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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."

60 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 gnugnugnu · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The command line is an interface but it isn't a Desktop interface.

    3. Re:I thought ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      The ASCIIpr0n starts to get old after a while though

    4. Re:I thought ... by xaxa · · Score: 4, Funny

      I went through a phase back in 2002 where I only used console tools. I didn't log into X for 3 months. ...
      Frankly, I think that was one of the happiest times I've had on a computer in a long while. So why did you stop?

      (Perhaps you were fed up missing out on images?)
    5. Re:I thought ... by Ynot_82 · · Score: 5, Funny

      someone sent him a funny youtube link

    6. Re:I thought ... by bsDaemon · · Score: 5, Funny

      no, it was the summer before I left for college. I was working at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator facility as an intern in Instrumentation and Control of the Free Electron Laser. After spending all day staring at high-resolution monitors counting pixels because I was working on spotsize detection, the last thing I needed was bright lights and tiny print when I came home.

      When I went to school, I had to use X because I had to program in Java and do stupid Swing things.

      About half way into my first semester my girlfriend ditched me after 5 years and I had sort of a break down and ended up switching to the English department, where being a sad, whiny little bitch gets you bonus points.

      Then all I did was write papers. I never learned LaTeX, and even if I knew it, I'd have been too lazy to use it, so it was StarOffice and then OpenOffice.org - again, under X.

      I'm going back to get another degree in engineering though, so I'm getting out of "lazy mode."

      its not so much the images -- w3m can display them in frame buffer.

    7. Re:I thought ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      After 3 months of ASCII porn, he started to get excited while reading books.

    8. 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.

    9. Re:I thought ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      It turns out he really was reading Playboy for the articles.

    10. Re:I thought ... by palegray.net · · Score: 5, Informative

      Nonsense. Everyone knows you can view live ASCII video. Bash 4 life.

      --
      512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
    11. Re:I thought ... by ubrgeek · · Score: 4, Funny

      Should this be marked, "Funny" or "Informative"? ;)

      --
      Bark less. Wag more.
    12. Re:I thought ... by hedwards · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I just loaded it up on my freebsd 6.3 box, and so far it's quite snappy. As surprising as it is too me, this seems to be significantly faster that fluxbox. Running firefox via wine on it is quite a bit faster than just a minute ago.

      Theme isn't great, but I'm personally far more interested in stability and performance. A GUI really is just a means to an ends, if it's taking up a whole lot of resources, that's just broken. The main reason I run fbsd is that I can get away with keeping a computer for several years without suffering a whole lot from performance.

      It also happens to have one of the features which I miss from vista, the ability to cruise through to a folder via a convenient start menu option is nice, and the ability to launch the file or open the folder as well. Can't imagine how often I'll be using it, but it's kind of slick.

      Perhaps I'm weird, but I personally think that I paid for the performance of this computer, and I want that to be available to the programs and applications that I'm using.

    13. 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.

    14. 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"
    15. Re:I thought ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      Does laptop refer to the laptop metaphor?

    16. Re:I thought ... by lysse · · Score: 3, Informative

      youtube-dl -b -o funny-youtube-link.flv [URL]
      mplayer -ao alsa -vo fbdev funny-youtube-link.flv

    17. Re:I thought ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Slashdot needs a "disturbing" tag

  2. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 4, Funny

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  3. 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).

  4. Yucky by jberryman · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It looks like a Windows 98 clone; even that graphic with the computer and keyboard looks like it was stolen from a MS time capsule.

  5. "Missing Features" by Darundal · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I wonder if those missing features were not included for speeds sake or because the developers of EDE didn't think that they were important.

  6. Plenty of choices by markdavis · · Score: 4, Insightful

    There are also plenty of great uses for lightweight window managers:

    1) New low-power machines with slower CPU's
    2) Older machines being brought back to life
    3) Lock-down environments were you want grant a little as possible to the user. Kiosks, single-purpose machines, etc
    4) Thin client environments where you want to push as little eye candy as possible through the network
    5) Smaller virtual machines where you want to use a little space as possible
    6) Live distros that you want to load quicky

    We have used IceWM for over a decade. Fast, stable, controllable: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icewm
    Looks like EDE is just another to add to the mix of blackbox, fluxbox, twm, etc.

  7. 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.

    1. Re:xfce by DeathCarrot · · Score: 3, Informative
      Yeah if it's a lightweight DE you're looking for, Xfce is pretty much the only logical choice. I also switched from Fluxbox to Xfce and couldn't believe how much lighter and faster this thing is than Gnome or KDE given it has all the same core functionality.

      The number of tray plugins are sortof limited, but all it needs is more developers willing to help out with that end. I've never had this problem. There's quite a nice list here, but if that's not enough, you can always use Gnome plugins with it. Granted, a lot of people (including myself) refuse to install the base gnome or kde libs, in which case that wouldn't be viable.
    2. Re:xfce by Paaskonijn · · Score: 3, Informative
      You should be able to add just about any GNOME panel plugin with XfApplet.

