Bodhi Linux

[Jeff91]

Originally Posted by wdhpr

My problem and I emphasize my there are too many buttons and switches for my liking.

Thats not only you - some people are just frozen when having too much power/control. Thats just how they are.

We are not about to pull a Unity/Gnome 3 however and remove most all control from the user. Instead we are working on an option that will allow users to "lock" their configuration. When locked all change options will be removed from sight (and thusly out of mind). Meaning users that just want a default set look won't be reminded constantly of all the customizations they could be doing.

~Jeff

[wdhpr]

We are not about to pull a Unity/Gnome 3 however and remove most all control from the user. Instead we are working on an option that will allow users to "lock" their configuration. When locked all change options will be removed from sight (and thusly out of mind). Meaning users that just want a default set look won't be reminded constantly of all the customizations they could be doing.

That is a excellent idea Taking that a step forward. How about a way to save a configuration after they have gotten it to look the way they want. Its not the power/control as much as getting lost after trying this switch or pushing that button. But then again I'm not overly concerned on how it looks. Probably explains why I kept my old brown Buick for so long

[Jeff91]

Originally Posted by wdhpr

How about a way to save a configuration after they have gotten it to look the way they want.

Already done mate - http://www.muktware.com/blogs/02/2011/1312

~Jeff

[MidnightCowboy]

That's answered that one I guess then

Friends came for lunch today complete with grotty teenage daughter in tow armed with an infected laptop sporting a dying copy of XP She looked at my screen and said "wow, wish I could have that", so half an hour later and she did. Another Bodhi convert and possibly a less infected one from now on too. Still have a few progs to put on later once her ladyship has made up her mind which one's she wants

[wdhpr]

Nice

On MS Windows I always saved my icons and start menu items by backing them up weekly with Titan back up. Customized themes can be saved from the Windows settings. I never knew how they would get messed up, but they did.

Anyway this ability is built in to Unity which makes enormous sense. I wonder if you can save a copy of the custom "profile" file and keep it on a USB drive that way it would be a snap in case something got messed up or if you have to reinstall your OS.

[Jeff91]

All the profiles you create are stored in their own folder in your ~/.e/e/config folder. You can easily back them up to a pen drive or other storage media.

Making a GUI tool for doing this is on an eventual TODO list.

~Jeff

[wdhpr]

Originally Posted by Jeff91

Making a GUI tool for doing this is on an eventual TODO list.

That would be great.

What I have been doing is making weekly images to restore my system. Fortunately with Linux I can keep it to around 4GB. To be honest I'm not quite sure how to save just my profile on Ubuntu. But what your suggesting with your GUI tool looks to be breaking new ground.

Cheers

[MidnightCowboy]

Originally Posted by Jeff91

Making a GUI tool for doing this is on an eventual TODO list.

~Jeff

This is just what Linux needs, making stuff easier instead of assuming that folks either have or will obtain the knowledge to take the difficult route

[wdhpr]

I remember old DOS days (thats dating myself) But I remembered and used over a dozen line item commands and knew where the files were placed and everything seemed simple enough. Then came Windows 3.0 and with it came the GUI. I recall how everybody hated windows at first but slowly the grumbling subsided and most just excepted the change and with it most of those line commands just faded away.

My first experience with Linux required very little knowledge of the line command maybe a apt-get this and sudo that. The results are a growing number of users with very little knowledge of the command line other than copying and pasting somethingh to the terminal and pressing enter. The lesson in this is that it will be very hard for people to reverse engineer their knowledge when all they have ever used are GUIs. I truly believe Linux is much more powerful using various line commands to complement the GUI. It would be great to see some kind of user interfaced tutorial that walks people through commonly used line commands. I have studied a couple of very good lessons which walked me through the basics but are quickly forgotten due to lack of use.

[MidnightCowboy]

Managed to mess up my sound yesterday which isn't surprising because I have been abusing the system somewhat to see if it would break Despite all of my attempts (apart from the sound) I had a few "segmentation fault" notices which self corrected and a window advising a fault with VLC on closure. This could well have been the skin though. The sound fault was weird. I have a "system" (two speakers + base unit) plugged into the rear jack and two more speakers connected to the front. The front pair were fine but I was getting hardly any sound from the R/H rear speaker. Despite exchanging emails with Jeff I couldn't find a fix. I confirmed it was me by booting from the live key and then decided to re-install. This is a W7 dual boot with everything of note on an external drive so no big problem.

The thing that impressed me this (second) time around was how quickly Bodhi can be set up, even allowing for the fact that much of the stuff you still have to get either from their online "click and install" or Synaptic. This time of course I didn't need so much stuff as before having tried and eliminated several of the options available for each category.

I opted for Chromium to run alongside the pre-installed Midori, Thunderbird, Deluge, VLC, K3B, Unetbootin, LibreOffice, Mirage and Pinta from the online store. I also got the theme pack from here and the Faenza icon set. I then loaded Firestarter, lm-sensors, GkrellM, Xpad and a few games using Synaptic. Having copied some stuff back over from my external drive, tweaked the theme and loaded a few extra modules, in no time I was back up and running from where I left off.

I really do like the simplicity of Bodhi plus how it looks great with so little effort. Changing the base theme also co-ordinates changes for your gadgets so you end up with a complete new look in just three clicks.