E17 Available From CVS 308
Lisandro writes "As stated by Rasterman on his site, Enlightenment 0.17's window manager is now available on CVS, which means you can build e17 completely from it, as it is, and give it a try. Of course, it's still work in progress, and lacking in several areas, but it is usable, and looks as gorgeous as ever. Also, in related news, the XFCE team, one of the best 'light' desktop environments for *NIX, has released the first release candidate for XFCE 4.2, with a lot of long due improvements." About e17, Rasterman's note says "It's limited in its support for ICCCM, no NETWM support and it has no iconification, virtual desktops, shading, keybindings or button bindings, but it does WORK (just). it's also fast and beautiful."
Work in progress (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Work in progress (Score:3, Interesting)
Screenshots (Score:5, Funny)
In case of slashdotting (Score:3, Informative)
Support This Project
Welcome to The Enlightenment Project.
We are dedicated to providing advanced graphical libraries, tools, and environments. Currently, the project is made up of three different components: Enlightenment DR16, The Enlightenment Foundation Libraries, and Enlightenment DR17. While we are best known for the Enlightenment Window Manager itself there is a long history of providing advanced libraries and tools to support the window manager and other applications, such as Imlib, FNLib, and Imlib2, which extend far beyond the window manager itself in scope. Today, in development toward the DR17 Desktop Shell we have created an entirely new set of libraries and tools that provide more power and flexibility than any other group of graphical libraries available, which we refer to collectively as The Enlightenment Foundation Libraries.
Enlightenment DR16
The Enlightenment DR16 window manager was released in 2000, along with its dependencies Imlib and Fnlib, and remains in heavy usage today. While rumors of its death still circulate, DR16.6 was release on Nov 2nd, 2003, and it remains in development today with a long life still ahead of it. DR16 has been the choice of power users and artists due to its low overhead, highly graphical, widely theme-able, extremely configurable, yet unobtrusive interface. Nearly all functions of the window manager can be handled without mouse input, including application launching via e16keyedit. It also remains highly portable, with ports avalible for Linux on all platforms, FreeBSD, IRIX, Solaris X86 and Sparc, HP-UX, AIX, OS/2, and more.
Imlib has lived a long life, still in heavy usage today, as one of the most popular image manipulation and rendering libs available. Its development was taken over by the GNOME project and used as GNOMEs rendering engine until it was replaced with GdkPixbuf in GNOME 2.0. It's popularity surpasses just development in C thanks to bindings for several scripting languages including PERL, Python, and Ruby.
Enlightenment Foundation Libraries
In developing DR17 it was made clear that we needed an entirely new set of libraries and tools. Raster had a bold vision of what was possible and where he wanted the next release to go, starting with Imlib2 and EVAS, and eventually growing into new libraries largely based on or around EVAS. It became clear that the usefulness of these libraries and tools went far beyond the DR17 release itself, just as Imlib did in DR16. Thus the collective library back-end of DR17 was given the independent title: the Enlightenment Foundation Libraries, or EFL for short.
The EFL contains solutions for almost any graphical interface task, far beyond just rendering images. EVAS provides a highly optimized canvas library. Ecore provides a simple and modular abstraction interface and advanced event management including timers. Etox provides a complex text layout library complete with theme-able text stylization capabilities (previously Estyle). EDB provides a compact database format for intuitive and easy configuration management, including the storing of binaries. EET provides an integrated and flexible container that ends the traditions of providing themes in tarballs. Edje provides a revolutionary library and tool set for completely abstracting application interfaces from their code, including a complex and flexible method of designing interfaces. EWL provides a complete widget library built on all the other components of the EFL. And more!
Enlightenment DR17
Development Release 17 of the Enlightenment window manager represents an evolution into the next generation of desktop environments: the desktop shell. DR17 will provide integration between files and your environment in a seamless manner while encompassing a graphically rich and flexible architecture. It will not compete with GNOME or KDE, but be a completely new way of visualizing your desktop, based around the EFL which was built from the ground up for this task.
Still in
Re:In case of slashdotting (Score:2, Funny)
Stupid question (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Stupid question (Score:2)
Re:Stupid question (Score:2)
Probably the best way to do it is to use E as the WM, and use nautilus or some other desktop manager around it. That way, you can have your icons, panels, and taskbar (if you want to use it). I forego the taskbar, because the pager is good enough.
