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View Full Version : [other] My feelings on Enlightenment/E17



toasty_ghosty
November 24th, 2008, 08:33 AM
Hello.

I just installed E17 and wanted to give my opinion on it as well as get what other users thought of it and find out what tweaks they have done. First and foremost, after three days of using it, I do not think I will be using Gnome again. I know E17 is beta, which it has been for quite some time, but it seems stable enough. I have yet to have any show stopping issues. Which, of course, could change. But as of right now, I am very satisfied. It is very lightweight compared to Gnome and provides speedy access to whatever I am looking for. My computer should not be slow, but lately after using E17 and switching back to Gnome for whatever reason, I notice how Gnome is a hog compared to E17. Don't get me wrong, I love Gnome over KDE, but I think I may have just found my favorite.

What do you people think?

toasty_ghosty
November 24th, 2008, 08:40 AM
Heres a screen shot for anyone that cares...

jittopjose
November 24th, 2008, 08:45 AM
hello friend...
i have installed ubuntu 8.04
how can i install E17 on top of this ubuntu install?....
is it in synaptic?
thank you,
jittos....

loell
November 24th, 2008, 08:48 AM
you will grow tired on it. ;)

i still have e17, but not a regular usage.

jittopjose
November 24th, 2008, 08:51 AM
is there any easy way to try it?...
i installed lxde from ppa. any ppa for E17?

toasty_ghosty
November 24th, 2008, 08:58 AM
you will grow tired on it.

i still have e17, but not a regular usage.

Any reason? I know there are a couple of things I that I have yet to "fix" but nothing that I can't. Where there any issues that were a pain? Also, your talking to someone that has Gnome,KDE,Fluxbox,XFCE and now E17 on one computer. I might have a problem.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=546746

That is how I did it. A script that compiles it from source. There is also this as well:

http://www.ubuntugeek.com/howto-install-e17-enlightenment-desktop-in-ubuntu.html

loell
November 24th, 2008, 09:15 AM
Any reason? I know there are a couple of things I that I have yet to "fix" but nothing that I can't. Where there any issues that were a pain? Also, your talking to someone that has Gnome,KDE,Fluxbox,XFCE and now E17 on one computer. I might have a problem.


well, since i mainly use gtk apps, i want things to look more consistent. and also, say you have a decent system, i would rather utilize it to make myself productive than to maximize my system resource by using e17. so i guess thats just my preference. ;)

Tux Aubrey
November 24th, 2008, 12:32 PM
Hello.

I just installed E17 and wanted to give my opinion on it as well as get what other users thought of it and find out what tweaks they have done. First and foremost, after three days of using it, I do not think I will be using Gnome again. I know E17 is beta, which it has been for quite some time, but it seems stable enough. I have yet to have any show stopping issues. Which, of course, could change. But as of right now, I am very satisfied. It is very lightweight compared to Gnome and provides speedy access to whatever I am looking for. My computer should not be slow, but lately after using E17 and switching back to Gnome for whatever reason, I notice how Gnome is a hog compared to E17. Don't get me wrong, I love Gnome over KDE, but I think I may have just found my favorite.

What do you people think?

I have been using e17 exclusively for over a year and still love it. A good "build" is very important as the code base is under heavy development and some days, well, it is just not worth the hassle! Rui Pais (who wrote the version of the script you used to get and build e17 from the svn) has further updated the tools available so that you can update as often as you like and will get a warning if there's a possibility of extra breakage.

Every time I think e17 is getting "close" to a releasable product, they change something major (This week it was the whole Configuration dialog and it now does not work properly with anything but the default b_and_w theme!). Don't go to the Enlightenment forums looking for help - it is sort of "Developers Only". Use the Cafelinux Forums (http://cafelinux.org/forum/index.php) (or those for Maryan Linux or OpenGEU) if you do need assistance.

I personally love the speed of e17 and the whole "look and feel" is smooth and responsive. I do admit it can take some getting used to. It works well with gtk themes too.

My current desktop is posted here (http://cafelinux.org/forum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=2286.0;attach=5257 ;image). But I change it often!

mikjp
November 24th, 2008, 10:27 PM
is there any easy way to try it?...
i installed lxde from ppa. any ppa for E17?

Elive (http://lightlinux.blogspot.com/2008/11/elive-development-release.html)?

mikjp
November 24th, 2008, 10:29 PM
What do you people think?

