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Comments: 199 +- Technology: Samsung Sponsors the Development of Enlightenment on Wednesday November 18, @01:26PM
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by
timothy
on Wednesday November 18, @01:26PM
from the don't-forget-who-pays-for-your-mantra dept.
from the don't-forget-who-pays-for-your-mantra dept.
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An anonymous reader writes "The Enlightenment window manager project has shared on its website that it now has the backing of a major (top-five) electronics manufacturer that will be actively sponsoring the project and using Enlightenment on its devices. No manufacturer was named, but Phoronix has dug deeper and found out that Samsung is sponsoring Enlightenment. Phoronix provides independent confirmation along with citing a new Enlightenment program that Samsung sponsored and then released under the LGPL-3. They also have videos of some of the new work to this window manager that Samsung funded."
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Submission: Samsung Sponsors The Development Of Enlightenment by Anonymous Coward
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Wow! (Score:5, Funny)
That's pretty ambitious. ;-)
So, a Buddhist walks up to a hot dog vendor, and says "make me one with everything". :-P
Cheers
Re:Wow! (Score:5, Funny)
That's pretty ambitious. ;-)
So, a Buddhist walks up to a hot dog vendor, and says "make me one with everything". :-P
Cheers
The vendor hands him a fully loaded hot dog, and the Buddhist hands him a $20.
After a few moments, the Buddhist asks for his change, and the hot dog vendor replies, "change must come from within".
Parent
Re:Wow! (Score:5, Funny)
That's pretty ambitious.
No, no, Samsung isn't funding an attempt to develop the attainment of a blessed state in which their customers can transcend desire and suffering and achieve Nirvana. That would be nearly impossible.
Samsung is funding an attempt to develop for their customers a completed version of the Enlightenment Window Manager. That will be completely impossible.
Parent
Seems Obvious (Score:4, Insightful)
It's like Fluxbox in terms of resource use (and unfortunately on flashy little GUI indicators) but looks amazing!
Kudos on this! Let's get windows management handled! It's been so many years of updates on something that should have been handled by now!
Re:Seems Obvious (Score:4, Informative)
Awesome [naquadah.org] is awesome.
Parent
Re:Seems Obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
Lets hope that Samsung manages to get e17 out of door in 2010.
Wow, I was trying it out 5 years ago and it still hasn't seen a release.
Parent
Re:Seems Obvious (Score:4, Informative)
*sigh* Why do people insist in this lie? The Matrix had no sequels or video games.
Parent
LGPL-3? (Score:4, Insightful)
Enlightment is BSD licensed. You can't just change it to LGPL-3.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The copyright holders can change the license to new releases however they want.
Re:LGPL-3? (Score:4, Informative)
That is true. However, Samsung != the copyright holders. Samsung could, however, fork it and create their own thing, which would not be the same as Samsung developing the original unforked e.
Parent
Re:LGPL-3? (Score:4, Insightful)
Samsung could, of course, hand over a fist full of dollars to the copyright holders [phoronix.com] and walk away with a copy of the code under whatever license they ask for.
Or maybe I'm just making this up.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
But Samsung is not the copyright holders. They can release a LGPL fork, but they cannot touch the license on the original trunk.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Actually, being BSD licensed, you can release a fork under a new license I believe since BSD is a permissive license.
The reverse, however, would not be true.
Cheers
Re:LGPL-3? (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, being BSD licensed, you can release a fork under a new license I believe since BSD is a permissive license.
The reverse, however, would not be true.
What you believe is wrong. The BSD doesn't let you change the license terms of the source code at your will. You must have permission from the copyright holder(s) to do so.
Parent
Re:LGPL-3? (Score:4, Informative)
To further add you may be confusing this with the fact that you can include BSD code inside other code that is licensed under another license, but this doesn't change the license that the BSD code is under.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Which, other than the need for attribution, doesn't really restrict you much.
But, yes, one occasionally forgets that Slashdot is well populated with semanticists and nit-pickers. ;-)
Cheers
Re:LGPL-3? (Score:4, Interesting)
Personally, I think this is one weakness of relying on "do whatever you want" licenses like BSD and MIT. Linux can always use BSD and GPL'd code, but the BSD devs want to stick with BSD for their kernels and other projects whenever possible.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Sure you can include BSD code in an LGPL application. BSD is perfectly compatible with the GPL and LGPL.
Scooped (Score:5, Funny)
Enlightenment already developed by Rousseau, Diderot, and Voltaire, among others.
v2.0? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Yes it's true that Linux's greatest failing was it didn't have enough DEs!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Enlightenment has more features than either of the desktops in popular use, when you consider its login manager and file manager as well as support libraries. The major concern I can see would be making it interoperate well with newer Linux desktop standards that have been established since 0.17 started.
