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Enlightenment Lives
Anonymous Coward writes "The Enlightenment Project, far from dead, is pleased to announce the DR16.7.1 release of the Enlightenment Window Manager. With tons of fixes, a massive overhaul of the internals, and several new features this release is a must try for those who haven't run E in a long time. The window manager that redefined the way a desktop can look is still going strong."
DR16.7.1 has been released!. This is the biggest release since DR16 first debuted! In this release dependencies have changed from Imlib/FreeType to Imlib2/FreeType2. The old default themes (which made the distribution almost 18M in size!) have been replaced with "Winter" by rephorm. The distribution has been split into 3 diffrent packages: programs (source), docs (Edox), and themes. A long long list of bugs have been fixed (including some very old nagging ones that weren't easy for kwo to squash). And probly of most interest to the end user: "Theme Transparency". Get the files source and RPMs in the usual place.
If your wondering what happened to DR16.7.0, it was halted last minute by several bugs that were only reproducable by a small number of us but were major bugs none the less. You can see the changes since the initial release here.
Ports for Solaris are avalible now and the DarwinPorts port is ready. Gentoo Portage will be updated shortly.
It ALMOST does Amiga Screens right ("Virtual Desktops on PCP" or something like that), let down only by some fundamental limitations of the X Window System (on the Amiga OS 3.0+, every GUI app had a notion of what named "public screen" it was on, Enlightenment fakes it by remembering for the application, which often breaks).
Try it, you might like it (or hate it).
"Rasterman", a very long time ago, was an Amiga hacker.
Yes, GNOME once ran with Enlightement, then that was changed to Sawfish, and now we have the current Metacity.
Though in reality, since all these are just window managers, you could replace them with anything you want.
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!
--
Society has traditionally always tried to find scapegoats for its problems. Well, here I am.
It would work fabulously. This is exactally the kind of machine that E was designed on (it was mentioned in an article I read last week). So, it shouldn't be a problem at all. You could probably get away with taking it down to 128MB of ram if you really wanted to.
Well, that may be so. However, the topic at hand here is enlightenment not evolution.
He's actually talking about Enlightenment. Alan Cox was heard to say that Rasterman is good at drawing pretty pictures, but as a programmer he makes a good plumber (or something to that effect - it's in one of the back issues of his Diary from 4 or 5 years ago).
Enlightenment is heavily, heavily based on themeable items -- not just colors, icons, or window bars, I mean *everything*. There are quite a few crappy themes out there, so you have to find the right ones.
The theming can completly transform E's look. I've noticed alot of people say they're not too keen on the look - alot of people who use it are into dark/gothic themes. I actually wasn't too keen on the original default themes either. But there are literally hundreds of themes available, everything from dark/gothic to abstractly artististic to clean/bright themes.
Chances are if you have a certain preference, then there are others who also have and have made a theme for it.
I think one of E's primary motivations is to design a desktop that's not constrained in any way. Every piece is designed to be as customisable as possible - to leave the end choice about how the desktop should look to the user. Nice philosophy.
Hey, load up Fink and you can have Enlightenment on your Powerbook. Or any of a bunch of other window managers.
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
As for reasons to use it?
Well lets see....
The themes change not only the look, but the functionality and behaviour. (See the Aqua themes)
Window Grouping
Virtual/Multiple Desktops (Yes, there is a difference)
More options than you can shake a /. troll at
Easy to use
I could go on, but I really hate telling people why they should use a product. Since you had the motivation to ask, find some motivation to try it out. Most people that have the patience to tune E to their liking will never go back to anything else. If they do, its usually to a minimalist WM like ratpoison or fluxbox (both ends of the scale I suppose). If you don't think its worth your time to enhance your productivity, then stick with what you know. Otherwise, give it a shot and be prepared to get lost in the immense selection of themes!
When encryption is outlawed, ou++1!@(93j++js-d9298yIUH(*Y24JKB!~
If I recall correctly Mandrake (of http://www.mandrake.net fame) worked with rasterman (of http://www.rasterman.com fame) at VALinux (the software area) long ago.. they've all parted ways from VALinux now. But since SF is run by VALinux these guys were some of the first to have access to it and all that. hence the group_id of 2 :-P
I believe Rasterman worked for VA... but my brain is a little fuzzy
Kyle
http://www.unlogikal.net/
Getting the code to run on Sun's C compilier back in the DR13 days was painful but possible and totally worth it due to the speed improvements. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the speed junkies gave up on E at/near the time of DR14 due to the extensive use of gcc-isms in the hacked up configure script and the code... and that doesn't even take into account some of the... err.. interesting methods that Carsten chose to implement some of his ideas.
Yes, back when we hacked up SF, Raster and Mandrake were just down the hall, so E became one of the first projects. IIRC mainly because at the time they were hosted on openprojects which was broken/down.
- U
They didn't take posession for some time, as they resisted moving off their own hardware, but they eventually gave in.
Chris DiBona
Co-Editor, Open Sources
Open Source Program Manager, Google, Inc.
Gentoo's Portage documentation is pretty nice.
/etc/portage/package.keywords, package.mask, and package.unmask. (They may need to be created.)
Try:
ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86" emerge -p enlightenment
Make sure it's not going to install some hideously unstable library in that cast.
Or edit
For example, package.keywords might have:
x11-themes/ethemes ~x86
to unmask unstable versions of ethemes on x86 systems
and
x11-wm/enlightenment ~x86
to unmask "unstable" versions of E.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
According to the text of the article, they switched the default theme to winter, so it looks more like this by default. Those screenshots on the E website are (if you look close) from E 16.0, and this is 16.7.
Also, I don't know what you heard, but E16 is just a window manager, like Fluxbox or KWin or Metacity. It isn't an never was trying to be a whole desktop environment. In fact, it used to be the default window manager for Gnome before Sawfish replaced it.
