Samsung Sponsors the Development of Enlightenment

An anonymous reader writes "The Enlightenment window manager project has shared on its website that it now has the backing of a major (top-five) electronics manufacturer that will be actively sponsoring the project and using Enlightenment on its devices. No manufacturer was named, but Phoronix has dug deeper and found out that Samsung is sponsoring Enlightenment. Phoronix provides independent confirmation along with citing a new Enlightenment program that Samsung sponsored and then released under the LGPL-3. They also have videos of some of the new work to this window manager that Samsung funded."

Comments

Wow!

[gstoddart]

Samsung Sponsors the Development of Enlightenment

That's pretty ambitious. ;-)

So, a Buddhist walks up to a hot dog vendor, and says "make me one with everything". :-P

Cheers

Re:Wow!

[Anonymous Coward]

Samsung Sponsors the Development of Enlightenment

That's pretty ambitious. ;-)

So, a Buddhist walks up to a hot dog vendor, and says "make me one with everything". :-P

Cheers

The vendor hands him a fully loaded hot dog, and the Buddhist hands him a $20.
After a few moments, the Buddhist asks for his change, and the hot dog vendor replies, "change must come from within".

Re:Wow!

[gstoddart]

Bravo, sir.

Cheers

Re:Wow!

[roystgnr]

That's pretty ambitious.

No, no, Samsung isn't funding an attempt to develop the attainment of a blessed state in which their customers can transcend desire and suffering and achieve Nirvana. That would be nearly impossible.

Samsung is funding an attempt to develop for their customers a completed version of the Enlightenment Window Manager. That will be completely impossible.

Re:Wow!

[hey!]

Meh. Waterfall projects. Samsara with its continual release cycles is much more agile.

Seems Obvious

[Deliveranc3]

Samsung is awesome, so is enlightenment.

It's like Fluxbox in terms of resource use (and unfortunately on flashy little GUI indicators) but looks amazing!

Kudos on this! Let's get windows management handled! It's been so many years of updates on something that should have been handled by now!

Re:Seems Obvious

[cptnapalm]

Enlightenment is not Awesome.

Awesome is awesome.

Re:Seems Obvious

[junglee_iitk]

Lets hope that Samsung manages to get e17 out of door in 2010.

Wow, I was trying it out 5 years ago and it still hasn't seen a release.

Re:Seems Obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

Enlightenment was awesome about 10 years ago, when it was streets ahead of every other desktop in terms of looks. Unfortunately, it has been in alpha since then, so I'm afraid, in my opinion, it has missed the boat. Pity.

Re:Seems Obvious

[ChipMonk]

So is Jessi "My Powers are Awesome" Reid.

Re:Seems Obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

If by "looks" you mean utterly tasteless themes based on The Matrix movies, sure.

Re:Seems Obvious

[sexconker]

When I built a new computer for my brother (who was on the same shitty rig for like 6 years) I was finally able to get rid of his Matrix green numbers screen saver.

Re:Seems Obvious

[Knara]

What, is it "geek-cool" to not like the Matrix now, or something?

Re:Seems Obvious

[sexconker]

They're terrible movies. Yes, even the first one.

Re:Seems Obvious

[dbIII]

I've been using version 0.16 for ten years and it's my desktop now becuase updates and bugfixes have kept coming.
Version 0.17 was a very ambitious restart by people that now have day jobs and wabted to get all the supporting libraries right first.

Re:Seems Obvious

[Stormwatch]

They're terrible movies. Yes, even the first one.

*sigh* Why do people insist in this lie? The Matrix had no sequels or video games.

Re:Seems Obvious

[alexandre_ganso]

Wow, I never thought that someone would think that kde does not provide control enough.

Oh this is slashdot. Forget it.

Re:Seems Obvious

[Fred_A]

This feels like "Return of the Son of Zombie Window Manager".

E has spawned some pretty good libs in its time but the WM itself is mostly dead. It probably has a handful of users but then so has pretty much any other niche WM out there, including TWM.
When I last seriously ran E (other than just to poke at it for 5 minutes to see if there was anything new), it was on a 486...

While in theory it could be seen as a good thing to revive a mummified project that was promising years ago, in practice the world has moved on and there are now other active projects that do the same things or where the missing bits (if any) could be added. In short I don't see any point to this, even though it means we'll maybe, finally, someday, possibly, ultimately, after a while, see something happening on the Enlightenment front (although I wouldn't hold my breath).

Re:Seems Obvious

[Abreu]

Back in those days, EVERYBODY wanted Matrix themes and screensavers

LGPL-3?

[Kartoffel]

Enlightment is BSD licensed. You can't just change it to LGPL-3.

Re:LGPL-3?

[mmkkbb]

The copyright holders can change the license to new releases however they want.

Re:LGPL-3?

[gstoddart]

Enlightment is BSD licensed. You can't just change it to LGPL-3.

Actually, being BSD licensed, you can release a fork under a new license I believe since BSD is a permissive license.

The reverse, however, would not be true.

Cheers

Re:LGPL-3?

[yet-another-lobbyist]

I think he means that the new program (=application) that Samsung created was LGPL-3 licensed (and not Enlightenment itself). Shouldn't that be possible despite Enlightenment being BSD licensed?

Re:LGPL-3?

[Disgruntled Goats]

Actually, being BSD licensed, you can release a fork under a new license I believe since BSD is a permissive license.

The reverse, however, would not be true.

What you believe is wrong. The BSD doesn't let you change the license terms of the source code at your will. You must have permission from the copyright holder(s) to do so.

Re:LGPL-3?

[Disgruntled Goats]

To further add you may be confusing this with the fact that you can include BSD code inside other code that is licensed under another license, but this doesn't change the license that the BSD code is under.

Re:LGPL-3?

[Disgruntled Goats]

Sure you can include BSD code in an LGPL application. BSD is perfectly compatible with the GPL and LGPL.

Re:LGPL-3?

[gstoddart]

To further add you may be confusing this with the fact that you can include BSD code inside other code that is licensed under another license, but this doesn't change the license that the BSD code is under.

Which, other than the need for attribution, doesn't really restrict you much.

But, yes, one occasionally forgets that Slashdot is well populated with semanticists and nit-pickers. ;-)

Cheers

Re:LGPL-3?

[Kartoffel]

That is true. However, Samsung != the copyright holders. Samsung could, however, fork it and create their own thing, which would not be the same as Samsung developing the original unforked e.

Re:LGPL-3?

[noidentity]

Replying to clear "overrated" moderation my fucking browser selected instead of "informative" which I selected (after selection, I hit page down, but apparently the popup was selected and thus it chose the last one, without me realizing it). Sorry. Argh.

Re:LGPL-3?

[Disgruntled Goats]

Which, other than the need for attribution, doesn't really restrict you much.

Sure it doesn't. But it doesn't allow you to relicense the code under something else without the permission of the copyright holder.

But, yes, one occasionally forgets that Slashdot is well populated with semanticists and nit-pickers. ;-)

What nitpicking? You claimed one can fork BSD code and change the code's license. That's wrong.

Re:LGPL-3?

[Hatta]

If you can take BSD code and re-release it under a proprietary license(as many companies have done), you can take BSD code and re-release it under LGPL-3.

