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Enlightenment GUI

Enlightenment now KDE compliant 120

teraflop user writes "The Enlightenment window manager now works with KDE, along with a load of other window managers. If you want to run the same window manager under Gnome and KDE, you now have several choices, including E, Blackbox and WindowMaker. "
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Enlightenment now KDE compliant

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  • I remember reading some time ago, when the KDE and GNOME flame wars were at their height, the sane and sensible voices were calling for the arguments to stop, and instead to let KDE and GNOME slug it out in the only arena that matters -- `code'.

    Which ever product has the best code -- the most functionality -- the most stability, is the one that will dominate the Linux desktop.

    I know which one I think is best ;-)

    Macka
  • "...adding esoteric stuff or eye-candy that a power user would find useful."

    This is not the definition of a power user. Instead, they are interested in tools, lots of tools, at both low and medium levels. They are also interested in fiddling with settings.

    "Ask a gnome fan why he prefers gnome to kde and you would hear stuff about enlightenment themes."

    Enlightenment is not a part of Gnome. This is like saying you prefer the L.A. freeways over the Bay Area freeways because you drive a Ferrari. A non sequitur.
  • by Anonymous Coward
    Transform yourself into an energetic being and influence the electrons in your computer directly.

    It needs a lot more practice than lerning to move a pointer and click buttons or typing commandos, but once you've masterd the transformation, you will never touch a keyboard ore mouse again.

    Believe me!
  • And DAMN are they unpleasant to use. Wonder why there are NO C KDE apps? GTK+ is pure bliss to program in C. Go figure.
  • If you read the license, once a product is released under GPL, any derived products from that work are also under the same conditions of the GPL.

    This applies even to the author! If I write a program and version 1 is GPL, version 2 if it is based on version 1 must also be GPL. You own the copyright, yes. But your "ownership" is under the same contions as the GPL.

    Linus can't tomorrow say "This open source software movement was neat, but now that I've got them hooked.." Nope. Of course this is a simplistic example because much of the Linux code is owned by other people, but you get my meaning.

    You can probably get more info from http://www.fsf.org. From "What is the Copyleft?",

    "To copyleft a program, first we copyright it; then we add distribution terms, which are a legal instrument that gives everyone the rights to use, modify, and redistribute the program's code or any program derived from it but only if the distribution terms are unchanged. Thus, the code and the freedoms become legally inseparable. "
  • as I understand it, the main reason why GNOME exists, is because RMS has declared KDE evil, for using Qt, which isn't GPL-ed.
    This is very true. And the reason HURD exists, is because Linux isn't a GNU project.
  • So "Power Users" don't mind things crashing and are primarily concerned with eye candy while new users just want things to work???

    I think you've got the groups backwards. New users (especially those migrating from doze) are used to things crashing as well as the form over substance of eye candy. Power users, on the other hand, are actually DOING stuff with their computer already and don't need distractions.
  • The license is an agreement between the owner of the software (in this case the author) and the person who wants to use/distribute/modify the software (in this case you).

    The owner doesn't have to follow the terms of the license because he is not a licensee, he is the licensor.

    Look at it like this: remember when your dad told you "in my house you follow my rules"?

    Now, do you think he also told that to himself? ;-)
  • I'm at work on an NT machine, and can't access CVS, does anyone have recent sources that they could post somewhere? I've got 0.16dev4, but want to give the new version a spin...
  • Well, others will disagree with some things I'll say, but here's the lowdown..

    A Window manager is what takes care of placing and decerating the windows temselves.. KDE DOES use a seperate window manager called kwm. The window manager itself is something simular as if you didn't have a taskbar in Windows. The provide other ways to launch programs beside's that little start button. There's ALOT more to it here, but I'm trying to generalize.

