Enlightenment DR 0.18: Improved Compositing, Wayland Support

An anonymous reader writes "The Enlightenment DR 0.18 window manager has been released one year after E17. Enlightenment 0.18 provides many new features, with demanding compositing, Wayland client support, improved systemd integration, new Enlightenment modules, and stability fixes."

Comments

Compare to the release of 0.17, this is *FAST* !

[Taco Cowboy]

How many years did the 0.17 release took ?

This release only take one year !!

Wow ! Congrats !!

Re:Compare to the release of 0.17, this is *FAST*

[Chas]

The thing is, from E16 to E17, you had a complete rewrite of the entire project that redefined what it did and how it worked.
So yeah, it took a while.
While I'm not denigrating what E18 has accomplished, it's building off a lot of the foundations that were already laid.

Lame

[Anonymous Coward]

16 years and they still can't reach version 1.0.

Re:Lame

[Anonymous Coward]

One thing that hurts open source adoption is this trend to stay at 0.x versions even if you practically have a good, polished product.

Re:Lame

[gbjbaanb]

One thing that hurts open source adoption is this trend to stay at 0.x versions even if you practically have a good, polished product.

quite true - I looked at it and thought its a new thing and was about to pass it by simply because of that pathetic version number.

OSS guys need to know that the version is a little bit of marketing that can make you look a little better - obviously its not the whole story, not unless you're Microsoft, but it needs to communicate some information about stability and project progress.

I understand there was a bit of a rewrite between 0.16 and 0.17 - and that's hopeless numbering, it should have gone from 1.0 to 2.0 there.

Re:Lame

[Anonymous Coward]

Other things that hurt open source adoption is the shoddy workmanship of the software, the poor user interfaces and the the developers who can do no wrong.

Re:Lame

[Dorianny]

Most open source software have development roadmaps with very clear goals of what would constitute a major release milestone. The developers of open source software are truthfull and open with their version numbering system unfortunately closed source software companies are not and often stick a major release number to minor upgrades or beta or even alpha quality software. This is why many people will not install closed source software until a service pack or 2 later.

Re:Lame

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit. The only reason open source developers overuse minor version numbers is an attempt to appear humble and truthful when in reality it simply makes them look unconfident and sycophantic.

Re:Lame

[Fishchip]

On the other hand, I commonly see Enlightenment referred to as 17 and 18 without the decimal. Those are nice big fat numbers. :)

lol

[Anonymous Coward]

User experience while crashing improved; some users have reported over a 200% improvement here.

Re:lol

[Anonymous Coward]

Enlightenment user here. The devs are not kidding, I can confirm there is a roughly 200% improvement when segfaulting.

In E17 when it recovered from a crash all the minimized windows would un-minimize, most would move to the first desktop, and a few others would somehow go to random desktops. In E18 all the windows go back to their original desktop and conserve their iconified status. An E18 segfault doesn't really interrupt your workflow in any meaningful way, it's quite pleasant.

Re:lol

[Anonymous Coward]

For context: Just yesterday I had Gnome segfault while taking down my wifi (and a 65% 5gig dl that wouldn't resume\recover) along with it.

Re:lol

[Anonymous Coward]

So to summarize, you love the way it crashes?

Re:lol

[mvar]

I tried enlightenment when 0.17 came out and stuck with it since then. Had a few random crashes in the past but never thought to go back to xfce etc. The only headache is fixing some missing application icons but after a point I stopped bothering

Re:lol

[darkHanzz]

Does it really segfault that often, that that's part of the 'experience'. That's quite bad. Last time I tried enlightenment (486dx, with 24MB ram), at least it was fairly stable.

Re:lol

[Anonymous Coward]

Loved how this comment flowed from absurd humor, to seriously important functionality, and then back to absurd humor.

Not many apps deal with major failures well. A failure of your wm can really hose a lot of in-progress work.

I've been using e16 for 10+ years, and mostly loving it. Maybe time to try e18.