Re:LGPL-3?

[gstoddart]

What nitpicking? You claimed one can fork BSD code and change the code's license. That's wrong.

From wikipedia ...

The BSD License allows proprietary use, and for the software released under the license to be incorporated into proprietary products. Works based on the material may be released under a proprietary license or as closed source software.

Short of getting into a pointless pissing match to sort out all of the minor semantic differences between what we've both said, it's effectively something you can essentially change the license of by only including the statement that it contains some BSD code. Or at least, you can release your software under any license you choose even if it includes BSD code.

You yourself have pointed out several times in this thread that you can do this. The nit-picking is identifying every little way in which one is ever so slightly is semantically different from the other.

Essentially, we're belaboring the point and not really adding much.

Cheers

Re:LGPL-3?

[Minwee]

Samsung could, of course, hand over a fist full of dollars to the copyright holders and walk away with a copy of the code under whatever license they ask for.

Or maybe I'm just making this up.

Re:LGPL-3?

[Disgruntled Goats]

Short of getting into a pointless pissing match to sort out all of the minor semantic differences between what we've both said, it's effectively something you can essentially change the license of by only including the statement that it contains some BSD code. Or at least, you can release your software under any license you choose even if it includes BSD code.

There is no minor semantic difference. You just have poor reading comprehension. What that statement is saying is that you can create derived works using BSD license code and release the program as a whole under a proprietary license. But the license to the BSD code is still covered under the BSD license.

You yourself have pointed out several times in this thread that you can do this. The nit-picking is identifying every little way in which one is ever so slightly is semantically different from the other.

I've pointed out that one can create works using BSD code and release that under a different license. But this isn't the same as saying you can relicense BSD code at your will. There is a major difference between the two.

Re:LGPL-3?

[Brandybuck]

But Samsung is not the copyright holders. They can release a LGPL fork, but they cannot touch the license on the original trunk.

Re:LGPL-3?

[sexconker]

But, yes, one occasionally forgets that Slashdot is well-populated by semanticists and nit-pickers.

Cheers.

Re:LGPL-3?

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

That's doesn't really add up. Adding an additional license is not a semantic difference - it's a completely different activity than changing the original license. You can release your code under LGPL, but the referenced code will /still/ be BSD .

Re:LGPL-3?

[Late Adopter]

What nitpicking? You claimed one can fork BSD code and change the code's license. That's wrong.

It's effectively the same thing. You can release a "derivative work" that contains an extra newline at the end and release it under a different license. But the original will still be available, so nobody does that.

Re:LGPL-3?

[redstar427]

Enlightment is BSD licensed. You can't just change it to LGPL-3.

Sure I can. I can use my text editor, remove all the BSD License words, and paste in the other license.
Done! See?

Re:LGPL-3?

[PitaBred]

They can also re-license the old code under a new license. It doesn't have to be a new release. The only thing that they cannot do is rescind the previous licensing terms.

Re:LGPL-3?

[onefriedrice]

If you can take BSD code and re-release it under a proprietary license(as many companies have done), you can take BSD code and re-release it under LGPL-3.

As it turns out, you can do neither (legally). If you're not the copyright owner of something, you have no business licensing it. You can combine BSD code with LGPL-3 code or proprietary code (a right granted by the BSD license), but that doesn't automagically change the license to something else.

Re:LGPL-3?

[mmkkbb]

They're just giving the copyright holders large sums of money. That tends to sway judgment!

Re:LGPL-3?

[Hatta]

If you can't relicense BSD code, then any code that incorporates it must be licensed under the BSD license. That sounds a lot like the "viral" GPL.

Re:LGPL-3?

[bsDaemon]

No, not quite. Taking BSD code and using it on your project, no matter how you change it, and whether you release as code or binary, needs only mention that you borrowed from the BSD code to begin with. You are under no obligation to make your code changes public in anyway, just the notice. Also, none of this affects the original BSD code.

If someone were to take BSD code and re-license it under the GPL, then the BSD-ness of the code would be in jeopardy in a way that Microsoft scraping 4.4BSD for its FTP program is not.

Re:LGPL-3?

[squiggleslash]

This viral nature of the BSD license is why I avoid it and only use GPL'd software.

Re:LGPL-3?

[MikeBabcock]

To misquote you ... "If someone were to take BSD code and re-license it as commercial, then the BSD-ness of the code would not be in jeopardy in a way that actually releasing the code but under the GPL would cause it to be."

It makes no sense either way you say it.

If "Jerk Option A" is to take the BSD code in question and never release it, how can "Jerk Option B", release it at all but under a more stringent license be worse? In neither case is the licensing of the original code changed of course. The question here is about derived work.

Re:LGPL-3?

[bsDaemon]

I don't see taking the code and releasing it as a "jerk option." That's the self-validation option -- someone thought my code was good enough and useful enough to include into a commercial product. The "I like this but, I don't really like your terms because of political/philosophical/church of emacs reasons and think everyone should agree with ME!!" option is how I view the GPL. Of course, maybe that just makes me the jerk, but I can live with that.

Re:LGPL-3?

[plasticsquirrel]

Actually, I believe that the terms of the BSD license do not restrict a developer from adding another license such as the GPL, to a software project. This would not remove the BSD license, but still effectively change the terms of subsequent modifications. In the words of Theo de Raadt:

GPL fans said the great problem we would face is that companies would take our BSD code, modify it, and not give back. Nope -- the great problem we face is that people would wrap the GPL around our code, and lock us out in the same way that these supposed companies would lock us out. Just like the Linux community, we have many companies giving us code back, all the time. But once the code is GPL'd, we cannot get it back.

Personally, I think this is one weakness of relying on "do whatever you want" licenses like BSD and MIT. Linux can always use BSD and GPL'd code, but the BSD devs want to stick with BSD for their kernels and other projects whenever possible.

Re:LGPL-3?

[Simetrical]

Enlightment is BSD licensed. You can't just change it to LGPL-3.

No, but you can redistribute a version that contains LGPLv3 changes, and not say which parts you changed. Then the work may as well be only LGPLv3. You can argue that theoretically, some of the code is BSD and not LGPL, but you have to satisfy the LGPL's requirements for the whole thing and that means you automatically satisfy the BSD requirements (as those are strictly weaker), so the distinction is academic.

Of course, none of this changes the status of the original version of Enlightenment from its original source.

Re:LGPL-3?

[Brandybuck]

So? If the copyright holders don't like being ruthlessly abused, they don't have to accept the money. No really, I'm serious! I know it's trendy to cop an lefty attitude about money being coercive, but there's nothing inherently mesmeristic about money. A few billion females manage to go through life without ever once prostituting themselves, so don't act like you don't have any choice when a dollar bill is waved in your face.

If you hate money so much, give all of yours to me.

Scooped

[d34dluk3]

Enlightenment already developed by Rousseau, Diderot, and Voltaire, among others.

Re:Scooped

[kellyb9]

Enlightenment already developed by Rousseau, Diderot, and Voltaire, among others.

so, you're saying there's prior art?

v2.0?