    I've heard of many good things about E on lower end machines, but be warned. The flashy themes you see on e.themes.org DO take gobs of memory.. E can be configured to use less memory, but you lose alot of flashyness. I use it on a 16 Meg machine with the 'Clean' theme, with little problems.. I've tried to add gnome to it, but the memory requirments of Gnome simply kill my little laptop..
  • ftp.rasterman.org used to have the daily snaps.. Check out enlightenment.org, I know they have a list of sites with snapshots..
  • MySQL didn't go GPL.. Take another look, Anonymous Coward..
  • You've obviously not used KDE applications. In terms of quantity and quality there's nothing comparable. Having said that, I hope that people won't loose interest in one project or another since this will promote monopolies and retard innovation.

    I've read somewhere that in the future KDE will be providing GTK+ drop-in compatible libraries which will be KDE aware so that you can run GNOME apps seamlessly under KDE.
  • by Junta ( 36770 )
    I find it strange seeing many very computer literate people duking it out over desktop environments. I personally tried both, figured out that both put too much overhead on my system, offered nothing of REAL use to me, and dropped em :) embedding stuff, a pretty graphical file browser that drags and drops files onto applications and so forth... bah to it all, gimme a good ol xterm/rxvt/Eterm. :)But it is nice to see this around though for those NOT competent enough to use a command line, and support it, but you just won't see me using it any time soon.. and my other gripe, the applications that don't NEED gnome that REQUIRE it to compile, can't people remember using #ifdef statements to only use gnome/kde features if present? *sigh*
  • >I've read somewhere that in the future KDE will >be providing GTK+ drop-in compatible libraries >which will be KDE aware so
    > that you can run GNOME apps seamlessly >under KDE.

    Woow ! that would really be something worth to see .. but .. I don't know why .. I don't think it's posible ... Kde is c++ ... gtk is c ... c++ wrapper for c libraries .. ok .. I've heard about it .. but ... c wrapper for c++ libraries ... hmmm ... anyboy know if smth like this is posible ??
  • Does that include PyKDE? What about KScript? :-)
  • I don't see what this has to do with the main point of the previous poster, which is that gnome had CORBA from the very beginning. No matter the fact KDE may have had CORBA before GNOME, it did not have CORBA at its beginning.
  • It was just made to prove a point.
    Anyway: if someone is interested in writing a good C wrapper, ask me how. Putting work in it it can be made arbitrarily good (within the bounds of C, which are more painful than your message seems to imply)
  • Go to plig.org [plig.org] to check a few out. I would recommend BlackBox or WM2 for something that can look nice, and still not suck up resources on a 486.

    The diffrence between a "window manager" and a "Desktop environment" is that the "desktop environment" includes a window manager, as well as a bunch of other applications that use the same widget styles.

  • I have no experience with E or Gnome (though I plan to give Gnome a serious try as soon as it will have matured a little more, meanwhile I have work to do;-), but I have used fvwm quite a while and do a lot in KDE now.
    What I have come to install on weaker machines recently is XFCE: really elegant, CDE-like looks, easily user-confugurable, supports drag and drop of a sort and is relatively humble in its demand on the systems ressources.
    I do use a mixture of applications from "generic X" and KDE under it, and it probably will interact even better with Gnome-apps, since XFCE is GTK as well.
    I can really recommend this for smaller machines.
    BTW, since I dont have sufficient documentation with me right now: anyone around who knows if there is an option to start kfm in a way that it doesnt put any icons on the root-window and works only as a file-manager/thumbnail-viewer/browser etc.?
    I would like to play with it a little under XFCE, to find out if it interacts well with it, but I dont want the KDE-Style icons.
  • He/She needs these as well (take some of mine, I'll get more):

    ......,,,,,,;;;;;;::::::(((((())))))>>>>###$$$$% %%%^^^^&&&&&&&&******
  • I use KDE, but it has some real annoying bugs. I'm using 1.1, tell me if they're fixed in 1.2. When you have the phone connectivity I have, you don't download the latest and greatest every day, and frankly you also get tired of watching your software versions like a hawk anyhow. But I digress...

    Session management: you can't save your session whenever you like, only when you quit. There is no option NOT to save your session when you do quit. Not like session management in any desktop environment, whether win (explorer windows), CDE, gnome, or kde has ever been anything more than a joke anyhow, so I never really use it and would like to keep it off.