      Quick Launch seems to do pretty much the same thing as Xfce's Quicklauncher plugin though, so you might want to give that a try first.

  8. the cycle of lightweight software by speculatrix · · Score: 4, Insightful

    yet another light-weight desktop. fluxbox, xfce, ratpoison, etc etc. why so many?

    herewith my theory of the cycle of lightweight software.

    • program $Z is bloated and slow, lets write a small, streamlined, lightweight replacement
    • 0.0 - the program runs, does something but not much
    • 0.1 - it's beginning to be useful
    • 0.2 - it's not bad, you don't miss program $Z so much now
    • 0.3 - 0.9 - hey, where's my fave feature $F, you can't be seriously missing that out, ok, we'll add that in
    • release 1.0 - quite good, not too bloated, fairly quick, has its serious fanboys, but most people would rather stick with $Z and buy a faster computer to keep the missing features
    • 1.1 to 2.0 - adding all the features that made $Z great, gaining bloat and bugs, losing speed all the way
    • release 2.0 - a direct replacement for $Z and runs 20% faster
    • release 2.1 - fixing all the bugs discovered now the code base is too big to audit, making it much less secure than the now quite mature $Z
    • Hey, your new program is a bit bloated and slow, I'm going to write a replacement for it and it's going to be a small, streamlined, lightweight replacemen
    and repeat ad nauseam
    1. Re:the cycle of lightweight software by The+Master+Control+P · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Your description is a good summary of "not invented here syndrome." Rather than fix/optimize slow, bloated program $Z they try to reinvent it from scratch and not suprisingly make most of the same mistakes by the time it's comparable to $Z.

      But seriously - Given 3 or 4 desktops (Gnome, KDE, some lightweights), are any of you going to seriously claim you can't find or custom configure at least /one/ of them to be what you want? There comes some point as which we need a benevolent dictator to knock people's heads together; Splitting efforts over N projects to do the same thing is bad as N grows (assuming any kind of even distribution of effort, which there rarely actually is), if there are less than N sets of users with genuinely distinct needs/wants.

    2. 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.

    3. Re:the cycle of lightweight software by value_added · · Score: 3, Insightful

      yet another light-weight desktop. fluxbox, xfce, ratpoison, etc etc. why so many?
      herewith my theory of the cycle of lightweight software.

      A better theory may be that people are simply looking for different feature sets. This ain't Windows, so you can do things any which way you please.

      To use your example of fluxbox, xfce and ratpoison, I doubt you'd find anyone who would say any of them is even remotely similar to the other, other than to characterise all of them as "lightweight", and that's only in the context of Gnome and KDE. Similarly, I doubt you'd find anyone using ratpoison, for example, who would even consider xfce.

      Me, I use fluxbox. It looks and behaves exactly like I want. That's not to say I wouldn't drop it in a heartbeat if someone wrote Yet Another Lightweight Window Manager that was similar to fluxbox, but offered some trivial features that fluxbox lacks but are found elsewhere.

      There's merit to the "cycle of lightweight software" argument, but I really don't see it being very meaningful or useful here.

    4. 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.

    5. Re:the cycle of lightweight software by lekikui · · Score: 3, Insightful

      No, doesn't work.

      Just for the hell of it, let's take an example. The killer feature I need is tiling of some sort. I don't want to have to hand-manage all my windows.

      Anyway, take Gnome, KDE, and a couple of the more mainstream lightweights --- for example, fluxbox and aewm. They can do a lot of stuff, but not one of those does tiling. So maybe add Ion to the list. Except that also doesn't behave the way I like. Possibly quark, which is nice, but not so usable on such a tiny screen. Maybe the way to go would be tinywm and whaw or something similar.

      Anyway, I've ended up with wmii. But the real point is that there are dozens or hundreds of window managers for a reason. A lot of the minor ones are just trying to do similar things to the big ones, but in a smaller way. However, a lot more of them are exploring all sorts of interesting other ideas --- there's whole families of tiling window managers which do various things with that metaphor. There's stuff like matchbox, which exist for a very particular niche. There's ones that add tabbing, or do unusual things with window borders, or look for replacements to the idea of workspaces (flux, wmx, wmii, in that order).

      So yeah. There's a bunch which are just out there reinventing the wheel. Sometimes this isn't a bad thing --- fvwm is still a floating window manager, but horrendously and scarily configurable. WindowMaker and Afterstep and the like are borrowing a different idea, and doing a lot of nifty stuff with it. IceWM is just a standard floating window manager, taskbar, etc, but very lightweight and quite nice to tweak. But there's also a load that are doing all sorts of other stuff, often in ways that other projects simply can't match. Or the projects that are working on doing some integrated stuff with new widget toolkits, and produce all sorts of nifty eye candy as a result (Enlightenment is the big one here).

      But yeah, the diversity is good. The whole tiling idea would be very hard to originate and develop in something like Gnome, because it's such a different method. However, with little minor projects that develop this, dozens of approaches can be tested and tried out in parallel, making sure that basically everyone has a system they like using.

