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Call for Questions: Rasterman, Founder of the Enlightenment Project
Since before all other
interfaces, Enlightenment has been making computers look and feel like
they're from the future. On December 21, the decade long effort to
rewrite Enlightenment will see
the first officially stable release. With e17 a few days away, project
founder and master of X11 graphics hacking Carsten Haitzler (the Rasterman)
has agreed to answer your questions. Ask as many questions as you
like, but only one
per post please.
What keeps you motivated? You had a long release cycle, a few dubious quality releases, all the while an abysmally small fraction of linux machines actually run your software.
Enlightenment is always "about" to achieve something great but it never quite manages to actually do it. Why should I care about a point release of a WM that will probably be obsolete by the time its finished?
Are you really a Rasterferian or a covert Vectoritron?
Linux users are astonished by new Gnome 3's nice-looking UI that dramatically improves user experience by removing redundant complications from UI such as extra settings and simplifying workflow. By replacing task-bar with activitites panels, Gnome-3 succeded in providing more free user space. For future plans of Enlightenment, the steps taken by Gnome 3 is a meaningful precursor that should absolutely be followed.
Can we get a 10 FOOT UI? After setting up my first HTPC last week I'm really surprised no one has a 10 FOOT UI desktop. Yah KDE has the Notebook Plasma but its just not good.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
As a longtime Enlightenment user (since 0.9 I think!) I have seen a lot of changes to it's look and feel over the years. Has your design philosphy changed over time or is it more a matter of changes in technology?
but my calendar doesn't say the April 1 yet, what gives?
In all seriousness, you've been working on e17 since you were what? 25? How did you go from "I want to make a window manager" to "Everyone is doing this horribly wrong and I'm tired of being everyone" at that age?
Blessed be he who reads this post, Cursed be he who tells my boss.
What can you say about e17 File Manager, one of the most undervalued assets of having a GUI?
Is it to coincide with the end of the current Mayan Calendar Era to include the joke "Enlightenment won't be done before the world ends"?
When KDE made their big transition from 3->4, most of the followup releases were on stability and minor improvements on the paradigm.
With E17, it seems that the amount of time taken was to ensure that the 'final' release of E17 would be bug free.
Assuming that E17 release is stable and solid, where do you see the enlightenment project going from here?
Your work at Samsung involves making EFL a great library for designing touch-based interfaces for use in a future Linux-based smartphone platform, presumably Tizen. But every time I've heard about Tizen in the press Samsung has made a big deal about HTML5 being the development platform. How do these two development platforms play together? Also can you provide any information about when we can expect to see the first Tizen phones hitting the US?
Your thoughts on usability vs beauty... Must they always be opposed?
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Back when i first heard about enlightenment - late 90's early 00's it was totally the best looking Window Manager / UI around.
I've just checked out some screenshots from e17 and I can help but think it looks really dated. Enlightenment used to stand out from the crowd
but now it seems to lag behind in this department.
What will you be doing to ensure that the new Enlightenment will once again showcase how slick and awesome a Desktop UI can look?
N.
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As one of the few non-minimal DE projects out there, what do you guys think of Wayland? From a leader's standpoint, is it relevant? From a designer standpoint, are you looking forward to working with a newer API? From a user standpoint, do you think it will be better enough than X to be justified?
How does Enlightenment relate to the Wayland replacement for x11?
Do you like KDE?
How difficult has it been to keep working on the Enlightenment environment all this time and has the opensource community been supportive?
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
Every now and then I check out the enlightenment.org website, because I want to see screenshots of it in action. /anywhere/ to the screenshots. /are/ screenshots on the website; they are here:
For some reason, I don't think there is a link
In case anyone else is interested, there
http://www.enlightenment.org/ss/
Does the enlightenment project have any plans for moving away from X11 and towards Wayland in the future? While X11 will certainly stick around for quite a while, the popularity of portable touchscreen devices and the development of KMS makes it look X11 is on its way out.
no question but a compliment. You always made very fast and useable libraries, thanks.
*** SPANK SPANK SPANK!!!
Enlightenment server is over capacity
Please wait a moment and try again later.
For more information, take a look at #e.fr on Freenode.
Well, that's hardly a professional error page...
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
You can enlighten yourself by googling. Of course, the question then becomes "what does Enlightenment bring that other desktops are lacking?" and "Why would having a desktop bigger than my monitor(s) be a good thing?"
Free Martian Whores!
I thought that the conventional wisdom in Open Source, was to engage users and coders by releasing early, and releasing often.
Given that software never really is ever "done"; please enlighten us (cough) about the thinking behind waiting so long to do a stable release. Was this a calculated risk, given the risk for erstwhile E fans to simply lose interest?