    Desktop pager: It constantly loses all but the first two desktops. The remaining two lose their names.

    Panel: No usable web browser button on the panel. Something like CDE's sdtwebclient would be nice, which uses netscape -remote, or some similar voodoo with hotjava.

    Tooltips: Those damn useless tooltips for those equally useless desktop folders pop up unbidden and over any foreground window when the mouse just grazes one, and don't go AWAY unless you "swat" them away with the mouse. Major annoyance, and I can't seem to disable them.

    General dumbness: The CD player applet from the panel really amazes me. Click it, it launches. Click play, it plays the CD. Okay, nice. Now click it again, and it launches a NEW instance. Close the rogue instance and it stops the playback. DUH. If there's ever a use for KUniqueApp, this one is *it*.

    Help in most apps: the content usually isn't too great, but also, clicking help several times launches multiple instances. Should only be one help instance per app (with an option to clone off the help window)

    The notepad app: triple-click doesn't work. Triple click (and sometimes quadruple click) are nice features that work across many text editors including notepad on win and emacs on *nix. Minor annoyance, but enough to really irk me (since i copy and paste lines all the time). The toolbar buttons are also really miniscule.

    Bug reporting: it's arcane and bureacratic, relying on specially formatted emails. Some bugs have remained open for over a year now. So I just gripe here instead.
  • At least for me this is the first mention of KDE awareness in Afterstep. I got a similar mail about icewm.

    If any WM has support for the KDE hints and stuff, let me know, and they will eventually get a headline in the KDE news page as well.

  • Does this mean in the future apps made specifically for either Gnome or KDE will operate under the same document framework? Grok and Thag like framework interoperability...

    Today's English Lesson: Oxymorons

  • Windowmaker is fully KDE compliant? It was my understanding that it's somewhat compliant.. At what point did they get to 100%?

    BTW, does Afterstep have any plans to be Gnome/KDE compliant?

    Alex Bischoff
    ---

  • The Window Manager != the Desktop system. Although, supposedly this wikll be the case in the future, aka, things for KDE console will work in Gnome console, and vice versa..
  • Does this mean that the information from gnome hints will actually interact with those from kde hints? I mean, if you're running gnome with enlightenment and need the gnome hints (say for gnome pager) but instead of gmc you want to run kfm (which needs kde hints) would it work?

    PS. Even though I've programmed gnome stuff before I've never even TOUCHED window manager stuff so if I don't know what I'm talking about......be nice....
  • I gave up trying to get Enlightenment *or* Windowmaker working right under gnome. When I have multiple desktops, E+gnome was restoring all my windows in the first desktop, no matter where they were. And when I used Windowmaker under gnome, I would get one set of all the saved windows back where they belong, and another entire set in the current desktop, which is a pain in the ass to remove.

    So now I'm using a windowmaker login (rather than a Gnome or KDE login) and I just have Windowmaker start a panel. It works well, the windows come back where they belong.

    The only problem I have is that if I add or remove desktops, or add or move icons on the desktop file manager, it crashes X. But I rarely do that, and I never need to.
  • With 0.16 just around the corner this is great news. I've been running the last developer snapshot for a while now, and it's never crashed once. I don't know if it has any leaks in it, but I haven't seen any performance degradation yet ... And speaking of performance, for such a feature loaded bit of software it runs faster on my aging Sparc 5 than any other window manager I've tried - that's some optimisation!
    Chris Wareham
  • by Anonymous Coward

    Why should E support KDE? It works well on its own. And if you feel more confortable with a desktop environment around your window manager, the GNOME should certainly be enough.

    Here is a suggestion:

    • Encourage the KDE developers to move over to GNOME, so that the development effort is not wasted by two teams re-inventing the wheel every time.
    • Encourage the GNOME developers to change the license to a BSD-like license, so that we could benefit from many more applications.

