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Enlightenment DR17 On the Linux Desktop 356
StephenJoiner writes "There's a new review on Mad Penguin of the latest VectorLinux release, which includes the in-development Enlightenment DR17 desktop. As far as I know, this is the first time DR17 has appeared on a production desktop... even as a "technology preview". All I have to say is Enlightenment on VectorLinux is absolutely off the scale." Enlightenment was in Slashdot news earlier for both the involvement with Elive and their use of Epeg bits to deal with thumbnailing.
Ok.. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Ok.. (Score:5, Funny)
I was wondering abou that. (Score:3, Funny)
LiveCD (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:LiveCD (Score:3, Informative)
Re:LiveCD (Score:5, Informative)
There's a torrent for it also: http://torrents.osdir.com/index.php?view=Elive%20
It's a trap! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:LiveCD (Score:5, Insightful)
Ubuntu + E17 (Score:5, Informative)
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=54476 [ubuntuforums.org]
Re:Ubuntu + E17 (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Ubuntu + E17 (Score:5, Informative)
And where are they? It's there, it's usable, and I'm loving it. Obviously, it is also still in-development, but aside from the total lack of configurability by GUI or textfile--nearly everything must be configured via obscure, undocumented enlightenment_remote commands (thank goodness for the included zsh completion script!)--once you've managed to configure it, it's completely usable. I was extremely impressed, and will be back to using Enlightenment from here on out.
For those of you who prefer it, another thing I found right after installing was this great page [nus.edu.sg], which has binaries and source rpms of CVS snapshots, and includes apt and yum repositories! Very nice! I wrote a script to install the whole she-bang from CVS a long time ago, but this would be an even easier way to keep tabs on the development progress, if you use a distro that supports rpm.
----
Personal recommendations:
I like the engage launcher/tray better than the default ibar. You can enable it as a module with these commands: I also edited the data/themes/module/images/bg_[hv].png files in the engage source before compiling to be completely transparent (instead of 65% opaque) to remove the (in my opinion) ugly background rectangle on my engage bar. I think get-e.org had another solution for this which involved editing the module.ecj file, instead, which probably would have been easier had I known to do it before I did the install. >8)
Re:Ubuntu + E17 (Score:4, Informative)
i take a bit of a different tact. i keep both the ibar and engage around. i settled on this for my normal configuration:
and i have a unique background image on each desktop, including Firefoxy and iCandy from ToyboxArts.Re:Ubuntu + E17 (Score:3, Informative)
Looks prettier. And can run faster (I know it sounds like I'm lying, but I'm not). Its amazing. Its just kinda harder to use.
Re:Ubuntu + E17 (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Ubuntu + E17 (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Vapourware (Score:5, Informative)
Actually if you look on Rasterman.com, he does a few comparisons of different stock window managers using a script that he wrote, and E-17 kills.
http://www.rasterman.com/index.php?page=News Scroll down to the post "E17 is being Optimized"
I'm particularly fond of the way the pager behaves. I like being able to drag and drop iconified windows between desktops. Although this works in Gnome, it will place the window in the new desktop at the same coordinates it was in the old one. With the pager in E, you can actually *place* the window within the pager...
Re:Vapourware (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Vapourware (Score:3, Funny)
Unlike FVWM.
Best window manager ever. (Score:3, Informative)
Oooh, just like you've been able to do in fvwm for 10+ years now.
The E pager is very nice and I hope everything is just as good. It's been a long time since I've used fvwm, just as it had been a long time since I used E. I like E's real division between virtual desktops and screens, so you can have multiple pagers in E each with it's own desktop with multiple screens. I also like being able to drag and drop between the diffe
Damn sexy too (Score:2)
Re:Vapourware (Score:2)
Slashdot editors know their readers (Score:5, Funny)
Clearly the editors know their readers so well! Due to the overly popular method of not reading the article, editors have apparently stopped including links to them all together so that readers aren't bothered by those nasty changes in text colors.
Well done.
Re:Slashdot editors know their readers (Score:4, Funny)
Actually, the jump from green to grey was a bit startling, but at least this story wasn't posted in IT. [slashdot.org]
Fedora & E17 (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Fedora & E17 (Score:4, Interesting)
It's also fun running E17 inside a nested X server under E16. I had to pick up my Mac-loving graphic-artist friend after I showed him what a fully eye-candy E17 (animated background, animated menus, animated titlebars, etc) looks like without shutting down my X session.