IT's simply great! See my Englightened Experience (http://lightlinux.blogspot.com/2008/11/enlightened-experience-e17.html).

toasty_ghosty
November 25th, 2008, 02:48 AM
I think my new past time may be making new themes for E17! Also, are there any other distros that use Debian and E17 (or E16)?

Lastly, what disc should I use to install Ubuntu without a window manager? Does the alternative disc do that? I'm thinking about starting fresh with just E17 and removing all the other ones on this computer.

Tux Aubrey
December 2nd, 2008, 03:53 AM
are there any other distros that use Debian and E17 (or E16)?

eLive is Debian + e17 - pretty up-to-date

Maryan Linux - Ubuntu +e17 - good.

Open GEU - Ubuntu + e17 (also good and very similar to Maryan in concept)

OzOS - Xubuntu + e17 (from source, via the e17_svn script) - what can I say?

gOS - Used to be e17 but now gnome - an attempted "community" e17 build was, frankly, not great and has hopefully been discontinued.

There have been others, but they died. :(

There are sevral non-debian e17 distros now and some (like Arch) have binaries that are kept pretty up-to-date.


Lastly, what disc should I use to install Ubuntu without a window manager? Does the alternative disc do that? I'm thinking about starting fresh with just E17 and removing all the other ones on this computer.

I have installed e17 onto Ubuntu server edition (no gui), but I would generally recommend Xubuntu (8.04.1 or 8.10). There's no advantage to the Alternative Disk - it just doesn't run "Live" but installs the standard desktop. There is no harm leaving Xfce installed and you may even find an alternative WM useful at some time to help trouble-shoot. I have a couple of machines set up with an e17 default session and Xfce as backup.

OzOS is basically a Xubuntu-lite without Xfce and with e17 built from source via the script you have already used. There are 32bit and 64bit live/installer isos available based on Xubuntu 8.04.1

kellemes
December 2nd, 2008, 05:23 PM
OpenGEU (http://opengeu.intilinux.com/Home.html)
Very very nice!

theweakend
December 9th, 2008, 02:36 PM
@Tux Aubrey: may i ask what that tool is that you have in you lower right hand corner, is that a tray?

VMC
December 9th, 2008, 05:20 PM
@Tux Aubrey: may i ask what that tool is that you have in you lower right hand corner, is that a tray?
You have it also. It's the "Thanks" icon :)

(You can't see your own, but log off you then it appears)

theweakend
December 10th, 2008, 01:27 AM
You have it also. It's the "Thanks" icon :)

(You can't see your own, but log off you then it appears)

Actually i was speaking of his screen shot

Tux Aubrey
December 13th, 2008, 06:31 AM
Sorry I missed the question -

That tool is just an e17 "shelf" with a "Winselector" gadget (a popup list of all running windows) and a launcher for the "Settings" panel shown open on the screen.

Most recently, I have been using modules directly on the desktop, rather than shelves. Here's a more recent screenshot > http://cafelinux.org/OptickleArt/albums/userpics/normal_Aubrey_screen-Dec_08.png. The "pager", the "taskbar" and the ibar are just modules, as are the clock and the two icons in the bottom right.

Free-floating modules seem more stable than they used to be and can be positioned anywhere. The only drawback I can see is that they appear on all desktops, whereas shelves can be configured to appear only on particular desktops.

The "Update e17" icon in the bottom right is a tool called "execwatch" that gives a visual prompt and launcher to run Rui Pais' update_e17 script when there is a new version of the e17 source code available. That script now also checks a thread over a cafelinux.org to see whether the new code is "viable" - (ie whether or not it has already broken one of the OzOS devs installs!). This is known as "facing life with an OzOS guinea pig on a stick". Seems to be working out quite well, except when I'm the guinea pig.
:p

richardh9936
April 13th, 2009, 08:12 AM
In Compiz, I can use an "accessibility" option called NEGATIVE, which inverts the screen, but with reduced subtulty. However, I don't know of anything similar in e17. (I want the negative image because that's the best way to get white text on dark backgrounds for all applications, including web pages.)

Can you please suggest how I can produce a negative image (also known as negative gamma ramp)?

jlimon
April 13th, 2009, 08:26 AM
E17 is a system almost 10 years in development without a stable release.

While I respect and admire the E17 effort.. I don't find it very useful to introduce yet another system of toolkits, APIs and etc..

I'm all about choice and cringe when people talk about merging KDE and GNOME and things of that nature.. but I simply disagree outright with the way E17's development went. E16 was great because it was *just* a windowmanager, but sadly E17 wants to be more than that.

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