    No, this is not only a flamebait (I am fully aware of the usual flamewars between GNOME and KDE). I am thinking about this seriously. Currently, several companies are reluctant about developing for GNOME because of the GNU GPL (this is the same for KDE, although the problems with the license are different). If GNOME was released under a BSD license, I am sure that these companies would not be reluctant anymore. And then the number of good applications would increase.

    Before you object about the fact that these applications would be closed-source, I must say that they do not have to be. But the developers and their bosses would be able to choose, and thus they will not be reluctant to at least look at GNOME and start coding something. And if some very good applications are released under a closed-source license, it will probably not take long before someone implements an open-source equivalent.

    Currently, the licenses on GNOME and KDE are only encouraging the fragmentation of the Linux desktop.

  • you have the *ability* to make it look like a nintendo console.
    you also have the ability to make your desktop look like Mac, windows, amiga, SGI, startrek, WindowMaker, or whatever else you want...

    If E looks like nintendo, that's because you set it up that way.
  • The slightly outdated ICCCM specification was an attemt to make toolkits, clients and window managers (which are just specialised clients), communicate with each other. As the Blackbox author points out, ICCCM needs some revision to bring it into the late nineties, but it forms a good basis for ensuring X clients don't behave oddly. I don't know whether olwm (the Open Look Window Manager) was ICCCM commpliant, but it always amazed me that I could run Motif apps under it without any problems ...
    Chris Wareham
  • I just love this. What Linux GUI's are working towards is a total compatibility between window managers.

    Some at one point in the brilliant future in which Open Source rules totally, you'll have the choice of OS (Linux, Sun, BSD, etc.), the choice of GUI (KDE, Gnome, etc.) and the choice of winmanagers.

    It sure beats trying to pass freedom as the ability to change fonts, colours and wallpaper!

    "There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."

  • Before he does that, why don't you read the text.
    ---
  • Just because KDE is easier to use doesn't mean it's less powerful. This is a common misconception among geek type people. Look at the MacOS, it's probably the most powerful desktop today, if you learn how to use it right. And it's the easiest too. Yes i know, MacOS has SERIOUS flaws, but that's because the Apple developers are putting it's efforts into the GUI instead of the underlying OS.
  • Becuase KDE works!
    I spent the better part of a week chasing down missing and outdated libraries trying to make gnome compile. KDE built and ran on the first try.
  • MySQL is a different beast altogether. It's a subset of an open standard. Even in pure binary form this makes it more open than 'kinda free' widgetsets. This is true for Oracle as well as long as you can stay away from any Oracle specific features.
  • I found easily mappable keys and the fast Eterms have kept me an enlightened user for many moons. I hope the good work continues as I see nice enhancements with each compile. E has come a long way since I first tried it in its snazzy version a few years ago. It was one of the reasons why I found Linux inspiring.
  • So does GNOME, just install all the packages like a good little end user.
  • Except code also includes dependencies.
  • I think that it will probably be GNOME 2.0 before you can REALLY see proper intergration between applications and GNOME.

    The one benefit that GNOME has over KDE is that it has been designed with a CORBA core since the very beginning. This *could* make it easier to get working reliably. KDE 2.0 will have a CORBA layer as well, but it will be added after a lot of development has already been done.

    The KDE folks will probably still produce a very respsectable CORBA desktop though.


    Tne applications that will make most use of the desktop features will probably office applications suites such a KOffice and the GNOME Workshop.


    Iggy
  • by Anonymous Coward
    From reading the comments and following links from the wonderful bb.themes.org [themes.org], it seems blackbox is only gnome and KDE compliant with patches.

    IceWM [cjb.net], on the other hand, had been Gnome-compliant for a long time and supports KDE too.

    MarkJ

  • Why would you have to re-write the code? Let's say I write the program "Widgets Inventory Program", and release it under the GPL. Under the GPL, I still maintain the copyright to all of the code I wrote for Widgets Inventory Program, right? So I can do whatever I want with it, including re-licensing it. On the other hand, taking other people's contributions to my code and changing them wouldn't be proper, since they hold the copyrights to their code, right?

