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I have one simple problem with Windows: they use a "Wizard" for EVERY SINGLE DAMN THING! When I want to change the settings for something, or even find out what they are, I just want to DO it, not click "next, next, next, next, next, next, next, next, next, next, next" a million times and then look in six different places for the information. A text file is OK; a GUI with a bunch of text boxes, combo boxes, and check boxes is OK too. A "wizard" is not.

Regarding themes, customizability, and screen real estate:

I don't use the "luna" theme. When I am forced to use Windows now, I change it to classic; when I used Windows on my own PC I used ThemeXP and third-party themes. The nice thing about Mac OS is that the default is good (except for mixing Aqua and Metal; they should just let you choose one or the other globally), and the nice thing about Linux is that you don't need a third-party hack to change themes.

I love the customizability of Linux desktops because I actually use it. My desktop consists of Sawfish as the WM, GKrellM as the clock and launcher for common apps, Multi-RXVT as the launcher for less common apps, and that's all. Sometimes I use Kicker solely for KNewsTicker, and I might try out GDesklets and one of those OSX Dock lookalikes.

Incidentally, I don't use GNOME or KDE specifically because they clutter up the screen with panels and try to be "Desktop Environments" -- why can't we just have "X apps" rather than "GNOME apps" or "KDE apps"?! Also, I HATE the fact that there are redundant and incompatible toolkits. I would consider using GNOME or KDE when one of them "wins" or when they merge technologies. Enlightenment is going in the exact opposite direction and is creating their own new set of crap -- it is EVIL!. GNUStep, however, is OK because "in theory" it is compatible with Cocoa.

I almost look forward to the future when everything will be written in Swing (or SWT?), Cocoa, and Mono, but will wish it all used WxWidgets or Xtk instead.

Lets see here is a brief list of some of the main software that I saw on that page. You can find information on those peaces of software at these sites.

Enlightenment Project: http://enlightenment.org/pages/main.html
Evolution: http://www.gnome.org/projects/evolution/
Gnome 2.8:http://www.gnome.org/start/2.8/
KDE 3.3:http://www.kde.org/
Thunderbird 0.8:http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/re leases/
XPDE 5.1:http://www.xpde.com/
YaST:http://www.suse.de/en/private/products/suse_l inux/prof/yast.html

Definitely a slow news day. I've been running 2 x 19" monitors since June 2000, and 3 x 19" since January 2001. I'm not the first. I copied most of the X config files from my co-workers who did it before me. 3 x 1280x1024 x 2,3,or 4 with enlightenment multiple desktops. Enlightenment / XFree86 / RedHat 6.2 Enlightenment / Xorg / Fedora 2 install each video card by itself, let your distro's config system create an X config file for that card, save the config files off to seperate files, and manually dither them together.

I got over Slackware dropping Enlightenment. Getting over Gnome being dropped from the distro should be easy.

The window management is Enlightenment running the new default Winter theme.

The kicker bar is Engage, an OS X docker clone based on the Enlightenment Foundation Libraries. It is NOT a gdesklet, and it performs a lot better and smoother than that one. As you can see, he is running Enlightenment and drop shadows work fine, so the answer to your last question is yes.

Some of those appear to be Engage which will be a part of Enlightenment DR17. You can get it from their CVS server, check this out for more info.

Does that works for any random X application without modification ?

Apparently you weren't even reading. I said "Evas-based apps".

And while NX is still a hack that attempts to get around the problem of poor network performance for X11 apps (by wrapping/translating X calls with its own calls), Evas solves the problem directly by making efficient use of Xlib and eliminating unneeded roundtrips. Evoak, the shared canvas goes even further: the host canvas is running on the same machine as the X server, and clients connect to Evoak (which has a much leaner protocol, supports compression *and* encryption) rather than to X. This is the kind of technology that could make running remote X apps on your cellphone possible if resources were available to implement it.

If you want to find out more go read http://enlightenment.org/pages/systems.html.