Re:Fedora & E17 (Score:3, Informative)
got good news for you then! window memory was implemented a couple of weeks ago. as were a lot of other must-have features from e16.
Re:Fedora & E17 (Score:3, Interesting)
More potential available? (Score:5, Interesting)
Cairo (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Cairo (Score:4, Insightful)
I've been using Windows a bit lately, after a long hiatus. It was apparent to me upon booting that my ubuntu desktop looks far better out of the box. When did that happen? Gee, I remember when we didn't even have X. Now it looks like we might even pull ahead of Apple in gooey eye candy goodness.
Re:Cairo (Score:4, Informative)
Re:More potential available? (Score:2)
Hook!! (Score:3, Funny)
Jeez, don't you know anything about the hip-hop subculture?
Stable, beautiful.... (Score:5, Informative)
Still, it's lightweight, beautiful, features real transparency, and is unusually stable for being in heavy development.
Re:Stable, beautiful.... (Score:5, Insightful)
You've used E17 for the "past few days", and it is "as stable as" or perhaps more stable than any desktop environment you have used.
Therefore you have never used a desktop environment that could run for more than a "few days" without crashing?
I thought "stable" means runs for days/weeks/months/years on end without crashing. Am I wrong? If not, how do you already know that E17 is EITHER as stable as OR more stable than any other desktop environment?
This reminds me of someone telling me that Mandrake 9.2 was more stable than 9.1---the day after it was released! (No, they hadn't been using cooker.)
Re:Stable, beautiful.... (Score:5, Informative)
Having said that, I've been using E17 on and off for about a year, and although I still wouldn't qualify myself able to comment on its stability, I will say this:
It feels solid. You know how you can just feel the difference? Like when you first tried OS/2 and compared it to Win 3.1... you didn't exactly know why, but you knew it was rock solid.
That's the way E17 feels.
I haven't had it crash on me, but I certainly wouldn't suggest people rush out to start using it as their main WM. It's just not ready yet. There are tons of features that still need to be implemented before it's usuable full time.
I look forward to it though, for those who like the E style, it's going to be awesome!
Re:Stable, beautiful.... (Score:2)
Software under heavy development usually doesn't merit being called stable according to either definition.
Re:Stable, beautiful.... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Stable, beautiful.... (Score:3, Interesting)
(Note that we have deferred the problem again to another layer, but gnu screen is "as stable as any terminal multiplexor I have used, maybe more".
http://www.gnu.org/software/screen/ [gnu.org]
Re:Stable, beautiful.... (Score:4, Informative)
there is a menu editor. entangle.
also, you can edit the menu itself in ~/.e/e/applications/ wherein you can find engage's sticky icons, your icon bar, startup apps, apps to run on restart, as well as your favorites menu.
Re:Stable, beautiful.... (Score:2)
Gnome-terminal has the added advantage of using imlib2 (which is what made Eterm so fast), and includes such nice features as tabs, psuedo-trans, HUGE scrollbacks, really nice mouse support, clickable web and email addresses (if any should appear in the console text)... and much more.
Eterm 0.9.x really just doesn't cut it anym
Got it on FreeBSD (Score:4, Informative)
I highly recommend it. Can't wait for the full release (not least because I haven't bothered to compile the extra utils).
Re:Got it on FreeBSD (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Got it on FreeBSD (Score:2)
Re:Got it on FreeBSD (Score:3, Informative)
Gentoo has had it for months (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Gentoo has had it for months (Score:2)
Re:Gentoo has had it for months (Score:4, Informative)
i really wanted to give it a try.
i now run this on a fairly regular basis:
i've been happily using e17 for a couple months, keeping up with all the major CVS changes. (of course, i'm subscribed to the CVS list so i can keep track of it all.)
Enlightenment version numbering.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Enlightenment version numbering.... (Score:2)
Besides, EnlightenmentXP or Enlightenment Panther both sound silly.
Re:Enlightenment version numbering.... (Score:2)
Re:Enlightenment version numbering.... (Score:4, Informative)
The next version will be 0.17, so its called DR17.
Slashdotted (Score:3, Interesting)
Precision in all things (Score:5, Funny)
Which way?
Re:Precision in all things (Score:2)
Which way?
Well, to quote "Ghostbusters":
"Went right off the top of the scale. Buried the needle! We're close on this one, I can feel it!"
I've been enlightened. (Score:2, Funny)
eHave eYou? (iApple and KDE?)
