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A Look At the Lightweight Equinox Desktop Environment

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the feature-rich-is-still-important dept.

Linux.com (who share Slashdot's corporate overlords) takes a look at the Equinox Desktop Environment and why, even though it is extremely lightweight, it may still lack the ability for widespread appeal. "the Equinox Desktop Environment (EDE) is the fastest desktop environment I know of -- but its lack of standards support and a few missing features may be troubling to some users. [...] EDE feels as light as a window manager but also offers the features mentioned above. The speed advantage of EDE most likely lies in its foundation, a modified version of the Fast Light ToolKit GUI library. EDE started almost instantly on the 500MHz machine I tested it on, whereas the other environments needed at least a few seconds. EDE provides a coherent and simple interface that requires little effort to learn."

21 of 197 comments (clear)

  1. I thought ... by jsnipy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I thought the command line was the fastest desktop interface ;)

    --
    -- if you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine
    1. Re:I thought ... by bsDaemon · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I went through a phase back in 2002 where I only used console tools. I didn't log into X for 3 months.

      I did all my editing in vi, used epic for irc, naim (ncurses-based aim/icq client), w3m for web browser, etc.

      I'd just Alt+F(x) between my vtty's and do my business. Frankly, I think that was one of the happiest times I've had on a computer in a long while.

    2. Re:I thought ... by bsDaemon · · Score: 3, Interesting

      my first nix experience was pure shell on freebsd. the first *nix box i brought up at home was because e15 was so damned cool. i made a few themes for it under the moniker "EvilGNU" -- mostly just little ports and tweaks of dr13/14 themes and whatnot though.

      making E themes is actually why I need glasses to see far away now :-(

      Fluxbox is pretty nice though.

    3. Re:I thought ... by hedwards · · Score: 4, Interesting

      That's really not true, all of the original Desktop computers were CLI only. The term "Desktop" refers to the location of the computer not to the interface. It's a statement of format rather than presentation. It was in contrast to mainframes and mini-computers of the day, this one could be placed on a desk and used. Sort of like later when notebooks and laptops were made.

    4. Re:I thought ... by strabes · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Doesn't "desktop" refer to the "desktop metaphor" not the fact that the monitor is sitting on the top of a desk?

      --
      Its = possessive. It's = "it is"
  2. OLPC? by CustomDesigned · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Maybe EDE is a better GUI for OLPC. Starting the GUI instantly would be nice (takes about 10 seconds to restart sugar).

  3. xfce by nawcom · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I still like xfce for over this. It looks alot like windows 9x for some reason. http://www.xfce.org/ I dunno. I'm the enlightenment/fluxbox type, but if I want a DE so i can use compiz as the window manager, I always got lost in deciding Gnome or KDE, but as soon as I found xfce I decided its the best. The number of tray plugins are sortof limited, but all it needs is more developers willing to help out with that end.

  4. Make your own desktop by Tom9729 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Why not just make your own desktop environment?

    I used to use Gnome, but then it got too bloated so I moved to XFCE. Now XFCE is bloated (memory leaks in the panel app don't help either), so I made my own "desktop environment".

    I use fbpanel as a panel, Sawfish as a window manager, ImageMagick's "display" program to set the wallpaper, the Gnome settings daemon/screensaver applications, and a quick little Bash script I wrote to launch a Nautilus window without taking over the desktop.

    Sawfish has more features than Metacity, and pretty close to the same number of themes.

    The whole thing takes less than 40mb. I realize something like this isn't for everyone, but for me it does just what I want without using that much memory.

    1. Re:Make your own desktop by jasonmanley · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Wow this sounds like a cool little project. You should blog it with step-by-step instructions for others who might like to try it out ( like me :) ) I love to hear stories of people who innovate by thinking outside the spinning rhombus.

      --
      http://projectleader.wordpress.com
    2. Re:Make your own desktop by TeknoHog · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I've never really gotten into the desktop idea, especially with the panel. I started my Linux journey with Gnome, and with a 800x600 laptop display I thought the panel is a waste of space. Later I used Enlightenment for quite a while, and finally settled into the lightweight window manager world with Blackbox and then Fluxbox.

      My .xinitrc sets the background image with xsetbg and launches an xterm. I have a key combination to lauch more xterms, plus a few selected applications in the Fluxbox menu. The idea of opening a menu just by clicking the background is awesome -- no wasted space or distraction by the panel. I also use lots of virtual desktops, generally one per task, so as not to distract from the playing around.. I mean the job.

      --
      Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
    3. Re:Make your own desktop by jalefkowit · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Why not just make your own desktop environment?

      Because memory costs practically nothing and my time is expensive?

      --

      Read my blog.

    4. Re:Make your own desktop by Tom9729 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Why not just make your own desktop environment?


      Because memory costs practically nothing and my time is expensive?

