-Tab and some common settings being absent can compromise the user experience as the user will either have to set the shortcuts and settings manually or adapt to the new shortcut and settings (which can sometimes cause confusion to friends or when using a different OS). In my opinion, this is a big usability issue and can annoy some potential users. 8. Don't have sufficient knowledge to comment on this. 9. Not everyone wants a 'fully featured, out of the box' distro, some users may prefer to have more control over what is installed in their OS. Again, this is a question of target audience. Note: It should be taken into consideration that Dedoimedo in his review, viewed the distro in the perspective of the "average user" and it would seemed that the definition of "average user" used is the average Linux convert or someone who don't know much about Linux, given that he questioned "Do you expect the average user to hunt for hundreds of missing programs and be able to tell the difference between Shutter, Shotwell, Openshot, and F-Spot?". In conclusion, for the "average user", Bodhi Linux may seem to be a bit pointless when compared to the other available distros but if it is addressed to the proper target audience, then the review cannot conclude that Bodhi Linux is pointless. Disclaimer: I have never used Bodhi Linux before but the point of this whole post is to evaluate the review, not the distro. Wow, that was a long post. I think it's the longest one I've ever made, ever. Now I can't remember why I did all this in the first place... __________________ A lot can change in a short period of time. What do you think changelogs are for?