Desktop environments Archive

OSDL coders are looking to solve one of Linux's greatest problems for developers: the battle between GNOME and KDE. The Open Source Developer Labs is previewing work that attempts to make life easier for software companies by bridging GNOME and KDE, the two competing graphical interfaces most widely used with Linux. The effort, called Project Portland, began showing its first software tools on Tuesday in conjunction with this week's LinuxWorld Conference and Expo in Boston. Using them, a software company can write a single software package that works using either of the prevailing graphical interfaces.

The Enlightenment team has released a new version of e16, e16-0.16.8.1. This is mainly a bugfix release. You can download it from the download page (well, if it'll appear there, 0.16.8 isn't listed either), or wait until your distributor packages it for you. In addition, Rasterman announced a few days ago that CVS was back up.

"A quiet revolution is taking place on a young mailing list, one that overturns years of false enmity and makes perfect sense to most free software users. Having competed for the free desktop crown since 1997, collaborating on code but never on promotion, KDE and GNOME have launched an initiative to market and promote the free desktop together."

Enlightenment 0.16.8 (now known simply as 'E16') has been released. This new release comes with a built-in composite manager, a systray, simplified configuration files, and session scripting. E16.8 is incompatible with configuration settings and custom menu configuration files from earlier versions, and as such they will have to be changed in order to work with E16.8.

"If you're planning on using Fluxbox, the key is, like everything in Linux is that you learn a little something and have fun doing it. Experiment with different styles and configuration. That is one of the advantages to this type of window manager - you can make it look like you want."

EDE 1.0.4 is a new version of EDE (Equinox Desktop Environment) which brings full FreeBSD support, various bugfixes and new features. 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.

FVWM, the F Virtual Windows Manager, is a window manager for computers running the X Window System. While KDE and GNOME offer more features, they are also heavy on memory usage. FVWM is light and fast, and you can customize it to meet your needs.

Elive, the Debian based Enlightenment (16.7 and 17) liveCD project has released version 0.1 for download. See the package and features list for more information. A screenshot tour is also available.

After benchmarking an extensive set of Window Managers for X, we have found that Enlightenment DR17 comes out on top in terms of speed. The benchmark was performed on old (FVWM) and new (Metacity, new KDE / KWin) window managers and rated them in terms of window mapping and response time. The bechmark can be found here (both results and source).

Have a look here for an appliance-like desktop environment.

People have said many times that Blackbox development, the minimalist window manager for X, was dead. With sometimes as much as two and a half years passing between stable releases, I can see why they'd get such ideas.

Rasterman talks about other's opinions. As he says, E17 has several of the tecnoologies gnome and others are searching. He adds two videos as a proof with animate backgrounds and other things.Perhaps it's time for the linux desktop world to stop reinventing the wheel and collaborate one with each other. Gnome has things like accesibility and lots of apps, enlightenment has a very powerful rendering engine. It'd be a shame to see people reinventing the wheel.

The EDE Team presents version 1.0.2 of the Equinox Desktop Environment and version 2.0.4 of the Extended Fast Light Toolkit (eFLTK).

Matchbox is a base environment for the X Window System running on non-desktop embedded platforms such as handhelds, set-top boxes, kiosks and anything else for which screen space, input mechanisms or system resources are limited. Version 0.9 was released today.