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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."
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
...by the time that's released!
(I've only just finished school)
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.)
How much longer? Enlightenment was my second window manager, Afterstep being my first. I loved enlightenment, made my system look so smooth.
:)
I've been waiting for e17 for so long, tried cvs occasionally but it's always got faults (unsurprising) making it not worth the effort. Especially now it's been declared as a glorified "test program"
Evas looks promising though. I've just never found a home since Afterstep/Enlightenment. Ion was very, very desirable but a few applications are irritating. Still I think the pros outweigh the cons.
if i think a project is dead i usually say the next version will be released just after E17
Smile... tomorrow will be worse.
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.
I dont remember seeing the E logo in a slashdot posrt... it must be true it hasnt been news about it in ages ...
------- The last Sig. got fired.
Last time I checked out e17 trying to contribute meant:
- Pulling stuff from cvs SPLIT and HEAD branches (both
had working and broken pieces)
- Finding some document describing the correct order to
build two dozen libs/apps; there was no such up-to-date
document on enlightenment.org
- Build failures, this month here, next month there
- Website says: "Don't complain it doesn't build. It does."
Nothing kills motivation like being told the problems you
are seeing and might even feel inclined to tackle don't
exist.
Geez, contributing to a freakin' OS kernel is a piece of
cake compared to the chores prospective e hackers are
facing.
Too bad, really. e16 is my wm of choice, and e17 has been
looking promising from its early beginnings.
If you read this and know better than I do, don't argue
about the details. The point I'm trying to make is that
e will see more contributions when it makes it easier to
do just that.
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.
Not trolling, but... ;-)
1. Write heavily hacked code that create beautiful thing.
2. Rewrite it, using
2.1 a more object-oriented approach
2.2 a more conventional approach
3. Improve the code using heavily hacked code.
4. Goto (2).
Well, back to the topic - Enlightenment is what attracted me to the graphical world of linux, and well, I really hate them having put off my wet dreams when I was using efm (enlightenment file manager) several years ago. I thought that they will continue with the same codebase and evolve into something like MacOS.. now that they go for a major rewrite (wel, this is old news anyway)...
I have nothing to say now.
Although I do not use E, I have checked the progress of its development through www.cuddletech.com and their efforts to improve E and port it to Solaris. I actually like the idea of slow, methodical development as opposed to the "let's add every feature under the sun (no pun intended)" effort ending up in a convuluted mess of bad code and incomplete or non working features. My experiences with Gnome and KDE under Solaris attest to the "it's gotta look cool despite the bad code" effort. People complain about CDE's memory footprint, Gnome just sucks up memory like there is no tomorrow and the only "feature" I can see that remotely benefits anyone is the ability to have more than four desktops (Gnome 6, CDE 4). And lets not mention KDE's memory leaks (which I do not know if they have been totally fixed yet). All I want from a graphical interface is the ability to run graphical applications effectively. At least with cuddletech's efforts (being performed by a working system administrator) functionalty is not being lost to "cool features". Maybe it is time to take another look at E since (at least for me) I am not satisfied with Gnome and Sun's efforts to bring it to Solaris.
see subject includes some other libs as well
the link
... or they just drew them in GIMP to start with. Maybe it's a Zen thing - "there is no Enlightenment".
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!
This is one of the annoyances of open source... the tendency of developers to undergo major rewrites.
:)
I've been following Enligtenment for some time, and the most annoying thing about it is that it undergoes a "major rewrite" nearly every major release. The new release always causes your current themes to break, and removes many of the features you were using.
Major re-writes are something developers like to do, but in the commercial sector their bosses won't let them. Why not? Most of the value of the re-write is in the developer's mind: they see the code, no the final product. There are three kinds of expenses to doing a re-write 1) the cost to actually implement the rewrite and 2) time cost to not market your products in a timely manner ad 3) loss of marketability due to feature loss and increased bug count. Even though it's free, the enlightenment project suffers from these costs.
Yes, I am a developer, and yes, I like to re-write. I'm just glad for my job's sake that my boss usually won't let me do it
"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).
- 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