The best way to learn is to experiment with it. If you want to get even more in depth, check out CmdrTaco's site.
Re:Stupid question (Score:5, Funny)
Second, get really into this movie called The Matrix. Watch it at least 20 times -- It will help you customize your Enlightment environment.
Third, develop a crush on an anime character. You'll need this for your desktop background.
Finally, just fire up your fake-transparent terminal and get on IRC. The "chicks" there will be glad to help you become an elite Enlightenment dood!
Re:Stupid question (Score:4, Informative)
That said, your mouse should be a three button mouse to best utilize e. And as another person posted, you can play around with it by right clicking the desktop, middle clicking, etc. to see all of the menus and functions.
I haven't kept up with DR17 development, but am I right to assume that the developers are trying to not only map mouse buttons, but also button and mouse movement combinations?
Too Late? (Score:5, Interesting)
Nowadays, I want a lot less visually from a WM--I want it to be as unobtrusive and thin as possible. I put up with Gnome/KDE (depends on what machine I'm working on) because of the nicer and nicer applications being built around them, but I dislike all of that extra overhead--"this app depends on *WHAT*?" This is, of course, my personal taste, and nothing more.
Enlightenment, how I used to long for you. I yearned for another release. I ached to spend long nights interfacing with you... but that was long ago. I've grown up, you've chnaged. We've moved apart. Can it ever really work again between us? Can't we just let the past stay the past, beautiful in what it is, but nothing more?
Call me.
Re:Too Late? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Too Late? (Score:5, Insightful)
The important thing about e17 is, IMHO, the technology that drives it. Some of the stuff that can be done with the Enlightenment libraries (particularly Evas) is amazing, and simply couldn't be done with software available before.
sco hacked (Score:2, Funny)
progress (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:progress (Score:2)
The ne
Not to rain on the parade, but... (Score:2, Insightful)
I think E is a long way from really being useable.
Click a button (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Click a button (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Not to rain on the parade, but... (Score:2, Informative)
Where do you see that on the site? That most likely needs to be changed.
And besides, that's refering to e16, not e17.
Re:Not to rain on the parade, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
There is a common misconception (or more of a preconception as I doubt most people who hold this opinion have actually tried Enlightenment) that anything pretty must sacrifice speed. E16 (and from what I'
Re:Not to rain on the parade, but... (Score:2)
It's all those little touches that keep me buying more RAM and bigger hard drives so I can run the latest GNOME or KDE. Not that they aren't a bit bloated, but all the libraries they use ARE reusable, and half your apps use most of them anyway, so why not have them around?
Re:Not to rain on the parade, but... (Score:2)
Not that anybody cares.
Re:Not to rain on the parade, but... (Score:2)
Or better, in this case, you don't have to restart at all
Done.
Of course, if you wanted to, you could write a little tool that uses fam to automatically update the menus when the files changed. Assuming you were willing to pre-parse and make sure they were valid first.
Enlightenment's still the best eye candy WM around (Score:2, Insightful)
I have always chosen to use E for all these years as my primary WM, no matter what Gnome and KDE can bring to the tables.
Linux is about the freedom of choices and you as the users have the freedom to use whatever WMs you please. I've been pleased with E and I can't wait to have E 1
Duke Nukem.... (Score:3, Funny)
E17 forever.
Leave the house more often (Score:2, Funny)
is...beautiful
Damn, you guys gotta get out more.
E16 vs. E17 (Score:5, Interesting)
But I remember building and running E17 from CVS something like two years ago; and I'm pretty sure it was further along then than it is now. I know Raster decided to rewrite everything from the ground up, but c'mon. This is in no way news. Should they ever actually FINISH - then let us know.
Re:E16 vs. E17 (Score:5, Insightful)
Absolutely! In fact, I'm using E16 right now, as I'm typing up this reply. It's simple, good looking, very customisable, and extremely suited to someone who has very good linux skills. It doesn't have the clutter of KDE/Gnome, nor their orientation towards giving users an almost windows-like menu feel. It's almost perfect for me.
