It's fork time, said Jeff Hoogland. The Bodhi Linux developer got fed up with Enlightenment versions 18 onwards and said "Fuck it, I'm going to fork E17, and I'm going to call it Moksha Desktop."
On Bodhi's blog he explains: Enlightenment went from being the Open Source Duke Nukem Forever to having three big releases in the last 3 years. E18 was so destitute internally that Bodhi didn't even want to release that version.
E19 seemed better to him compared to E18, but although he spent time working with the Enlightenment developers and reporting bugs, not even they used E19 as a daily desktop. They barely released E19, they already got to work with E20. The frustration he had was such that he had to take that long break that kept him inactive.
When he returned, he released Bodhi 3.0.0 with E19 as the default desktop and also a legacy image with E17 for older machines. since it did not require the composer to be always active and thus run better.
But the important thing is that E17 had some functionality that E19 did not have, such as a functional inbox or the ability to mix theme components, which made you rethink whether it was a good idea to go to the new version. So he consulted with the community and many agreed with Jeff. Then he took the fork path.
Moksha will first integrate the desktop enhancements that he added to Bodhi, and then he will be bringing out the more useful features from E18 and E19. It is expected that by the time Bodhi 3.1.0 comes out (for August), he will release his images with Moksha, and that E19 will still be in the repositories for whoever wants.
For the love of math, yet another unnecessary fork? Why doesn't Mr. Jeff help the people at Enlightenment instead of sending himself a whole fork? : /
In the post I put the reasons.
You have not read the article, or, you do not understand what you read.
At least the motivation for the fork in this case seems quite justified, although in the end it is the usual, each one does what they want with their time but so much fragmentation 🙁
Everyone is free to invent whatever they want!
For the conga another fork, but what do we do, it is the good and "bad" of the wildebeest world, as well as the one who has money does what he wants, the one who has time and desire makes the fork he wants! (:
The linux world is becoming more pathetic, instead of creating billing software or something like that but that works and is easy to configure, it does not matter if it is paid, they live repeating the same episode over and over again sometimes even I want to to abandon ship.
The name says it all: Moksha = emancipation, liberation. In this case, it is to free yourself from the frustration of not being listened to by the developers. Jeff is right to criticize not being able to shut down the composer completely. I use E19 on two 32-bit machines and notice that it doesn't seem as "light" as in the past.
That said, I don't see a justification for creating a fork either. KDE users suffered in the early years of KDE 4, and it seems the same with E. Perhaps the developers are so "enlightened" that they do not listen well, but I also notice a faster pace in the evolution of Enlightenment. I also see a danger in dividing a small community. KDE has survived and Trinity is still for now. The Gnome user community has managed to keep two forks: MATE and Cinnamon (both good, but unnecessary). The question is what happens to E when there are only 2 "E-centric" distros (Bodhi and Elive) and a couple more that offer it more or less unsupported?
Could you explain to me, why do you find the existence of MATE and Cinnamon unnecessary? I tried both DEs and find they have their niche. Now I use Plasma 5 but I like the easy handling of MATE for example and the beautiful interface of Cinnamon, but from there to say that its existence is unnecessary makes me think ...
Well, you give the arguments yourself has led the leader of the Bodhi Linux project to make a fork: E17 considered it more polished than E18 and E19 did not improve substantially what the previous version spoiled, with the addition of the extra requirements for the graphic composer leaving many teams that moved E17 with ease out of all possibility when in graphic aspect and characteristics it offered even less than E17 (that is, a full-blown involution) and since it could not continue the development of E17 officially, it has chosen to create a derivation of the source code of the latest version and start a new project from it to carry out an independent development of the decisions of the "core team" of E.
If there is no way to reconcile two opposing positions, which basically consists of going through the ring of E's "core team" or not, and since the free licenses of E's libraries and applications (BSD, GPL and LGPL) allow us to skip the A typical and fallacious false dilemma, we opt for a third way and voila, a fork of a project branch (E17) that E's "core team" no longer maintains because it has left it behind because its policy is to always be at the same time. last (E20 now), so that a person prefers to start from the source code of E17 to maintain it and add improvements but with the philosophy focused on performance and low technical requirements of E17 is something that I think that nobody should be bothered and who likes to use it or contribute (and even fork it again), it is free to do so, which is the beauty of this whole world of free software.
Since you have given two examples, just Mate is the one that it resembles, Gnome 2.x was abandoned in favor of Gnome 3.x, it was not a simple renumbering, everything new, new desktop paradigm, new libraries (GTK + 3 ), etc, but there were people who preferred the classic Gnome 2.x paradigm, part of the higher performance on more modest computers, well, nothing, they started to create Mate and there they have their own lot of users who prefer that desktop environment to Gnome 3.x (and even so they are not completely anchored in the past and are porting Mate to GTK + 3), something different is Cinnamon, which based on Gnome 3.x prefer to have their own paradigm and an independent development, but they do the same, Take advantage of the advantages of free software, when you don't like something and they don't let you change it because someone else runs the show and you can only contribute where and how they leave you, because you become independent and create yours using what is necessary and what you like about it. already existing, which then has always brá peña who likes your vision more than points to the car (or not, but it is something that those who undertake these adventures generally assume).
This is what happens with software projects, whether they are free or not, the course is generally taken by a few, if as you say it is not that there are many Linux distributions that carry E as standard and on top of that they are not listened to by their maintainers, well Little room for maneuver is left to them if it is not to swallow with what those who cut the cod say and, continuing with the gastronomic analogy, that they are also the ones who decide how it is cooked, without taking into account the alternative recipes of those who really distribute the dishes prepared for your potential guests ...
I don't use Bodhi Linux so I don't have an opinion, but if your community voted for a change it is their decision and it must be respected.
The decision to create a new fork seems very good to me. And from my point of view it would not be going backwards, but rather moving forward, but by a different path. If something was so good, it can be maintained and even improved some other things.
I have tried Bodhi for a long time and version 3 was terrible, due to the waste of resources and errors made by the E17 interface.
Today I am putting together for my own pleasure and hobby, my own Debian 8 installation image with E17, without systemd.
A necessary derivative, because the Enlightment people definitely ignore the suggestions of the daily users.
Although Enlightment is great in terms of the few requirements it needs, its lack of essential applications is its weakest point.
It is very easy to use, and I hope that instead of being a Window Manager like Enlightment, you can create so much software that it is a complete Desktop Environment.
Another conflict is that for example E17, E18, E19 and E20, they are not Retro / Compatible, especially in the customization of the desktop appearance, that is, you cannot use an E17 theme in E18 / 19/20 or vice versa
If mate had been unnecessary, it would not have been created, it was created precisely because many people did not want or do not want Gnome3, or Unity, since users asked Cannonical and at that time they came out with: «GTK2 is dead, it is discontinued It is ugly, useless, nobody wants it and after This is not a democracy. That's why LinuxMint extended Gnome2 with Mate as much as possible and then ported it to GTK3. same with Cinnamon, Budgie, Pantheon, Solus
What is unnecessary are the bunch of distributions derived especially from Ubuntu, which all they do is change the "Art" (Controls / Buttons / Scroll Bars, Icon Theme, Cursor Theme, Default Wallpapers). that don't really offer anything useful, just more unnecessary fragmentation and more confusion for those just starting out who believe that each distribution is a different Operating System.
Because you don't understand that a distribution is basically Preset Software with Preset Configurations. and we are all using the same operating system, what really varies are the versions of the software in use.