The latest installment of the DR16 series, Enlightenment version 0.16.6 has been released. Significant new features in this version include full support for the freedesktop.org Extended Window Manager Hints (EMWH) Specifications. This means that E now works excellently with both KDE 3.x and Gnome 2.x desktops and their applications. Automatic menu generation updated to work with Gnome 2.x and KDE 3.x menus. Support for software cursors in XFree86 4.3 or higher. Numerous bugfixes including focus issues, Epplets and more.
Enlightenment 0.16.6 Released; Becomes freedesktop.org Compliant
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And to think Debian was slow, I tried 0.16.0 in 1999!
Fond memories of enlightenment though here. The FX were woweeee back then
Yup, E has always had some nice effects. Also it was always a relatively attractive choice for those who want a different sort of interface without the start button.
Nice to see that software cursor support in newer X’s is finally there. I dropped E completely a few months ago because of this and after a couple weeks came crawling back to it still irked about the cursor support. As soon as I get home I’m going to emerge this and hopefully be able to look at my desktop with a smile again.
Is ‘software cursor’ the appropriate word to use for this? IIRC, XCursor is still hardware-accelerated, just software defined. There is a seperate software cursor option in XFree for buggy hardware cursor implementations, but that’s much slower because it draws the cursor via the CPU.
Enlightenment is still around? I thought we had finally evolved past that.
Enlightenment has to be the worst interface I have ever used.
To each his own, it made great screenshots back in late 2000 and still can have some sexy screenshots with it. But using it is another story, I was never happy using it myself. Used gnome, to ximian, to xfce and I think I will stay here.
I can’t wait for DF 17, that should be great when it’s done, it’s been rewritten a few times so they are putting some aweful hardwork into making it great I am sure !
In 6 years I don’t think I’ve ever used E for more than a day. For years it was ahead of it’s time, in the sense that it took more horsepower than most people had. Now that anyone can run it other WM’s have made so much progress there’s little point in using it.
I still want to see E.17 but i’m tired of waiting for it.
It would be interesting to see more DE’s and WM’s adopt them as it resolves a lot of the problems in the Linux Desktop department for people who switch DE’s and WM’s from time to time.
Also it makes it easier for package managers to use one standard to create packages for one GUI standard.
I might be just a little jaded, but WHY do all these “desktop environments” and window managers STILL rely on Xfree for graphics operations??!?!! I’d rather run a terminal all day long than stare as Xfree makes my screen flicker like a cold fluorescent light, and individual window refreshes stutter and never qork quite properly. I can’t even work up the interest to d/l and install this new enlightenment because I hate X so much.
Wake me up when E no longer depends on X. Bah humbug.
Oh, and instead of screenshots: how about some nice little movies instead, to show off what’s new in E?
I decided to fire this up, I hadn’t run it since the 90’s.
My experience back then was that it was bloated, slow and a cpu hog. Consequently I’ve been running windowmaker for quite a while now.
The look hasn’t really changed, but just keeping an eye on the memory and cpu usage with top it really looks like this incarnation is fairly lean, mean and efficient.
Now I just have to figure out how the heck to map all my lovely keys. again.
I have to say I’m a bit surprised how suckessfull the freedesktop effort has been. There is nothing that forces developers to follow their guidlines, yet most want to.
When freedesktop was launched many ppl said it is useless, since diversity and coice drive linux. Currently freedesktop is slowly becoming somewhat of a standardsbody, and people are seeing that a concesus of how things should interoperate is in no way in contradiction with coice of diversity.
Although there are only a few set of guidelines that do not cover all aspects, it seems ppl are eager to adopt these now. This is very much in contrast to what many developers said when freedesctop was launched.
Just my 0.02€.
I might be just a little jaded, but WHY do all these “desktop environments” and window managers STILL rely on Xfree for graphics operations??!?!!
“Why does all this X software rely on X?” A window manager is a very X-specific piece of software. You don’t have a window manager on Windows or on MacOS. The term has no meaning outside of X Windows.