What you don't know is that Raster decided to rewrite the rewrite. And he possibly rewrote that too. This recent E17 release should really be called E20 or something around that. The CVS E17 hasn't actually had a window manager in it for ages, as they kept on working with the foundation libraries until they felt they finally got them right. Raster only started working on this new WM code in the last 3 or 4 months, and this is his first upload of that code to CSV, as far as I can tell.
Personally, I feel that naming this E17 is confusing many people. They think it's the same E17 window manager from a few years back, which is completely incorrect. This update is definitely news, and it's news I've been waiting for.
Screenshots and Videos (Score:5, Interesting)
My eyes! Oww! Make it stop! (Score:5, Funny)
I realise that E17 is still a WIP, but...
Did anyone else see those screenshots and think "OMG! It's Kai Krause [mprove.de]! Run for the hills!"?
As one artist once commented to me, you can envisage Spock with some alien's computer saying: "I'm sorry, Captain. I cannot work out how to use this. The interface appears to have been designed by Kai Krause."
DR 17 Movie (Score:5, Informative)
Let's get some things straight here (Score:5, Informative)
First of all I use E16.7.1 as my WM of choice. I've been using E since I first found it several years ago.
A lot of people don't understand that, why would I use E when there's Gnome or KDE? Well, personally I can't understand why people use Gnome or KDE when there's E, but that's just personal preference.
I'm one of those people who like minimal functionality, uber-flexibility, combined with easy of use, and demands aesthetics above all. E is for me, but I can see why it's not for everyone.
People are scoffing at the poster who said E17 is beautiful and fast by suggesting that without functionality of course it's going to be fast.
Some people are laughing at Enlightenment for being around for 5 years and still not having virtual desktops, pagers, etc.
E16.7.1, the latest stable release, has everything you could ever want from a WM. It has THE greatest pager ever. It even updates the mini window images in real time! The virtual desktop support is second to none. You can even have different layers of virtual screen accessed by using the scroll wheel on the desktop.
E also has the best Xinerama support I've ever seen in a WM, for those of you who are into dual monitors like me.
Now let me address some of things people have been saying about E17. Apparently the poster forgot that this is slashdot and most of the posts will come from people who have never actually used Enlightenment, or who don't know anything about it.
Like many others have said, E17 is a complete re-write, and it's not anywhere near finished. The post is simply an acknowledgment that the window manager code for E17 has finally been put back into the CVS repo. So if you're wondering why it has such limited functionality, it's because it hasn't even been available to be worked on by anyone other than Raster yet!
Some people said that this is not news because it has always been in the repo. Not true. It was in the repo a while back before major rewrites to the foundation libraries, but it got taken out because the changes were too great. Raster had to start again on the WM code.
And finally... why should we care about E17? It is going to be cool... seriously cool. Raster and his team are excellent coders. The reason why it's taking so long is because they're doing it right this time.
The supporting libraries have an OpenGL rendering back-end. Think about that. A WM finally rendered in OpenGL. And think about the possibilities it will bring.
E17 will be worth waiting for. It will be feature-packed. It will be beautiful. And it will be fast.
Re:Let's get some things straight here (Score:5, Informative)
FWIW, the Quartz Extreme in Mac OS X 10.3 is just that, an OpenGL rendered WM.
Re:Let's get some things straight here (Score:3, Insightful)
A few, but much less than a windowing system - X - being rendered on top of OpenGL. Which is what freedesktop.org will do.
Re:Let's get some things straight here (Score:5, Informative)
like the finder? (Score:3, Insightful)
It means that DR17 will combine features of a window manager and a file manager. It will provide nicely integrated GUI elements for managing your desktop elements, both files and windows. It does *not* mean that DR17 will be another application framework like Gnome and KDE.
I'm not very familiar with E, so feel to correct me, but this sounds a heck of a lot like the function of the Finder in MacOS (both X and classic) and explorer.exe in Win9x.
I'm not saying that this is a BAD thing, but it's hardly original. Needless to say, I think this will be a good thing overall for Linux if we're to actually get a good desktop. It's been established that the KDE/Gnome metaphor doesn't work at all and that the file manager and window manager need to be intergrated (as shown by the OS X Dock-like thing in the E17 screenshots)
Now, of course, you do have the problem of an application framework. It REALLY should be intergrated into the WM / File Manager (FM). As said already, monolithic models like KDE and Gnome just don't work. They're bloated, ugly, and force developers to commit to one platform.
