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."
Glad to see it's still around (Score:5, Interesting)
It looks cool but (Score:1, Interesting)
sourceforge group (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:cool to see it get fixes (Score:3, Interesting)
I've pretty much replaced Linux with MacOS X (and I'm not the only one - I notice another similar reply already), but I would be curious to know if it's any easier to install than the old whole day or more nightmare where it seemed like you needed every library on the planet to get the thing working.
D
Re:E redefined the desktop? (Score:1, Interesting)
I could be wrong, but I think the enlightenment pager was also the first to actually show miniature contents of windows in the display, prior to that, virtual desktop pagers just showed rectangles representing the windows.
Re:sourceforge group (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:cool to see it get fixes (Score:2, Interesting)
But why is it? All the X-WMs look shabby, slapdash and incomplete compared to MacOSX and even, dare I say it... WinXP.
To be fair, I thing E does better than most... more attuned to my taste than KDE or GNOME. But why must we have hundreds of hours of development hours go into something which is inferior to the two market leaders? Sure there are Lunix/BSD vs Windows/Mac arguments/fests all time time, but no Linux/BSD WM looks or functions as polished as WinXP/MacOSX (note I am walking WM/GUI here, not OS in general).
Divide and conquer...
As long as the X-Windows system is divided with no clear objective (WTF are GNOME up to with those massive icons and lack of flexibility everyone hates, why do KDE have to make it so difficult to make something doable, etc) and no clear purpose it seems inable to get the critical mass behind it to make a decent desktop. Perhaps we need some skill regarding graphical design to be recognized and give this tired uber |337n355 superiority regarding the(se) technical, and none too important to the finished project (what does the user care if it was created in C, C++, Assembly), difference(s) a rest.
I want a straightforward window system which is flexible and adaptable with graphics what don't look slapdash. All Linux/BSD WMs are good for is keeping several CLIs in the same 'desktop'... and for this E is best.
Give us E17 damnit! (Score:2, Interesting)
Who knows, i might even drop XFCE for it if it runs well enough.
Re:It looks cool but (Score:4, Interesting)
So don't, I'm guessing they won't really miss you anyways and if you don't want to go through the effort (somewhat nontrivial) of trying it out then don't. Then again what do you mean by "works"?
There are a lot of people using windows, most are not going to switch to linux anytime soon because for them windows "works", of course they still have all the trouble with spyware, viruses, no multiple desktops, etc, but they say it "works". Same with IE, they figure it "works" and don't even consider activeX wonkyness or tabbed browsing (don't know what SP2 has done for this). So at what point does your window manager "work"? When it compiles? When it has no bugs? When it has nothing you can point to from your dialy usage and say "that's a bug"? Maybe when annoying UI issues are gone? I figure the only way a program is ever truly done is if it does everything you've ever wanted it to do as simply and efficiently as possible. So if you want to put in the effort to see what you might be missing from your window manager that "works" go ahead and try it out. I can tell you that I'm certainly not going to try it out today (heck probably won't even RTFA) but sometime later when I have some time to spare, maybe days, maybe weeks, maybe never, who knows, I might just give it a whirl.
Re:Oh no! more memory wastage... (Score:2, Interesting)
Add to this the fact that most people don't typically have a myriad of apps open at any given time; maybe a web browser and an email client, a few terminals with whatever project they've got going on, etc etc. Shouldn't be a problem.
I agree, though. There are just too many libs to chose from, as a developer. It would be nice if there were one or two fully developed libraries.
E will need KiKaZ themes! Calling all skinners! (Score:3, Interesting)
Pixelmoose if you're listening, don't forget to a)port your theme to E16.7.1 b) make a 23oz of glass xmms skin...
Never could get into it (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't get me wrong: Enlightenment is certainly a powerful and capable windowing system, and there have been some fairly original looks/themes released for it, but, to me at least (he says, carefully circumventing the Troll under the bridge) it's not a GUI that a new user coming from the Windows/Mac/KDE/Gnome world can immediately begin using. Or configuring.