      --
      "Lisp ... made me aware that software could be close to executable mathematics." - L. Peter Deutsch
  9. 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 Jorophose · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Alternatively you could drop nautilus and imagemagick's utility for ROX-filer. Excellent little file manager, just needs a menu bar IMHO for those of us who plan not to use it with ROX... Or it wouldn't even be too hard to write in yourself, would it? It's nice the way it is normally anyway, just looks a bit odd.

      Handles desktop items too. Running with IceWM it generally sits on ~50MB/60MB of RAM, but as we know wasted RAM is wasted RAM so I'm thinking they suck up as much as they can.

    4. 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.

    5. Re:Make your own desktop by coaxial · · Score: 2

      All hail Sawfish! All hail Lisp!

      (I've used it since it was called Sawmill.)

    6. 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.
  10. 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.

    --
    This sig intentionally left blank.
  11. yet another by nawcom · · Score: 3, Informative
    I wonder why this one gets its promotion from linux.com... Here's another one (that's at least new to me) http://lxde.sourceforge.net/

    Same concept, but it sounds like its at a slightly more stable state. Check it out as I just did.

  12. Re:Yes, by hansraj · · Score: 4, Funny

    It tried but was snubbed by the Exherbo developers. True story:
    EDT - Exherbo Dev Team, EDE - Equinox Desktop Environment

    EDT: Exherbo is one bad ass muthafucking distro! Seriously!

    EDE: Cool! I wan to run on Exherbo.
    EDT: No, you don't.

    EDE: No really, I do.
    EDT: OK. But we will have to break you since our distro is so badass that it does everything badly.
    EDE: eeep

  13. Re:Plenty of choices - missing use by thewils · · Score: 5, Funny

    7) Confusing the idiot who comes to install your Cable Modem.

    Me to Confused Techie: "What are you looking for?".
    Techie: "My Network Places".
    Me: "Arf!".

    --
    Once I was a four stone apology. Now I am two separate gorillas.
  14. Re:Windows 95 called.... by bmo · · Score: 2, Funny

    "Talking "we need something lighter than WindowMaker" here, of course ;)"

    What, like Open Look with a decent file manager? I've been fond of that since forever ago - since 486 and 8 megs ago. Can anyone get more lightweight than that?

    Gimme back my oval buttons, bitch.

    --
    BMO

  15. seriously... by bsDaemon · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

    1. Re:seriously... by c6gunner · · Score: 4, Funny

      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.


      Just be happy in the knowledge that your suffering has provided us with 30 seconds of entertainment.
    2. Re:seriously... by bsDaemon · · Score: 4, Funny

      Well, I did spend the holiday weekend on Slashdot... with you.

    3. Re:seriously... by TheRaven64 · · Score: 4, Funny

      We're laughing at you because you didn't learn LaTeX and save yourself all of the pain of OpenOffice.org.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    4. Re:seriously... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      That statement pretty much sums up YouTube.

    5. Re:seriously... by FelixGordon · · Score: 3, Funny

      Rage against GUIs and Java.
      Dramatic emotional conflict.
      Admissions of an emo/goth/whiny little bitch period.

      Your post had it all, and now your response to moderation really shifted gears and made this seriously epic /. entertainment.

      I applaud you.

    6. Re:seriously... by blixel · · Score: 2, Funny

      "...ended up switching to the English department, where being a sad, whiny little bitch gets you bonus points."

      That part made me snicker a little.

      "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."

      That part made me fall out of my chair from laughing so hard.

  16. Re:Windows 95 called.... by coaxial · · Score: 2, Insightful

    You can be lightweight without being a clone of clunk.

  17. Re:Windows 95 called.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    You're missing my point. You don't have to look exactly like windows 95 to be lean and fast.

  18. 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
  19. Missing it by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Linux.com ... 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. Perhaps because "extremely lightweight" isn't the factor most users base their decisions on?
    --
    #DeleteChrome
  20. 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.

  21. Re:Ugly as Windows 95 by Darkness404 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Round corners are in. Grey is out.

    Exactly. Many non-technical users judge the quality of Linux by what the DE looks like. If it has a black bar on the bottom it is futuristic and "vista-like", if it has a brightly colored bar on the bottom it is automatically XP-like and seems to be as familiar to them as XP, if it has a bar at the top and the bottom it becomes OS X-like, however if it is grey on the bottom and uses a rectangle as a applications menu, it is automatically thought as Windows 95/98/ME and old and obsolete. Now, all this could be avoided by using say, black or another color on the bottom, but grey will always make the non-technical users think that Linux is as current as Windows 98. Ubuntu with the brown color scheme seems to avoid this as brown hasn't been used much in any default Windows theme yet.
    --
    Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
  22. 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
  23. 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.

  24. Re:Windows 95 called.... by glwtta · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Windows 95 is one of the very few times that Microsoft got things indisputably right.

    You keep using that word... etc, etc...

    --
    sic transit gloria mundi