I can't wait for the fork: (Score:2)
Looks/works great on Ubuntu (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Looks/works great on Ubuntu (Score:2)
ubuntuforums seem to be down.
Re:Looks/works great on Ubuntu (Score:2)
deb http://ubuntu.nooms.de/ [nooms.de] hoary/ enjoy
Re:Looks/works great on Ubuntu (Score:3, Informative)
deb http://ubuntu.nooms.de/ [nooms.de] hoary/
To get it to work I had to comment out the Universe line.
Speedy Enlightenment? (Score:3, Interesting)
Linux usually gets much more efficient use of the same HW than Windows. But I never saw GUI lethargy like this with Windows installed on that Inspiron.
Re:Speedy Enlightenment? (Score:3, Informative)
First, Gnome Terminal is dog slow and fat-ass. I never use it because it's such a resource drain. I use Eterm 0.9.3 actually and with the exception of it not liking some UTF-8, it works great. It takes up about 1/6 of the resources GT does.
Second, are you using the nv (Open Source) driver or the nVidia (Proprietary) driver? I've noticed the nv driver is incredibly slow compared to the nVidia driver, especially dragging windows around. I don't see pixels update, but refresh goes to about 1
Re:Speedy Enlightenment? (Score:2)
As for my driver:
# diff
Re:Speedy Enlightenment? (Score:2)
girls (Score:2, Funny)
Seriously though, while those screenshots do look nice, I haven't yet looked at a flashy desktop and wished it on my system. I prefer every ounce of my cpu going to my applications. top -p 4148 just showed twm using
Re:girls (Score:4, Funny)
Re:girls (Score:2)
Bah! Real men don't use
e17 (Score:5, Interesting)
It's really not ready for prime-time yet, although it is certainly close. Maybe they've fixed these bugs in the last few weeks, but I noticed-
* sometimes windows refuse to close after their owning process has been killed. These things just linger on the screen, filled with random garbage.
* multiple monitors profoundly confuse the desktop-switching gadget and pager
* evidence CVS was broken, so there's no e17 native file manager and I resorted to using nautilus
And of course it needs an e17 native version of eterm... that will be excellent when it shows up
The themes available so far don't really make use of the way-cool stuff edje can do... e17 is going to be really amazing once more themes and applications are built with its core libraries.
The best way to run E17 (Score:5, Informative)
If you want the full effect you have to go into Gconf and tell nautilus to not draw the desktop, but otherwise it works pretty good. I have found that overall its faster than Metacity, and is more stable with xcompmgr. I just wish I could find another way to task switch in E17 that is not alt-tab, and I hope that one day E17 will conform to Freedesktop standards so I can use Kompose with it!
Re:The best way to run E17 (Score:2, Informative)
Form vs. Function (Score:2)
Enlightenment on Debian unstable (Score:2)
Corrected link for e17 video (Score:2)
Re:I'm torn. (Score:3, Insightful)
Traditionaly yes, but with free stuff, you get what someone else paid for. If they paid a lot, you'll get good stuff.
However people who pay a lot to make something will usually want to get their investment back.
Now software came along with people who had ideas for the greater good. People donated their time and skill for this noble goal. What do we get, in some cases quality stuff for free and in other cases junk.
With normal stuff you can actually hold in your hand
Re:I'm torn. (Score:4, Insightful)
What a vacuous, inane, empty load of rubbish. I use OSX alot, Linux moreso. If anything OSX is UNIX done 1 Way, and a reasonably inflexible, non-free, hardware dependent way at that. Is that "UNIX done right"? Next you'll be telling me the one button mouse is necessary because it encourages software developers to write applications with simpler interfaces.
Re:I'm torn. (Score:2)
DR17 is pretty much used by a lot of people. Obviously not as many as those using OSX, but then, even if only a handful of people ever visit your personal website/blog that doeswn't make it useless or pointless, does it?
At the end of the day, you use what suits you, your job and your habits. The role that OSS is playing today
Re:Link to actual review (Score:2)
Re:Link to actual review (Score:2)
Get with the program (Score:3, Funny)
Re:StyleXP (Score:5, Insightful)
Enlightenment is not a flavor of anything.
Enlightenment is not a desktop environment a la MSWindows explorer.exe .
KDE and Gnome are something like that.
Enlightenment is a window manager evolved into a desktop shell and lots more.
Imagine you were not a Windows user, and you didn't feel their metaphor is the natural metaphor for a GUI system.
