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State of the E-nion

Posted by michael on from the dusting-off-the-enlightenment-topic-icon dept.

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."

4 of 188 comments (clear)

  1. stick to e16 for a wm, but e17 has nice stuff by Trepidity · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    --
    10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
    1. Re:stick to e16 for a wm, but e17 has nice stuff by koekepeer · · Score: 5, Informative

      [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 :)

    2. Re:stick to e16 for a wm, but e17 has nice stuff by fusiongyro · · Score: 3, Informative

      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

  2. updated document on website by koekepeer · · Score: 3, Informative

    see subject includes some other libs as well

    the link