[MonsterTrimble]

This can only be considered a good thing - another well funded GUI to go against Gnome, KDE & XCFE. Myself I have been looking over OpenGEU for a while (even ran it for a week) and while I really like some of the features it's not ready for prime time. I partially blame the integration of GTK pieces into Enlightenment but I feel that is a necessity at this moment. If funding from Samsung can improve Enlightenment to where it has a stable, 100% native suite then only good things can happen.

Re:v2.0?

[Disgruntled Goats]

Yes it's true that Linux's greatest failing was it didn't have enough DEs!

Re:v2.0?

[MonsterTrimble]

Yes it's true that Linux's greatest failing was it didn't have enough GOOD, WELL DEVELOPED DEs!

There. Fixed that for you.

Seriously. Beyond Gnome, KDE & XCFE what is another well polished DE with all the bells & whistles that a modern distro is expected to have?

Re:v2.0?

[the_womble]

What do you mean by "100% native suite" and why does it matter?

I always use some KDE/QT apps with XFCE and I used to use some Gtk apps with KDE.

Re:v2.0?

[MonsterTrimble]

By 100% native suite I mean things like network manager, file manager, media player, menu, and battery gauge

Re:v2.0?

[MonsterTrimble]

Whoops - I meant to add that I use a number of GTK apps on my KDE system as well - notably Thunderbird and Open Office.

Re:v2.0?

[LWATCDR]

Enlightenment is a much lighter DE. I don't think it is going to compete with KDE or Gnome for Desktop mind share. I see it as ending up on mobile devices and maybe netbooks. Also Enlightenment is very NeXT/OSX in look. Linux is right now starting to look like it will big in the Mobile market. Android, WebOS, and Maemo are gaining a lot of ground while WinMo is loosing ground.
Linux can never be the winner. Linux is an option and the users are the winners.

Re:v2.0?

[TangoMargarine]

He's agreeing with you. The "good, well-developed" thing was a qualification of your statement. Although putting it in a FTFY did come across as a bit hostile.

PS: I also agree with you both.

Re:v2.0?

[bzipitidoo]

This is good news. I'm always looking around for faster desktop environments. Enlightenment is one I keep occasional tabs on. Also Equinox and LXDE. And plain old windows managers too, such as JWM, IceWM, and Fluxbox. The Wikipedia list of these is handy.

XFCE feels bloated and slow, but they brag that they're faster than Gnome or KDE. Just looking at XFCE's memory consumption was depressing. And who wants animation when slow screen repaints provide plenty of eye candy? One thing that makes XFCE so confounded slow, especially on older hardware, is dynamic font antialiasing and hinting. Turn that off and XFCE is noticeably faster. Of course then text looks awful, but this can be worked around by switching fonts. Trouble with that is the only font I have found that looks decent without antialiasing and hinting is the fixed monospace ones.

Re:v2.0?

[SgtChaireBourne]

I see it as ending up on mobile devices and maybe netbooks.

I see it ending up on netbooks especially. Eventually it'd be nice to see it installed by default by the OEM. That was a possibility during the first months of netbooks before M$ shut down that option.

However, the work-around, aka the windows refund, might not be as financially bad as it sounds. It used to be profitable to buy a car or other expensive item in a high-tax country and then fill out the import papers to have it brought home and pay the tax at home. The reason was because the vendor had to cut down on the base price to leave room for the tax and still have it within reach of enough of the market.

Same deal with the Windows refund. The manufacturers have to keep the overall price down to cover the cost of Windows. Take that off and the discount is noticeable. The downside is that it takes a little patience and a little record keeping to plod through the process. However, all retailers have a refund process, especially during the holiday season.

Just a few for ideas. It varies from country to country, of course:
http://www.linux.com/archive/articles/59381
http://www.theopensourcerer.com/2009/07/29/amazons-windows-refund-helps-the-earth/
http://www.linux.com/archive/articles/59381

Re:v2.0?

[Darkness404]

The thing is though, are the bells and whistles needed when they use up RAM and CPU cycles? Now, on a reasonable system of course they can be used. Ubuntu 9.10 has no problems running on my desktop from 2004 even though it only has a gig of RAM, integrated graphics and a slightly sluggish CPU, there are no visible slowdowns during normal use. But lets say we have a 600 Mhz ARM embedded system with only 16 MB of RAM? Or if we are re-using older computers? Or making a kiosk or other embedded computer? Are the features of GNOME, KDE and XFCE really needed?

Re:v2.0?

[HiThere]

That all depends.

Currently I've moved from KDE3.x to Gnome because KDE4.x has been so unfriendly. In about a year Gnome is scheduled to release a new version that looks to be as unfriendly as Gnome was.

Well, that gives KDE a year to develop KDE4 into something decent. If it doesn't, I'll be looking for the best alternative under active development.

Re:v2.0?

[blackpig]

I have an old Celeron 1.7 Ghz, 512Mb Ram with onboard graphics that runs Elive E17 and it's quite snappy. I presume that it will work quite well on a netbook since. There is a demo included called 'Enlightenment for Embedded' that looks like it has been designed for mobile phones and other low power devices (not smart phones)

Re:v2.0?

[MikeBabcock]

Enlightenment has more features than either of the desktops in popular use, when you consider its login manager and file manager as well as support libraries. The major concern I can see would be making it interoperate well with newer Linux desktop standards that have been established since 0.17 started.

Re:v2.0?

[dantum_sh]

I agree, Englightment was always a little bit different from the rest of the Window Managers. I would love to see more active development of it.

E17 is pretty stable now

[jlowe]

While news on the site may have been sparse, quite a lot of work has been going on with E17 development. The developers had released a roadmap showing that perhaps it would be ready for a Christmas release. While I doubt that milestone will be achieved, it has made significant progress.

I've been using it for months as my desktop at home and on my laptop. It is quite usable and I've had zero crashes for a while now. Rasterman has always had a focus on small-screen devices, so this development doesn't surprise me. But if you haven't checked it out in a while, you should.

Re:E17 is pretty stable now

[Tom]

The developers had released a roadmap showing that perhaps it would be ready for a Christmas release.

Did they mention the year? Or at least the decade?

I remember waiting for E17. That was about two years before I switched to OS X, so it must be what, five years now?

Re:E17 is pretty stable now

[jlowe]

I will not argue that it's been a long time. I've been waiting a long time, too. I gave up on it years ago before recently trying again due to some positive things I was hearing.

But I follow the commits pretty regularly, and many of the component software and libraries are reaching a 1.0 and mature status. They have a very clear roadmap to reach a stable release. As I said, I'm not saying they will make a Christmas release. But to go from years of, "it will be done when it's done" to "possibly release by Christmas," that's a pretty major shift in thinking.

But I'm not taking the developers' word for it, nor should you take mine. Try it out. I think you will be impressed with the progress. It truly is already in a workable state for day-to-day use.

Re:E17 is pretty stable now

[failedlogic]

I remember several years ago, Rasterman had posted on his personal website that he was working on E17 to work with mobile phones and had a picture of his own phone running some version or semblance of E17. All I know is if this phone works out pretty well in the next 2 years, my next phone is going to be running E17. The interface I'm sure is going to be fun to use.

Re:E17 is pretty stable now

[Alef]

I remember waiting for E17. That was about two years before I switched to OS X, so it must be what, five years now?