    So, essentially, I can change the license of the original code that I wrote, but I can't change the license of the contributions from others if they submitted it under the GPL (which they're required to do under a GPL license), or change the license of the combined/merged code written by myself and other developers.

    Now, of course, if I did make any changes to the license, they would not be retroactive since a license is essentially a contract and you agreed to that contract before (but that doesn't mean you need to agree to it in the future!).

    This is my understanding of copyright law. As long as you wrote the code, you own it, you own the copyright, and you have the right to do anything you wish to it as long as you don't break any contracts/licenses already entered into.

  • for window managers, i would look at the smaller
    ones, like wm2, lwm, flwm etc. if you can deal,
    maybe 9wm. fvwm at the most. how much ram you need
    will also depend on the frame buffer (resolution)

    ceretainly NOT enlighenment on that one.
  • blackbox is KDE-compliant. (./configure --enable-kde)
    GNOME support is in a patch, but I don't think the patch will work right with the current source release of bb.

    ------
  • Try painting a picture from the bash command line. :-)

    Or are you just not competent enough??


    John
  • What is X10?

    I though it was a device intercommunication spec.


    John
  • although many of these themes are stunningly beautiful, real works of art, imnsho most seem to render the desktop unreadable/unusable, unless you have an 80Hz 19" screen.

    Just to offer an example, check out Absolute_E on e.themes.org. Beautiful, functional, and uses less screen real estate than the default theme.

    ------
    • You don't put more than 3 dots next to one another....
    • (((((And NEVER put two open brackets next to one another)))))

    John
  • I guess all of us "power users" who open many many many transparent Eterms and get lots of "actual work" done (while still having a desktop that is cooler than yours) should just delete E and go back to fvwm, huh???

    I actually used to use just plain X (no WM at all), starting up a couple of xterms and an editor in the right places in ~/.xinitrc . Than I tried fvwm/fvwm2/afterstep/windowmaker/etc... But now I have been "enlightened" and have a 3x3 virtual screen full of windows, where I can do quite a lot of real work. I will even be going multihead after Xfree4 comes out (depends on $$$). So after adding another 21" monitor and streching E across it, I will be one happy camper!!

    (btw, I remember when E was fvwm-xpm, so there!)

  • That the biggest boosters of KDE seem to be Windows Share/Crippleware crowd? Interesting isn't it?
  • But KDE compliance isn't ready yet ... not even in the latest snapshot of 0.16, because I've tried it , and kpanel wouldn't start , just sits and waits for windowmanager.

    But the ideea is great ! wow ... using enlightment with kde .. yummy ... and .. using enlightment with kde 2.0 ... wow ... The is great news ! :o)
  • ...anyone around who knows if there is an option to start kfm in a way that it doesnt put any icons on the root-window and works only as a file-manager/thumbnail-viewer/browser etc.?

    Seems like the quick way to do that is to just bring up kfm and delete the icons from the desktop. "Trash" might fight, since it doesn't seem to include a "delete" option on its context menu, but a quick trip to the shell and rm -rf ~/Desktop/Trash will get rid of it.

    Don't know if kfm puts it back or not.
    ------------
    Michael Hall
    mphall@cstone.nospam.net

  • A Window Manager is closer to a desktop system than GNOME is - withotu someone elses WM it is completely useless. you can move or resize a window- no borders, titlebars etc. - eer run X withotu a WM and just apps - well that's what u'd have with gnome - gnome is an application framework - NOT a desktop- KDE is a desktop environemt, E is becoming sa desktop shell (desktop shell being the stuff in a desktop minus the application framework - i'm leaving that up to GNOME and KDE people and they can all happily make their ofice suites and apps all they like and make good ones).

    GNOME and KDE are both doing good jobs. they're going to both be using XDND (wel gnome alreayd does since GTK does int is dnd implimentation and KDe is moving to use XDND in their next release) and Enlightenmnet's File Manager when it gets put in will use XDND too.
  • Linux is all about the freedom to choose. It begins by choosing the operating system, but it doesn't end there. You could choose whether or not to have a "window system", then select a desktop system, window manager, and finally customize it all to hell.