Evas-based apps (including the upcoming E17 window manager) perform extremely well over remote X connections, using traditional Xlib. I have tested this myself, over remote connections Evas-based apps are at least 10 times more responsive than GTK/QT apps, using the same traditional X11 connection. Evas is designed to minimize roundtrips to the server so everything gets drawn the first time. And there's a new canvas server in CVS called Evoak that allows remote canvas sharing among applications, complete with gzip compression etc....NX probably won't even be able to touch it performance wise.

Oops, correct links:
http://enlightenment.org/pages/efl.html
http://enlightenment.org/pages/cvsnotes.html

mea culpa.

Oops, correct links:
http://enlightenment.org/pages/efl.html
http://enlightenment.org/pages/cvsnotes.html

mea culpa.

• entrance - EFL based Login Manager (gdm replacement)
  
• engage - OS X-like dock with smooth scaling.
  
• entice - EFL based image viewer.
  
• evidence - File manager with TONS of features.
  

• entrance - EFL based Login Manager (gdm replacement)
  
• engage - OS X-like dock with smooth scaling.
  
• entice - EFL based image viewer.
  
• evidence - File manager with TONS of features.
  

The main strength of the EFL isn't the widget set. The EFL does a lot of cool things that Qt and GTK programs can't. For example, everything is based around Evas canvas(es), an EFL desktop can use all the cool eye-candy effects that the rest of X is still waiting on.

And it's all written in Raster's hand-optimized code, so it's quite a bit faster than current XRender. And it runs on handhelds, too, so you can take all that with you on your iPAQ.

For example: DVD player in 18 lines of C, RSS feeds embedded in the desktop.

The main strength of the EFL isn't the widget set. The EFL does a lot of cool things that Qt and GTK programs can't. For example, everything is based around Evas canvas(es), an EFL desktop can use all the cool eye-candy effects that the rest of X is still waiting on.

And it's all written in Raster's hand-optimized code, so it's quite a bit faster than current XRender. And it runs on handhelds, too, so you can take all that with you on your iPAQ.

For example: DVD player in 18 lines of C, RSS feeds embedded in the desktop.

This isn't a troll, or at least it's not meant as one, but try as I might, I could never get into using Enlightenment. And from the fact that Gnome and KDE get the majority of the press/developers/software, I'm guessing I'm not alone in this impression.

Don't get me wrong: Enlightenment is certainly a powerful and capable windowing system, and there have been some fairly original looks/themes released for it, but, to me at least (he says, carefully circumventing the Troll under the bridge) it's not a GUI that a new user coming from the Windows/Mac/KDE/Gnome world can immediately begin using. Or configuring.

(This is where all the Slashdot/Linux "elite" begin to quote my thread for their 'RTFM', and 'How could it be any simpler than xxxx?' responses)

When I first began investigating Linux all those years ago, Enlightenment themes and screenshots were all the rage. KDE and Gnome were promising, but Enlightenment was how all the coolest geeks seemed to produce such cool eye candy-based desktops. But to a Linux newbie like me, coming from an Amiga/Dos/Windows background at the time, it was totally alien. It was just too much to have to begin learning Linux, and a totally different GUI like Enlightenment, both at the same time. So Enlightenment went goodbye after way too many wasted hours trying to become productive and look good doing it.

So flash ahead several years (last year, to be exact), and a much more Linux-savy version of Me decided to give Enlightenment shot again. I hadn't kept up with it, and had meanwhile become an avid KDE fan, but I wanted to try something different, and figured that Enlightenment had to have matured by this time, to a point wherein I could grasp it easier. I mean... KDE had came so far in this time.

So I boot it up after installing the latest version, and ,after booting, am faced with the identical look and feel of the last time I used it. Nothing (on the surface, at least) had changed! No icons... Just a couple of odd, pager-like boxes.

Now... I'm not expecting enlightenment to change their way and become KDE or Gnome or anything. But they've gotta realize that virtually any converts to their window manager will be coming from an environment such as KDE, Gnome, Windows, etc. It's a totally different methodology from that of Enlightenment. You'd think that one of the first things that you'd see on a default desktop would be a "how to get started" type of document.