As for “desktop environments”, and any other software, there is plenty of stuff out there that isn’t X. You’re free to use them, if you like. Some of us are rather fond of X. It’s a brilliant design, and it’s stood the test of time because it works well.
I’d rather run a terminal all day long than stare as Xfree makes my screen flicker like a cold fluorescent light, and individual window refreshes stutter and never qork quite properly.
I have no idea what you’re talking about. For general day-to-day use, I’ve never had any problems with the performance of X.
I can’t even work up the interest to d/l and install this new enlightenment because I hate X so much.
Wake me up when E no longer depends on X. Bah humbug.
Then don’t download it. Sheesh. “Wake me up when Exposé no longer depends on Quartz.”
And to say something on-topic: I don’t think E’s goal was ever to make a simple, intuitive interface. I’ve always viewed it as sort of a playground of ideas. A lot of it is just eye candy, but not all. The split-window-workspace thing is, AFAIK, unique to E. I don’t find it very useful, but it was a clever idea that was worth playing with.
“Xfree makes my screen flicker like a cold fluorescent light, and individual window refreshes stutter and never qork quite properly.”
I second the above post. The problem’s on your end.
E is a nice example why people can state that open source isn’t ‘innovative’. The E developers are attempting to revolutionize the GUI. But they can’t release their new stuff (E 0.16.6 is a update of the old stable branch from many years ago) because it’s still pre-alpha quality. Meanwhile GNOME and KDE evolve; mostly implementing proven concepts. Open source can be revolutionary, but people want evolution really.
> I might be just a little jaded, but WHY do all these “desktop environments” and window managers STILL rely on Xfree for graphics operations?
Because XFree has all the drivers..
WHY do all these “desktop environments” and window managers STILL rely on Xfree for graphics operations?
They don’t. They just rely on X11.
If you find the implementation of XFree.org too slow, use another one, its your choice!
“You don’t have a window manager on Windows or on MacOS.”
Won’t comment on MacOS, but there certainly are WM’s for Windows thought not common nor default with it. A pretty known WM is LiteStep (AfterStep clone), among others. Plus KDE2/3 GNOME1/2 kinda got partly ported to Windows with Cygwin … THE HORROR!
“A lot of it is just eye candy, but not all. The split-window-workspace thing is, AFAIK, unique to E. I don’t find it very useful, but it was a clever idea that was worth playing with.”
I do find it very useful (and unique, agreed) plus it can be turned off so i don’t see ze problam.
“The E developers are attempting to revolutionize the GUI”
(They do release their new stuff, just not as ”stable” or ”release”)
They already did so years ago, and they are redoing currently. People have a life too, you know? Lots of more people are working on GNOME and KDE – their choice.
That said, i have to say i needed this KDE3/GNOME2 support because my menues still supported old versions while my OS already had the newest one.
I’m very happy with E but i do know various bugs exist (and reported) so i’m looking forward to what’s fixed
Just noticed it’s in Gentoo/Unstable (0.16.6) already. Thought not yet in Debian/Sid (still 0.16.6-pre8).
Yah, there needs to be an organized push to try to change this.
I’m still somewhat upset that Linus and a few others massively derailed the KGI project way back when.
Those bashing Enlightenment don’t really realize what it’s strong points are. They include incredible speed, an awesome way of doing multiple desktops, neat little epplets, and now freedesktop.org compliance.
Good integration with KDE 3 and GNOME 2 means that it will appeal to a much larger userbase, and it’s wonderful that it has an automatic menu generator now. This was by far my favorite window manager when I started out in Linux back when Mandrake 8.2 was shiny and new, and it’s still my favorite window manager. I’ve just been waiting for a release that supports all these nifty features that have recently become so popular.
“You don’t have a window manager on Windows or on MacOS.”
Won’t comment on MacOS, but there certainly are WM’s for Windows thought not common nor default with it. A pretty known WM is LiteStep (AfterStep clone), among others.
You misunderstand. LiteStep is a replacement for system libraries. On Windows, the window decorations (titlebar, etc.) are under direct control of the window. Windows provides standard libraries for doing this, and LiteStep replaces those libraries.
