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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."
I don't know about many of the rest of you, but I've been using E16 nearly nonstop (give or take a few weeks of experimentation with each of several other wms) since its original release four or so years ago.
Its age causes the odd compatability problems (esp with nautilus), but there certainly aren't things which cannot be worked around...
It does entertain me that nearly every user who was introduced to linux after RedHat switched their default wm to be sawhorse/sawfish has never even heard of what is still arguably the best looking thing out there. (I've not touched KDE3.1 yet, but seeing as I have stylistic issues with most of the KDE 'way', my subjective opinion would probably remain the same even with such an experience.)
Yeah it's taken for ever. But you can tell it will be good when it gets here. There has been a long-running thread about a real-time background which represents the weather / time / moon-phase. Sounds _really_ sweet. Eye-candy galore once the libs are finally set in stone.
I currently switch between E-16 cvs (it's got some work-arounds for rendering issues with later version of X) and E-17 cvs. Every so often I'll try out Gnome / KDE out for a couple of days, but I always end up getting annoyed enough to go back to E. It's just a better interface.
Evas is the technology in E17 that can really turn heads. For the uninitiated, it's a display library that abstracts the pixels, handling hardware accelleration and optimization for you. The concept is very similar to Quartz Extreme on OS X (except I don't see any of the functionality of Display PostScript).
We really need Evas and the rest of E17 to get mature -- it's something that can potentially make Linux desktop technology take off in a big way. Think about an OpenGL accellerated composited windowing system. That would lend itself to all sorts of interesting possibilities for desktops.
For one, we'd certainly get rid of a lot of the ugly artifacting and flicker that you see with Qt and GTK today (assuming they could somehow be ported). While a lot of that could be fixed with double buffering, you still wouldn't get all the benefits of Evas.
If you wanna see what I mean, you can go and download only the Evas package and run a small test suite. If you've got an OpenGL accellerated graphics card, you're in for a real treat -- this stuff is incredibly cool.
Now only if they would finish it!
Join Tor today!
- As Mandrake pointed out, a new patch has just been committed to CVS that will enable E 0.16 to support new KDE/GNOME Window Manager hints. For the uninitiated, this means that it will finally be possible for you to use Enlightenment as your window manager in GNOME 2 or KDE 3 (and get the best of both worlds, if you wish). So expect an 0.16.6 release very soon. :)
:)
- E17 as present is a moderately functional window manager, with few features but great looks. Expect this present window manager to be eventually nuked pending completion of the underlying libraries, to make way for the real Enlightenment.
- There are several other libraries and apps that are being worked on, notably ebg, ebits, ecore, ewl (widget library), evidence (file manager, although a fairly separate project presently), entrance (login/display manager) and so on.
Want to see what E17 looks like? Check out my collection of screenshots here and here.
And if you've ever done some sort of GUI programming, you need to check Evas out NOW!
Am I a hipster-doofus?
It should also be noted that evas is disgustingly easy to code for - i was making simple windows with a couple of buttons (button code writen myself - evas is just the canvas not the widget API) and resizing decently in about 3 hours - that includes the time it took me to learn the API.
In addition to a really clear and powerful API, evas is also provides heaps of typechecking and other debugging goodness. It picks up 90% of the errors for you, and you can fix them in a thrid (perhaps a quarter) the time it would have taken before.
if you want to dive in and have a play with evas, Id suggest going here Rephorms page and getting eprog (its a little library to abstract some of the setup of an evas for you - great if you just want a simple X app), evas and imlib, although the ones of rephorms site are a bit out of date, so CVS is your friend here.
Another nice thing about evas, is that the only thing that differs between a X11 app, a framebuffer app, a DirectFB app and an iPaq/Zarus app is the init code basicly (and wether it needs to resize). Thats alot of power. In that line, future ports include PalmOS and MacOSX (native - its already there under their X server)
Lots of acceleration there two; OpenGL which has already been mentioned a bit, although i dont know if Raster actually has this in the mainline code yet (it was in the old Evas, but go removed during the refactor / recode). Theres also MMX/SSE support to.
Summary; lots of power & easy to use from a programmers perspective, and not sacrificing flexibility either. Check it out if you need a good canvas
The Lockdown Project
It was when I saw Enlightenment running on FreeBSD 3.0 that I was hooked on open-source software. The idea of a bunch of nerds cranking out free editors and compilers was fine in and of itself, but the artistry and raw sex appeal Mandrake (Geoff Harrison) and Rasterman (Carsten Haitzler) achieved was completely unexpected. It was then that I knew I had to have this stuff. I still insist there is a place for art and personal expression in computer design, a position that so far only Apple appears to appreciate.
Gary Dunn
Open Slate Project