Nah, more like nine years. According to wikipedia: "Version 0.17, also referred to as DR17 or E17, has been in development since December 2000."

I used to look forward to it during a couple of years at the beginning of this decade but have long since given up and lost interest.

Re:E17 is pretty stable now

[MichaelSmith]

My openmoko phone runs Illume (E17) and I am developing applications for it using the toolkit which comes with Enlightenment. On small screens its a pretty good environment. I tried E17 on my HP laptop and was less impressed. If I had been willing to tweak it before going back to Gnome I might have had better results.

Excellent!

[Jerrry]

Now maybe we'll see the final release of E17 before the 22nd century. Who knows, it may even come out before Duke Nukem Forever.

Re:Excellent!

[kwiqsilver]

Now maybe we'll see the final release of E17 before the 22nd century. Who knows, it may even come out before Duke Nukem Forever.
I'm sure the first thing Rasterman will do with this new funding is begin a complete rewrite of e from scratch. So once Mitsubishi starts sponsoring Duke Nukem, it'll be a tight race.

Re:Excellent!

[MrHanky]

First they would have to re-implement Duke Nukem Forever. From scratch. DNF has always been the main dependency of Enlightenment. Remember when Rasterman ditched his entire EVAS library and starter again? It coincided with DNF's switch from the Quake engine to Unreal Engine. Every setback in E17's development has coincided with similar setbacks in DNF.

Re:Excellent!

[Monkeedude1212]

I suppose thats all dependant on whether E17 will come out at all.

Duke Nukem Forever will never come out.

You DO know the Development team at 3D Realms got sacked for not producing a game, right?

Re:Excellent!

[93 Escort Wagon]

Now maybe we'll see the final release of E17 before the 22nd century. Who knows, it may even come out before Duke Nukem Forever. I'm sure the first thing Rasterman will do with this new funding is begin a complete rewrite of e from scratch. So once Mitsubishi starts sponsoring Duke Nukem, it'll be a tight race.

The people who've modded you "funny" have obviously never followed Enlightenment's development. If they had, your mods would've been "insightful".

Re:Excellent!

[failedlogic]

I was looking at the source in the latest CVS builds. The devs have commented (caveat this is not the exact quote): // This lib is for Holographic Projectors display. // E17 is running pretty well on LCDs but when // version 1.0 hits, we'll have to be ready // for the current tech.

Re:Excellent!

[SerpensV]

Maybe we can even run it on GNU/Hurd.

Re:Excellent!

[kwiqsilver]

They need a new "funny because it's true" mod. I started using e15 a few months before e16 came out. When e16 came out it was the shiniest, flashiest UI available. I spent hours tweaking the UI to be exactly what I wanted (F1, change text file, :wq, <alt>F7, <ctrl><alt><backspace>, verify change, ...). Then they announced e17 would be out "soon", then they decided to rewrite it, then they re-announced it as "soon", then they re-rewrote it, then I gave up and used KDE, because the rest of the FOSS UI world had caught up with, and passed, e (and Qt has a good C++ api for writing my own apps).</nostalgia>

Re:Excellent!

[Stormwatch]

You DO know the Development team at 3D Realms got sacked for not producing a game, right?

Not necessarily their fault. Rumors told of terrible management preventing developers from getting anything done.

Re:Excellent!

[Trepidity]

On the plus side, it's given us some pretty good reusable components. If the only goal were to get e17 out the door years ago, they probably could've done that, but by doing the extra work to produce clean components with generally usable APIs, we've got a whole set of things like evas and imlib2 that other projects now use. It's fairly typical that it takes at least 2x (usually more like 3x-5x) as long to produce something with a reusable API, that you're willing to distribute and maintain for use by other projects, than to hack up something that's good enough specifically for your own internal use.

I've always liked enlightenment.

[QJimbo]

I used it back in the days of SuSE 6.3 and really liked it then. It had the most eye candy and "slickness" at the time (1999 or so), blowing other WMs and Win98 out the water, I mean who couldn't love the semi-transparent "eTerm" windows?

Other WMs have caught up now with the eye candy, but enlightenment is and was one of the few window managers that actually displayed innovation instead of simply tailing after windows and mac. It's nice to see it getting recognition.

Re:I've always liked enlightenment.

[clang_jangle]

Haven't used it in years now, but was quite fond of it back in the day. Congrats, Rasterman!

Re:I've always liked enlightenment.

[six11]

I last used enlightenment in like 1998 or so, and always felt like it excelled in gratuitous eye candy and infinite customization, but lacked in usability. But I always respected how Raster was willing to try new and sometimes completely wonky things, because that is how interesting interaction is developed.

But I just tried it again, and was underwhelmed (with E16). It is entirely possible that I am just grumpy in my old age, or I'm no longer in the target audience.

Re:I've always liked enlightenment.

[jlowe]

E16 is way way way outdated. Sure, some bugfixes are still provided, but it is not evolving. You need to give e17 a try. Either from svn (tutorials are around for most distros) or try a snapshot.

Re:I've always liked enlightenment.

[rwa2]

It's funny that it was considered a "bloated eye-candy" wm back in the day and a "sleek and fast" wm today :P

e16 is still my favorite WM, though I'm currently back to using WindowMaker at the moment because I managed to break e16 while tweaking the NeXTstep-ish theme to make it darker.

There are several features I like from e16 that have been very difficult to find elsewhere:

* compositing works : drop shadows, semi-transparent gnome-terminal, and semi-transparent window movements look great and work fast. Sure Beryl / Compiz can do more, but they also eventually crap out on my system with video memory corruption. (Nvidia 8800GT)

* desktop pager : shows a miniature version of all my virtual desktops, complete with realtime updating thumbnails (when compositing is enabled). Even with compositing disabled, it can still update the window thumbnails every few seconds. The old Gnome 1.4.x pager was the only other thing I've seen that did this, but they removed it from current pagers, along with the ability to reposition windows around on screen.

* virtual desktop vs. virtual workspace : I tend to stick with just swapping virtual desktops, but the expanded workspace sliding is interesting.

* virtual desktop sliding : it's fun to grab the deskbar and partially expose the apps on the desktop one layer down. I just wish the first desktop was the "top" desktop instead of the "bottom" one.

* shaped window decorations : makes for some interesting themes, though I don't really play with them all that much. Someday...

I've been really excited about some other useful features Rasterman had blogged about, such as putting per-process CPU / RAM / Disk / Net stats in the titlebar of windows and things like that.

Re:I've always liked enlightenment.

[martin-boundary]

Wrex,

FYI your sigged blog site erroneously displays an IE centric message when it's accessed through w3m.

Re:I've always liked enlightenment.

[Eskarel]

They were very innovative. However as has been said in other posts, they've gotten caught in an innovation trap and have been essentially releasing nothing but small bug fixes for close to a decade now. For all intents and purposes the enlightenment you used on SuSe 6.3 is exactly the same as the on they've currently got in stable release.

Videos show

[gr8_phk]

The linked videos show that E17 has some nice rotations going on. Then they try to do some 3D effects and it's apparent that they're only doing affine transformations, so the perspective texture mapping is wrong on the 3D stuff. It feels so much like 1992. Didn't they learn anything from ID? There are even simpler ways to get the perspective right for large polys too.

