EDE (Equinox Desktop Environment)
More info
- Released
- Type
- Desktop environment
- License
- GPL
- Website
- edeproject.org
A small desktop environment from 2000 built on FLTK, with a panel and start menu that look like Windows 9x and that boots on hardware where GNOME cannot even bring up the login box.
EDE was written so that a Unix machine with a few dozen megabytes of memory could have a complete desktop: a panel with start menu, clock and window list, desktop icons, a small window manager of its own, and settings programs for wallpaper, fonts and keyboard. The toolkit was FLTK, which draws its own widgets and links statically, so every program starts without loading a pile of libraries. The model was not so much CDE as Windows 9x, with the difference that everything was free and the source fit in the heads of a couple of people.
For some years the project maintained its own FLTK branch, eFLTK, before returning to FLTK 1.3 and shipping EDE 2.0 in 2012 after an unusually long rewrite. It never got big: Xfce took the "light desktop" niche and the Openbox-based LXDE the one below it. But for anyone wanting to know how small a desktop can be without ceasing to be one, EDE remains a good demonstration.