14 DAY TRIAL // Jeff Hoogland, the founder and lead developer of the Ubuntu-based Bodhi Linux operating system, announced plans for dropping the current version of the Enlightenment desktop environment used in the recently released Bodhi Linux 3.0 distro for Moksha Desktop, which is based on the older Enlightenment E17 desktop environment.
The Bodhi Linux developer came with the idea of forking the Enlightenment E17 desktop environment into a new project called Moksha Desktop, which will offer some great new features and improvements over the upstream version of Enlightenment E17. The Moksha Desktop will become the default user interface in the next major release of the Bodhi Linux operating system.
From the lengthy article wrote by Jeff Hoogland on the Bodhi Linux website, it would appear the he really does not like the new modifications implemented in the Enlightenment E19 desktop environment, and that he believes Enlightenment E17 is one of the most stable and responsive desktops ever created.
"The problem with these major releases is that instead of continuing to perfect the end user facing components E17 started over the course of a decade, they were essentially internal tear downs," says Jeff Hoogland. "These tear downs were rushed to meet release deadlines and did not have the same quality and stability the E17 desktop had come to know."
Bodhi Linux 3.1.0 will be the first release to use the Moksha Desktop
The development of the Moksha Desktop is fully transparent, as the source code can be found on GitHub, so anyone can contribute or just track progress and file bug reports. It will integrate all the Bodhi patches that were implemented in the Enlightenment desktop environment over the years, as well as some of the new features introduced in the Enlightenment E18 and E19 desktops.
Additionally, Moksha Desktop will also offer some unique functionality that will improve the end user experience of Bodhi Linux customers. Bodhi Linux 3.1.0, which will be released sometime in August 2015, will be the first release of the Ubuntu-based operating system to use Moksha Desktop by default.