Desktop environments Archive

The new 0.4 version of Etoile had just been released. Etoile intends to be an innovative, GNUstep-based, user environment built from the ground up on highly modular and light components. It is created with project and document orientation in mind, in order to allow users to create their own workflow by reshaping or recombining provided Services (aka Applications) and Components. 0.4 is a developer-targeted release on its way towards this goal. As a developer-focussed release, this predominantly consists of frameworks. A few demonstration applications are also included.

After 6 months of development and more than 1000 change sets, the final version of awesome 3.0 has been released. 'awesome' is a frame-work window manager, which also supports tiling window management. This major release brings a lot of new features. The whole configuration file is now write in the Lua language and use a simple API. This allows to modify and control every corner of the window manager. This version is based on XCB, a new low level library which communicate with the X server. Pango usage also enhances text rendering.

A window manager in GNU/Linux is a piece of software which controls placement and appearance of windows in a graphical user interface in X. All the WMs listed here can easily be obtained through your distribution's respective repositories.

The Equinox Desktop Environment is a small memory footprint desktop environment built on top of the extended FLTK toolkit ('Fast Light Tool Kit'). EDE features a desktop, a Windows-like panel with 'start' menu, taskbar, and system tray, support for theming, and graphical front-ends for software installation, xscreensaver configuration, and much more. Linux.com took a look at EDE version 1.2.

Enlightenment 0.17, the big, long awaited new release of the Enlightenment project, has been in the making for a long time now - since December 2000, to be precise. E17, as it became known, is a complete rewrite of Enlightenment, complete with a set of base libraries (the Enlightenment Foundation Libraries) turning it into a full-fledged desktop environment, complete with its own set of base libraries for building applications. Last November, main developer Carsten 'Rasterman' Haitzler stated that there were only two big to-do items left blocking the release of E17. We're now a few months ahead, so I contacted Rasterman to see what's what.

"dwm is a dynamic window manager for X. It manages windows in tiled and floating layouts. Either layout can be applied dynamically, optimizing the environment for the application in use and the task performed. It is the little brother of wmii." And version 4.9 has been released.

AfterStep 2.2.8 has been released. It's a bugfix release, as the release announcement details: "Major bugfix release: Found and plugged an elusive memory leak, and many other minor bugfixes." There is a special 'update' package for users of previous versions of AfterStep.

dwm 4.8 has been released. "dwm is a dynamic window manager for X. It manages windows in tiled and floating layouts. Either layout can be applied dynamically, optimizing the environment for the application in use and the task performed."

A new version of E16 has been released. "Fix rendering issues when using pseudo-transparency; fix translucent moves of non-shaped windows; fix border right click (winops menu) in many themes; fix incorrect tracking of pointer motion when dragging window; fix potential trouble while exiting/restarting; various minor bug fixes and enhancements, see ChangeLog for details." Get it here.

"There are literally dozens of window managers that you can use with your favorite desktop environment to get a beautiful and appealing desktop. If you want to fine-tune your window manager, here are two programs that can help you control everything from application window size to pinning an application to all workspaces to fixing a position for your application windows to resizing desktops. One, wmctrl, works with any window managers that adheres to the Extended Window Manager Hints, while Devil's Pie is a window-matching utility, which means it can configure application windows based on defined rules."

"Linux has proven amazingly flexible: after nearly 10 years of use, I'm still impressed by how the Linux operating system does exactly what I want on any type of hardware. Desktop customization is no exception; from the ultra-modern KDE and GNOME window managers to with the likes of Fluxbox and AfterStep, there's a Linux desktop to suit everyone."

EDE 1.2 is a new version of EDE (Equinox Desktop Environment) which brings mostly bugfixes. Also it comes with full German and French localization. The Equinox Desktop Environment is a small desktop environment, built to be simple, to have a familiar look and feel and to be reasonably fast.

xmonad 0.4 has been released. "xmonad is a tiling window manager for X. Windows are arranged automatically to tile the screen without gaps or overlap, maximising screen use. Window manager features are accessible from the keyboard: a mouse is optional. xmonad is written, configured and extensible in Haskell. Custom layout algorithms, key bindings and other extensions may be written by the user in Haskell, in config files. Window layouts are applied dynamically, and different layouts may be used on each workspace. Xinerama is fully supported, allowing windows to be tiled across several physical screens."

Fluxbox 1.0 has been released. There's a changelog, and a download page, of course. "Fluxbox is yet another windowmanager for X. It's based on the Blackbox 0.61.1 code. Fluxbox looks like Blackbox and handles styles, colors, window placement and similar thing exactly like Blackbox (100% theme/style compability)."