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."
cool to see it get fixes (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Oh goody. (Score:2, Insightful)
By the way, from the FAQ:
Concentrate more on promoting than on demoting. The real goal here is to find the juicy good stuff and let others read it. Do not promote personal agendas. Do not let your opinions factor in. Try to be impartial about this. Simply disagreeing with a comment is not a valid reason to mark it down.
Why? (Score:1, Insightful)
At the time, I found the widgets fancy but unintuitive.
Seriously, what has Enlightenment been doing these past 7 years? The screenshots don't look any better than my desktop did way back. Plus, you don't get the nice KDE or Gnome-related integration.
'E' is a window manager that was ahead of the pack, and fell to the wayside by not being able to keep up with the times.
Version numbering (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Wow (Score:3, Insightful)
not dead, but comatose (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh no! more memory wastage... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sheesh, just great, a third set of graphical toolkits to load in memory for nothing... Like we didn't have enough waste of memory with Qt/kdelibs and GTK/Gnomelibs having to be both loaded in memory most of the time (who restricts his choice to either Qt programs or GTK programs, but not both?)
Really, there are some times where the OpenSource approach to things isn't the right one. Sure choice of graphical toolkits is great, but do we look like stupids forcing users to have more memory to load several huge sets of similar libraries *just because* or what? I wish F/OSS folks decided to rally behind one and I'd happily follow, even if it wasn't my primary choice, for the sake of reducing the bloat...
Re:Oh no! more memory wastage... (Score:4, Insightful)
You just need one, say GIMP in KDE, and there you have megabytes of additional, functionally identical code loaded in memory for nothing.
And you know what? even with 512M, when I edit really big images with GIMP, I need all the memory I can get. Memory isn't there for applications and libraries to waste as they please, it's supposed to be used for the data you create/manipulate.
Many years ago, it used to be that memory taken by applications and the OS was minimal compared to your data, simply because it was vital. Now it's the other way round, because developers have gotten comfy with Moore's law. The problem is, code grows faster than Moore's law...
Re:E redefined the desktop? (Score:5, Insightful)
E had fully themed widgets, both for window manager utilities and the decorations themselves. Shortly thereafter I saw this creeping into other window managers and toolkits, and then windows and macs both unofficially and officially began carrying similar flexible interface enhancements. As far as this unparalleled flexibility, E _was_ the first, and the pattern I just described is no coincidence--the influence was definitely there to a not insignificant extent.
raster's a nice and very enthusiastic guy, dedicated and ambitious. Take a look at E17 if you have a moment.
(note zealotry is not the aim here--E is not even my primary; simply I hate this damned bashing)
I'd like to see it use the latest X stuff (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:not dead, but comatose (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't really know why you would be offended by an insensitive clod like me, if you are comfortable with the current state of enlightenment.
I still think it's great, but I doubt that they are going to release 0.17 this year and I also doubt that they'll (at the current rate of development) be any better than some newer WMs/minDesktops in regards to innovation, features and usability. I found something which works better for me but I never would criticize someone who is loyal to E.
Re:Oh no! more memory wastage... (Score:2, Insightful)
Join the 21st century. At $130 for 512MB of DDR2 who gives a crap about wasting memory any more?
Re:cool to see it get fixes (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:cool to see it get fixes (Score:1, Insightful)
My personal favorites are WindowMaker, Fluxbox, and flwm. None of them look particularly pretty, but they're all more functional than Windows.
Yes, I'm calling flwm more functional than Windows.
Re:Oh no! more memory wastage... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's just the insight you'd expect from combining an arrogant linux zealot who doesn't care about product coalescence to reduce redundancy with a bloated american 'honey, let's take the SUV to the ATM tonight' approach to the world.
Beautiful to see in all its unadulterated corpulence.
-Nano.
Re:Oh no! more memory wastage... (Score:2, Insightful)
I'll grant you that SUVs are useful in some situations and for some people. Guess what -- most of the time the people I see driving them will likely never encounter those situations.
I don't know if you're familiar with game theory, but there's something called the Prisoner's Dillemma, wherein two suspected partners in crime are apprehended and separated. Each is told that ratting out the other will lighten any sentence they might get, but if both rat each other out they're screwed. The best choice is for both to keep their mouths shut, because the prosecutors need their testimony to get anywhere, but as human nature would have it, in practice, they almost always both rat each other out, figuring that the other will have done the same.
This is how it seems to work with SUVs. The most common excuse I hear for driving them is, "I feel safer." Yes, they're safer relative to people like me in regular old cars. However, SUVs have been shown to be more likely to roll over in accidents, especially where vehicles of similar size are concerned. In other words, an accident between two SUVs is more dangerous than between two cars. The safest route would be for everyone to drive cars. However, some people 'sell' out for a little marginal safety for themselves and get SUVs, thus endangering everyone else. Eventually you have 50% or more of the cars on the road as SUVs, very dangerous for car drivers, and dangerous even for SUV drivers as now they have more 'peers' on the road, peers which in an accident are mutually more dangerous than if they drove cars.
SUVs are a huge problem, no pun intended. Let's just hope oil prices go up and hit their drivers where it hurts.