Very interesting

[Lemming Mark]

Enlightenment generally seems reckoned to be very nice technology. I've been repeatedly surprised to see Enlightenment popping up in commercial products here and there; Edje-based wallpapers can even be loaded in KDE now. Evidently it's a strong piece of work and it'll be really interesting to see where this sponsorship gets them. It certainly seems an enlightened approach.

Windowmaker and GNUstep

[argent]

I wish someone would do the same with Windowmaker and GNUstep, but I suspect the licensing has closed off that path.

Re:Windowmaker and GNUstep

[tweek]

Wow. I haven't thought about WindowMaker for years. I always enjoyed that wm. If I could be arsed to tear myself away from the joy of openbox + tint2 + conky, I would ;)

Re:Windowmaker and GNUstep

[Qzukk]

I've been using Window Maker for nearly a decade now, and have to admit that it's very nice that it's stable (not crashing AND not changing). Sure, it'd be really neat to have compiz or whatever support, but honestly it does everything I want from window management: provides window dressing, an application menu (at the pointer, even!), and a place to dock and/or launch apps from.

Re:Windowmaker and GNUstep

[idiotnot]

I think GNUstep's problem is that porting between GNUstep and OSX keeps getting more difficult. Apple well-documented OpenStep, and it stayed static for a very long time (~10 years). OSX, on the other hand, keeps changing, and is becoming increasingly hardware-dependent since 10.2. Quartz, CoreGraphics, CoreData, etc. etc. all break backwards-compatibility. Many of the new features are also offloaded to hardware. Apple's attitude used to be that if you didn't have new hardware, the new whiz-bang stuff just wouldn't work for you, and your system would look/feel much the same as it did under the previous version. Not so these days....

As for WindowMaker, it's a legacy WM, I think. When I used to use GNUstep extensively (a few years ago), they were already seriously looking at things to replace it. Etoile (a cutting-edge GNUstep environment/in-development-distro) now uses Azalia, which is distantly-related to WindowMaker.

Re:Windowmaker and GNUstep

[rwa2]

Word, bro'. I'm still using WindowMaker at this moment, since I managed to bjork-up my e16 NeXT-ish theme while trying to make it darker. It was much much easier to apply good-looking WindowMaker themes (but of course it's much simpler).

There are actually a few features from WindowMaker that I really wish other WMs would adopt...

I love the way you can name the virtual desktops, and the desktop names flash on the screen when you switch. This, in combination with the desktop-specific launchers attached to the desktop clip really help assign virtual desktops to different functional tasks (I usually have "Web", "Graphics", "Work", and "Root" desktops defined) and keep those kinds of applications on each space.

The dockapps were also a neat idea, but I've more or less eventually replaced all of them with a single instance of gkrellm.

Re:Windowmaker and GNUstep

[argent]

I guess it depends on whether you see GNUstep as being NeXTStep Junior or a useful platform in its own right. If you're just trying to be NeXTStep Junior and track OS X, I think you're doomed to fail. I'd rather have a useful platform that happens to be source-compatible with a subset of OS X, so you can develop GNUstep apps and port them easily to OS X.

Re:Kill the X Boondoggle Already

[dvlhrns]

Chrome is not gonna kill or replace X so until a new server comes along we are stuck with it

Re:Kill the X Boondoggle Already

[Tom]

Funny how this argument mostly comes from people who know virtually nothing about X. Most importantly, not the difference between the concept, the protocol and the implementation.

And just because it's 20 years old doesn't mean it sucks. How old is TCP/IP? The mouse? The binary system?

Re:Kill the X Boondoggle Already

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately for Linux users, we tend to listen to idiots like lobiusmoop FAR too often. Instead of keeping code that works and improving it, we end up throwing it away and starting from scratch. That is what causes situations like the OSS/ALSA/PulseAudio mess. So far we have mostly managed to ignore the morons calling for the death of X, hopefully that will continue.

summary

[rackeer]

Summary from TFA:
Samsung is sponsoring Enlightenment so that they can obviously deploy this lightweight and robust window manager on some of their mobile devices, but we do not yet have confirmation on what devices or when they may start surfacing... It sounds as though Samsung is still early on into their love affair with Enlightenment and that many more changes and work are still to come, which means that it may be some months before seeing any devices.
We also have been forwarded some YouTube videos of recent Enlightenment advancements (user-interface improvements) that have been made possible through this hardware company's sponsorship. The video demos are quite interesting and worth checking out.
Video here.

At least it's not from the 70s

[Lemming Mark]

Chrome OS is based on technology with strong roots in the 70s, i.e. Unix and C. Moreover, the creators of Unix went on to create a new OS (Plan 9) to solve its problems and, recently, a new programming language (Go). Both Unix and C have been able to remain strong over time and add modern features whilst staying true to their roots and, broadly, retaining compatibility. This is particularly true for Unix, despite some questionable design decisions along the way.

The link you supplied is from the Unix-haters handbook, which basically argues that the entire Unix + X11 stack is a load of rubbish - I think that's a more consistent position than just wanting X replaced. To be honest I've never seen a strong explanation of why it's OK to keep developing Linux and BSD but that X should be ripped out and replaced, other than perhaps that X has languished due to lack of maintenance and management over a long period of time. But I think X.org has shown some reasonable signs of revival and more modern features.

Ironically, recent developments in X.org make replacement servers more viable than they have been before - lots of X.org infrastructure (kernel mode setting, GEM, plus others) have separated a load of the hardware support issues from the windowing system itself. Wayland seems to be the main example at the moment: https://groups.google.com/group/wayland-display-server/web/frequently-askeds-questions

Re:Kill the X Boondoggle Already

[clang_jangle]

You're right about that.
I think what happens is they use a package manager to install every available bit of xorg when a given machine will need perhaps 10% of it. Also people who use GUIs for everything will tend to see a lot of bloat and unresponsiveness. But for those of us who know what we're doing, X is still pretty cool.

2001 called..

[Anonymous Coward]

It wants its anti-networked display server argument back..

I love enlightenment

[logicassasin]

In fact, the old Gnome/Enlightnement desktop paradigm is what originally convinced me to try Linux back in 2000 after hearing a bunch of "linux doesn't even have a desktop!" talk by coworkers. I tried it out and eventually learned that I could run with just Enlightenment and did that and never looked back. I've run AfterStep, Windowmaker, Black/Fluxbox, and a number of other WM's, but will always manage to come back to Enlightenment.

These days, when I bring up new linux installs, the number one task on my list is to get Enlightenment DR16 up and running if it wasn't installed by default.

Re:Kill the X Boondoggle Already

[Andy Dodd]

UNIX in general? (With Linux effectively being a re-implementation of UNIX.)

Re:Kill the X Boondoggle Already

[LWATCDR]

I have worked with X and I would love to hear what makes it great. I will agree that current implementations seem to leave a lot to be desired but how much of that is because of the actual design and how much is because of poor programing?
What makes X better than say Quartz? Or the current Windows graphics systems? I like most programers these days just us GTK or QT for our apps.
So for the average users what makes X the best besides the large amount of existing software running on it? I honestly wonder just how much of that we would loose if x was replaced as long as you ported GTK and QT to the new display system. For the hard core apps you could just run x on top of the new system like Apple does.