Yeah, yeah... I know. RTFM. Yes, I also know that I can configure Enlightenment to look and interact like whatever I want it to, but I'd kind of expect "something" to push the new user in the right direction.

But other things were not impressive also. Fonts, in paricular, looked poor when compared to the more popular window managers around.

So flash foward to todays announcement here on Slashdot, and so I decide to take a look at Enlightenments page to see if anything's changed yet. I see this. Come on... For crying out loud, someone get Enlightenment a PR director. If the programmers hope to grow the userbase of their window manager, they really should make it a bit more accessible. If an "intro level" of usability isn't a possibility, then how about a simple "Introduction to Enlightenment" document, or walk through? Something to offer the new user a glimpse of the power of Enlightenment. And without requiring them to hunt it down, or surf out to a website.

At least make the default font's look better. This is a good example of both the default look of Enlightenment, and it's default fonts. Conversely, this is the default look of KDE. I'm not saying that KDE's superior (to me it is, but who cares), but the default look, which all of us have seen many times before, and consi

This isn't a troll, or at least it's not meant as one, but try as I might, I could never get into using Enlightenment. And from the fact that Gnome and KDE get the majority of the press/developers/software, I'm guessing I'm not alone in this impression.

Don't get me wrong: Enlightenment is certainly a powerful and capable windowing system, and there have been some fairly original looks/themes released for it, but, to me at least (he says, carefully circumventing the Troll under the bridge) it's not a GUI that a new user coming from the Windows/Mac/KDE/Gnome world can immediately begin using. Or configuring.

(This is where all the Slashdot/Linux "elite" begin to quote my thread for their 'RTFM', and 'How could it be any simpler than xxxx?' responses)

When I first began investigating Linux all those years ago, Enlightenment themes and screenshots were all the rage. KDE and Gnome were promising, but Enlightenment was how all the coolest geeks seemed to produce such cool eye candy-based desktops. But to a Linux newbie like me, coming from an Amiga/Dos/Windows background at the time, it was totally alien. It was just too much to have to begin learning Linux, and a totally different GUI like Enlightenment, both at the same time. So Enlightenment went goodbye after way too many wasted hours trying to become productive and look good doing it.

So flash ahead several years (last year, to be exact), and a much more Linux-savy version of Me decided to give Enlightenment shot again. I hadn't kept up with it, and had meanwhile become an avid KDE fan, but I wanted to try something different, and figured that Enlightenment had to have matured by this time, to a point wherein I could grasp it easier. I mean... KDE had came so far in this time.

So I boot it up after installing the latest version, and ,after booting, am faced with the identical look and feel of the last time I used it. Nothing (on the surface, at least) had changed! No icons... Just a couple of odd, pager-like boxes.

Now... I'm not expecting enlightenment to change their way and become KDE or Gnome or anything. But they've gotta realize that virtually any converts to their window manager will be coming from an environment such as KDE, Gnome, Windows, etc. It's a totally different methodology from that of Enlightenment. You'd think that one of the first things that you'd see on a default desktop would be a "how to get started" type of document.

Yeah, yeah... I know. RTFM. Yes, I also know that I can configure Enlightenment to look and interact like whatever I want it to, but I'd kind of expect "something" to push the new user in the right direction.

But other things were not impressive also. Fonts, in paricular, looked poor when compared to the more popular window managers around.

So flash foward to todays announcement here on Slashdot, and so I decide to take a look at Enlightenments page to see if anything's changed yet. I see this. Come on... For crying out loud, someone get Enlightenment a PR director. If the programmers hope to grow the userbase of their window manager, they really should make it a bit more accessible. If an "intro level" of usability isn't a possibility, then how about a simple "Introduction to Enlightenment" document, or walk through? Something to offer the new user a glimpse of the power of Enlightenment. And without requiring them to hunt it down, or surf out to a website.

At least make the default font's look better. This is a good example of both the default look of Enlightenment, and it's default fonts. Conversely, this is the default look of KDE. I'm not saying that KDE's superior (to me it is, but who cares), but the default look, which all of us have seen many times before, and consi

This isn't a troll, or at least it's not meant as one, but try as I might, I could never get into using Enlightenment. And from the fact that Gnome and KDE get the majority of the press/developers/software, I'm guessing I'm not alone in this impression.