E17 seems to be a step in the right direction but not quite enough. First off, this stuff is pretty basic and should probably be intergrated right into X11. Secondly, we need some sort of UI toolkit which could theoretically have more than one implementation (in the same way that there are several implementations of the X protocol).
XUL could be the answer to all this. It's a cross-platform UI language. If someone wanted to make their own XUL implementation, they'd be free to do so and the K/Gnome folks could finally get along.
So in short -- keep the current 'layering' model that we've got going on with the unix desktop metaphor, but make it so that different implementations of these layers don't break compatibility.
Re:like the finder? (Score:2)
Hmmm -- a XULWM? (Or MozWM?)
Re:like the finder? (Score:4, Insightful)
Imlib2 for example has both efficient caching for remote image display as well as all-round support for image formats of various kinds and a lot of cool tricks up its sleave.
His decisions to create libraries of code that are used by other modules so that like can be kept with like and linked together as necessary is wise, even if it slows down release schedules.
I've been using DR16 for "ever" now and love it.
PS, DR17 has been in CVS for "ever" as well.
Re:like the finder? (Score:5, Interesting)
If all open source stuff was developed this way, Windows/MacOS would have died a long time ago.
I also admire the guy for not releasing a final release at all 'til all the major bugs are polished out. Calling it 0.17 is gutsy as well. Most people would call something like this a whole version number bump.
Pity that more people aren't working on this project and in this fashion.
Look at Mozilla. Remember the old Milestone builds? Talk about unnecessary bloat/misguidance. While firefox is a lean machine compared to its older cousin, it's still got MILLIONS of lines of gratuitious code in it for unnecessary 'features'. As much as XUL sounds like a good idea, imagine how much faster the browser would be if it either used native widgets or XUL was stripped clean of unnecessary features which are now permanent.
Interview with Rasterman (Score:5, Informative)
Oh, and he can drink like a fish-- Enjoy!
Re:Interview with Rasterman (Score:2)
Printing was a nightmare of PERL and fontsets and all kinds of wierdness.
In fact, if you look here [magicwardrobe.com], you can see the slightly customized RedHat login screen I did for them back then.
Disclaimer: They are no longer a customer, I can't recommend their project professionally but I think its really cool on a personal level and I helpe
Why is this on slashdot? (Score:2)
Maybe it's just that I've been called in to work late on a Sunday night, that I'm tired, or maybe this is a trend of posting non-news on Slashdot.
Why is this "news" posted on slashdot? Sure, I know this is a big software re-write effort on a pretty major window/desktop system (which I used to use once upon a time, and it was very nice). But when new software is available, doesn't that belong on Freshmeat [freshmeat.net] instead of a site that's about "news for nerds, stuff that matters"? Freshmeat is even part of the
Re:Why is this on slashdot? (Score:2)
Also, slashdot posts a lot of things that aren't necessarily important. Really, "news for nerds" is almost the opposite of "stuff that matters," when you think about it. Even so, most of what's on here is a lot more revelant than the kind of stuff they come up with to fill the air on CNN and Fox News and such, so you can't complain too much.
Looks awesome! (Score:2)
I can't wait for the Win32 port! ;)
E17??? (Score:4, Funny)
Enlightenment and Evidence (Score:5, Informative)
What I don't understand... (Score:2)
I mean... it's a window manager, just like many others, and it's not radically different, either (or at least not more radically different than ot
Simple. It dares to be different (Score:5, Interesting)
Linux is not the linux of old. You got a lot of people who grew up with windows only for whom the whole idea of configuration files is alien. Now that isn't much of a problem. Some distros have come a long way into making a linux install extremely easy. But any new desktop user soon wants to chance the look and goes searching on the internet for pretty desktops. E has some very very pretty ones. Then they try it and hit the learning curve. It ain't a wall. It is a ceiling. Breaking through it is hard if you come from a windows gui for everything background. The reward is full control but the price is RTFM.
Add to it that most E users don't want or need things like a start button. Its far more extreme use of virtual desktops. Themes wich look cool in screenshot but perhaps grey on black text in real life is hard to read.
This then soon scares people off who are scared and humiliated that they could not use it. This is the "sucks" era. If you can't use something it must suck, it is never your fault.
