E17, Slimmed Down For Cell Phones 166
twitter writes "Want to run Enlightenment on your cell phone? The Rasterman's recent efforts bring E17 to Open Moko FreeRunner and Treo 650: 'According to the Rasterman, when used with his updated illume stack and new Elementary widget set, E17 can now run in just 32MB of RAM, on an ARM9 processor clocked at 317MHz. To prove it, he is distributing a Linux kernel and E17/Illume/Elementary stack for Palm's Treo650. The stack can be launched from PalmOS without touching the device's flash storage, he says.' While Microsoft fumbles with limited 'instant on,' GNU/Linux rules the embedded world and that's the only thing going in the IT market right now."
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
method that he does this (Score:1, Informative)
One of the things that's neat about e17 and the way that they get it to run on things like a phone is that every thing they can is run as a module now. For an embedded device like a phone you maybe aren't that interested in some special effects like a dropshadow or resolution widget so you can turn off anything that's not needed.
Another thing that makes this possible is that e17 themes are very customizable. You can define nearly everything about how the window borders and modules are drawn in the theme itself so different themes can be completely different from each other. You can check out some of the variability in the themes site: http://exchange.enlightenment.org
Re:What a guy (Score:4, Informative)
He did a lot of work on imlib2, which languished for years until better software replaced it (where "better" might mean "less buggy" or "released more frequently" or "appears maintained"). I've never thought that he had much interest in releasing stable versions of his code with any frequency or rhythm. That's not the sole criterion for positive notoriety, but releasing software that people can actually use is important.
(One caveat is that I stopped using Enlightenment a decade ago, around E14, because the new versions weren't stable or releasable.)
Re:Awesome! (Score:3, Informative)
No, I don't think he has a last name of Rasterman. I think that's his internet handle, and thus the connection between his name and 2D graphics is rather deliberate. :P
Re:Finally the lack of updates make sense (Score:2, Informative)
The Revision Log [enlightenment.org] Begs to differ.
It gets updated quite a bit, there's releases every now and then, but it is still considered a development version.
Uncanny! (Score:2, Informative)
The last time I tortured myself with Enlightenment, that's almost exactly the kind of machine I ran it on, about ten years ago.
I wonder why Rasterman didn't just grab some old Enlightenment code from his geriatric tree and nearly do a straight port.....oh.
Re:Can the summary be any more unclear? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Awesome! (Score:3, Informative)
I've got an OpenMoko and I'm very happy with it hardware-wise. However, the software is currently Enlightenment, some Enlightenment ToolKit based apps, some GTK stuff (some of which is left over from the previous OpenMoko GUI) and all of the holes patched up with QTopia/QT Extended tools.
It's not really a case of E17 and an application, its a case of E17 and GTK libraries and daemons, and QT libraries..... and an application.
I'm trying to get started hacking on it to fix this, but I'm having some trouble with getting Enlightenment libraries installed on my Debian laptop (no matter how nice the OpenMoko keyboard is, I'm not using it to program :P )
Running E17 full time. Wouldn't use anything else. (Score:5, Informative)
I'm running E17 on my desktop right now. Been running it both at home and work for the last few years. It's by far my favourite window manager, for a variety of reasons:
* It's fast. Very fast.
* It feels clean and simple.
* Looks very good.
* Very customisable.
* Keyboard shortcuts for just about anything!
* Just about everything can be controlled or configured from the command prompt.
With E17, I can configure my desktop to be just a background picture. No start menus, strips, clocks, nothing. Then I can add whatever I want, starting with a simple left click on the background to bring up the Enlightenment configuration menu. From there, you can build it to your taste. Sure, it has it's own way of doing things, but it never forces a display feature onto you. It's all your choice to show.
Given, I run the development version, so it's not the easiest to get running. There's a nice script I use to download via CVS, compile up the source, and package it into deb files. I keep a copy of the deb packages for the last version I liked, and revert to that if the latest version is buggy. It's worked well for me so far.
As such, I wouldn't recommend E17 to your average user. For the more technically inclined, though, it beats anything I've ever used. I've tweaked E17 to behave exactly how I want it. Now I feel like I'm working with my computer, instead of struggling against it. Truly, I have been enlightened.
Re:Running E17 full time. Wouldn't use anything el (Score:2, Informative)
Apart from that last point, the same could be said about fluxbox [fluxbox.org].
I myself migrated from E to fluxbox a few months ago, and found it to have that same no-frills attitude. (Or rather, just-the-frills-you-want-and-nothing-else.) From what I gather, Blackbox [sourceforge.net] and its offspring [icculus.org] appear to have filled the void left by E16 rotting away and E17 never releasing.
No, wrong tool for the job. (Score:3, Informative)
No, I don't want to run software designed for a desktop on my phone. Stop trying to shoe horn software into places it doesn't belong and focus on releasing it where it belongs.
Why is it that techies think this sort if thing is cool, but if a handyman or construction worker saw you trying to use a jackhammer to put a nail in your house they would realize you were a complete moron instantly?
Do because you should, not because you can.