Don't get me wrong: Enlightenment is certainly a powerful and capable windowing system, and there have been some fairly original looks/themes released for it, but, to me at least (he says, carefully circumventing the Troll under the bridge) it's not a GUI that a new user coming from the Windows/Mac/KDE/Gnome world can immediately begin using. Or configuring.

(This is where all the Slashdot/Linux "elite" begin to quote my thread for their 'RTFM', and 'How could it be any simpler than xxxx?' responses)

When I first began investigating Linux all those years ago, Enlightenment themes and screenshots were all the rage. KDE and Gnome were promising, but Enlightenment was how all the coolest geeks seemed to produce such cool eye candy-based desktops. But to a Linux newbie like me, coming from an Amiga/Dos/Windows background at the time, it was totally alien. It was just too much to have to begin learning Linux, and a totally different GUI like Enlightenment, both at the same time. So Enlightenment went goodbye after way too many wasted hours trying to become productive and look good doing it.

So flash ahead several years (last year, to be exact), and a much more Linux-savy version of Me decided to give Enlightenment shot again. I hadn't kept up with it, and had meanwhile become an avid KDE fan, but I wanted to try something different, and figured that Enlightenment had to have matured by this time, to a point wherein I could grasp it easier. I mean... KDE had came so far in this time.

So I boot it up after installing the latest version, and ,after booting, am faced with the identical look and feel of the last time I used it. Nothing (on the surface, at least) had changed! No icons... Just a couple of odd, pager-like boxes.

Now... I'm not expecting enlightenment to change their way and become KDE or Gnome or anything. But they've gotta realize that virtually any converts to their window manager will be coming from an environment such as KDE, Gnome, Windows, etc. It's a totally different methodology from that of Enlightenment. You'd think that one of the first things that you'd see on a default desktop would be a "how to get started" type of document.

Yeah, yeah... I know. RTFM. Yes, I also know that I can configure Enlightenment to look and interact like whatever I want it to, but I'd kind of expect "something" to push the new user in the right direction.

But other things were not impressive also. Fonts, in paricular, looked poor when compared to the more popular window managers around.

So flash foward to todays announcement here on Slashdot, and so I decide to take a look at Enlightenments page to see if anything's changed yet. I see this. Come on... For crying out loud, someone get Enlightenment a PR director. If the programmers hope to grow the userbase of their window manager, they really should make it a bit more accessible. If an "intro level" of usability isn't a possibility, then how about a simple "Introduction to Enlightenment" document, or walk through? Something to offer the new user a glimpse of the power of Enlightenment. And without requiring them to hunt it down, or surf out to a website.

At least make the default font's look better. This is a good example of both the default look of Enlightenment, and it's default fonts. Conversely, this is the default look of KDE. I'm not saying that KDE's superior (to me it is, but who cares), but the default look, which all of us have seen many times before, and consi

Anyone noticed the title of the song being played on this screenshot? (see the bottom right)

Anyone interested in what rasterman and crew have been up to should really check out and compile the EFL (Enlightenment Foundation Libraries)

Some really neat stuff is on the way, of particular interest is the edje/evas/evoak stuff. Eventually this work will lead to an improved themeing system, for E and anything else that ties in to the EFL.
Rasterman has even given a glimpse of the power these libs will bring to the programmer with his own version of a DVD player, using the EFL, in just 17 lines of code!

so no, contrary to popular belief...E is NOT dead!

As it happens, that's what's being done with Edje, one of the new enlightenment foundation libraries. Very nice it is too :)

The release is not of Enlightenment the Window Manager. It is a release of EFL, the libraries that they wrote to underpin Enlightenment. Here are some screenshots of E components that will depend upon the EFL: Evidence, Entrance. and Emotion.