So now you got two camps. Those that managed to break through the learning curve and those who didn't (of course you also got a camp who could care less either way but they are boring) and the perfect setup for a holy war.
On the one hand you got those who miss their GUI theme configurations and start button on the bottom left corner. On the other hand you got people who enjoy a window manager that just draws the bloody windows as they want it without turning into the bloat that is KDE or the "you can't do this because it would be confusing" that is Gnome.
Welcome to Linux where people got choice. The price for freedom might be eternal vigilance but the price for choice is eternal holy wars. Choice is all very well but unless you choose what I choose you are the sucks.
The difference about E17 is not just the desktop layout, it is how things are drawn. ALL windows managers use the similar model at the moment wether it is MS windows or Apple or any of the linux ones. If Rasterman realizes his vision then E17 could be one of the most important steps forward in desktops (as he has already used it on his Zaurus. Yeah that is right. E17 on a pda. Try that MS.) Remember that most enlightenment haters are probably using it already. The libraries developed for E have found widespread use. Just check for something like imlib2 on your average linux desktop.
I don't believe it (Score:3, Funny)
Very Innovative (Score:2)
Really awesome. Perhaps this could be added to Firefox, especially for browsing local folders. If it's targetting IE as competition, perhaps it should also include such capabilities. It pioneered tabs as a way to revolutionize browsing, and it would be useful (to me at least) if it included this f
Re:Very Innovative (Score:3, Informative)
Re:OK (Score:2)
Re:OK (Score:5, Informative)
I *believe* e17 was a total rewrite, which is why those features are missing...simply because the rewrite hasn't been completed yet.
haven't used anything but E for years now (Score:3, Interesting)
Mine (16.6 right now) is set up 3x3x3 - 9 virtual desktops, times 3 multiple desktops (each with a different background). It's a 3x3x3 cube.
alt-shift combined with right,left,up,down arrows moves you around the virtual desktops (same background, the virtual desktops also wrap around)
ctrl-alt combined with left and right arrows takes you from one multiple desktop to another (different backgrounds, no wrapping)
you kind
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Fortunately, reality is much better :) (Score:3, Informative)
The window manager mentioned here is the very start of the "2 lines of code" (a long runnign in-joke) that builds a window manager out
Re:Fortunately, reality is much better :) (Score:2)
The parent is probably saying that because the parent is a troll.
There's really no way that you can look at Enlightenment and miss the virtual desktop capabilities, or the fact that it has the best pager of all wm's I've seen.
E is great. There's so much you can do with it, especially when it's combined with a normal desktop environment.
Re:OK (Score:3, Informative)
things I would like to see
1) reorginize the configuration menus(a little on the confusing side)
2) have e16 keyconfig and menuconfig come built in
IMO enlightenment is sort of like debian, it go
Re:OK (Score:4, Funny)
This is just priceless. Really...
pot... kettle... black.
Re:OK (Score:2, Funny)
A sniglet if I ever saw one.
actually, thats kind of wrong. (Score:5, Interesting)
And you must understand, what rasterman, etc are trying to do is a hell of a lot more advanced then anything tried before. They for instance are developing their own composite system instead of using Xorg's, and they do a lot of work optimisation wise.
They have also been developing it to be completely dynamic. In retrospect for instance, the windows start bar, the best you can do is theme it, but it will always be the same. Rasterman and the rest of the enlightenment team are making it so that the way things work on the bar are completely dynamic for instance. An example would be when you put your mouse away from the applications button, it moves to the right (bad example, but you get the point).
So, I hate to say it, but I dont think you realise the real benefits. The default theme cannot show off the full power of enlightenment 17, and you can only see it after using it for a while. And btw, I'm sure they'll add virtual desktops, its still an early alpha. virtual desktops dont take many lines of code...
As a programmer, I actually very eagerly await e17, because the foundation libraries and concepts seem pretty amazing, and believe me, all the other window libraries like GTK and QT are mostly static.. In fact, the library seems so cool that I might be changing the application I'm programming to EFL from gtk
Re:actually, thats kind of wrong. (Score:3)
Re:actually, thats kind of wrong. (Score:3, Interesting)
Meanwhile, EFL has completely dynamic elements, so any QT or GTK theme would be missing a lot of critical elements, and wouldn't be dynamic at all. Thats the beauty of EFL, its completely dynamic. At th
Re:OK (Score:3, Informative)
With componets like evas which now has a media player built into it is going to be the best window manager out there.