Re:lol

[Anonymous Coward]

It depends. I periodically built from svn head for years (pretty much since e17 existed), running e17 as my WM on all my computers, and rarely encountered an unstable version (when I did, I just reverted, and waited a bit-- I always kept at least a couple versions back, with just PATH, PYTHONPATH, and LD_LIBRARY_PATH needing to be set to switch between them).

When the project started releasing snapshots, I found what was in svn head to get really sketchy, and switched to running their release snapshots. The snapshots have been pretty stable too (I say pretty stable, because one computer at work seems to have some weirdness, but the rest of my computers running these snapshots are all super stable.

The only thing that was really disruptive to my work has been having to re-setup my environment occasionally (rare) when a build decided it didn't like something in my already defined profile for a diff build, and forced a new clean profile (usually associated with a revert).

After using e16 for many years, I gave e17 a try right away, and it was still a great and very customizable WM that did not try to get in the way of what I was doing (it was and is also super lightweight compared to everything else with anything approaching its features). The only things I miss, are window groups from e16, and placement of newly created windows at cursor which was removed from e17 some years ago.

Re:lol

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhm... The option to place new windows at mouse pointer is right there, I just checked.

Re:lol

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll just stick to Windows, where my window manager doesn't crash every day, thanks.

Re:lol

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll stick to Linux, where everything else doesn't crash every hour, thanks.

Re:lol

[Anonymous Coward]

I have tried various Linux distros over the years and they never work. They don't support standard hardware, the windows managers all crash 30 seconds after boot and there is zero real software available for them.

Re:lol

[Anonymous Coward]

What distros, what software, and is your computer 15 years old or somthing (if it is, you should use TinyCore or Puppy)?

Re:lol

[Anonymous Coward]

No crash problems here, thankyouverymuch. And I'll stick to operating systems that let me choose my window manager. Especially window managers that support virtual desktops.

Re:lol

[Demanufacture]

Unfortunately, yes - it really does segfault so often that improving the behaviour during crashing is a Big Deal.

I tried running E17 (Debian jessie packages) for about a month but I eventually got fed up with the general buginess and missing features that I consider to be important. I switched to GNOME flashback a few days ago... it has a number of really frustrating bugs but in my view it is still way more usable than E17.

Here are my thoughts on E17:

The good:

• Great eyecandy
• Highly tweakable

The bad:

• I don't like the way that virtual desktops work in E17 with multi-monitor configurations (each viewport switches independently) and there's no way to change it because Rasterman has decreed that the "E17 way" is the "right way"
• Many gadgets seem rudimentary in comparison with the GNOME/KDE equivalents and are missing specific functionality that I rely on:
• • Calendar has no way of showing calendar weeks
  • There appears to be no way to set up multiple locations in order to see the local times in other timezones with a single glance

The ugly:

• Average time between crashes was about 2 days
• E17 caused Xorg to suck up about 50% of one CPU at all times (i7-2760QM CPU @ 2.40GHz) and would often climb as high as 95%

Re:lol

[Lisandro]

Pun aside, i had E17 segfaulting a couple times (i've been using me as my DE of choice for over a year now) and it handles crashes surprisingly nice. The screen goes black for a second while the windows manager restarts and you get all your applications back, running as if nothing happened, along a "Sorry, i've crashed" dialog.

Good news

[rmstar]

I sincerely hope that I will be able to use Enlightenment at some point in the future. I like the idea of a desktop full of eye-candy exhuberance, but every time I tried to use E, I ended up annoyed by the bugs.

It seems I'll try again after christmas, and I hope it is better this time.

Re:Good news

[eneville]

If on the other hand you want to take a look at a productive minimalist desktop, I suggest you try evilwm [6809.org.uk], which I think is the best [usenix.org.uk]. If you like GNU Screen you may also like Ratpoison.

Re:Good news

[Fishchip]

Or you could just try Bodhi.

Re:Compare to the release of 0.17, this is *FAST*

[Anonymous Coward]

True but KDE went through two entire major versions in that twelve or so years (with 3 getting ported to Qt 4 before being scrapped and rewritten for some reason). Windows went from ME to 8. Apple went from Arabic to Roman numerals while also switching to BSD.