Some other details:

Edje provides a revolutionary method of absstacting every aspect of your interface from the application itself. By passing signals between the interface and the application all communication is done in an interface neutral way. No longer are "themes" simple changes of pixmaps over a fixed area. Using Embryo we can provide scripting ability to the interface componant itself to harness even more power and flexability. [sic]

So, no, this is not just a brushed metal window manager theme (of course, E 0.16 was always more than that, too). I've been watching E, and making the same jokes on April 1st, but I must say that I'm looking forward to trying what they're coming up with once they've got a semi-stable release; and since the EFL seems to be close to a freeze, I think we can hope to see E 0.17 soon.

I could only find this one. hth!

• be-fan wrote:
• 
  "Open source will handle this challenge quite fine. It's not a unified effort, but all the pieces are falling into place:
  
  1) OpenGL 2.0 should easily be a match for whatever the successor to Direct 3D is. A lot stuff mentioned in the article is also in OpenGL 2.0.
  
  2) The freedesktop.org folks are working on building an X server that sits on top of OpenGL.
  
  3) Some DRI folks are working on an OpenGL implementation that can operate without the X server, to support using the X server on top of it."
  
  The OSS community has already been working on it. Now find some new FUD.
  

I don't know about cairo state, like waimea it seens stoped.

But The enlightenment team is doing a nice job with a lot of nice libs and the DR17 will be relased this year.

I don't know about cairo state, like waimea it seens stoped.

But The enlightenment team is doing a nice job with a lot of nice libs and the DR17 will be relased this year.

I don't know about cairo state, like waimea it seens stoped.

But The enlightenment team is doing a nice job with a lot of nice libs and the DR17 will be relased this year.

Age of Enlightenment

We only need to wait for DR17 :D

A very simple RSS (both RDF and XML) stream reader. eRSS is simple to set up, and allows for tweaking the settings of each stream you want on your desktop (see the three in the lower right, and one bottom center).

A very simple RSS (both RDF and XML) stream reader. eRSS is simple to set up, and allows for tweaking the settings of each stream you want on your desktop (see the three in the lower right, and one bottom center).

I believe many people would agree with you. (Do you remember when emacs was ridiculed for its vast size (50M ?)?)
However, I do not think KDE is "hacked"; it works well for me. (I do not use Gnome and cannot comment on it.) What specific issues do you have with KDE?
I assume you have tried Lynx or Links as a web browser. (Actually, I love vim; it is compact and works well.) There are other desktops, of course (e.g. fvwm, enlightenment).

It's hardly more than 3ddesktop.
I run it all the time as a desktop switcher for Gnome.
The difference with 3ddesktop is that it doesn't use all your CPU just sitting there, and it doesn't look like a sad attempt at making the whole desktop 'experience' 3-dimensional. Some things are better in 2D. Desktops are one of them. There's nothing to be gained from having a window slant into the background. It certainly doesn't aid in getting work done. Yeah maybe it looks cool. So does 3ddesktop, and it's actually functional.

Personally, I'm waiting for Enlightenment to fulfill my need for eye candy. And yes I realise I'll be waiting a while. At least it have the word 'Java' smacked at the front of it in some sad, desperate attempt at building mindshare for their slow-arse POS flagship product. Jesus - imagine if this thing were actually written in Java ( put up your hands everyone who likes playing those First Person Shooters that are written in Java, you know the ones, the .... um .... the .... well .... the .... Oh, I've forgotten the names ).

Plus Sun sux. Their attitude towards Microsoft is displayed in a new light next to their attitude towards Linux ( specifically RedHat ).

>I was a bit taken aback that the install ran slower >then windows 2k on my celeron 400.
>When i say slower, i mean that browsing the web >took longer and programs took longer to load and >execute. Windows took longer to move around the >screen. Menus took longer to "pop up." Basic stuff,
>really.

I've got the release of KDE that came with RedHat 9, and I will say that it has gradually been winning me over, lately. Konqueror is a very useful file manager when in twin-pane mode, and Konsole also makes my life a lot easier.

That said, one thing I have noticed is somewhat poor performance on slower machines, and even on my own setup (Celeron 1.7, 512 Mb ram) things can get a bit choppy at times. I would tend to conclude that KDE is built primarily for aesthetics and secondly for functionality, with efficiency being a fair way down on the list of priorities.