Enlightenment proposes a different interface, plus a different interaction with objects from the user perspective. You can't really compare enlightenment with gnome, because they are completely different in their own essence.
Aside from that, enlightenment is a project that provides lots of useful general purpose libs, but back in the day, they defined what general purpose meant in many areas (e.g.:imlib, esd).
They are building libs that they think should be available to anyone building next generation stuff. They can be right, like before, or they can be coding useless stuff. We'll see.
Re:StyleXP (Score:2)
But, do we want it to be any of that? To me it sounds like it will be very much bloat, too, after some more years.
Re:StyleXP (Score:2)
Re:StyleXP (Score:2)
KDE/etc are way closer to windows
Re:StyleXP (Score:2)
Anyway
Re:StyleXP (Score:2)
There is some third party software that will do it on Windows, but it's not there by default, nor is it in any way common. Your idea that OSX is different from Windows because it doesn't have multiple desktops is strange, to say the least.
p.s. Expose is *NEW* to OSX. Are you claiming that pre-Expose OSX (as in 2004) was Windows-like?
p.p.s. I'm not claiming OSX to a clone of Windows. I'm only claiming that they us
Re:StyleXP (Score:2)
Gnome, on the other hand, seems to me that they might lack some functionality common users can miss, but they focu
Re:StyleXP (Score:2, Informative)
Re:StyleXP (Score:5, Insightful)
If you do not like it don't use it. If you want a customizable engine like StyleXP then write it. Nothing is stopping you.
Re:StyleXP (Score:5, Insightful)
Elitist:
1. The belief that certain persons or members of certain classes or groups deserve favored treatment by virtue of their perceived superiority, as in intellect, social status, or financial resources.
2.
a. The sense of entitlement enjoyed by such a group or class.
b. Control, rule, or domination by such a group or class.
Ok, now what is there in this definition that matches the developers? Are they expecting favoured treatment from someone because they are developers? No. Are they making demands that they feel they have an intrinsic entitlement to because they are developers? No. Are they attempting to use their developer status to control anyone? No.
Now, lets apply this test to YOU, the user. Are you expecting favoured treatment from someone because you are a user? Yes, you're demanding that the developers should cater to your needs. Are you making demands that you feel you have an intrinsic entitlement to because you are a user? Yes, you appear to think that being the user makes you the King, and apparently you're used to being listened to when you make stupid demands like changing colors etc. Are you attempting to use your "user" status to control anyone? Well, your whole point was that there is some natural order to things that places you at the top of the heap because you are a user.
So, I guess what I'm basically saying is stop being elitist, and go learn what the word means before you use it in public.
Re:StyleXP (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Multiple desktops for WinXP (Score:3, Informative)
Re:StyleXP (Score:2, Informative)
However, programs aren't expecting windows to have capabilities like that, so it's a bit glitchy, sometimes, haha
That said, Every Linux WM/DE that I've used has implemented these capabilities better.
Re:Not trying to start a flame war (honest)... (Score:2, Insightful)
Run on Linux? It's free software?
Re:Not trying to start a flame war (honest)... (Score:2)
Well, it's not really an innovation, but a welcome design change (at least IMO) to copy OS X rather than Windows. Even though I have used Windows 95, 98, 2000, and XP and only recently bought a Mac in 2003 (I have a PC with Ubuntu on it if anyone is curious) and found the interface just seems more logical once you get used
Re:Not trying to start a flame war (honest)... (Score:2)
Several years ago, when I saw the panel on OSX I immediately thought of Enlightenment. Chicken meet egg. On another front, Enlightenment is alot more (shock) fun.
Re:Not trying to start a flame war (honest)... (Score:2)
Re:Not trying to start a flame war (honest)... (Score:5, Interesting)
Most of you that have never looked at enlightenment probably think it is just another windows manager. However, as others have stated under this topic, enlightenment is built on top of libs that are meant to increase speed, stability and useablitly. Yes, e17 is lacking useablitly right now because it is still under heavy development and there are still changes being made to the libs themselves and the window manager will be the last thing being updated.
Re:Not trying to start a flame war (honest)... (Score:2)
Re:DR17? (Score:2, Informative)
The last release of Enlightenment [wikipedia.org](an XWindows windows manager) was 0.16, and it used to be the default window manager for GNOME. It was released in 2000 (last stable) and an update was released December of last year (2004).
DR17 indicates it is a development release (i.e. not advisable to use in a production machine) of the next version (0.17, or "17" for short). There are some very novel things in it, and all-