First off, congratulations on getting Enlightenment (nearly) out ! In this dark times of Gnome, KDE and Unity horrors, E17 and the EFL look like divine intervention :D
What I was wondering is, to what extent has Samsung involvement changed the project if at all ?
What can EFL offer me as a cross platform GUI-centric developer ? Is Android supported ? What about iOS \ iPhone ? I remember seeing some early attempts at getting the GUI tool kit - Elementary was it ? - to play nice under Windows. Was the w32 path ever pursued ? GTK+ is really showing it's age and Qt \ WxWidgets are very C++ centric. Their bindings are also very limiting: QMainWindow for instance is mostly private meaning docks can't be implemented easily without some crazy boilerplate.
After looking at the screenshots, I don't understand what the fuss is all about. If that's supposed to represent the future I need to remind you that we're in 2012.
From the screenshots, I'd say it looks a bit better than Windows 98, but not any better than current GUIs from all three major operating systems.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
I was wondering if there was a demo video or tutorial that shows you Enlightenment in action? I went to the actual Enlightenment.org website but in two minutes of looking found nothing. Seems to me this should have been the most prominent thing on the page, no? I shouldn't have to go searching youtube.
I've noted that while Enlightenment is BSD licensed, but some of the foundational libraries are licensed under *various* versions of the GPL. What gives? This would be confusing to most people who are looking to repackage E for use on various devices. Is there going to be a resolution for the licensing mess, or will development continue with multiple licenses that have to be negotiated by vendors and others interested in using this with their products? The issue isn't free beer vs free speech, the issue is how does one decide which license takes greatest precedence. Is the project going to go forward as GPLv3, v2, v1, or 2 clause BSD, or what?
After looking at the screenshots, I don't understand what the fuss is all about. If that's supposed to represent the future I need to remind you that we're in 2012.
From the screenshots, I'd say it looks a bit better than Windows 98, but not any better than current GUIs from all three major operating systems.
I looked at the screenshots you linked to and I had a different reaction. I thought, that looks great! There's little if no unnecessary clutter, no excessive and superfluous window decorations. It's clean, without quite being spartan, and functional with everything in a fairly familiar place. Fantastic!
I don't remember Windows 98 that well, but if it was like this, it was way ahead of its time. The new interfaces of KDE 4, Windows 8, Gnome 3 and Unity suck ass. Enlightenment looks like a breath of fresh air in comparison.
Why does every developer at the moment want to shove hideous user hostile (unwanted) changes down the throats of users? So many features that the users want and have become accustomed to get "cleaned up" while the new way of doing things tends to be limited and restrictive. Seriously., Tool bars removed from browsers and history kept against the user's will (Firefox), popular codecs removed (Handbrake), and do I need to mention KDE or the Ubuntu desktop fiasco? It's not just open source. That abomination of a ribbon UI on Office products that forces users to remember arbitrary groupings of functionality if they ever want to get anything done (while throwing out screen realestate). The most significant thing is there is no way to revert and options that people have been adding for over a decade are steadily removed in the name of simplification (dumbing down!) the interface. Often the developers will actively force the change by removing old versions from their repositories (or in the case of commercial software from sale).
I would like to know how you managed to convince Intel and Samsung to build yet another mobile framework on a technology that has been really difficult to use, and has a very small share of the UI framework "market?" Is it that Enlightenment is providing UIs of the future, or is everything better encumbered by their ownership or stakeholders?
So This past year saw the tenth aniversary of the introduction of Windows XP operating system and desktop interface. I am writing from such a machine in my corporate job. Why o why has not the linux community come up with a substitute (desktop and OS) that is faster, more secure, easier to install, supports more hardware and cheaper than microsoft support contracts ( or miscrosoft OEM *taxes*)
You are on the front lines.
The arrgument KDE vs gnome is ONE problem.
Lack of support of hardware is another...
rant rant rant...
sigh
Even though I know that you are trolling, I am compelled to respond.
You and Gnome 3 come mierda y muerte, hijo de puta!
I'd rewrite it again, it's outdated tech if it took 10 years to write, seriously, rewrite it again for the next 1-2 yrs keeping good ideas and scrapping old, while incorporating modern ideas.
or do we start the next rewrite now?
gg
So This past year saw the tenth aniversary of the introduction of Windows XP operating system and desktop interface. I am writing from such a machine in my corporate job. Why o why has not the linux community come up with a substitute (desktop and OS) that is faster, more secure, easier to install, supports more hardware and cheaper than microsoft support contracts ( or miscrosoft OEM *taxes*)
faster - done.
more secure - done.
easier to install - done.
supports more hardware - done.
cheaper then MS support contracts or OEM costs - I can't speak for support costs, but OS costs much less.
What area (assuming you're serious) do you think that Linux hasn't outdone XP on? Linux desktop beat Windows a long time ago. Now it's retrogressing.
