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The Enlightenment desktop's development team reports:
The E19 Release Cycle has concluded. Thanks to everyone who helped along the way.
Major changes since the last stable release include:
Features:
- greatly improved wayland support
- E_WL_FORCE environment variable for forcing output types
- e_uuid_store: Add infrastructure to store window/surface properties.
- Add a tiling profile.
- per-screen desklock logo visibility config
- Tiling: Merge the tiling module rework..
- check udisks1 DevicePresentationHide flag
- ACTIVATE_EXCLUDE window active hint policy
- show video resolution in filepreview widget
- add fileman option to clamp video size for video previews
- handle xrandr backlight using a single, accurate handler
- blanking options for wakeup on events (urgent + notify)
- packagekit module for package manager integration
- ibar now optionaly triggers its menu on mouse in
- selective redirection toggling
- new focus option "raise on revert focus"
- add PIN-style desklock for lokker module
- make desklock hookable, break out current desklock into module, move pam stuff to separate file
- revive personal desklock passwords
- allow moveresize visuals to be replaced
- allow desk flip animations to be handled completely externally
- E16-style live pager returns!
- comp config is no longer a module
- E_FIRST_FRAME env variable
- new compositor API
- add E_MODULE_SRC_PATH for setting current module src path without needing to install modules
- use non-recursive makefiles for entire build system
Improvements:
- filemanager popups no longer span multiple monitors
- system operations no longer dim screen until action has begun
- window stacking and focus restore is more accurate across restarts
- gstreamer1 is now used for media previews
- improved multiple monitor setup reliability
- shaped windows now render more accurately
Phoronix notes
The Enlightenment E19 update is a huge upgrade over E18 or E17, especially if you're an early Wayland adopter.
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Enlightenment E19 Officially Released With Its Own Wayland Compositor
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The software required Win95 or better, so I installed Linux.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Arik on Friday September 19 2014, @04:03PM
That doesnt sound like a trade-off, that sounds like a flat loss.
I have used E on and off for years and always been a fan. I was thinking about trying the new version out today. But binary config files? Screw that.
It's a real shame, Rastman always impressed me, I hate to see someone like that go full retard but... binary config files? Yeah that's trash.
I guess I will just continue to be happy with WindowMaker then.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by Marand on Saturday September 20 2014, @06:55AM
It's a trade-off in the sense that it trades usefulness and a good Unix design for something more convenient for embedded systems like refrigerators [youtube.com]. I have the impression that Enlightenment is more about the EFL (Enlightenment Foundation Libraries) than the desktop these days, and the focus is on putting it on various oddball systems that will need a GUI.
Not really a surprise, if you think about it. The whole thing is BSD-licensed, so it's a juicier target for areas filled with custom solutions like "smart" devices that all have their own GUIs. Companies like Samsung and ProFUSION (the maker of that fridge in the previous link) get the bulk of the work done, and all it costs them is a bit of "sponsorship" occasionally...
You probably aren't missing much. The last time I tried it post-E16 days the desktop part felt like an afterthought, like its only purpose is to showcase the GUI toolkit and utilities. I didn't stay with it.
I used to use WindowMaker religiously, and still throw it on systems with low specs sometimes, though I tend to use KDE because of its configurability and suite of applications (which I generally like).
I recently found a tiling window manager, called notion [sourceforge.net], that I've been spending time with and enjoying. It's static tiling, with the ability to create, save, and reuse layouts manually, and the option of having multiple apps in a single tile, as tabs. It also handles multiple displays fairly well and can have multiple workspaces (virtual desktops) per-monitor, with arbitrary tile layouts in each. Oh, and it has mouse control in addition to keyboard shortcuts, instead of forcing one specific use case on everybody.
I've always liked the idea of tiling WMs but hate the dynamic tiling, so this hits a sweet spot for me. Notion may even replace windowmaker for me on desktops that don't always have a lot of space, like small laptops and remote X sessions. Only thing I don't like is I haven't found a way to show the root window underneath notion's "empty" tiles, but that's not much of an issue for small screens.
