Fedora Desktop on XO

[Carol Farlow Lerche]

Another plug for Teapot's Intrepid Ibex install if you want an easy way to
try the Ubuntu XFCE out on an SD card.  I think it is quite beautiful.

http://www.olpcnews.com/forum/index.php?topic=4053.0

On Tue, Jan 6, 2009 at 12:04 PM, Erik Garrison <erik at laptop.org> wrote:

> On Tue, Jan 06, 2009 at 02:23:24PM -0500, Chris Ball wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> >    > Now, the question I have is why we would chose GNOME over XFCE.  I
> >    > think there are significant differences in system resource
> >    > consumption.
> >
> > We had a long thread about whether to use GNOME or XFCE on devel@ last
> > month.  I suggested XFCE, and was persuaded that the disk image size
> > of DebXO+GNOME is not significantly different than DebXO+XFCE,
>
> Yes, the NAND usage is comparable.  You end up using very similar
> libraries.  In my tests even fluxbox-based builds required at minimum
> 2/3 of the NAND space of the GNOME builds.
>
> In my experience the benefit is visible only at runtime.
>
> > ... and that both run fine without swap, suggesting that we might be
> > able to pull off GNOME on Fedora.  If we find it unbearable, I'm fine
> > with using XFCE instead, but my impression was that GNOME is
> > preferred.
>
> I doubt we will find it unbearable.  And I somewhat doubt that even if
> we do we will elect to switch after we invest development effort into
> it.  So we should be very careful going into this to choose the most
> suitable option, before we are locked into one system or the other.
>
> I think it is telling that XFCE is designed expressly for limited
> systems such as ours, whereas GNOME has a more general applicability and
> is less optimized for our target.  The effort shows.
>
> In terms of features, I have not experienced any significant difference
> in my use of the two systems on the XO, except perhaps that the
> appearance of GNOME is less configurable by the user in its default
> setup.  Some may say this is a good thing as it decreases the potential
> problems that can arise, but to me it seems a positive feature to make
> the environment more enjoyable by young people.
>
> ... But frankly I don't care much about window manager features so long
> as a lack of them doesn't get in people's way.  I want applications.  If
> running one system means a quarter more available memory available to
> user-chosen applications, then we have made a big win.
>
> OK.  Enough rambling... My opinions await qualification by tests.
>
> > (For the record, I'm not against investigating adding some swap for 9.1
> > now that we have NAND partitioning available.  We'd have to be more sure
> > of our estimate that it won't significantly shorten the lifespan of the
> > flash chip, though.  What do people think?)
>
> IMO: The NAND is not sacred.  It is there to be used.  If the chip fails
> the repair is as simple as installing an SD card; and as time goes on
> they rapidly decrease in price.  That all said, it is not my
> understanding that the chip will fail catastrophically.  It will just
> wear out, and its storage capacity will decrease.  Like the breaks on a
> bike its use necessitates that it be burnt up very slowly.
>
> (don't forget compcache ...)
>
> >    > Even though XFCE is not a Fedora-supported desktop environment, it
> >    > is readily supported in other distributions.  We could easily
> >    > borrow the polish that XUbuntu has applied to its distribution and
> >    > get a system equally usable as GNOME.
> >
> > Scott previously made a build stream ("faster") that contains both Sugar
> > and XFCE and a way to switch between them, so this integration work has
> > already been done.
>
> I wasn't specifically talking about integration, but polish.  Ubuntu's
> XFCE seems to be in a better state than Fedora's or Debian's as they
> have integrated some upstream patches (most notably desktop icon
> customization stuff).  They also use the GNOME menu system, which is
> very clear and well-organized.  I don't know exactly the state of the
> differences but they are significant enough to be notable from the
> user's perspective.
>
> Erik
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>



-- 
"Don't think for a minute that power concedes. We have to work like our
future depends on it."  -- Barack Obama
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