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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."

8 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 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.

  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 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.
  5. 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.