After 12 years of Development, E17 Is Out 259
The Enlightenment front page bears this small announcement: "E17 release HAS HAPPENED!" The release announcement is remarkably spartan — it's mostly a tribute to the dozens of contributors who have worked on the software itself and on translating it into many languages besides system-default English. On the other hand, if you've been waiting since December 2000 for E17 (also known as Enlightenment 0.17), you probably have some idea that Enlightenment is a window manager (or possibly a desktop environment: the developers try to defuse any dispute on that front, but suffice it to say that you can think of it either way), and that the coders are more interested in putting out the software that they consider sufficiently done than in incrementing release numbers. That means they've made some side trips along the way, Knuth-like, to do things like create an entire set of underlying portable libraries. The release candidate changelog of a few days ago gives an idea of the very latest changes, but this overview shows and tells what to expect in E17. If you're among those disappointed in the way some desktop environments have tended toward simplicity at the expense of flexibility, you can be sure that Enlightenment runs the other way: "We don't go quietly into the night and remove options when no one is looking. None of those new big version releases with fanfare and "Hey look! Now with half the options you used to have!". We sneak in when you least expect it and plant a whole forest of new option seeds, watching them spring to life. We nail new options to walls on a regular basis. We bake options-cakes and hand them out at parties. Options are good. Options are awesome. We have lots of them. Spend some quality time getting to know your new garden of options in E17. It may just finally give you the control you have been pining for."
2000 E was the absolute coolest looking WM (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Out? (Score:4, Interesting)
Am I the only one who interpreted "out" as meaning "abandoned" or "given up on?"
No. Enlightenment was a really promising window manager. I used it from the late 90's until the early 2000's. It was pretty nice even with all of the warts. They kept scrapping it and starting over so many times that I kinda gave up on it. Honestly, I thought it was dead years ago. I figured they finally officially threw in the towel.
Re:12 years to achieve..... (Score:4, Interesting)
Your arguments seem pretty pointless to me. I've compared Enlightenment with all the other desktop environments, and E uses less resources, while doing a prettier and faster job. Run your own tests, against the major DE's. E beats them all.
Enlightenment doesn't compare as favorably against some of the older, lighter desktops, such as XFCE. But, those older lightweight interfaces don't offer quite the "experience" that the heavyweights offer, either.
Bloated eyecandy. Confuses everyone. Phhht. Nonsense. Violates standards? I never researched that - like most users, I'm not as interested in standards, as I am interested in results. Destabilizes the working environment? Needs citations - I've witnessed nothing like that. E is as stable as anything I've used.
Which games are incompatible with E? List them please.
My ONLY complaint with E17, is that it has taken so long. I've been fooling with it for years, impatiently waiting for this release.
god, the distros are LAZY, not him (Score:5, Interesting)
Its time like these, that hopefully will change in 2020.
These stupid ass distros who are so hard up and anal, they should be the ones who find all these cool apps and programs, and re-package it up into their REPO servers ASAP, or on the day of the release.
If conical wants an app store, PUT all the damn cool shit on it. Not old shit, new shit.
Linux needs a none-distro specific Super Store.
Click download app - dont ask for what distro I am using, figure it out lame asses. Use a app store client that runs on 5 major distros. And can install app XYZ easily, that doesnt break other apps, and that wont stop and get stupid python errors, coz again some lame ass coded his scripts with 2.6, but fails in 2.7. Fix your shit, stop breaking old shit, stop removing old apis, you want to reduce bloat? then dont package up 167 languages that take 89 megs.
windows has its replacement shells too (Score:2, Interesting)
There are numerous free and opensourced replacement desktop shells for windows. Some are old linux ports.
They are good, because they work and run inside the free MS HyperVisor VM. Which boots into a cmd line plain gui, but no shell. Its easy to install these new shells, to create a working desktop thats linux like, but in windows.
http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/five-apps/five-replacements-for-the-windows-7-desktop/1327 [techrepublic.com]
Re:windows has its replacement shells too (Score:2, Interesting)
A shell in Windows is not the same as a window manager in Linux. Not in any way. Replacing Windows' shell still leaves you with the exact same window management, it just changes your task bar and desktop shortcuts (and judging from the examples on there: into something far less useful). And Windowblinds isn't even a shell replacement at all!