What is BlackLite?

BlackLite is a light weight desktop enviroment, a collection of tools, linked together via a common set of scripts. It is attractive, portable (written in perl), and usable. It has everything a desktop needs, and nothing a desktop doesn't need. No over the top eye-candy, no processor-cycle sucking, battery draining, "applets". Just desktop. And lots of it.

Why BlackLite?

Why not?

BlackLite's Status

BlackLite is currently under planning, though there is a pre-alpha release available for download from sourcforge.net, I am not entirely pleased with it's general feel. The current release is version 0.0.2, the current version being developed is 0.1, if all goes as planned a beta will be available within a month. Development updates might come slowly from time to time, as I am the sole developer on this project, and the list of tasks just keeps growing.

BlackLite Features

While I don't consider BlackLite to be a feature rich desktop, it does have the following features:

• Sawfish Window Manager - If you don't have a window manager, what do you have?
• Chameleon - A background manager, alas, I am working to replace it with one of my own.
• XFM - The X File Manager, it simple, light weight, functional.
• XscreenSaver - every desktop needs a screensaver, sometimes the oldest is the best.
• FSpanel - F**king Small Panel, a pager panel, it makes it easy to see whats goin on in the background. And it's light weight too.
• BlackLite-Control - the Control panel, written in perl-GTK, by me.

Planned Updates/Features 

BlackLite is meant to be a somewhat minimalistic interpretation of what a desktop should be. While there are something included in BlackLite that are not minimalistic, they are there for ease of use and functionality puproses. Here are somethings that BlackLite will have before it reaches a major release number:

• Anarchy - This is a project to develop a perl-gtk background manager for BlackLite, it's in house development so it will be kept to the specifications that make BlackLite a quick and easy desktop.
• BlackLite Window Manager (BLWM) - This is a far off project, it will likely be based on the NWM(miNimilistic Window Manager), except with a few features (yes... features) that NWM doesn't have. 
• A configuration file system - while this is lightly implemented in Alpha-2, it is not anywhere near what an actual config file system should look like.
• BlackLite/LX (a BlackLite centric Linux distro) - At this point it's just a side note in my head, but it's one of the reasons I started developing BlackLite in the first place. I'm tired of all these HUGE distro's with all sorts of shit you don't need. I want it to be small, and expandable. It'll be Debian based probably, if not debian based it will have an apt-get function, and ONLY the things you need to get your desktop up and running. This way everyone can download it with out a fight.
  

Screenshot

The latest screenshot of BlackLite in action: