It should have been easy. After all, I had successfully installed its base components on another partition, but no, it did not go well. I have an old P3 800, 500mb ram desktop of circa 2003 vintage, so 14 years old. Bohdi Linux is supposed to be a lightweight distro for old computers. It did not install very well on my old biddy.
Bohdi Linux 4.2.0 Legacy is 32 bit and runs on a base of Debian Linux 8 or 9, with an Enlightenment E17 desktop environment. On top of this Bohdi Linux packages things up, adds its own flavouring and spices, and is supposed to be a low spec distro. Here are its install requirements:
Minimum:
- 500mhz processor
- 128MB of RAM
- 4GB of drive space
source
My old desktop exceeds all these requirements.
My old desktop is partitioned to run 3 OSs, one in a 4G partition, and 2 with 5G partitions each. There is also a /dos and a /home partition, as well as a /swap partition.
Bohdi Needs More Disk Space
Days before the Bohdi Linux install, I installed Debian 8 Jessie server version, in partition 1, the 4G one. On top of this I installed the Enlightenment E17 desktop environment. It boots, it runs, it is bare bones, because it has almost no usable software applications. The install uses 1.22G disk. After Firefox it uses 1.58G. Add FCITX-SunPinyin Chinese input and display and I top out at 1.9G. I have a working browser on a low end desktop.
After the initial boot and CD load the computer spewed out some error messages, which is common. The Bohdi install CD whirred, and the screen remained frozen for 10 minutes. Eventually I saw a Bohdi logo pop up, and Bohdi started its in-memory install. Fine, I’ll wait.
A logo at the bottom menu bar had “Install Bohdi”, which I clicked. The install began. This install is really, super slow. Each screen takes a long time to change. Bohdi did recognize that I had Debian on the first partition, and did ask me if I wanted to install beside Debian. This is good. The next screen said that Bohdi need 5.6G disk space to install.
What? I installed Debian 8 and Enlightenment E17, the base components of Bohdi, in 1.22G disk on my first partition. Why does bohdi need 5.6G? I canceled the install. Maybe I should merge my two 5G partitions together?
Midori Browser Crashes on Google.com
So we are back to Bohdi, loaded into memory. It seems slower than E17. There is more hesitation. The screen behaviours though, are exactly like E17. Bohdi has the Midori browser installed, so I start it up, going to Google.com, and it crashes badly. I start up Midori again and it crashes again. Starting a third time I navigate to one of my really simple pages, one with html only, 3 links, no css, no images, and it loads. So the browser does load. I then load this blog, and am successful. Good. Let’s try google.com again, and Midori crashes for a third time. Not Google friendly, but I can handle that.
Bohdi Power Down Does not Work
I try to power down. The CD whirs and I wait. There is a rotating Bohdi logo. Eventually the CD stops and I remove the CD, but the desktop does not power down. The logo blinks. I eventually kill power and force reboot back into Debian 8 and E17. At least Bohdi did not damage my Debian install.
Bohdi did load into memory. Bodhi did come with a browser, but it crashed on Google.com. It could not properly power down.
I may have better luck with Bohdi on a stronger desktop, but not this one. I’ll stick with Debian 8 Jessie and E17. It runs solid, as does Puppy Tahr.