E needs more contributors and for someone to clean up the config UI.

Does it support systemd and journald ?

[Anonymous Coward]

... if not then it's dead software! Why care for niche crap?

fosdem

[Anonymous Coward]

There will be a talk about enlightenment at FOSDEM 2014 in Brussels (Belgium). Look in the Desktops DevRoom.

previous post removed posthumorlessly

[Anonymous Coward]

mynuts won; unspeakable. it was about the potential for POT (Personal Open Terminals) & stem cells.

creepy

apologies rebounding

[Anonymous Coward]

disappearing post reappears POT (Personal Open Terminal) really wwworks? free the innocent stem cells

Desktop is so 2011

[Anonymous Coward]

Aren't desktop computers basically dying ? They keep on trying to replicate something that users already no longer use. Pretty sad

Edit: even the captcha agrees with me: sadists

Re:Desktop is so 2011

[Anonymous Coward]

Buying stats for desktops is down because everyone already has one and there's no compelling reason to upgrade. Laptops count as desktops too, in terms of software.

Re:Desktop is so 2011

[MrEricSir]

That's probably why the Enlightenment home page shows it running on a phone.

Re:Desktop is so 2011

[Lisias]

Aren't desktop computers basically dying ? They keep on trying to replicate something that users already no longer use. Pretty sad

Edit: even the captcha agrees with me: sadists

You don't have a job, do you?

Because, you know, not everybody makes a living browsing the Facebook using a tablet...

Re:Desktop is so 2011

[0123456]

And because no-one wants to buy a new desktop when they see what a piece of crap Window 8 is.

Re:Desktop is so 2011

[Anonymous Coward]

Never heard of this job... "community manager" ?

Re:Desktop is so 2011

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't have a job, do you?

Because, you know, not everybody makes a living browsing the Facebook using a tablet...

Don't judge me.

Re:Desktop is so 2011

[Anonymous Coward]

Decidedly true.

Most of my co-workers seem to make a living browsing Facebook using a good old desktop PC.

Re:Desktop is so 2011

[Lisias]

"not everybody" != "no one". ;-)

Re:Compare to the release of 0.17, this is *FAST*

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a DR release. IIRC E17 had plenty of pre-releases before coming out too.

Why compositing?

[Viol8]

Now correct me if I'm wrong - but isn't Enlightenment supposed to be a light weight WM - hence the pun in the name? Why is it trying to go the way of KDE and Gnome by throwing in bells and whistles that require compositing in the first place? Not everyone needs flashy graphics, some of us just want a WM that manages windows and stays out the way, but also doesn't require learning strange arcane incantations to modify .rc files just to add a program to a menu.

Re:Why compositing?

[srobert]

I thought that true transparency was just eye-candy, until I started using it on my laptop. I can type into a terminal while still reading the application below it. That's very useful on a small screen. Even with the tiling wm that I use, XMonad, I still float my terminal windows, and have them about half transparent.

Re:Why compositing?

[mvar]

on the contrary i think that enlightenment is supposed to be an eye-candy WM not a light weight one

Re:Why compositing?

[Anonymous Coward]

You both fail. Enlightenment is an eye-candy AND lightweight WM. That's what Enlightenment means!

To the GP: Have you ever TRIED Enlightenment's software compositing? It runs like a bitch with diarrhea on any computer you can try it on! This is no compromise from a performance standpoint. Any comparison between Enlightenment and any other WM, especially KDE's and Gnome's, is futile because only Enlightenment has three puns in it's name -- light as in lightweight, light as in photons, and enlightenment as in the realization of how to make something that is BOTH lightweight and flashy without either thing being compromised. There's really nothing else like it, you'll only understand once you're Enlightened.

Re:Why compositing?

