Enlightenment Lives 339
Anonymous Coward writes "The Enlightenment Project, far from dead, is pleased to announce the DR16.7.1 release of the Enlightenment Window Manager. With tons of fixes, a massive overhaul of the internals, and several new features this release is a must try for those who haven't run E in a long time. The window manager that redefined the way a desktop can look is still going strong."
Mirror...Kinda (Score:5, Informative)
If your wondering what happened to DR16.7.0, it was halted last minute by several bugs that were only reproducable by a small number of us but were major bugs none the less. You can see the changes since the initial release here.
Ports for Solaris are avalible now and the DarwinPorts port is ready. Gentoo Portage will be updated shortly.
Re:It looks cool but (Score:2, Informative)
Try it, you might like it (or hate it).
"Rasterman", a very long time ago, was an Amiga hacker.
Re:Gnome used to run E? (Score:5, Informative)
Though in reality, since all these are just window managers, you could replace them with anything you want.
EFL and the road to E17 (Score:5, Informative)
Some really neat stuff is on the way, of particular interest is the edje/evas/evoak stuff. Eventually this work will lead to an improved themeing system, for E and anything else that ties in to the EFL.
Rasterman [rasterman.com] has even given a glimpse of the power these libs will bring to the programmer with his own version of a DVD player, using the EFL, in just 17 lines of code!
so no, contrary to popular belief...E is NOT dead!
Re:Glad to see it's still around (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Be curious to find out if the code's any cleane (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Be curious to find out if the code's any cleane (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Glad to see it's still around (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Glad to see it's still around (Score:5, Informative)
Chances are if you have a certain preference, then there are others who also have and have made a theme for it.
I think one of E's primary motivations is to design a desktop that's not constrained in any way. Every piece is designed to be as customisable as possible - to leave the end choice about how the desktop should look to the user. Nice philosophy.
Re:My first window manager (Score:4, Informative)
Re:It looks cool but (Score:4, Informative)
As for reasons to use it?
Well lets see....
The themes change not only the look, but the functionality and behaviour. (See the Aqua themes)
Window Grouping
Virtual/Multiple Desktops (Yes, there is a difference)
More options than you can shake a /. troll at
Easy to use
I could go on, but I really hate telling people why they should use a product. Since you had the motivation to ask, find some motivation to try it out. Most people that have the patience to tune E to their liking will never go back to anything else. If they do, its usually to a minimalist WM like ratpoison or fluxbox (both ends of the scale I suppose). If you don't think its worth your time to enhance your productivity, then stick with what you know. Otherwise, give it a shot and be prepared to get lost in the immense selection of themes!
Re:sourceforge group (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Be curious to find out if the code's any cleane (Score:2, Informative)
Getting the code to run on Sun's C compilier back in the DR13 days was painful but possible and totally worth it due to the speed improvements. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the speed junkies gave up on E at/near the time of DR14 due to the extensive use of gcc-isms in the hacked up configure script and the code... and that doesn't even take into account some of the... err.. interesting methods that Carsten chose to implement some of his ideas.
Re:sourceforge group (Score:4, Informative)
Re:sourceforge group (Score:5, Informative)
They didn't take posession for some time, as they resisted moving off their own hardware, but they eventually gave in.
Chris DiBona
Re:EFL and the road to E17 (Score:5, Informative)
$_='while(read+STDIN,$_,2048){$a=29;$b=73;$c=142;
Read the manual. (Score:3, Informative)
Try:
ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86" emerge -p enlightenment
Make sure it's not going to install some hideously unstable library in that cast.
Or edit
For example, package.keywords might have:
x11-themes/ethemes ~x86
to unmask unstable versions of ethemes on x86 systems
and
x11-wm/enlightenment ~x86
to unmask "unstable" versions of E.
Re:Never could get into it (Score:4, Informative)
Also, I don't know what you heard, but E16 is just a window manager, like Fluxbox or KWin or Metacity. It isn't an never was trying to be a whole desktop environment. In fact, it used to be the default window manager for Gnome before Sawfish replaced it.
In other words, if you want panels and desktop icons and stuff, then you need to run Gnome or KDE with Enlightenment as the window manager, or you need to use iDesk or something like that to provide that extra functionality. E by itself is closer to the minimalist window managers.