(Score: 1) by Arik on Sunday September 21 2014, @03:08AM
I still use KDE applications, just not the window manager. Even on a new fast machine it always feels clunky somehow. And even after I spend an hour going through and setting up sloppy focus and finding a NeXT theme and then going through and manually going through every setting... I still find myself sitting there a couple days with a serious look on my face, switching back to WM, and instantly smiling.
It's not *bad* - I am a huge fan of customization and I am glad it offers so many options and someday when WindowMaker just cant be used for some reason that's what I expect to fall back to. But ultimately it seems the only option I really want in a window manager is the 'be WindowMaker' option. There's something about those gradients, combined with a proper dock and a super-clean, super-fast, super-responsive GUI that just adds up to put a smile on my face. It's not fancy, it's minimalist even, understated, but everything necessary is placed in easy reach, looks great, and responds instantly to your every command. The perfect shell.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by Marand on Sunday September 21 2014, @05:07AM
I happen to like kwin + plasma (the KDE parts that are generally equivalent to something like windowmaker), mostly because of how flexible they are. Different panels on different displays as needed, plus window rules for placement, sizes, and custom overrides to window types and such to bypass misbehaving apps' idiocy. Titlebars turned off to save space, with common titlebar actions replaced by shortcuts (left/right mouse + meta for resizing and moving, for example). Plus some other stuff, like activities and the way you can put plasma's widget-app-things in the bars or on the desktop and have them behave appropriately, which works well with how I use multiple monitors; I tend to use certain displays for certain tasks, so I have different launchers, taskbars, etc. for different screens. Helps reduce mouse travel and taskbar clutter by keeping open apps only visible on their relevant screen, for example.
There aren't many WMs/launchers that are flexible enough to suit me while working well with more than two displays, so I find the warts of Plasma (kwin is top-notch, most of the gripes come from plasma) to be worth the benefits. Of course, if I had to set everything up from scratch from a plain KDE4, I might find that annoying; I started with a fairly vanilla configuration and made individual tweaks as I went, rather than changing everything at the start. Now I just keep the config backed up and use it as a starting point on new systems.
That said, WindowMaker's still one of my favourites. Started with AfterStep because GNOME 1.x, while impressively blingy and decent (for the time), ran like a dog on my AMD K5. Used that for a while, then found out about WindowMaker and made the switch. Stuck with that until midway through KDE 3.5's lifetime, which was the first time I liked another environment enough to replace WindowMaker. Even on better hardware, I stuck with WMaker because I hated all the alternatives of the time. I found KDE 1 and 2 to be crap, and GNOME2 to be unconfigurable* crap, so I stuck with WMaker for a very long time and still use it occasionally.
It's great inside a nested X session (Xephyr), as one example; or in VMs, VNC sessions, and on devices with small screens or slow hardware. Any place I don't need the fancy parts of plasma and kwin, basicaly.
It's funny how the heavyweight GUIs of old become the lightweights over time. I remember WindowMaker being "like AfterStep, but nicer if you have the hardware for it" and now it's fast on everything because it hasn't changed much while hardware's improved. Well, some things; people still act like X is a horrible resource hog, despite running on systems hundreds of times more powerful than it was originally made to run on.
Going to say it again, because it's definitely worth trying out: I'm really digging notion for the low-resource or small-screen environments. Hell, I'm tempted to give it a try on my main system (four displays) because it handles multi-display setups well, though I'd have to work out some replacements for some of the KDE customisation I have before that would be a viable replacement. First tiling WM I've actually liked using, and the first WM I've tried and liked in a long time aside from WindowMaker and KDE's setups. (Xfce is okay, but never really found a compelling reason to use it vs. WM or KDE)
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* I find it deliciously ironic that the GNOME2 fans complain about GNOME3 removing features and having no flexibility, because the same thing happened with GNOME2 -- which was less flexible than GNOME1, WindowMaker, KDE, etc. -- but everyone seems to have forgotten or missed it by coming into Linux too late. The GNOME crew just did the same thing again with 3, that's all.