In other words, if you want panels and desktop icons and stuff, then you need to run Gnome or KDE with Enlightenment as the window manager, or you need to use iDesk or something like that to provide that extra functionality. E by itself is closer to the minimalist window managers.
E17 will be more like Gnome, KDE or XFCE, but that's been years in the making and may yet be years before it's released. But E16 was never trying to be like that. What you're doing is sort of like complaining that Fluxbox doesn't do everything that KDE does. E isn't designed to do fancy stuff out of the box and be GUI configurable in all aspects. That's what KDE and Gnome are for.
I've come for the woman, and your head.
correct. Raster used to work for RH and i am pretty sure he worked for VALinux and then quit to move back to australia.
Mandrake (http://www.mandrake.net) however was not associated with Mandrake-Linux (http://www.mandrakelinux.com).
Mandrake went on to found another company, which he then sold and is in the process of working on yet another. BTW, Mandrake's first company was bought by VALinux, it was called Enlightened something I believe... Someone care to correct me? I may have my facts slightly mixed up about raster working for VA still.
Kyle
http://www.unlogikal.net/
Gentoo users, this is now in portage.
PCB
free ipod and free gmail!
As long as the X-Windows system is divided with no clear objective
The X-Window system has no objective whatsoever regarding desktop environments, let alone a clear one. It is only a display surface.
As far as desktop environments go, of course we're divided. There's Windows, Mac, KDE, GNOME, etc. Why aren't we up in arms that Apple created their own desktop instead of working with what existed? Each of these projects has a reason for being. And sure, their existence takes away from the others. For example, lots of software is Mac only, and so the rest of us miss out. This is inherent to having many desktop environments.
But hey, at least on a usual X11-based OS, you can run KDE and GNOME apps at the same time. Running a Windows app on a Mac is considered a feat and a feature, but for some reason having the GIMP under KDE means that Linux sucks. I'll just end this by saying that Linux isn't even a desktop.
Don't use ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86", use Mr. Dodd's other suggestion, /etc/portage/package.keywords instead. If you do use ACCEPT_KEYWORDS, and do something like "emerge -D", it will attempt to "upgrade" all of the dependencies of that package...
Seriously, if you don't like it, vote with your mindshare and your wallet.
Want unix without the X hassle, the 4 different environments you need to run all the programs that you use, the different desktops, etc, etc, etc?
BUY A MAC.
Mac OS X is the only affordable commercial unix workstation. And as a bonus, it's based on FreeBSD (quite heavily) - which means almost any unix program will work on it with relative ease (mostly a compile) - and if you need X protocol support, you have that too, without the hassle.
Use linux or FreeBSD on your server where you need the real horsies. Get an OS that's actually addressing your desktop needs for your workstation - and manages to support OSS as well; perhaps not in the way that some people here would like it, but it works for me.
Enlightenment belongs in the latter catogery. KDE and Gnome have a mission and so does Enlightenment but they are not the same mission. Read their site.
It being hard to use is not a problem to the people who use it. That is may be a problem to you is not their problem. This is the hardest to get about opensource. That the programmer doesn't need to give a damn about marketshare or customer satisfaction.
So your last line is right. They don't care and they don't have to. That is freedom. If you want them to care, pay them.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
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.
There's an awesome intro-level introduction. You download the docs from where you downloaded e. Install the docs, and when you fire up e, go to the main menu (middle-click), and click "Help." Anyone who bothers to download the docs can figure it out, with or without outside help.
I know it's a concept that's hard to grasp, but actually looking at something and TRYING IT OUT before you critique it is usually a good idea.
For those interested:
http://enlightenment.org/pages/efl.html/
http://enlightenment.org/pages/cvsnotes.html/
Try out some of the cool apps people have started working on like:
Go to the main enlightenment.org page and CVS for lots more...
-- "Chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit." -Henry B. Adams
Back during the imlib mess raster made the decision not to support the GNOME hints (from what I remember - this was years ago). Sawmill became the default window manager, gdk-pixbuf was born, and that was the end of the Enlightenment-GNOME relationship.
I can't say if it's been added back since. Sure, GNOME apps will run on anything, but for the best operation the window manager needs to support GNOME hints.
I only paid mild attention as I couldn't stand DR14+ enlightenment anyway. I had switched to fvwm and then switched to sawmill (which eventually because sawfish over a name dispute).
I'm sure if you look in the GNOME mailing lists for 1999 and 2000 you'll see what I'm talkin' about.
What I miss is the old versions of E, before the overlaying desktops (or whatever they're called). Back in the day I had a lot of people interested in linux just because of E - _nothing_ looked cooler at the time, and not too much does nowdays. I'm running fvwm now but would gladly switch to something like that if it wasn't older than dirt.
Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach either, do tech support.
I've used E for a long long time. I don't use gnome or kde because they LOOK heavy. The bars, the widgets, everything feel fat.
And since, as we all know, Gnome and KDE are not window managers, and I believe that E is at least Gnome-compatible, there's no reason to be speaking as if E and Gnome (or KDE for that matter) are equatable.
What's more, Gnome and KDE are both fully themable, and at least in the case of Gnome, that means that you can select pixmaps/SVG, layout and fonts that result in a very E-like look (there are, in fact, several old Gnome themes that were designed to fit in with E more smoothly than the default).
Gnome is a set of libraries that provides for everything from widgets (such as the truly amazing Gnome Canvas which is distantly related to the TK Canvas) to session management to inter-applicaton communication to accessibility features to internationalization and much, much more. Enlightenment is a fine Window manager, and it has some of the other features of a desktop system as well, but let's not forget that most of what a desktop does, it does for applications via libraries, not by controling the display and management of application windows.