Under X11, a window has no direct control over its window decorations. Drawing the decorations, minimizing, shading, moving, resizing, and lots of other things are done by the window manager, which is just a separate running program. X11 is the only system I know of that does things this way.
“The split-window-workspace thing is, AFAIK, unique to E. I don’t find it very useful, but it was a clever idea that was worth playing with.”
I do find it very useful (and unique, agreed) plus it can be turned off so i don’t see ze problam.
No problem at all. I wasn’t trying to rip on Englightenment. I think Enlightenment does some very clever things, and it’s fun to see what they’re up to from time to time. If it suits your needs, use it. That’s the beauty of free software.
Good old e. Doing brushed metal before it was cool.
This makes it tempting to try it again. I originally stopped using it because of compatibility issues with new apps.
Yesss!!!
E-16.6 beat Duke Nukem Forever.
There’s still hope for the world.
🙂
I dont get it. I think Enlightenment has an excellent interface. One click-> menu, two clicks->your program starts. No reaching around to find some crappy windoze knockoff start menu. Even configuring menus without auto wasn’t THAT painful. No different than hand editing to get a damn video card driver installed.
I have been using 16.5 for awhile and its ran plenty fast on my 1ghz celeron with 256 mb ram. I dont know, I think people just like to trash on stuff thats different from what they are used to.
Also, the screenshots they had for 17 look awesome. I for one think it will be worth the wait.
This comment just drives me up the wall:
“E is a nice example why people can state that open source isn’t ‘innovative’. The E developers are attempting to revolutionize the GUI. But they can’t release their new stuff (E 0.16.6 is a update of the old stable branch from many years ago) because it’s still pre-alpha quality. Meanwhile GNOME and KDE evolve; mostly implementing proven concepts. Open source can be revolutionary, but people want evolution really.”
GNOME and KDE both have large groups of developers. Enlightenment has less than a dozen. The release of DR16.6 is a wonderful thing and a true testimate to the free software/open source philosophy! DR16.5 was released almost 3 years ago, hundreds of people still use it every day, but the developement team had little to no interest in investing more time in it because there is so much truely revolutionary work happening on DR17, and DR16.5 was extremely stable. It was “kwo” who came of his own will, grabbed the code and started working on it, and then accepting patches, and getting this 3 year old code moving again. He invested alot of time and effort putting this together with absolutely NO prompting from the core E development team. This is what open source is all about!
DR16.6 is a point release, this is a fix of the exsisting code with new features and cleanups. Point releases are not the place for revolution. If you want to see truely revolutionary tools, methods, and code look at the Enlightenment Foundation Libraries, the backend being developed for DR17. We’re creating new ways to solve problems and to really make some amazing things possible.
It is due to Raster’s vision, and the hard work and innovations put together by himself, RbdPngn, Rephorm, Azundris, Atmos, and Xcomp that revolution happens. In a small group of hard working and brilliant people. It’s because of people like KWO, Pixelhead, vac- and Tokyo that great things can still be made of old code even when people have long said it’s “dead”. DR17 isn’t alpha-quality, it’s backend is release quality, and has been several times but we continue to improve, refine and innovate. We don’t just push out releases to make people happy.
Nothing about E is dead. And I think there is no great testimate to the revolutionary nature of the free software/open source philosophy than E. (Well, okey, maybe Apache and the kernel, but we’ve gotta be 3rd!)
too both Shaunm, and dpi:
you are both incorrect about the nature of Litestep et. al.
Litestep is a GUI shell. there a large range of shells, the predominant ones being Litestep (although its kinda dead these days), geOShell, Hoverdesk and Stardocks offering. And of course the default: MS explorer.exe.
the shell provides the general interface to your system including (but not limited to) how you (the user) manages tasks (menus, shortcuts etc for launching programs etc), A desktop (most alternative shells dont provide one), workspaces etc.
the shell is NOT a replacement for system libraries. for the most part they provide very little code to the system. in litesteps case, its basicly a skeleton for hanging pluggins on for a shell and a primitive configuration file. There is no real comparison on linux/X to the shell because most do much more than the shell.