Re:Kill the X Boondoggle Already

[CannonballHead]

But for those of us who know what we're doing, X is still pretty cool.

Hmm. That sounds like computers from quite a while ago. That sounds like one of the main reasons people use Windows (you don't have to know what you're doing and edit a bunch of configuration files to get it working properly). It doesn't even sound like your sig - "FreeBSD Just Works for me."

If I can't install X easily and have it run relatively efficiently without bloat and unresponsiveness, then X - or the package manager - needs to be fixed. Being too complex/customizeable and making people waste time trying to configure it properly are issues that need to be addressed. Most computer users are just that - computer users, not computer configurators. Or whatever. hehe.

Re:Hey Obamaheads, how's it going?

[sexconker]

Offtopic for sure, but I absolutely fucking LOVE how ol' Booney Boy and his "plan" disappeared when oil prices went LOL.

Oil prices were ridiculous. He came on TV and announced how he would be talking to us about his plan over the coming months.

We got 1 follow up commercial to that, a vague introduction to his plan.

Then oil prices started to return, and I haven't heard a peep out of Pickens since.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Kill the X Boondoggle Already

[hey!]

Well, the title of your article is "How to make your 50-MIPS Workstation Run Like a 4.77MHz IBM PC"

Since the CPU in my laptop is rated at over 4000 Vax MIPS, I'll happily throw 1-2% of that away to get the benefits of proven software. Most of the time one or the other of the cores is close to zero utilization anyway.

What I'd like to see is simpler security setup (without sacrificing features or security of course). That's when you say "there has to be an easier way". It's bad when tunneling a protocol through ssh is the *easy* way.

Used E again recently....

[Picass0]

During my time on Fedora 11 I fell out of love with Gnome and switched over to KDE. During my transitional phase I played a bit with E. It was the window manager during the redhat 5.x days when I first started with Linux, and I was nostalgic to see how E had changed.

I liked E's speedy response. It's a lightweight WM without much bloat. Very quick and responsive load times.

On the other hand it needs updating. There's no support for compositing, and GL is software rendered. No acceleration. I'm a Blenderhead so this was not good. It doesn't have a good file manager. I found myself using MC whenever I was in E. No easy menu editing.

I very much would like to see E take it's place again as a viable desktop option. It has so much going for it, be clearly developer resources haven't been available like KDE and Gnome.

Re:Used E again recently....

[Interoperable]

It's a lightweight WM without much bloat

There's no support for compositing

They may be related.

Re:Used E again recently....

[rwa2]

Are you talking about e16 ? Compositing and GL work fine in it (I'm using the release packaged in Debian). I'm actually quite surprised that people don't list it as one of the compositing window managers like Beryl / Compiz.

It doesn't have as many extra features as Beryl / Compiz, but it has the few I care about... namely - composited drop shadows, true-translucent backgrounds in gnome-terminal, translucent window movement, and composited miniature windows in the pager.

It's actually been much more stable than Beryl on my system... eventually Beryl seems to exhaust the video memory and I get lots of video corruption, which seldom happens under the e16 compositor. It's also pretty easy to turn compositing on and off when I want more GPU resources dedicated to an OpenGL app or game.

Re:Used E again recently....

[Chris Burke]

Just fyi, your window manager has nothing to do with your Blender window not being hardware accelerated.

Re:Used E again recently....

[Late Adopter]

The nice thing about desktop components is that they are often independent programs from the window manager. You can mix and match. If you like Compiz, you can run it in GNOME instead of Metacity. If you like Nautilus, you can run it in E instead of MC. Feel free to poke around and find out what it is that's actually responsible for the things you like in your system.

As for GL, as a sibling mentioned, that's X's responsibility. E won't affect that, and neither will the presence or lack of compositing.

Re:Used E again recently....

[Ant P.]

and neither will the presence or lack of compositing.

You'd be surprised how much a proprietary graphics driver can suck, even in 2009.

Re:Kill the X Boondoggle Already

[clang_jangle]

You misunderstand -- X is not the culprit. Personally I really don't care if people want to use windows or mac, unless I'm the support person. And I really don't care much about the opinions of perpetual neophyte users (not saying you are one, just that most "end users" are) about FOSS "useability". I use xmonad on FreeBSD and I'm quite happy with it. For me FBSD and Debian really do Just Work. People who need a DE to dumb down their machine for them have problems with bloat and bugginess whether they choose windows, mac, linux, or even *bsd. That always has and aways will be true.

Some explain the Linux GUI thing?

[Anonymous Coward]

You have Window managers and desktops and whatnot. X-windows, gnome, enlightenment, etc. From my reading it seems x-windows and enlightenment do overlapping things. There seems to be a lot of confusion as to what to use, there is no consistency to this area.

Re:Some explain the Linux GUI thing?

[WaXHeLL]

I can't figure out if this is a troll or if this is genuine confusion.

Re:Some explain the Linux GUI thing?

[Qzukk]

They're different layers.

X is the graphics system. It provides the video driver and makes pretty pictures show up on your screen.

Enlightenment is a window manager, it gives those pretty pictures borders so that you can drag them around.

Gnome is a Desktop Environment, which is a couple hundred programs that are designed to work together and work the same way. This includes a window manager, menus for launching programs and a place to hold minimized programs and icons, a file manager, network configuration tools, a terminal, calculator, scanning software, music player, cd ripper, graphics editors, etc etc.

X is always there.

The features that Enlightenment provides works using X.

The features that Gnome provides works using a window manager and X. Gnome provides Metacity as its window manager by default, but you can use others like Enlightenment.

This is highly consistent.

Re:Some explain the Linux GUI thing?

[slimjim8094]

I'm going to assume this isn't a troll, and instead is a real question. Crash course for everyone else:

Unlike OSX and Windows, the graphics subsystem is (almost) completely independent from the core of the OS (kernel). This means that the graphics can be completely removed with little-to-no effort, leaving just a text-based system.

This is because the X-windows system is implemented by Xorg the program. Like any other program it can be killed/removed, etc. This program just happens to take over a terminal window and show pictures.

A program wishing to do graphics talks to X and tells it to do stuff, using the X11 protocol. This can be direct memory access, a Unix socket, or a network socket - X doesn't care.

However, this is a pain. X (delibrately) doesn't specify any widgets like buttons, etc. Moreover, if you draw a window it will take up the whole screen - X has no concept of multiple windows.

So, you need a window manager. This basically hands X one "window" (composed of all the others, including the taskbar and window decoration like titles, etc). GNOME and KDE include window managers (Metacity and kwin, respectively).

But we still don't have buttons or other widgets. For that, we use a library - usually GTK or Qt. There are whole packages of software, plus glue (like settings managers), built on these libraries - the desktop environments GNOME and KDE.

None of these parts are dependent on each other. You can run a GTK window in a KDE environment, or a Qt program in a GNOME environment (it's just a library, the widgets will be different). You can use Metacity in KDE.

So for a graphical desktop you need:
X (somewhere, locally or remotely)

Window Manager \
    Widget Library - - compose a Desktop Environment (KDE, Enlightment, GNOME, Xfce)
    Utility programs /

I may be wrong on some details, but this is it in general.

Re:Some explain the Linux GUI thing?

