...for ARM based devices everybody that is so hot right now...

Yeah.. um... huh?

There is no GUI option to change the font size in Enlightenment but there is a way to change the font size; it involves editing config files [soft32.com]. Although I should point out that Enlightenment puts a higher focus on having a light footprint than usability, it just doesn't seem to take it as far as Fluxbox does.

For the lazy here is the relevant quote:

So what can we do about the 3D graphics licensing issue? Legally not very much. The companies that own the IP (Intellectual Property) rights to these drivers often want large licensing fees for their technology. This is a model for single product lines (take the Nokia N900 for instance) but for Ubuntu where we are targeting a more broad approach, this isn't ideal.

It's Ubuntu that package the whole thing and decide on the default font size.

E only plays the part of supplying the critically needed libraries.

Your comment would make sense if EFL/E17 did not already support OpenGL ES on embedded devices. Illume, the E17 variant designed for mobile/embedded devices, already runs quite well with hardware/OpenGL acceleration on platforms like Maemo, and I already have built and successfully run EFL-based OpenGL apps on the Palm Pre (available in the WebOS Internals WIDK tree [webos-internals.org]).

Evas was designed from the ground up to be modular and support every graphics platform known to man. Windows GDI, DirectX, iPhone OS, X11, WebOS, native Linux Framebuffer, SDL, OpenGL, OpenGL ES - you name it, EFL runs on it. Evas will take advantage of hardware acceleration when it is available, but benchmarks actually show that in many instances, when it comes to regular UI graphics operations, OpenGL/hardware accelerated interfaces don't necessarily perform better than Evas' own software engine and in several cases are actually worse -- on the Palm Pre, for example, GLES is actually much slower at doing things like alpha blending. So in that respect, yes, hardware does have some catching up to do.

[quote]Hopefully it's come along a bit since then.[/quote]

The decided to rewrite it. They lost the cool overlapping desktops feature, and it i unusably immature.

It was always lightweight used as a DE. I never tried it with Gnome.

He is right even if he is "selling" Linux. Gnome has far more gui options available in gui control panels than Windows even offers. The same goes for KDE and XFCE.

E17 is what runs on this hardware. I'm sure that if Gnome or KDE could run on it they'd base the ARM customized Ubuntu distro to use one of them instead. Problem is that Gnome and KDE use more resources than E17 does and E17 just doesn't have a GUI for changing certain settings. E17 isn't aiming to compete in the same areas that Gnome and KDE are. E17 is primarily used where computer resources are limited while Gnome and KDE are generally used on systems where computer resources aren't the major problem. Now if you've been using Linux for 10+ years, you probably have run into hardware that is crap by today's standards and would not run well with larger D.E.s.

Where did you get this information from? GTK/Qt apps are guided by GTK/Qt DPI settings (there should be something for that - E has a DPI control, but I'm not sure what it does), but E has pretty good font-size management (for stuff like menus, titlebars etc), right in the System Settings -> Appearance -> Font tab. You just need to use a snapshot which is not ancient.

It doesn't appear that you put any effort into it.

On the contrary, it lets you get straight to work, and when you run into specific Many of them, yes. None of your examples captures this notion. There are certain brick walls that you do have to get used to, but there are many layers of customization possible in almost everything. Off the top of my head, I can't think of a single thing that I absolutely can't do from the OS X desktop that I can on Ubuntu.

The difference is that there are far, far fewer necessary configuration options to get started, which is a huge timesaver.

Only if you move them. The Exposé sequence is based on the position of the windows on your desktop. It's not random. If none of your windows move, the order won't change.

You could always try clicking on the application's icon in the Dock, which is always on the screen (unless you move it). Those icons don't move, either, unless you move them. Just like Exposé windows.

I assume you mean can't. With good reason: it breaks the metaphor. When you cut text and fail to paste it, it disappears. That behavior is undesirable for files, so they just get put back where they were (unlike cut text). Finder is meant to be used with a mouse and multiple windows. There's always Terminal or third-party file managers that can be more Windows Explorer-like (Ubuntu's model) if that's your preference.

Moving isn't exactly difficult: just open up adjacent Finder windows and drag. Keyboard users can use mv in Terminal. If you really want to enable this functionality, it's trivial to implement in AppleScript, which you can assign to a keyboard shortcut. There's also Filecutter if you really just want the functionality restored.

This is the craziest one. There are about 19,000 different ways to set global keyboard shortcuts to switch back/forward in playlists in iTunes.

Fn+left, right, up, down

Oh come on. Two finger tap, control-click, buy a multi-button mouse.

Care to elaborate?

Fn+delete is forward delete.

This is all pretty basic stuff that my kids managed. Certainly, no sophisticated Linux user could actually go three months without figuring all of those things out.

As a long-time Debian and Ubuntu user myself, I find it particularly comical that you think Ubuntu is well-thought-out. Configuration options are scattered about, the menubar has a truly bizarre default arrangement, and the application menu is far from complete. It's much more likely the case that "well thought out" means "the one I'm more familiar with".