If they have built it the way they were saying, it can be a fairly lean window manager if you build your theme correctly, without the builtin dvd player.
Re:Took a while (Score:2)
Okay, so it's been 4 years since the last major release, and yes, I used to love Enlightenment back in the day, but the world has moved on to bigger and better things (KDE, Gnome, OS-X). Enlightenment still has a lot of catching up to do before it is newsworthy!
This is not true. As can be seen on this [sourceforge.net] page, the last release was only three months ago. Also, you do not descern between the different releases. The release noted in the post in DR17, which is very new. I know being informed before you post on
Re:Took a while (Score:2)
Re:Took a while (Score:2)
I look orward to seeng what they have to o
Re:Took a while (Score:2)
Re:Took a while (Score:5, Interesting)
I personally think KDE and gnome (or GTk/QT) are in need of a rewrite, and many programmers have agreed with me.. GTK# might save GTK, but the C code for it can be hell. I think its extremely promising considering E17 is still barely finished yet.
Take my advice and give at least engage and entrance a try from CVS.. You'll see its very newsworthy
Re:Took a while (Score:5, Insightful)
Today's Metacity is as heavy-weight as Sawfish.
E has always been "fast", but fast in a different way. There are true optimizations that aren't just a result of feature incompleteness (mostly the rendering model which allows for greater hardware acceleration). Still, it's frustrating to see this process of the new toy being compared to a mature tool with a modern feature set. I love Gnome (and I'm sure I'd love KDE too) because it provides a deep and rich integration between applications. It doesn't really matter if the Window manager is Sawfish, Metacity, E or whatever comes out tomorrow, I'll still demand strong support for internationalization; multiple desktops; interaction with the session and desktop managers, panel and applications; configuration through the same configuration system as the rest of my apps; etc.
If your window manager can do all of this, THEN I'll look at how fast it is. Same for a mailer or terminal or web browser, etc, etc.
Re:Took a while (Score:2)
Re:fluxbox (Score:2, Informative)
Re:fluxbox (Score:2)
Fluxbox is pretty cool. Don't know much about XFCE, but I do know that Enlightenment is NOT , and probably never will be, a light desktop. It has always been about the eye candy.
Re:fluxbox (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:fluxbox (Score:2)
Re:fluxbox (Score:5, Informative)
Fluxbox has a menu, minimal taskbar like support, tabbed windows, and a place for windowmaker dockapps.
Xfce is a complete and highly modular desktop environment. Unlike Gnome, components are loosely coupled, so you can easily run part of the environment without much overhead.
Xfce includes: A window manager, a taskbar program, a panel with plugins (launchers, menus, workplace switchers), a file manager, a desktop menu with a backdrop system, a session manager, a plugin capable settings manager, and a small application development environment.
There are some other micellaneous toys - calendar, a gtk theme engine, a nice resolution switcher, an iconbox. And the third party apps are growing - a couple of terminal programs, a fine media player, a growing number of panel plugins.
Making fluxbox and it's kin usable winds up requireing I run half a dozen other apps. Xfce is those apps, bundled together. You can think of it as Gnome done right.
Re:fluxbox (Score:3, Interesting)
I guess I'll come off as a troll, but I'm honestly wondering if you could explain a little more. I use fluxbox, and I don't feel anything is lacking. I right-click, and I get a menu that lets me run the apps I want to run, or I can open an aterm and start other gui apps from the command line. Is it the file browser that you really feel is missi
Re:fluxbox (Score:2)
Re:fluxbox (Score:4, Informative)
Your very close. Obviously Fluxbox and KDE are desktops in the way most people think of them, drawing windows and providing a workspace, but what KDE is that Fluxbox is not is a Desktop environment.
A window manager in their most basic form just draws windows on the screen, thats it. Thats not very usable since simply doing that does not give a method to actually run applications, so a menu is added. So thats all it does.