Re: (Score:2)
What do you mean by "100% native suite" and why does it matter?
I always use some KDE/QT apps with XFCE and I used to use some Gtk apps with KDE.
E17 is pretty stable now (Score:5, Informative)
I've been using it for months as my desktop at home and on my laptop. It is quite usable and I've had zero crashes for a while now. Rasterman has always had a focus on small-screen devices, so this development doesn't surprise me. But if you haven't checked it out in a while, you should.
Re:E17 is pretty stable now (Score:4, Insightful)
The developers had released a roadmap showing that perhaps it would be ready for a Christmas release.
Did they mention the year? Or at least the decade?
I remember waiting for E17. That was about two years before I switched to OS X, so it must be what, five years now?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
But I follow the commits pretty regularly, and many of the component software and libraries are reaching a 1.0 and mature status. They have a very clear roadmap to reach a stable release. As I said, I'm not saying they will make a Christmas release. But to go from years of, "it will be done when it's done" to "possibly relea
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Nah, more like nine years. According to wikipedia: "Version 0.17, also referred to as DR17 or E17, has been in development since December 2000."
I used to look forward to it during a couple of years at the beginning of this decade but have long since given up and lost interest.
Excellent! (Score:5, Funny)
Now maybe we'll see the final release of E17 before the 22nd century. Who knows, it may even come out before Duke Nukem Forever.
Re:Excellent! (Score:5, Funny)
Now maybe we'll see the final release of E17 before the 22nd century. Who knows, it may even come out before Duke Nukem Forever.
I'm sure the first thing Rasterman will do with this new funding is begin a complete rewrite of e from scratch. So once Mitsubishi starts sponsoring Duke Nukem, it'll be a tight race.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
First they would have to re-implement Duke Nukem Forever. From scratch. DNF has always been the main dependency of Enlightenment. Remember when Rasterman ditched his entire EVAS library and starter again? It coincided with DNF's switch from the Quake engine to Unreal Engine. Every setback in E17's development has coincided with similar setbacks in DNF.
I've always liked enlightenment. (Score:5, Insightful)
I used it back in the days of SuSE 6.3 and really liked it then. It had the most eye candy and "slickness" at the time (1999 or so), blowing other WMs and Win98 out the water, I mean who couldn't love the semi-transparent "eTerm" windows?
Other WMs have caught up now with the eye candy, but enlightenment is and was one of the few window managers that actually displayed innovation instead of simply tailing after windows and mac. It's nice to see it getting recognition.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I last used enlightenment in like 1998 or so, and always felt like it excelled in gratuitous eye candy and infinite customization, but lacked in usability. But I always respected how Raster was willing to try new and sometimes completely wonky things, because that is how interesting interaction is developed.
But I just tried it again, and was underwhelmed (with E16). It is entirely possible that I am just grumpy in my old age, or I'm no longer in the target audience.
Videos show (Score:3, Interesting)
Very interesting (Score:4, Interesting)
Enlightenment generally seems reckoned to be very nice technology. I've been repeatedly surprised to see Enlightenment popping up in commercial products here and there; Edje-based wallpapers can even be loaded in KDE now. Evidently it's a strong piece of work and it'll be really interesting to see where this sponsorship gets them. It certainly seems an enlightened approach.
Windowmaker and GNUstep (Score:5, Informative)
I wish someone would do the same with Windowmaker and GNUstep, but I suspect the licensing has closed off that path.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Wow. I haven't thought about WindowMaker for years. I always enjoyed that wm. If I could be arsed to tear myself away from the joy of openbox + tint2 + conky, I would ;)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I've been using Window Maker for nearly a decade now, and have to admit that it's very nice that it's stable (not crashing AND not changing). Sure, it'd be really neat to have compiz or whatever support, but honestly it does everything I want from window management: provides window dressing, an application menu (at the pointer, even!), and a place to dock and/or launch apps from.
Used E again recently.... (Score:3, Interesting)
During my time on Fedora 11 I fell out of love with Gnome and switched over to KDE. During my transitional phase I played a bit with E. It was the window manager during the redhat 5.x days when I first started with Linux, and I was nostalgic to see how E had changed.
I liked E's speedy response. It's a lightweight WM without much bloat. Very quick and responsive load times.
On the other hand it needs updating. There's no support for compositing, and GL is software rendered. No acceleration. I'm a Blenderhead so this was not good. It doesn't have a good file manager. I found myself using MC whenever I was in E. No easy menu editing.
I very much would like to see E take it's place again as a viable desktop option. It has so much going for it, be clearly developer resources haven't been available like KDE and Gnome.