I really like the way E does many things (I've been using e17 for almost 10yrs now), but was wondering if in hind-sight there are things you would rather change. E.g. perhaps sandboxing modules to prevent module issues affecting the WM generally; restarting pulseaudio will crash sound mixer module will cause E to have to restart.
Whats your view on the current trend of desktops to be more like their tablet/phone cousins? Do you see any features that can be brought over from either side without sacrificing usability? Also how do you feel about black turtleneck shirts?
When Enlightenment came out, it also included ESD, the Enlightened Sound Daemon. Window events could cause sounds, which was nice, but ESD was also a sound multiplexing and remote sound protocol that was way ahead of its time. Now, there are PulseAudio, Jack, Yiff, Phonon, etc. and many people say the whole thing's a big mess. What's your opinion on the current state of sound / mixing on Linux desktops.
Did you mount a military-grade, variable-focus MASER on an unlicensed artificial intelligence?
Bitchy much, not like he killed your grandmother, and with that attitude why should he care if you care. Some have been actively using the project as a day to day desktop, without complaint or trouble, pretty much from the start. I wish you luck with your choice of WM.
Unfortunately, most of those screenshots look nothing like the default install. I just installed it on my Pi to see what it looked like, as it's been years since I ran it. It looks nice, but it's hard to get a good feel for what it's really like on such a weak system.
If you can't convince them, convict them.
I'm not a heavy linux user any more - Windows 7 was enough to bring me back into Microsoft's world full-time. However, back through university and the dark days of Windows XP, e16 was the first time I'd call a GUI beautiful and functional.
However, every now and then I boot into one of my stored legacy linux boxes to tweak a long-forgotten or abandoned project of mine, and I instantly remember why I loved used e16 so much back in the day. Maybe e17 will bring me back into linux a bit more... Anyone know if a new Slackware is coming out?
Would help if a summary was in the article.
Enlightenment seems to have introduced many new features to desktops for many years.
Do you have some anecdotes of E being used as prior art to help people fend off patent lawsuits?
Could you add some really creative mouse themes and fix zoom so you can use superkey scroll to zoom like on Compiz?
You've done a lot of X programming, so as a user of that API, you must have strong opinions about it. What are the worst design decisions in X11? (The toughest things to get around/fix) What are the best? (Timesavers)
Why to see screenshots hen you can try it: http://www.bodhilinux.com/ ,and there are some screen captures by users.
Do you think there is any substantially new feature to be added to desktop environments? In particular, do you think the desktop environment in 20 years will be different than those of today?
"What lies behind us, and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us." Ralph Waldo Emerson
Last year it was great seeing your presentation and getting a chance to bounce some ideas off you at FOSDEM. The 2013 schedule is still open - are you planning to go again this year and / or give a talk?
What is your opinion about the various FreeDesktop standard and how that "organization" help or not the development of Linux Desktop ? Do you think it could be improved ?
In the small-ish world of open-source & embedded graphics, toolkits, and SW / HW rendering implementors, there are few who have been at it as long and have such a breadth / depth of experience in so many areas as yourself.
As someone who has done a fair bit of searching for resources on the theory and practical design of such systems, I must say, that there are few books out there that concisely describe the "how" and "why" in a design-patterns kind of way tie in with immediately relevant topics (e.g. fbdev, widget & drawing libs, scene-graphs). Naturally, implementors often pick up the talent and ensure that trade secret is kept that way, but you are at a bit of an advantage I think, no?
You've been at E for a *long* time and you've done an insane amount of work making SW rendering almost as efficient as HW rendering - I'm sure there is no shortage of material.
Have you ever thought about writing a book - sharing some of your expertise with the world in a less formal language? Not something that's all-encompassing by any means but maybe with references for further reading. What about a techno-biography of E?
have been using a viewport with a virtual size destop for years, but im horrified to find how poorly it is supported by current windows managers ( including e17 and other polpular managers when i tried it) and apps as well, apps will fail to postition properly ie dialogs will misplace. window manager toolbars wrongly placed.
Im somewhat amazed that this feature is so poorly supported. As i mentioned above i have used this feature for years so its not new by any means.
I scroll the viewport over the virtual desktop with the mouse.
Is E17 giong to become a Wayland compositor at some point?
Thanks for the link. I just spent 5 minutes myself, trying to find them, but I had to give up. So, to phrase this into a question for the Enlightenment founder: Will there ever be an easily available link to the screenshots on the project web page?
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Will enlightenment ever run on Irix again?
How does E17 relate to the KDE KWin Suspended Compositing? The benchmarks at phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ubuntu_1210beta_desktops indicate it's very beneficial for games. Thanks!
Will there be any support for OpenGL and 3D graphics ( 3D rotations, 3D animations, 3D vision, etc .. ) ??
Why are you guys still using SVN, why not switch to Git?