Now look at everything KDE does and is. kwin draws windows, kdelibs provides IO slaves to handle background IO, kdenetwork provides access to protocols for every KDE app, and provides the kparts that come together for mail (kmail), news (knode), IM (kopete) and whatnot, all of which then also show up (along with others) in KDE's PIM, kontact. The khtml kpart is available to all apps, along with the file browser component, and so with those and the other kdenetwork kparts, konqueror becomes usable as a browser, file manager, ftp client, or whatnot depending on how its used. There are integrated apps for managing sound, X settings, your kernel config and virtual desktops, and that's just the beginning.
So often with a simple window manager you may have a bunch of apps that do many or all of these functions, but they are separate apps and if they all talk to each other, well your quite lucky. A full desktop environment has all the parts needed for a completely usable system to handle all those parts, and often more then you need, in a very integrated manner that all work together by design.
Re:fluxbox (Score:3, Interesting)
In the end, asking if XFCE is better than Fluxbox, or if KDE is better than Gnome, is a bit like asking if blue is better than yellow. It all depends on what you like to look at, because if you want, for example, to put a clock on your
XFCE (Score:2)
First and foremost, the file manager sucks. It's exceedingly slow, difficult to navigate, and easy to click into things like "SMB Network" by mistake. The top-level hierarchy is also heterogeneous - "Book" (wtf?), home directory, "SMB Network", "Applications", "Find", "Trash", and "Fstab". But mainly it's slow as hell.
Next up, I'd love for the ma
Re:XFCE (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:fluxbox (Score:4, Interesting)
Now i'm settled with XFCE 4, and i have to say is the first time i've ever been really comfortable with an *NIX desktop enviroment. Think of it as being somewhere between a WM and a DE: it borrows the best from both worlds. XFCE looks much like GNOME, being GTK based, but it just *flies*. In fact, i'm pretty sure that if your system runs Fluxbox well it will also run XFCE well.
The latest XFCE release is major in the sense they've started to polish the weak spots in the design - there's now a nice session manager, better configuration options, more eye candy
Re:fluxbox (Score:3, Interesting)
I couldn't agree more. XFCE feels like what Gnome used to be in the 1.4 days, fast and light and "just works." The other really nice trait about the XFCE 4 rewrite is that it's a DE built on the unix philosophy of simple, small components. For example, I have no need for a taskbar, and one just comments out that particular module in the startup script. There's still a few areas that could stand a bit of polish, but I've switched from gnome to XFCE 4 (and now 4.2) and am very pleased with the system overall.
Re:fluxbox (Score:2)
Re:"Beautiful" (Score:2, Funny)
"I got over brushed metal through enlightenment"
Re:"Beautiful" (Score:2)
Re:"Beautiful" (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:"Beautiful" (Score:2)
In my humble opinion, the default views of GNOME, KDE, and XFCE4 are really nice looking. I feel this is a major reason people use them. I read light window manager zealots bitch all they want about how bloated they are, but at least they look good (yeah, soon XFCE will be too much to be
No, that is the attitude of some themers (Score:3, Insightful)
E gives you the flexibilty, you can abuse it and create some pretty ugly/unworkable themes or you can make a very refined one. They do exist.
Re:Always been in CVS (Score:4, Informative)
Allow me to explain. They had started development a long while ago on E17 which they had put in CVS (this is what you are thinking of). Since then raster has decided to start over. They have been concentrating on the EFL(Enlightenment Foundation Libraries) since then. Today's "release" exciting beause this is our first look at the real E17
Re:Always been in CVS (Score:3, Informative)
Now please don't go rushing to check it out yet. It is still barely functional and is not usable as a day-to-day wm yet - this is pre-alpha code essentially. We need more people who are interested in actually helping to contribute code than excite
Re:Always been in CVS (Score:2)
And to you E developers.. rock on. We look forward
to what you come up with.
Re:Always been in CVS (Score:4, Funny)
You're new here, aren't you?
Re:some random screenshots (Score:5, Funny)
(At least you didn't link to the video, and no-one's gonna find it since it's all slashdotted and everything now!)
These screenshots aren't e17. (Score:2, Insightful)
More complaints. (Score:2)
Re:Completely unimpressive (Score:3, Funny)
Re:x.org, gnome, enlightenment (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm pretty sure the answer to that question is "e". If i recall correctly, there was an irc discussion posted on xcomputerman's site that showed a few stats...EFL murdered xorg. I wish i could get back at the site to doublecheck the results, but it's been slashdotted.