[Xtifr]

If it claims to be lightweight, it can only do so as a DE, not a WM. Ihave lightweight WMs, and E isn't one of them. As a DE, though, yeah, sorta. It's pretty comparable to XFCE, and with a lot more eye candy. Unfortunately, E17 also had a lot less stability. I also dislike the tendency in most themes (including the default one) to omit side borders on windows. I know that's something some people are into, and it's seen on WindowMaker as well, but I've never cared for it. It doesn't fit well with sloppy-focus/no-autoraise, which I consider non-negotiable.

E is pretty, though. But E17 also has a lot less eye candy than E13 did (although it's noticably smaller and faster). I realize that E13 was slow and unmaintainable, but wow could it look awesome!

And other WMs have been catching up on the eye candy too. Heck, even good ol' FVWM (an actual lightweight WM) has eye candy options I never would have imagined ten years ago.

Re:Why compositing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually the distro I'm using E on comes with Xfce by default, and they're not comparable at all, E is a lot faster and uses less memory. I think if E is comparable to something, it's to LXDE. And I wouldn't be surprised if it also comes close to bare Openbox if you disable all the modules, although on this I'm not so sure.

Re:Why compositing?

[unixisc]

Now correct me if I'm wrong - but isn't Enlightenment supposed to be a light weight WM - hence the pun in the name? Why is it trying to go the way of KDE and Gnome by throwing in bells and whistles that require compositing in the first place? Not everyone needs flashy graphics, some of us just want a WM that manages windows and stays out the way, but also doesn't require learning strange arcane incantations to modify .rc files just to add a program to a menu.

Doesn't Enlightenment need X11 to run on, or does it run directly on top of the kernel? If it needs X11, and other DEs are already adopting Wayland (aside from Unity which is going Mir), then it makes sense for Enlightenment not to be stuck on X11

Wal-Mart gPC

[Anonymous Coward]

The only time I have seen Enlightenment in action was Wal-Mart's gPC. I thought the 2007-ish gPC was a special plot to discredit Linux as a consumer PC operating system once and for all, because the gPC was horribly bad. (Plus it had this little fan smaller than a quarter which was louder than most jet engines.) I got one, just to support Linux, and had another distro installed on it in days because the Enlightenment-based OS was terrible - the desktop was supposed to run better on el cheapo hardware, but Ubuntu (remember this was 2007) ran great.

The plot worked - I have never seen another Linux-based consumer PC for sale in a store.

So whatever good or bad qualities Enlightenment has, I'll forever link it with the gPC.

DE or WM?

[srobert]

So do we call Enlightenment a "window manager" or a "desktop environment"? How many features you can add to a WM before you have to officially declare that it is a DE?

Re:DE or WM?

[Anonymous Coward]

DE vs. WM is not really a matter of features but rather of accompanying applications. Enlightenment may have a lot of features as a WM, but as a DE it only really has a terminal and a file manager. The file manager is pretty spartan, if with a couple neat features, and the terminal is kick ass, but both are still in early-ish development. I know I don't use them, I prefer to borrow Dolphin and Konsole from KDE. So where is Enlightenment? Not quite a DE yet if you ask me. It could be plausibly called a DE when EFM and Terminology reach maturity, but a proper DE also has at least a text editor, and most seem to have a toy web browser. These days many DEs also seem to involve a PackageKit client.

Captcha: pertains

Re:DE or WM?

[riondluz]

Hi:

Long time E user here. Its a WM (IMO), but if you want the DE then use Entranced; as my belief is that a DE begins at the login screen should you so desire it.

regarding earlier posts on segfaulting, E17 is/was the only WM that restored itself (mostly) on "something bad....." happening where other WM's just totally crashed. E remote is another feature i really appreciate; being able to control :0 from a terminal (if they would only revert to the previous - more robust - version).

Though building E from svn suggests its far from 'light' it certainly more lite than gnome or kde.
For the past 5-6 years the push as been in the automotive markets.

My only hangup is having to compile options; not having a text file for options was/is almost a deal-breaker regardless of ease of compiling a cfg.