Re:Used E again recently.... (Score:5, Informative)
Are you talking about e16 ? Compositing and GL work fine in it (I'm using the release packaged in Debian). I'm actually quite surprised that people don't list it as one of the compositing window managers like Beryl / Compiz.
It doesn't have as many extra features as Beryl / Compiz, but it has the few I care about... namely - composited drop shadows, true-translucent backgrounds in gnome-terminal, translucent window movement, and composited miniature windows in the pager.
It's actually been much more stable than Beryl on my system... eventually Beryl seems to exhaust the video memory and I get lots of video corruption, which seldom happens under the e16 compositor. It's also pretty easy to turn compositing on and off when I want more GPU resources dedicated to an OpenGL app or game.
Parent
Re:Kill the X Boondoggle Already (Score:5, Insightful)
Funny how this argument mostly comes from people who know virtually nothing about X. Most importantly, not the difference between the concept, the protocol and the implementation.
And just because it's 20 years old doesn't mean it sucks. How old is TCP/IP? The mouse? The binary system?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Instead of keeping code that works and improving it, we end up throwing it away and starting from scratch. That is what causes situations like the OSS/ALSA/PulseAudio mess. So far we have mostly managed to ignore the morons calling for the death of X, hopefully that will continue.
So far we have mostly managed to ignore the morons calling for the death of PulseAudio, hopefully that will continue as well.
Pulse is new code, not a rewrite of anything. Yes, ESD was a sound server too, but the similarity ends there.
Many of PulseAudio's problems are caused by "iffy" stuff in ALSA drivers, and the ALSA folks are working to fix the bugs Pulse exposes. Many more are caused by distro people making questionable decisions on how to set it up (see Ubuntu/rtkit).
I'm sure glad that PA isn't going a
Re:Kill the X Boondoggle Already (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem with PulseAudio isn't PulseAudio. The problem is that the presently known-to-be-unstable PulseAudio/ALSA/apps combo is pushed to "stable" desktop distros. It's like KDE 4.0 "stable beta" release, only it's taking longer, and people are understandingly getting more impatient.
Some guy out there simply knows that if he has PulseAudio, his sound is crap, and if he removes it using his package manager (which could well be Ubuntu "Add/Remove Software" or something similarly easy), it starts working.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If I can't install X easily and have it run relatively efficiently without bloat and unresponsiveness, then X - or the package manager - needs to be fixed.
True, but the key word is "relatively". Relatively to OSX and Windows, X even at its most bloated is *still* a paradigm of efficiency. Its just that, once you're familiar with it, you can make it do even more with less.
I guess it's a bit like Emacs. For the uninitiated, it's an extremely capable editor. For those who have mastered it, however, it's God's greatest gift to Mankind.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If you want to replace X, the question you should be asking is, what does X do worse than Quartz? There's no point replacing X just for the sake of it - if you want people to think about replacing X, you need to explain what's wrong with X.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
``What's in this for Samsung ? Are they going to run Enlightenment on their mobile phones ? Their TV's ?''
Possibly. Mobile phones are actually powerful enough these days to get pretty much all the flashy eye candy stuff you might want, but Enlightenment is one of the few products that _both_ run on such "low-end" hardware and provide the eye candy.
Besides mobiles phones and TVs, though, Samsung may also be thinking about notebooks.
Re:Some explain the Linux GUI thing? (Score:5, Informative)
They're different layers.
X is the graphics system. It provides the video driver and makes pretty pictures show up on your screen.
Enlightenment is a window manager, it gives those pretty pictures borders so that you can drag them around.
Gnome is a Desktop Environment, which is a couple hundred programs that are designed to work together and work the same way. This includes a window manager, menus for launching programs and a place to hold minimized programs and icons, a file manager, network configuration tools, a terminal, calculator, scanning software, music player, cd ripper, graphics editors, etc etc.
X is always there.
The features that Enlightenment provides works using X.
The features that Gnome provides works using a window manager and X. Gnome provides Metacity as its window manager by default, but you can use others like Enlightenment.
This is highly consistent.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I'm going to assume this isn't a troll, and instead is a real question. Crash course for everyone else:
Unlike OSX and Windows, the graphics subsystem is (almost) completely independent from the core of the OS (kernel). This means that the graphics can be completely removed with little-to-no effort, leaving just a text-based system.
This is because the X-windows system is implemented by Xorg the program. Like any other program it can be killed/removed, etc. This program just happens to take over a terminal wi
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
There are no more layers in the Linux GUI system than in Windows. X, which provides the basic graphics operations, is roughly equivalent to the Windows GDI; the window manager and the desktop environment provide the functions provided by the Windows shell; and the toolkits like GTK and QT are the equivalent of the standard controls in win32. The basic architecture is not very different - it's just that, on Linux, the separate pieces are independent and properly specified, so that you can use a variety of di