      I said my solution wasn't for everyone. ;)

      I spent maybe 20 minutes setting the whole thing up on a whim. It's not like I went out and coded my own DE.
  5. Microsoft called... by mdw2 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    and they want their win95 widgets back.

    I would be quite upset if a GUI toolkit that looked like windows 95 wasn't quick on a 500MHz cpu. Win95 itself was blazing fast on hardware of that speed.

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    This sig intentionally left blank.
  6. Re:Windows 95 called.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Well, that's the FLTK default look.

    But some of us like that. I like knowing that the desktop is not wasting resources. That the widget toolkit is not wasting resources.

    Looks mean nothing to me. To me the visual design of widgets peaked with Xev, or maybe gray scale GEM.

  7. Re:the cycle of lightweight software by Tyir · · Score: 2, Interesting

    While your story does sound reasonable, I don't think that is what happens. For example, fluxbox is just now 1.0, and is still starts in around .5 seconds, and is really minimalistic. As is ratpoison, ion3, all the rest. I think the reason for them is that it's an itch that a lot of geeky OSS types like to scratch. A lot of people think GNOME/KDE are too slow, and people are very *very* particular about their window manager. If it doesn't fit exactly the way you want, then they write a new one. That's my feeling, anyway.

  8. Three words... by milatchi · · Score: 2, Interesting

    MaXX Interactive Desktop.
    MID is heavily based upon SGI's Indigo Magic Desktop and IRIX Interactive Desktop environments. I believe the developer may have an agreement with SGI also.
    http://5dwm.org/
    Anyway, since it's probably not GPL you can mod this post down like I know you want to.

    --
    Slashdot = -1 Redundant, Asperger, kdawson FUD, Libertarian, and Linux
  9. What about IceWM? by Ilyakub · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'm surprised to see that no one has yet mentioned IceWM. It's just as fast (or faster) than this EDE, but is much more popular and customizable. You can make IceWM look like almost every operating system, including Ubuntu (with the IceBuntu theme), Windows 2000 or Windows XP. Plus, IceWM has the best keyboard shortcut support of any desktop environment I've ever used.

  10. Re:Windows 95 called.... by JDWTopGuy · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Actually, IMO copying the Win95 interface may be EDE's strongest selling point. Who on earth doesn't know how to use it?

    --
    Ron Paul 2012
  11. Re:seriously... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    If someone could please tell me wtf was so funny about that, I'd be much obliged. None of it seemed particularly funny to me while living it.
    The amount of douche-baggery on Slashdot has reached a critical point. I chalk it up to this type of personality: the rightwing fucktard who doesn't have any actual science or engineering background but still thinks he understands everything better than the few of us here who actually have a clue. He logs in to tell us that global warming is a conspiracy and that all cosmologists are just making crap up. He confuses his "windoze certs" with an actual technical background. He also thinks that discussing legitimate problems in life (or concern about the environment or social justice) is just "whining" because his daddy hit him whenever he expressed an actual normal human emotion.
  12. Re:the cycle of lightweight software by martin-boundary · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Not really. You're assuming that OSS desktops are all chasing a single ideal target, which simply isn't the case.

    If two teams both try for the exact same target program, then a single team which pools the available expertise is more efficient. However, if two teams try for two different target programs, then a single team is less efficient, since the result will be approaching neither of the two targets.

    The mistake many OSS commentators make is that they think OSS wants to go where they would like it to go. Then they say things like why have several desktops, when the one ideal desktop *I* want is a combination of a couple of existing ones, and they would be more efficient at offering what *I* want if they combined forces instead of duplicating effort.

    In fact, if the goal is to get close to what each person wants for all people at the same time (the "utilitarian" goal), the best approach is to have hundreds of slight variations of the same program, so that regardless of what any one person wants, there's a random program which is only a short distance away. The more programs there are, the shorter the distance for everybody simultaneously.

  13. Re:Windows 95 called.... by Rhapsody+Scarlet · · Score: 4, Interesting

    They want their GUI interface back.

    There have been so many great UI innovations in the last decade, this seems pretty niche to me...

    Better that than copying Windows 3.1. Seriously, this may have been meant as humorous but I'm starting to get frustrated. Windows 95 is one of the very few times that Microsoft got things indisputably right. Yet despite that, it seems that everyone is determined to redesign this classic formula in an attempt to making things more usable, only I haven't seen anyone actually get it right. I'm using KDE right now, since it seems they're the ones least infected with this "Let's change everything for the sake of seeming fresh and original!" virus (seems to have started with Microsoft and spread out from there), but I'm sceptical about KDE 4. I know I'll probably use it someday, but I'm scared that they're going to fuck it up and the best desktop environment will end up losing a lot of its lead.

    I'm sure there's a user interface revolution on the scale of Windows 95 out there somewhere, I'm just hoping we don't have to wade through too much more crap before someone finds it.