Enlightenment Returns To Bring Ubuntu To ARM

mu22le writes "Enlightenment, the daring window manager that disappeared from our collective radar years ago, is back to bring Ubuntu to ARM. The bet that E developers made years ago to neglect 3D, compositing, and make a fast and versatile 2.5d engine may have finally paid off. The current popularity of ARM-based devices could be a niche that the Enlightenment Foundation Libraries can fill comfortably."

Comments

Re:Fonts are too small

[wizardforce]

There is no GUI option to change the font size in Enlightenment but there is a way to change the font size; it involves editing config files. Although I should point out that Enlightenment puts a higher focus on having a light footprint than usability, it just doesn't seem to take it as far as Fluxbox does.

Re:2.5d?

[freedumb2000]

RTFA

For the lazy here is the relevant quote:

So what can we do about the 3D graphics licensing issue? Legally not very much. The companies that own the IP (Intellectual Property) rights to these drivers often want large licensing fees for their technology. This is a model for single product lines (take the Nokia N900 for instance) but for Ubuntu where we are targeting a more broad approach, this isn't ideal.

Blame Ubuntu, not Enlightenment !

[Taco Cowboy]

It's Ubuntu that package the whole thing and decide on the default font size.

E only plays the part of supplying the critically needed libraries.

Re:not for long

[xcomputer_man]

Your comment would make sense if EFL/E17 did not already support OpenGL ES on embedded devices. Illume, the E17 variant designed for mobile/embedded devices, already runs quite well with hardware/OpenGL acceleration on platforms like Maemo, and I already have built and successfully run EFL-based OpenGL apps on the Palm Pre (available in the WebOS Internals WIDK tree).

Evas was designed from the ground up to be modular and support every graphics platform known to man. Windows GDI, DirectX, iPhone OS, X11, WebOS, native Linux Framebuffer, SDL, OpenGL, OpenGL ES - you name it, EFL runs on it. Evas will take advantage of hardware acceleration when it is available, but benchmarks actually show that in many instances, when it comes to regular UI graphics operations, OpenGL/hardware accelerated interfaces don't necessarily perform better than Evas' own software engine and in several cases are actually worse -- on the Palm Pre, for example, GLES is actually much slower at doing things like alpha blending. So in that respect, yes, hardware does have some catching up to do.

Re:Fonts are too small

[Anonymous Coward]

Before saying anything, you should perhaps get some real information. E17 use Evas to handle the graphics canvas and Evas does provide tons of different backend. OpenGL ES is one of them. E17 is the only window manager that can scale from hardware without any GPU, to hardware with just a blitter or hardware with full Open GL.

And in all of this scenario, it is highly optimised. My bet that at a graphic equivalent result, you will use less ressource with E17 than with any other WM. Oh, and E17 is the only WM that propose a composit manager that doesn't require OpenGL hardware.

And no the main interest of E17 is not its graphics layer, but it's theme/layout engine: Edje. This give a real possibility to have one code that will run every where. Just change the theme, and you will have huge animation that can't run without a big GPU, or with another theme, you will be perfect on an e-book black and white screen.

Re:Fonts are too small

[jo_ham]

So press Command+Option+D.

Sorted. How hard was that?

(Or if you don;t know the keyboard command, go to System Preferences, click on "Dock" and tick the box that says "automatically hide and show the dock" - you can also tun off the animation here if you like, and change the size of the Dock itself, its position on the screen and whether it magnifies when you hover over it)

It's pretty intuitive really - all of the UI options are in System Prefs. Even better, the help box on that app responds to the Windows keywords for what you are changing. For example, if you type in "Wallpaper" it highlights the Desktop and Screensaver icon, and indicates that on Mac OS X that is called "Desktop Picture". So, if you have found it hard to use, you must not have read the little intro thing Apple produced which mentions this. (I just tried it - it is still working in 10.6).

I know a few people who keep their Dock on the left side of their screen because the display is wider than it is tall and they like it over on that side. Can you put the start menu/toolbar thing on the sides of the screen in Vista? I know you can change the size of it, but I haven't been in front of a Windows box since XP.