Submitted by Enlightenment 0.16.8.2 has been released, and it includes some bugfixes and speed improvements. Remember that E16 is the ‘old’ Enlightenment; E17 is the new one, and there’s a short article on HowtoForge explaining how to set it up: “Enlightenment 17 or E17 as it is generally called, is a cool Window Manager for X. The latest stable version of Enlightenment is E16 (0.16.8.2). In this article we will talk about the latest CVS build available (0.16.999.023).”
E17 has been in development for at least two millenia now. How long will this all likely take?
How long will this all likely take?
At least two more millenia.
Seriously, what’s your problem? When the developer(s) believe it’s stable enough, it’ll be released (and you can still use the Beta if you want it so badly). Anyway, there’s a WM for everyone. If you don’t like the slow development pace, switch to KDE, GNOME, XFCE, *Box or one of the countless other WM’s out there.
And who uses Enlightenment anymore?
And who uses Enlightenment anymore?
Me, for example. E17 is my window manager of choice.
When you have <10 developers, all of whom have wives, girlfriends, jobs and other interests, the development pace is slow.
However, things are quite stable and most major features you need in a WM have been finished for some time. I’ve used it as my only WM at both home and work for over a year (and at home for much longer, but I’m a developer, so thats sort of a given).
Mostly, though, its a matter of personal taste. No other WM feels quite right for me. (and the API’s are lickably clean, imo).
Give it a shot, let us know what you do/don’t like, and if its not right for you, there are plenty of other alternatives.
“If you don’t like the slow development pace, switch to KDE, GNOME, XFCE, *Box or one of the countless other WM’s out there.”
Um, sorry to burst your bubble, but just about everyone has already done that now.
E17 has been in development for what, like eight years? Restarted from scratch twice? Something along those lines. Honestly it all sort of blurs together after a while.
Um, sorry to burst your bubble, but just about everyone has already done that now.
Eh, wtf are you talking about? I’m currently using XFCE and pretty soon I’m moving to Openbox, so I don’t know what “bubble” you just burst. Maybe your own…
So in other words his point was correct?
E17 = the answer to the question that was asked so long ago people either forgot they asked or came up with a new question.
When this thing finally does reach completion will it be ahead of the curve, even or behind?
Whatever became of Mandrake/Geoff Drake anyway?
What really bothers me is the lack of news or progress reports from the team. I never use software if it seems dead or unmaintained. Even if it works just now it’ll never grow with me or any bugs I find will never get fixed. Then I’ll have to switch and learn again from scratch… so I avoid it in the first place. E17 has so few updates with the rare rumbling on Rasterman’s blog or on the almost-never-updated website that AFAIC it is dead. Look, WINE has been in development forever and yet it fosters mindshare by communicating with the community and by showing progress. Think about that.
If you’d check the mailing lists, you’d see it’s not dead at all. Also e16 is still alive.
http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?forum=enlightenment-us…
http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?forum=enlightenment-de…
The commit-list shows daily activity on cvs…
http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?forum=enlightenment-cv…
Another site to look for news and themes for e17 is:
http://www.get-e.org
You can download snapshots from:
http://enlightenment.freedesktop.org/
While it’s not completed and not released yet, several people are using e17 as their main (and only) window manager, including me. The code in CVS is pretty stable most of the time and it is very much usable in my opinion. Or let me clarify that… the window manager is perfectly usable and has been very stable for me. The accompanying applications tend to have some problems.
Their official homepage is a real enlightenment:
http://www.enlightenment.org/
Maybe they should try writing something there…
I’ll hold for the next version of Elive
Only 3 distros come with Enlightenment by default, and only 1 works on my system.
Edited 2006-07-19 20:18
True enlightenment is unachievable
Yes, I think you just blew my mind.
I think the development of E17 and Elive has been very good in the last 4-5 months, E17 is x10 more stable than 6 months ago.
People who want bloated heavy WMs and Desktops that are clunky and feel like Windows are welcome to use those.
People who want something configurable, fun to use, and as simple as one wants, have Enlightenment.
E17 was the reason I switched from Windows to Linux. There was no other reason. For me it is the “killer app”. Otherwise I don’t really need Linux, and in fact I make a few sacrifices for the enjoyment and usability of Enlightenment.
I used to have a copy of Enlightenment for Win98 (it was about 8 years ago), and I remember enjoying it. However, I haven’t found the old themes I used to use (they probably don’t even work anymore), and the default E17 theme is awful. After trying to configure/reinstall about five times, I came across bblean and fell in love. It’s a very light WM, it’s based on BlackBox so it has many extensions, and it provides simple things I think should be considered standard features. It allows windows to fold-up into their titlebar, right-click titlebar minimize, virtual desktops, right-click start-menu & ‘My Computer’ drop-down lists, and many more things. It reminds me very much of BeOS’s right-click-to-do-anything-you-want interface. Enlightenment took so much of my time, and after reading tons of questionable documentation – I just gave up. BlackBox works on *nix as well, so I’m happy to have found an alternative that I will already be familiar with across platforms.
I have fond memories of Enlightenment, I just haven’t been able to recreate them…
I remember playing with E17 years ago. I was trying to decide which WM to use since I was getting tired of blackbox. Gnome 2.0 was on the threshold of being released and was cool and usable, and E17 was all the eyecandy you could ever ask for.
I picked Gnome 2.0, and I’m still waiting on E17.
You can wait for E17 to be released, but if you really want, you can try it now as well.
But no one is asking anyone to wait for it. The people working on E17 are doing so first and foremost because they want to, not because someone is paying them to produce a finished product by a certain deadline. They aren’t obliged to provide free software any more than the rest of us.
For those who doubt that progress is being made, the “TODO” list for the E17 release has shrunk quite significantly since this time last year.
I used E17 for a few weeks a while ago. It’s fast, lightweight and I didn’t have too many problems. The only problems I had were visual (dock items disappearing or things acting a bit goofy) but no crashes.
I think there is still a good reason to support/develop E17, and that being that the E17 group is still trying to write code that will run on older systems. This might not be of importance to most people, but I still have a few old machines where even XFCE is a bit too heavy.
There’s a good BSDtalk interview with Rasterman here:
http://bsdtalk.blogspot.com/2006/05/bsdtalk044-interview-with-raste…