Aside: I really wish that a WM/DE could remember (via ps and wmctrl i suppose) what all of my desktops are doing. Real session management would spare me from having to record each/every job in each/every xterm in the event of a crash.
It would be similar to FF sessions. Crash? just restore the last session. I'd switch in a heartbeat to any WM/DE that provided said feature.

Contrats to Rasterman and all the E-lovers out there!

Re:DE or WM?

[riondluz]

P.S.

Though I'm fond of sshX, NX, X11VNC, etc...
One fault I have w/entranced is its inability to do XDMCP and my wishlist includes it being as capable in that regard as KDE.

FAILzORs?!

[Anonymous Coward]

NetBSD posts On hand...don't

Why I don't use Enlightenment.

[MouseTheLuckyDog]

One day something went wrong during a routine upgrade and I lost KDE. Since it would take a while to fix, I decided that this would be the perfect time to try out E17.
I started my laptop since my desktop was down for other reasons.

I got this big mess of white on black stuff, I couldn't tell which windows were which and could get barely anything to work. Obviously someone had chosen a really horrid theme. So I went to freenode, caught a couple of E17 developers in their channel. Instead of getting advice on how to change thde theme to something more usable, I get berated because I was using debian stable. What was I to expect from a distro that uses such old packages.

With advice like that I decided I would be better off with KDE.

Re:Why I don't use Enlightenment.

[Yebyen]

You really are at fault here, how can you expect the Leading Edge windowmanager to have a viable release at all, for the Two Years Ago is New Enough debian stable?

When I learned to use Enlightenment, the first step was ./autogen.sh

Go back to KDE :)

Re:Why I don't use Enlightenment.

[Anonymous Coward]

I had a similar e17 first experience on debian this year in my never ending quest to find a WM/DE that feels right. Windows bounced nauseatingly when receiving focus, pointers moved on their own trying to be 'helpful', and other flashy features. I was instantly turned off. It was like a 12 year old turned on every optional (and questionably useful) feature trying to turn things up to 11. I decided to suck it up and spend a few minutes turning annoying sh*t off, and was greated with some really funky/windows 3.1 style diaglog based configurations. Started to look for config files to edit, but no it was all binary. Hated it.

So what WM am I using 3 months later? e17. It turned out to be worth the configuration hassle. It's fast, and has some nice features (especially like per-monitor virtual desktops). Found a nice looking theme, and I'm pretty content. All in all my biggest issue is the lack of thumbnails on alt-tab, I really miss that. On the other hand it's fast and pretty stable.

Looking forward to e18.

Re:Why I don't use Enlightenment.

[bug1]

Socially retarded attitudes such as this are why normal people throw rocks at you.

Re:Why I don't use Enlightenment.

[Yebyen]

I was joking, but I can tell you, since E16 stopped being a thing that people cared about, E17 was either not viable or not ever included in any Debian Stable release. Maybe things have changed in Wheezy. I don't think so.

Now that you called me out, I call bunk on the GP's whole story though, I just checked and Debian Stable still today does not package Enlightenment 0.17x, it's only available in Jessie (testing) and Sid (unstable). MouseTheLuckyDog either tried compiling from source and missed some (important but not mandatory) dependencies, or used third-party packages that were not good enough, given his poor experience. The software is actually very good. (says the Gnome Shell user)

They always seemed to get it packaged right in Unstable, sometimes even in Testing, but for some reason that never seemed to successfully "trickle down" to a stable release. I don't know why. You can (honestly) have Enlightenment 17 even with Debian Lenny, it just requires some careful attention to the packages you provide it when compiling (or use elive, which is actually built out of Lenny/Wheezy.) Maybe they will do better in the final release of Jessie.

That says something about the concept of allowing any person to "call it" deciding when the quality of all software is good enough for a stable release once every two years, more than it says anything bad about Enlightenment developers or Debian policy. Thanatermesis (the steward of Elive) seems to get it right, but his work does not filter back into Debian Stable because they have more serious things to concern with than the proper configuration and packaging of Enlightenment, apparently.

oops, i read too fast,

[Anonymous Coward]

thought it said "composting"