[MichaelSmith]

Its worth pointing out that Enlightenment has multiple back ends, only one of which is X.

Re:Some explain the Linux GUI thing?

[quickOnTheUptake]

Level 1, X11: handles the basics (writing to the graphics card, tracking the mouse, tracking key presses, tracking what programs are displaying windows and the dimensions and visibility of those windows etc.). X by itself is almost useless, thus:
Level 2, Window manager (WM): Also keeps track of windows and tells X what to do with them. It sets the policies about how windows gets focus (sloppy focus? click to focus?), how windows get moved and resized and closed, window decoration, universal keybindings, and other such sorts of things.
Some people like to continue to
Level 3, Desktop environment (DE): This is a window manager, plus a whole suite of more or less integrated programs that aim to give a full consistent GUI experience. So it will generally have things like a network manager, a music player, a picture viewer, a task-bar/dock/menu, a settings manager, etc.
Enlightenment is a WM, albeit a fairly feature rich one. Thus it does not replace, but requires X.

Re:Some explain the Linux GUI thing?

[Homburg]

Moreover, if you draw a window it will take up the whole screen - X has no concept of multiple windows.

That's not true - X understands the idea of multiple windows. The window manager just provides a UI for manipulating (moving, closing, etc) these windows.

Re:Kill the X Boondoggle Already

[GaryOlson]

Well, since values for the binary system can include 0 or 1
and the binary system has existed for a finite period of time, the value cannot be 0,
therefore the age of the binary system is 1.

Now we just have to determine a proper unit of measure for 1.

Re:Samsung sponsering Enlightenment., but ...

[RAMMS EIN]

``What's in this for Samsung ? Are they going to run Enlightenment on their mobile phones ? Their TV's ?''

Possibly. Mobile phones are actually powerful enough these days to get pretty much all the flashy eye candy stuff you might want, but Enlightenment is one of the few products that _both_ run on such "low-end" hardware and provide the eye candy.

Besides mobiles phones and TVs, though, Samsung may also be thinking about notebooks.

Re:Kill the X Boondoggle Already

[neiras]

Instead of keeping code that works and improving it, we end up throwing it away and starting from scratch. That is what causes situations like the OSS/ALSA/PulseAudio mess. So far we have mostly managed to ignore the morons calling for the death of X, hopefully that will continue.

So far we have mostly managed to ignore the morons calling for the death of PulseAudio, hopefully that will continue as well.

Pulse is new code, not a rewrite of anything. Yes, ESD was a sound server too, but the similarity ends there.

Many of PulseAudio's problems are caused by "iffy" stuff in ALSA drivers, and the ALSA folks are working to fix the bugs Pulse exposes. Many more are caused by distro people making questionable decisions on how to set it up (see Ubuntu/rtkit).

I'm sure glad that PA isn't going anywhere, despite all the uninformed hate flying around.

Re:Kill the X Boondoggle Already

[FlyingBishop]

Too late.

Re:Samsung sponsering Enlightenment., but ...

[lbalbalba]

Cool. Looking forward to running Enlightenment on my Samsung microwave.

Obvious for netbooks

[SgtChaireBourne]

Samsung is awesome, so is enlightenment.

It's like Fluxbox in terms of resource use (and unfortunately on flashy little GUI indicators) but looks amazing!

Kudos on this! Let's get windows management handled! It's been so many years of updates on something that should have been handled by now!

I've been using Compiz on my desktop the last few months, and the jury is still out. On the netbook, I went all the way back to FVWM just for the speed. The crystal theme is not bad and even the basic FVWM can be pimped out, within limits. I used Enlightenment for years, so this is great news. It is time to take a look at it again.

Re:Kill the X Boondoggle Already

[CannonballHead]

I suppose that's fair enough. I guess I don't see anything wrong in trying to get rid of bloat/bugginess while making it eas[y][ier], though.

(in general, I agree X isn't the culprit... whether or not X can be improved on is a question, of course, but I agree with the general feeling that X isn't as bad as lot of people try to say it is).

Re:Kill the X Boondoggle Already

[clang_jangle]

Sure, improvement is always possible and desirable. And with Google, Nokia, IBM, and other corps throwing big bucks at the UI problem certainly there will be progress in terms of making GUIs more efficient and easy for casual users. But with X I'm happy with what I have -- I can launch many terminal emulators in which to work, view/hear/produce multimedia, and entertain myself with a smidge of eyecandy -- all while remaining responsive and easy on resources. :)

Re:Kill the X Boondoggle Already

[CannonballHead]

view/hear/produce multimedia, and entertain myself with a smidge of eyecandy

Well, the "hear" bit is debatable at times. ;)

(well, in my experience, ALSA works pretty well... but the push to move to a very buggy pulseaudio seems stupid...)

Re:Kill the X Boondoggle Already

[clang_jangle]

OSS FTW.
:)

Re:Kill the X Boondoggle Already

[LWATCDR]

This is a great none answer.
Apple wrote Quartz didn't they? It didn't take decades.
The question is what does X do better than say Quartz? Besides the large base of software and applications that use it why keep it?
I am not sure that you would not keep most of the software once GT and GTK are ported.
I am asking the valid question of why keep X and not even think about replacing it?

Re:Kill the X Boondoggle Already

[LWATCDR]

Yes that is a problem. I find it funny because I am not saying that we should drop X. I am asking why shouldn't we. Couldn't a new solution be better for users today.
I will say that right now the current implementation of X on Linux really isn't that great. It seems very fragile and the configuration tools are not ideal to say the least.
I don't think Xs support for accelerated video playback is fully baked yet as well.

Re:Kill the X Boondoggle Already

[LWATCDR]

I know that they are cross platform. That was my point. If you port things like GTK, QT, and Motif to a new graphics framework just how many applications would even notice?
Keeping X for backward compatibility just doesn't seem that important.

Re:Kill the X Boondoggle Already

[CannonballHead]

Admittedly, I haven't tried it super recently, but I had more-than-one-app-trying-to-access-sound-device problems with OSS last time I tried it...

Re:Kill the X Boondoggle Already

[shutdown -p now]

The problem with PulseAudio isn't PulseAudio. The problem is that the presently known-to-be-unstable PulseAudio/ALSA/apps combo is pushed to "stable" desktop distros. It's like KDE 4.0 "stable beta" release, only it's taking longer, and people are understandingly getting more impatient.

Some guy out there simply knows that if he has PulseAudio, his sound is crap, and if he removes it using his package manager (which could well be Ubuntu "Add/Remove Software" or something similarly easy), it starts working.

Re:OK a little clearer.

[Jesus_666]

The various DEs have various aims. Some are more leightweight than others.

- Gnome and KDE are the "feature complete" ones. They come with all the bells and whistles but also eat up comparatively many CPU cycles.
- Enlightenment is lighter but still provides a lot of eye candy.
- Even lighter are things like Xfce of LXDE - these are fairly minimalist DEs that focus on letting you launch and control apps with little besides that.
- If you need even less you can drop the whole desktop environment thing and just use a window manager directly. If you can live with a butt-ugly and somewhat unintuitive interface, twm is the window manager that comes with X.org itself. It allows you to position, resize and close windows. In order to launch programs, you use the automatically opened terminal window or an external terminal session. You do still need the widget libraries (they provide much more than just widgets) but those mostly take up RAM rather than cycles.