    GNOME and KDE are not encouraging the fragementation of the Linux desktop--the flame wars are. Why on earth do these little people run around crying "my desktop system is better"? It beats the hell out of me, and frankly it's a little sad.

    That aside, GNOME cannot be un-GPLed, and that is what you propose when you suggest moving to a BSD-like license. Once you GPL your software, that's it buddy. In order to move to a more "restrictive" license, you have to totally rewrite the code. Fat chance at getting current GNOME developers to do that.
  • I installed gnome on my BSD machine yesterday. the process consisted of:

    cd /usr/ports/x11/gnome
    make install

    done. all dependencies accounted for, etc.

    honestly, if you're on BSD it's dead easy, if you're on any major linux distribution, it should be almost equally dead easy, there's a site somewhere (no idea of the URL offhand) which keeps recent versions of gnome on tap in (S)RPM format.
  • C wrappers for C++ libraries are indeed possible.
    I wrote one for Qt long ago.
  • The new devel Afterstep (the 1.7.x series) has Gnome support.

    Disclaimer: I don't use Gnome so I can not attest to how well it works. Also, since I have been without net access at home (only at work under NT) I haven't been able to keep up with the newest devel snapshots. :(
  • KDE is not for newbies and Gnome is not for power users. Both are great for either group. Currently, Gnome is "prettier" but this will change with KDE2.0. At the user level, there's just not much difference. Underneath they have differing architectures which will appeal to different developers. Someone from the KDE group (can't remember who) said that the real power of Gnome and KDE is NOT their interface, but that they are development platforms in disguise. ps. Not all Gnome libs are LGPL. There are a couple that are plain GPL.
  • The default window manager is kwm. To use another window manager, you will need to do a tiny bit of work on your .xinitrc.

    Take a look at the KDE manuals as well as the specific window manager's manuals. These should give you the clues you need.
  • yes - it means you can use KDE aps or components under E and gnome ones and they will both work as expected - so youcan use kfm wiht gnomes panel and have them at least run and display as expected as far as the WM is concerned.
  • The smiley is because X10, the precursor to X11, was replaced in the early/mid-80s. I used it on a Sun dickless workstation for a while at university.
  • REALLY old version.. They didn't 'fall for the GPL'. they just happened to release an old version to be nice..
  • I think you're missing the point of the BSD style license. If you take a BSD licensed open sourced application, and add a buttload of features that people are willing to pay for, then you can sell the binaries only and not be obliged to release your source changes to the mass public. No one is *making* you buy it. Just use or help develop another free and open source alternative, or help put the changes that the said extension added into the original application and release the source. Freedom of choice is a good thing.
  • black box is not GNOME complient !! BB is KDE complient I mailed the auther of BB and they replyed saying the WM Spec is AFU GNOME have to lay out how it should be done like ICCCM come on sort it out ! KDE is mostly german euro effort what does that say ? regards john jones
    a poor student @ bournemouth uni in the UK (a deltic so please dont moan about spelling but the content)
  • What's the difference between window managers like E, and desktops such as KDE/Gnome? What essentially are their contrasting functions?

    Also, I'm sticking Linux on a 486/100mhz laptop with 12mb RAM. I know this'll run X, but how about a window manager like E that's a step above, say, twm?
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • by Mandrake ( 3939 ) <mandrake@mandrake.net> on Friday September 03, 1999 @03:34AM (#1706680) Homepage Journal
    I think I should point out to people who are trying out 0.15 with KDE that the 0.16 release is what will be KDE compliant. We're approaching a feature-freeze right now - and like always I won't give a release date because I usually bite myself in the ass, but I can at least say the feature set has slowed down to allow for bugfixes for 0.16 release
    --
    Geoff Harrison (http://mandrake.net)
    Senior Software Engineer - VA Linux Labs (http://www.valinux.com)

He has not acquired a fortune; the fortune has acquired him. -- Bion

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