(This is where all the Slashdot/Linux "elite" begin to quote my thread for their 'RTFM', and 'How could it be any simpler than xxxx?' responses)
When I first began investigating Linux all those years ago, Enlightenment themes and screenshots were all the rage. KDE and Gnome were promising, but Enlightenment was how all the coolest geeks seemed to produce such cool eye candy-based desktops. But to a Linux newbie like me, coming from an Amiga/Dos/Windows background at the time, it was totally alien. It was just too much to have to begin learning Linux, and a totally different GUI like Enlightenment, both at the same time. So Enlightenment went goodbye after way too many wasted hours trying to become productive and look good doing it.
So flash ahead several years (last year, to be exact), and a much more Linux-savy version of Me decided to give Enlightenment shot again. I hadn't kept up with it, and had meanwhile become an avid KDE fan, but I wanted to try something different, and figured that Enlightenment had to have matured by this time, to a point wherein I could grasp it easier. I mean... KDE had came so far in this time.
So I boot it up after installing the latest version, and
Now... I'm not expecting enlightenment to change their way and become KDE or Gnome or anything. But they've gotta realize that virtually any converts to their window manager will be coming from an environment such as KDE, Gnome, Windows, etc. It's a totally different methodology from that of Enlightenment. You'd think that one of the first things that you'd see on a default desktop would be a "how to get started" type of document.
Yeah, yeah... I know. RTFM. Yes, I also know that I can configure Enlightenment to look and interact like whatever I want it to, but I'd kind of expect "something" to push the new user in the right direction.
But other things were not impressive also. Fonts, in paricular, looked poor when compared to the more popular window managers around.
So flash foward to todays announcement here on Slashdot, and so I decide to take a look at Enlightenments page to see if anything's changed yet. I see this [enlightenment.org]. Come on... For crying out loud, someone get Enlightenment a PR director. If the programmers hope to grow the userbase of their window manager, they really should make it a bit more accessible. If an "intro level" of usability isn't a possibility, then how about a simple "Introduction to Enlightenment" document, or walk through? Something to offer the new user a glimpse of the power of Enlightenment. And without requiring them to hunt it down, or surf out to a website.
At least make the default font's look better. This [enlightenment.org] is a good example of both the default look of Enlightenment, and it's default fonts. Conversely, this [kde.org] is the default look of KDE. I'm not saying that KDE's superior (to me it is, but who cares), but the default look, which all of us have seen many times before, and consi
Re:Oh no! more memory wastage... (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't be silly. If some program uses the EFL, even if I don't use Enlightenment, I'll have to use the EFL libs to use said program.
For example, I don't give a rat's ass about Gnome. I think Gnome, as an environment, is as ugly as it gets. But I need to use GIMP and Gnomeeting. There's no Qt/kde equivalent: what do I do? do without them? of course not, and you know it full well.
Your bitching about inefficient memory usage when you probably haven't written a single line of code in your life
Heh, funny people who make assumptions without knowing. FYI, I do real-time programming and I port the Linux kernel on embedded processors. You've probably already seen my name out there on the net, but of course this is
you will be able to afford another 64MB stick and all your memory problems will be a thing of the past.
Tell me, is computing all a matter of how much it costs to you? or "just get xxx more of yyy and you're set"? how about engineering elegance? how about not wasting when you don't need to?
When *you* leave school and become a professional, which I hope you do, hopefully you will learn to appreciate that. I know it's a concept of the past, but it is one that I think is still important.
Re:Never could get into it (Score:4, Interesting)
As far as I'm concerned, E is perfect the way it is. I couldn't care less if there's never another release. I couldn't care less if no-one else ever uses it.
It's fast, stable, powerful, flexible, and pretty. No, it's not for people who don't like to tweak. I like to tweak. Gnome and KDE are for those who just want to get work done, and not mess around on their computer. I like to mess around with it, make it stand up and talk (I have a COOL computer
So really, if you don't like it, don't use it. Don't tell anyone else to use it. Tell people other things are better. I really don't mind in the slightest.