If that's still too much you can just unload X altogether and work entirely on the shell. It's not terribly uncomfortable, either, if you know your way around Linux (in case of problems I recommend consulting the Gentoo Linux HOWTOs - there are Gentoo HOWTOs for just about everything and they're great learning resources regardless of distro). Of course graphical applications won't work without X running.

Re:Kill the X Boondoggle Already

[Homburg]

If you want to replace X, the question you should be asking is, what does X do worse than Quartz? There's no point replacing X just for the sake of it - if you want people to think about replacing X, you need to explain what's wrong with X.

Re:OK a little clearer.

[mister_playboy]

What makes you think the Linux method takes more cycles? Unlike Windows or OS X, you can see your GUI up to be as heavy or as light as you wish.

Re:Kill the X Boondoggle Already

[osu-neko]

And just because it's 20 years old doesn't mean it sucks. How old is TCP/IP? The mouse? The binary system?

Would you believe my car still uses wheels?! You know how old that technology is? You would think by now we'd have something better for rolling on... XD

Re:OK a little clearer.

[Homburg]

There are no more layers in the Linux GUI system than in Windows. X, which provides the basic graphics operations, is roughly equivalent to the Windows GDI; the window manager and the desktop environment provide the functions provided by the Windows shell; and the toolkits like GTK and QT are the equivalent of the standard controls in win32. The basic architecture is not very different - it's just that, on Linux, the separate pieces are independent and properly specified, so that you can use a variety of different options at each level.

Re:Kill the X Boondoggle Already

[dbIII]

X can run on systems with 4MB of memory. It's all the crap on top to make little thumbnail pictures in your file browser that produces the "bloat" you are talking about.

Re:OK a little clearer.

[dbIII]

I'm the GP. That's a lot of layers to suck CPU cycles

No.
It's just different programs doing different things and passing it on just like on MS Windows and a pile of other platforms. Nobody pokes things directly into video memory anymore.

Samsung not known for their UI, *vomit*

[Xyde]

I shudder to think how much uglier they could make Enlightenment after their recent work on Android: http://gizmodo.com/5406912/samsung-behold-ii-non+review-oh-god-the-ugly

Software for a unique interface for mobile devices

[HoldmyCauls]

Samsung does have a line of netbooks (mostly same spec as everyone else, but oooh! colors!) and presumably regular laptops, but I can't believe no one's pointed out on this thread that enlightenment is meant for mobile devices, and since Samsung currently has a meagre Android lineup, apparently replacing their Instinct line with the Moment, this sponsorship could finally lead them to market dominance in one area, when they have spread themselves thin trying to be an everything company. This is their one foothold on making a unique and great interactive experience.

Being an Android and Enlightenment fan (and current Instinct S30 owner), I will be following this closely -- and trying OpenGEU, since someone mentioned it earlier.

Re:Kill the X Boondoggle Already

[Draek]

If I can't install X easily and have it run relatively efficiently without bloat and unresponsiveness, then X - or the package manager - needs to be fixed.

True, but the key word is "relatively". Relatively to OSX and Windows, X even at its most bloated is *still* a paradigm of efficiency. Its just that, once you're familiar with it, you can make it do even more with less.

I guess it's a bit like Emacs. For the uninitiated, it's an extremely capable editor. For those who have mastered it, however, it's God's greatest gift to Mankind.

Re:Hey Obamaheads, how's it going?

[tabrnaker]

So, you only pretend to have morals if others play the same game?

The discerning choice

[petrus4]

"Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat:

Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it."

-- Matthew 7:13,14

Enlightenment as a window manager, is similar to the Amiga, in the sense that it is yet another example of the road less travelled, and yet more proof of the truth that the mainstream choice is nearly always, also the very worst.

Graphically it is beautiful, and always has been. In terms of resource use, it is far more efficient than it has any logical right to be, given its' degree of aesthetic beauty.

It is a shining example of the timeless, divinely sanctioned, and tragically (but unsurprisingly) rarely followed UNIX design philosophy, and as proof of such, also naturally uses the BSD license.

There are some people, who I wish it was possible for us to render exempt from physical death; such is the extent to which we as a species need them. UNIX's initial authors are such men, and Raster is another. However passionately I may experience negative emotions towards some things, I experience equal passion of a positive form towards others.

Re:So what about end programs?

[dkf]

Must they be coded to be compatible with a specific winsys/manager/DE, or are they portable across all of the Linux GUI elements?

It really depends on what you mean by that question. An app (specifically, a GUI app; let's ignore databases and webservers and other server apps for the rest of this post) can be coded so that it just talks to X and it will be handled fine. An app can additionally speak the standard protocol for communicating with window managers and do a few more things that would otherwise be impossible. Finally, an app can talk some more protocols and work with a desktop environment; that can in turn be either at the interoperability level, which will work well enough with both Gnome and KDE, or at the level of DE-specific communications, which usually only tools that are part of that DE bother to do.

Lots of apps do choose to be highly portable, since that increases the number of systems they can run on.

Re:Hey Obamaheads, how's it going?

[V!NCENT]

While true, the Geneva convention is what sepperates 'us' from 'them'. How can we make a stand and say "You are very bad!" if 'we' would just be doing the same evil things as 'they' do?

Re:Kill the X Boondoggle Already

[LWATCDR]

Rendering fonts.
Playing video using hardware acceleration.
How about those two?

Re:Kill the X Boondoggle Already

[Homburg]

What's wrong with the font rendering?

Hardware accelerated video is a weakness, I agree, but the problem is predominantly a lack of driver support (the VIA driver appears to be the only open source driver with support at the moment, with the closed source nvidia drivers also supporting it); X already has an API for hardware accelerated video. There are apparently some limitations with this API, and so a new one is being developed. Nonetheless, there doesn't seem to be any difficulty adding this new API to X - it's a limitation of current X implementations, but not a fundamental problem with the X architecture, so I don't think it provides a good reason to abandon X.

Re:Kill the X Boondoggle Already

[LWATCDR]

What is wrong with font rendering? Take a look at a Linux box and then take a look at a windows machine or a Mac. Linux has gotten better but in general font rendering is a mess.
Can we add a new API to X to fix video? Maybe but we keep adding fix on top of fix to this monster. I am not not even saying that we should toss X. What I am saying is that it is far from dumb to say that x has some real issues and that there might be time for a new system.
For one thing display and printing are completely disconnected at the the level of xWindows. That is not a great situation since both are really just displays. Fonts are another mix mash of libs that live in different layers.
Yes x-Windows may be fixed and patched to work but saying that even thinking about replacing it is foolish is just silly.

Preparation for Samsung bada?

[mykro76]

From the Enlightenment page: You can even start your development now in anticipation. Use Elementary, Evas, Edje, Ecore, Eet, Eina, and so on and design for a small screen with a "finger" and minimal keyboard (by small screen i mean in the range of 240x320, 320x480 and so on up to 480x800 for portrait, and similar for landscape (320x240, 480x320, 800x480).

Could Samsung be eyeing Enlightment as the (or one of the) UI frameworks in their 'bada' mobile OS?