If you're sufficiently computer literate that a few less frills won't bother you, I'd recommend Fluxbox, a smaller and lighter window manager which from what I've seen has become rather popular with the LFS crowd in particular. XFce is another possible choice, and personally I've always been a huge fan of Enlightenment. E can be a bit slow initially, though...you'll need to turn off some of the more frivolous additions such as the desktop micro-window and so on, but I used to run that on a Celeron 400 myself and had no problems.

I didn't used to like KDE at all I will confess, but I've learned recently that it does have it's place. Resource efficiency however is not what it was designed for, so you really need to have the horses to drive it.

I then tried enlightenment and ran even better, and it looked better too!

Enlightenment and WindowLab are two projects that spring to mind. There are many more.

Since when was XP eyecandy? Looks like they haven't looked at enlightenment recently... You get multiple desktops *overlapping*, the bottom of the screen ripples and waves with a watery reflection of the windows, windows slide in smoothly rather than just appear, the list goes on!

But what should it be, a whole new library based
on the best from Gnome,
Kde,
Gnustep
Enlightenment Foundation Libraries
and Tao elate
implimentet in Ocaml ??

Obviously, this "dumb cracker" remark means that GNOME developers are nothing but cold-hearted racists, and their desktop environment should be avoided at all costs.

This is unfortunate, because the other option, KDE, is unfortunately run by a Kommunist regime from straight from the heart of the former Soviet Union.

As a result, the only viable solution is Enlightenment.

Perhaps you should check out the EFL's. The edje library works very similar to Avalon/XAML. UI's are completely abstracted from the applications and stored in text/image archives, but unlike Avalon, edje files aren't pre-compiled. They also allow animations and other neat things that MS hasn't mentioned being in Avalon.
Avalon's SVG-like display tech breaks SVG standar- err- has better interoperability with WinFX (whodathunkit).

And nice troll btw. Yummy.

Using a window manager that supports grouping, etc. (like Enlightenment) is highly recommended as well I might add. Just because Windows likes to make big EXEcutables with meta-data and resources built-in and big MDI windows with lots of sub-windows doesn't make it the right way to do things.

I love being able to arrange my desktop of Gimp windows the way I want and not have a big blank "GIMP" window taking up space on my desktop.

There do seem to be some improvements listed. Foremost appears to be the ability to view a scaled version of the desktops in full screen instead of just the little icons in the pager. For instance, with 4 virtual desktops, they describe a scaled view where each desktop is essentially 1/4 of the screen. If you have two browser windows open in two different desktops, such a view would enable you to visually determine which is which. I don't remember seeing such a feature in other VWMs. They also describe animating the transition between this view and the full desktops via shrinking/expanding the active desktop.
Sure, real new.

There do seem to be some improvements listed. Foremost appears to be the ability to view a scaled version of the desktops in full screen instead of just the little icons in the pager.

The Enlightenment window manager does that already. Look at the lower left corner of of this screenshot.

There do seem to be some improvements listed. Foremost appears to be the ability to view a scaled version of the desktops in full screen instead of just the little icons in the pager.

The Enlightenment window manager does that already. Look at the lower left corner of of this screenshot.

enlightenment has a beautiful pager that includes a thumbnailed image of the window. Here you can see it.

If i can find something like the wheel, or standing in line isnt patented yet, can i file for it and charge everyone that uses it?

It's the on with Enlightenment 0.16 where you can see, if you want, the entire desktop with the actuel application !

It's the on with Enlightenment 0.16 where you can see, if you want, the entire desktop with the actuel application !

It's the on with Enlightenment 0.16 where you can see, if you want, the entire desktop with the actuel application !

It's the on with Enlightenment 0.16 where you can see, if you want, the entire desktop with the actuel application !

Evas will also do this, but claims to be faster. If gdk won't do what you want you might look at that project. Homepage

Actually, if you check out the E Team page, you'll see that Kim Woelders is and has been maintaining E16 for a while now. Raster is mentioned many times on the Team page for all sorts of tasks, and Mandrake is listed as "Inactive."