There are some things that are just not customizable in OS X, it's true. But so much more of it is than you seem to realize, both internally and with third-party extensions. Additional features can always be added to suit users, as adding is easy, but you can't ever get less than the minimum. Just look at the Firefox disputes that erupt between the "I want a lean, clean browser...you can clutter it with a

Uhm, command-tab switches between apps and command-tilde (~) switches between different windows in the same app. Depending on the revision of MBP F7 through F9 should control switching/pausing of music. Oh, fn+arrow keys will get you your home/end pgup/pgn too.

While I think your call on the delete/insert key is valid, the rest is just BS and/or FUD. You (apparently) spent a tidy sum on a macbook pro. Try actually using the OS provided. Steve Jobs/Mark Shuttleworth got nothing to do with it, a startling lack of adaptability, or lack of manual reading is more to blame.

Um, excuse me? What SoC are you talking about? With some simple googling, here's two videos - 1 [youtube.com], 2 [youtube.com] - showing 3D demos running on the OMAP3-powered Beagle Board. The linked news item (TFA) even mentions an OpenGL ES 'engine' for Evas [enlightenment.org] being contributed by Samsung. 3D drivers are certainly available for the PowerVR GPU in the OMAP3 (albeit binary-only), and Enlightenment would seem to be able to use 3D acceleration.

in e17 there is a wonderful full complete ui scaling factor - u can ask it to be automatically adjusted from dpi - if x dpi is right, or just slide the slider to where you like it... so moot for 17 - not to mention a font config dialog when themes support textclasses...

the elephant in the room is that e17's libraries (efl) have been using full accelerated pipelines like opengl to render years before gnome or kde did... maybe you never saw the original evas gl rendering demos... all hidden behind a canvas api that rendered any way you like... the engine got revamped recently thanks to samsung for opengl-es2.0... not just opengl (full opengl).

(note - ubuntu's problem is the lack of ability to ship the binary-only powervr opengl drivers themseleves - thus their hands are tied. manufacutrers who make full products invariably have access o the driver source and have ship them on their devices).

so.. e17 does... it just ALSO has a highly tuned software engine for when the pipeline doesn't work... /me goes back to his e17 on an arm soc with full gl-es2 compositing, tear-free rendering and silky smooth scrolling with many layers of blending and smoothness

Before saying anything, you should perhaps get some real information. E17 use Evas to handle the graphics canvas and Evas does provide tons of different backend. OpenGL ES is one of them. E17 is the only window manager that can scale from hardware without any GPU, to hardware with just a blitter or hardware with full Open GL.

And in all of this scenario, it is highly optimised. My bet that at a graphic equivalent result, you will use less ressource with E17 than with any other WM. Oh, and E17 is the only WM that propose a composit manager that doesn't require OpenGL hardware.

And no the main interest of E17 is not its graphics layer, but it's theme/layout engine: Edje. This give a real possibility to have one code that will run every where. Just change the theme, and you will have huge animation that can't run without a big GPU, or with another theme, you will be perfect on an e-book black and white screen.

I remember the days of tentatively venturing from TWM to use Enlightenment during quiet days. Then everyone moved to WindowMaker.

Then KDE and Gnome came along to ruin it all :-(. :-p

So press Command+Option+D.

Sorted. How hard was that?

(Or if you don;t know the keyboard command, go to System Preferences, click on "Dock" and tick the box that says "automatically hide and show the dock" - you can also tun off the animation here if you like, and change the size of the Dock itself, its position on the screen and whether it magnifies when you hover over it)

It's pretty intuitive really - all of the UI options are in System Prefs. Even better, the help box on that app responds to the Windows keywords for what you are changing. For example, if you type in "Wallpaper" it highlights the Desktop and Screensaver icon, and indicates that on Mac OS X that is called "Desktop Picture". So, if you have found it hard to use, you must not have read the little intro thing Apple produced which mentions this. (I just tried it - it is still working in 10.6).

I know a few people who keep their Dock on the left side of their screen because the display is wider than it is tall and they like it over on that side. Can you put the start menu/toolbar thing on the sides of the screen in Vista? I know you can change the size of it, but I haven't been in front of a Windows box since XP.

I'm with you, man. Nobody else has problems with cut and paste files, just the Mac. It breaks the metaphor, but so does dozens of other things they've done to add glitz over the years. (btw, select, drag, hold down the apple key and release mouse button to cut and paste across file systems.) I am used to the OS X user interface, but it took me YEARS to get used to it. There are still things I find annoying. I am not sure what to say on the Expose thing. I can hit f9 over and over and the windows will NOT tile into the same place.

Here are some things I would love to have the option of on Mac OS X:

* Solid window border
* no drop shadows or fading
* remove transparency in menus
* Minimize with no effect
* focus follows mouse

The first four are eminently doable and there is no reason for not having the option other than the fact that Apple is a walled garden. The last one, I am told, is not possible to implement fully correctly on OS X because of assumptions the OS API makes about windows being in focus. Oh well.

In defense of Apple, many annoyances have been fixed since back when I first started using OS X 1.2. Adding alt-tab was great, expose is excellent, so is Spaces. The combination of all three of these speed up my workflow tremendously. It is my environment of choice, but I won't kiss Jobs ass. Some things should be configurable and they just aren't because the OS appearance is a marketing tool for them. I don't care much how stupid Gnome on Ubuntu supposedly looks because I can change it to whatever I want and be happy. Not so on a Mac.