Re:Oh no! more memory wastage... (Score:1, Interesting)
Actually, the problem is the GNOME project. They got started because of a really bad case of Not Invented Here, and they've just kept going in that direction. Any time they need a library, they roll their own. KDE at least often uses a thin wrapper around a standard library. (Which is why the dependencies for kdelibs4 are so insane) If the GNOME project would just FOAD already, the Linux desktop effort would be in much better shape.
Re:Oh no! more memory wastage... (Score:2, Interesting)
And hey, there's plenty of petroleum out there, so who gives a crap about driving an SUV instead of a Prius or Civic Hybrid? Just because you can waste doesn't mean you should waste, and no matter how inexpensive or ubiquitous memory (or gas) seems to be, it is in limited supply and it does cost money.
I see your opinion as being patently American, which depresses me to no end about my countrymen.
Best of both worlds (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Glad to see it's still around (Score:2, Interesting)
I remember a lot of heated words being uttered about E's "bloat", but I just downloaded all the major components of E17, and the total came to about 11 Mb, which seems pretty paltry by comparison with Gnome (not flaming, I'm a big fan of Gnome) or KDE. I'm looking forward to giving it another spin...
just to clarify, that's not the one released today (Score:3, Interesting)
They might be slow, but they sure as hell do a thorough job.
Re:cool to see it get fixes (Score:3, Interesting)
I can't say I'm a big fan of CVs, but I just downloaded and extracted all the source packages from Sourceforge, and a simple
was all I needed to do on my Slackware box. No problem.
Re:cool to see it get fixes (Score:2, Interesting)
What really ticks me off is that Litestep looks nicer than anything I've run in Linux and Litestep is based on an X-WM! I'm pissed off to no end that it only works in Windows. I'd give my left foot for a Linux version that installs so easily and has support for all of Litestep's modules and themes.
Note: If I get slammed for this because there really is a Linux WM that works so well then I'll likely weep with joy, karma be damned.
Evidence - the enlightenment file manager (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Oh no! more memory wastage... (Score:3, Interesting)
Bah. True but only half true. Sure you can attempt to compile anything you want but lacks a real official package system. If you have any dependencies then you have to download each one and compile it too.
Sure there is fink and darwinports but both of them are very small compared to the freebsd ports or apt,
I like my mac but don't pretend that it's somehow easy to get your favorite OSS program working on it. It's possible but it's such a pain in the ass it's not worth doing.
Re:Never could get into it (Score:3, Interesting)
They've been quite far into awesome development progress when Mandrake and Rasterman get the inspiration to scrap the code base and do a "rewrite". I was using E CVS snapshots 3 years ago that were more advanced, more featureful, and more pretty than what's currently available.
I suspect the reason why E17 isn't catching up to where it used to be is because a lot of the developers have left. EFM was getting really, really nice, and they scrapped the code base. I've got a friend that was working on it. He left shortly afterwards. Rasterman and Mandrake are apparently impossible to work with, between this and their moving around the world, etc.
Excentric is the word, people.
Re:Oh no! more memory wastage... (Score:3, Interesting)
This is true, obviously, but doesn't add to your conclusion. He argues that code should not be _unnecessarily_ bloat, not that you shouldn't make new features for new computers. He argues for elegance and efficiency, you argue for non-elegance and non-efficiency because that doesn't stop new computers.
Well, when these new computers are three years old, and Enlightenment 20 comes, the owners of those computers might have been able to run it if it was more efficient.
On the other hand, efficiency is a huge sales trick for open source software: Norwegian schools are now joining the Skolelinux project, not because it provides cheaper software (Windows school licenses are dirt-cheap anyway), but because it works on their legacy hardware.
Innovation should not compromise with the idea of saving resources. Far too many times have humanity made that mistake. Computer cycles are also resources, at least as long as 95% (yes, it's true!) of the world's population hasn't even got a computer.
Cool.... (Score:1, Interesting)
enlitenment - lite version of enlightenment anyone?