Bodhi Linux 5.1

Although Mayank Sharma would have you believe that he’s a grown man and this is just a distro, he can’t wipe that grin off his (beautiful) mug.

- Mayank Sharma

Bodhi Linux has flirted with extinction in the past. With its creator moving on to other things, this time around Bodhi’s community has stepped up and the distro has new blood at the helm. The new management team has just put out its first ISO; a point release that’s been in the works for quite a while and refreshes Bodhi’s last major 5.0 release, which came out almost two years ago.

This latest 5.1 release continues to be based on Ubuntu 18.04. But don’t sweat, since the Bionic Beaver is a LTS release that’ll continue to receive updates until 2023. But the new project lead has made certain changes in Bodhi. Most noticeably, the distro has swapped out a couple of legacy apps with new ones that are just as lightweight, namely Leafpad text editor and the Epiphany web browser.

The other major visible change is the new ISO lineup. Going forward the project will now make four ISOs for every release. There’s the Standard release that has the bare minimum number of apps to help you build your installation from the ground up, as per your requirements. If you’d rather have something with more tonnage, there’s the AppPack ISO that comes with all sorts of apps you’d expect on a desktop distro.