[HN Gopher] EDE: Small and Fast Desktop Environment (2014)
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EDE: Small and Fast Desktop Environment (2014)
Author : bradley_taunt
Score : 88 points
Date : 2025-11-14 12:51 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (edeproject.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (edeproject.org)
| GaryBluto wrote:
| Funny this should be posted. I was just considering this for a
| Boot CD project a few months ago.
| WD-42 wrote:
| Very cool! Love the crystal icon set. I remember when that was
| first released, it was mind blowing.
| edoceo wrote:
| Wow! This looks like XP/Win2k. Gotta put this on the parents
| computer, they'll be happy they got their old Windows back. (They
| don't really like Xfce)
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| Maybe they like LXQt more.
|
| XFCE can be themed to be almost identical to XP.
| mghackerlady wrote:
| theres a windows 9x total conversion out there iirc
| packetlost wrote:
| I don't think it's _complete_ but I have that mostly set up
| with LXQT on NixOS on my Framework desktop. I love it
| wild_egg wrote:
| Chicago95 theme for XFCE is great
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| Looks more legit than Redmond97.
|
| If we go retro then I would go for a MacOS 9 look. Like
| what this user achieved: https://www.reddit.com/r/unixpor
| n/comments/tsric2/xfce_color...
| ikamm wrote:
| The Q4OS distro has an addon called XPQ4 which has some old
| Windows themes https://xpq4.sourceforge.io/
| skerit wrote:
| I like these kind of themes in theory, but they're always a
| bit janky. Not that they have to be pixel perfect, but
| they're always broken enough that they're not a pleasure to
| use.
| WillAdams wrote:
| Any chance of an rPi image?
| woleium wrote:
| i imagine it's trivial to install on raspian?
| a96 wrote:
| https://edeproject.org/wiki/binarypackages Don't see anything
| for ARM, but might be as simple as getting the source package
| and (de)building debs for it.
| tyfon wrote:
| I tried to search their wiki for wayland, but got zero hits so I
| guess this is for X11 only?
|
| Edit: nevermind, I see this is relatively "ancient" software.
| Last release over 10 years ago :)
|
| Will take it for a spin on an old computer though
| skeezyjefferson wrote:
| they posted literally just the wiki article for MUDs earlier,
| slow news day
| a96 wrote:
| > EDE (Equinox Desktop Environment) is a simple and fast desktop
| environment for *nix-like systems. It uses the FLTK GUI toolkit
| and offers a familiar look and feel. EDE is designed according to
| the UNIX philosophy, which means it offers seperate executables
| for each component to "do one job and do it good". This makes EDE
| very modular and also easy to alter for any user's special needs
| and requirements.
|
| TIHI, but I can definitely see places where this would be useful.
| Based on the name, I thought it was just Enlightenment/E rebrand
| or something.
| analog8374 wrote:
| I like the look of this. It looks like mate, which I presently
| use. I wonder what the difference is
| BirAdam wrote:
| Well, FLTK instead of GTK is a big one. Also, EDE more closely
| mimics the Win98 Explorer rather than GNOME. EDE is also
| lighter weight.
| analog8374 wrote:
| But it's the same desktop, menus, windows, icons thing with
| nothing fancy tacked on pretty much. Right?
| analog8374 wrote:
| Have we arrived at where everybody knows what a desktop
| environment should look like?
|
| I mean, an end to experiments and variants and improvements. We
| all know how it should be and anything else is wrong.
|
| I would like that.
| seanhunter wrote:
| Different people want different things because they use
| computers in different ways. That's ok.
|
| I personally am very happy with my sway setup - it works
| fantastically for me but most people would honestly hate it.
| That's ifne - I wouldn't force anyone else to use it.
| analog8374 wrote:
| And yet for 99% of the cases we have a certain way we like
| them to be. And I'm in that 99%. And we know exactly what I'm
| talking about. So for all intents and purposes, fuck the edge
| cases. Let's focus on the archetype.
| seanhunter wrote:
| Not 100% sure what point you're making. Mainstream desktop
| O/Ss strive to service this 99%, so you have an abundance
| of choice. Windows, MacOS, KDE, Ubuntu are all there to
| cater to you.
| tracker1 wrote:
| It depends... I've found things I like and dislike with every
| DE I've ever touched... from early windows, to OS/2, Mac old
| and new, Amiga, BeOS, and even some bits from more modern
| Windows. On my personal desktop, I've been running Cosmic, as
| it's close to what I want. I had run Budgie desktop previously
| and had it tweaked very specific to my liking, but it was a
| hodge-podge and I just wanted an out of the box experience
| easier to deal with.
|
| I think there is/was a lot to like with the Win9x interface
| that I feel advanced a lot through to Windows 7 even. I think
| the current taskbar in windows is relatively nice too, but the
| start menu itself has taken a few steps back. I'd like to see
| Cosmic get a bit closer to the taskbar, but keeping it's
| application menus and settings, which get better with each
| iteration imo. There's still something alien about the spacing
| on the dock's corners though.
| kjs3 wrote:
| No?
|
| Be forced to use Gnome because some royal 'We' decided that's
| what a DM should be? No farking way. Force someone else to use
| KDE because I think Gnome is kinda awful? No. Give up on low-
| resource desktop environments because Gnome or what ever is The
| One True DE? Sorry...no.
|
| I would not like that.
| lproven wrote:
| Oh nice. I occasionally mention EDE in desktop roundups on El
| Reg. Glad it is not forgotten.
|
| It's based on FLTK, and although the effort to create FLTK 2.0
| faltered and died a few years ago, last year there was a new
| point release, FLTK 1.4, the first in 13 years.
|
| I wrote about it almost exactly a year ago:
|
| https://www.theregister.com/2024/11/26/fltk_14_released/
|
| (In researching that I discovered that apparently it's not
| pronounced "eff ell tee kay" but "full tick".)
|
| Since then it's got up to 1.4.4, and they're working on FLTK 1.5.
| And yes it supports Wayland now.
|
| So maybe it's time for a new release of EDE to go with it. :-)
|
| https://www.fltk.org/
| jayroh wrote:
| If anyone wants some screenshots:
| https://edeproject.org/page/screenshots
| chriswarbo wrote:
| EDE is a standalone WM/DE with a Windows 9x look
|
| XPde was a similar project, but with a Windows XP look. Their
| site seems dead, though I'm sure the software could be found out
| there somewhere
| https://web.archive.org/web/20070825005617/http://www.xpde.c...
| cout wrote:
| How does it compare to using icewm or fvwm95?
| pndy wrote:
| Oh I remember EDE being briefly reviewed some 20 years ago in
| local Linux magazine and if I'm not mistaken being a part of
| Mandrake packages selection
| anthk wrote:
| There's Dillo and Florb (Open Street Maps client). Now we just
| need a simple MPV UI and some kind of FLMail client. On office
| suites, someone should modernize Siag Office with XFT and Unicode
| support.
|
| If anyone says "that's outdated crap", Siag supports RTF, and the
| spreadsheet module could just use plugins written in Scheme with
| incredible features related to number crunching. Printing?
| PostScript and PDF, problem solved.
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