State of the E-nion

An anonymous reader writes: "Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) has posted a "state of the union" for the enlightenment project on their mailing list. It has been over 2 years since the last major release of the Enlightenment window manager. It looks like 0.17 is a ways off but it's nice to see an update."

Comments

stick to e16 for a wm, but e17 has nice stuff

[Trepidity]

If you want a working window manager, stick to e16; e17 isn't really being actively worked on as a window manager yet, and doesn't have many features. The work is on a lot of useful backend stuff; the joke is that once the backend is done, the window manager will be five lines of code. Take a look at the components though. Many of them are in a very good state, and the E folk are to be commended for their excellent modular development -- many of these components are already being used by other projects (imlib2 in particular), and many of the others either are or soon will be in shape to be used in other projects too.

Of course perhaps I'm a bit biased, since E16 is still my favorite window manager (a better way to view/edit remembered window/app attributes being my only real feature request), but I think the E17 team is doing a good job contributing to the overall Free Software codebase. And though it's a bit frustrating that E17 is taking so long, reading through the components is impressive -- everything is being engineered carefully. While many window managers hack things in, everything in E -- from the theming engine to the window decorations -- is carefully designed with a clean interface. Should be impressive when it's done.

My only main worry about E17 is that it seems to be going desktop-environment-ish, a la GNOME/KDE, which I really can't stand. Hopefully we'll be able to turn all that off.

Re:stick to e16 for a wm, but e17 has nice stuff

[koekepeer]

[quote]
My only main worry about E17 is that it seems to be going desktop-environment-ish, a la GNOME/KDE, which I really can't stand. Hopefully we'll be able to turn all that off.
[/quote]

it's going to be a desktop shell. they'll have an icon bar, a filemanager, and a desktop, epplets. now that would be rather okay, because i like their original ideas, and my guess is that it will outperform gnome/kde in that area. probably speedwise, and certainly interface-wise.

i think E16 is the most easy to handle WM i have used (and i've used a lot of them). this is all a matter of personal preferences of course. the deal is, E has a tradition of being able to change those preferences to suit your needs. i think this is one of E's bigest merits (customisability)

this will probably translate into the ability to switch off everything if you want to in E17. and you'll just have a WM again :)

Re:stick to e16 for a wm, but e17 has nice stuff

[fusiongyro]

Didn't Afterstep become GNUStep?

Nope. A popular misconception however.

Afterstep was a window manager based on Bowman, which was in turn based on FVWM 1. GNUstep is the GNU reimplementation of the NeXTSTEP libraries and interfaces (i.e. the Cocoa part of Mac OS X). As a matter of fact, they recommend using Window Maker as your window manager to complete your NeXT under Linux experience.

--
Daniel

I'll be retired....

[redcliffe]

...by the time that's released!

(I've only just finished school)

Re:evo is cool

[localghost]

Well, you could use it with KDE. It's NETWM compatible, so you could just replace the kwin window manager with enlightment. If you want to try it out, just edit you startkde script, or set the environmental variable KDEWM to the path to enlightenment (that sounds funny) before you start KDE and it should use that instead.

Re:Enlightenment one of the first...

[Anonymous Coward]

Over the years, how many people have been turned onto Linux from seeing a tricked-out E desktop? I'd say a lot.

I definitely agree with you there. One of Linuxs big selling points on the desktop is the configurability of the windowing system. The abstraction of the windowing system and the open nature of Linux have resulted in people experimenting with different types of interface. For a taster, check these out:

FluxBox
Ion
PekWM
TreeWM
WindowLab

updated document on website

[koekepeer]

see subject includes some other libs as well

the link

Re:efm (is now evidence)

[Azundris]

now, have you seen efm? (not maintained since they focus on E17 now). g(*&^mn, that was a fine filemanager. no clutter, a sort of mixture between command-line and graphical shell, simple yet effective windows (a-la mac-os classic), really gorgeous.

"evidence" will basically be that -- efm features (icon-view, "typebuffer" micro-shell, with a browser-view a la Mac OS X thrown in for good measure), but on top of the new e17 libs. A working (if unoptimized) version can be pulled from CVS (cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/ evidence co evidence, don't bother with the 0.9.4 RPMs).