E17 will be more like Gnome, KDE or XFCE, but that's been years in the making and may yet be years before it's released. But E16 was never trying to be like that. What you're doing is sort of like complaining that Fluxbox doesn't do everything that KDE does. E isn't designed to do fancy stuff out of the box and be GUI configurable in all aspects. That's what KDE and Gnome are for.
Re:sourceforge group (Score:3, Informative)
Mandrake (http://www.mandrake.net) however was not associated with Mandrake-Linux (http://www.mandrakelinux.com).
Mandrake went on to found another company, which he then sold and is in the process of working on yet another. BTW, Mandrake's first company was bought by VALinux, it was called Enlightened something I believe... Someone care to correct me? I may have my facts slightly mixed up about raster working for VA still.
now in portage (Score:5, Informative)
PCB
Re:cool to see it get fixes (Score:2, Informative)
The X-Window system has no objective whatsoever regarding desktop environments, let alone a clear one. It is only a display surface.
As far as desktop environments go, of course we're divided. There's Windows, Mac, KDE, GNOME, etc. Why aren't we up in arms that Apple created their own desktop instead of working with what existed? Each of these projects has a reason for being. And sure, their existence takes away from the others. For example, lots of software is Mac only, and so the rest of us miss out. This is inherent to having many desktop environments.
But hey, at least on a usual X11-based OS, you can run KDE and GNOME apps at the same time. Running a Windows app on a Mac is considered a feat and a feature, but for some reason having the GIMP under KDE means that Linux sucks. I'll just end this by saying that Linux isn't even a desktop.
Standard Gentoo "Don't use ACCEPT_KEYWORDS" post. (Score:4, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
You don't get E (Score:3, Informative)
Enlightenment belongs in the latter catogery. KDE and Gnome have a mission and so does Enlightenment but they are not the same mission. Read their site.
It being hard to use is not a problem to the people who use it. That is may be a problem to you is not their problem. This is the hardest to get about opensource. That the programmer doesn't need to give a damn about marketshare or customer satisfaction.
So your last line is right. They don't care and they don't have to. That is freedom. If you want them to care, pay them.
Re:Never could get into it (Score:1, Informative)
There's an awesome intro-level introduction. You download the docs from where you downloaded e. Install the docs, and when you fire up e, go to the main menu (middle-click), and click "Help." Anyone who bothers to download the docs can figure it out, with or without outside help.
Re:Oh no! more memory wastage... (Score:3, Informative)
I know it's a concept that's hard to grasp, but actually looking at something and TRYING IT OUT before you critique it is usually a good idea.
For those interested:
http://enlightenment.org/pages/efl.html/ [enlightenment.org]
http://enlightenment.org/pages/cvsnotes.html/ [enlightenment.org]
Try out some of the cool apps people have started working on like:
Go to the main enlightenment.org page and CVS for lots more...
Re:Why? (Score:2, Informative)
I can't say if it's been added back since. Sure, GNOME apps will run on anything, but for the best operation the window manager needs to support GNOME hints.
I only paid mild attention as I couldn't stand DR14+ enlightenment anyway. I had switched to fvwm and then switched to sawmill (which eventually because sawfish over a name dispute).
I'm sure if you look in the GNOME mailing lists for 1999 and 2000 you'll see what I'm talkin' about.
What I miss is the old versions of E, before the overlaying desktops (or whatever they're called). Back in the day I had a lot of people interested in linux just because of E - _nothing_ looked cooler at the time, and not too much does nowdays. I'm running fvwm now but would gladly switch to something like that if it wasn't older than dirt.
Re:Never could get into it (Score:3, Informative)
And since, as we all know, Gnome and KDE are not window managers, and I believe that E is at least Gnome-compatible, there's no reason to be speaking as if E and Gnome (or KDE for that matter) are equatable.
What's more, Gnome and KDE are both fully themable, and at least in the case of Gnome, that means that you can select pixmaps/SVG, layout and fonts that result in a very E-like look (there are, in fact, several old Gnome themes that were designed to fit in with E more smoothly than the default).
Gnome is a set of libraries that provides for everything from widgets (such as the truly amazing Gnome Canvas which is distantly related to the TK Canvas) to session management to inter-applicaton communication to accessibility features to internationalization and much, much more. Enlightenment is a fine Window manager, and it has some of the other features of a desktop system as well, but let's not forget that most of what a desktop does, it does for applications via libraries, not by controling the display and management of application windows.