E17

[titan]

Having read this article
www.h-online.com/open/features/Seeking-Enlightenment-1739812.html
I liked what was said and I thought I would look again at at another WM. I have regularly tried them all over the years and the recent thread about Razorqt tempted me to look again at alternative to i3 which I have been using for the last year or so and Openbox before that, fed up, as are a lot of other users at the direction and complexity of KDE. Razor was a big disappointment, in functionality  no better than Openbox  and E17 has also been the same in the past,a lot of potential but buggy.I have to say though that I think E17  has changed significantly . It is great. I just used the version from Sid and it is well worth a try if you are looking for a modern light  fast configurable WM although it seem more a DM to me. I use a mixture of GTK and QT applications, the best application for each task and Enlightenment works great with all of them.  The configuration options are good but not always that obvious but after two days I have a very usable system. So usable I have now moved away from i3wm as my default. There is also a new release imminent, good times ahead.

[lizbeth]

have you seen bodhi linux?  it's based on ubuntu and has a 5 year stability plan of backports and a 64 bit version all based on e17.  


http://www.bodhilinux.com/

[titan]

Bohdi looks fine but it is based on Ubuntu, if it changed to Debian I would consider trying it. Enlightenment is just a WM I don't think it needs a dedicated distro.

[michaaa62]

I agree, E17 is just an extended WM, BUT the work Bodhi-Linux is doing in preconfiguring the different setups for E17 on tablets, desktops and laptops is awesome!
And you will also need those packages transfered to Debian for a nice E17 experience in E17.

[titan]

What do you think is missing from Debian that Bohdi has, I would be interested in improving my e17 experience.Maybe I will give the live version a run to see what an optimised version looks like.

[turtaf]

I'm following e17 development now and then.
If you are interested in trying it on a debian base you could give a try to
e17 flavour of snowlinux. It's based on testing and does a quite good job, even if I didn't try it for a long time.

cheers

[titan]

Thanks turtaf but I don't think there is any need for a specific ISO to run E17. I have tried Bohdi today and I can't see that it is any different functionally from my version installed from the sid repro. In fact part of the interest in installing a non optimised version is the learning process of discovering all the configuration options. I am happy with the sid  version and did not see anything in Bohdi to think it would be any better. Having said that Bohdi has a quality installer and a nice basic desktop.

[DeepDayze]

Thanks turtaf but I don't think there is any need for a specific ISO to run E17. I have tried Bohdi today and I can't see that it is any different functionally from my version installed from the sid repro. In fact part of the interest in installing a non optimised version is the learning process of discovering all the configuration options. I am happy with the sid  version and did not see anything in Bohdi to think it would be any better. Having said that Bohdi has a quality installer and a nice basic desktop.

So you saying that the E17 packages in Sid are good enough for everyday use? If you have a good configuration that works well could you share it with us?

[titan]

I can only speak from my experience. I installed the packages from sid and it gives a very usable desktop. From the Debian changelog it looks like the end of May was the last update so it may not be fully up to date. There is no hand editable config file as with i3 and Openbox it is all done with GUIs, although there is a hidden .e folder in the user directory.  There is only one theme shipped ( which you will want to change!!) but loads are available as are icons. The panel (i-bar) has basic apps installed along with sound control and clock etc but I removed the apps and created a favourites menu for my most used apps which is available with a right click like Openbox.It is a WM I don't know what people expect. It runs GTK and QT apps seamlessly and tries to use a common e17 theme where possible. It is simple to install and run and can just as easily be removed. If you are interested give it a try there's nothing to loose.E17 certainly does not require a dedicated distro. I have tried it in the past a few times but it was buggy, this time it looks very polished and so far bug free.

[turtaf]

From the Debian changelog it looks like the end of May was the last update so it may not be fully up to date.

That's the main reason why I was suggesting that to try Snowlinux E17.
Sid packages are rather old and might suffer from more bugs:

- Snowlinux repo based on version 78753
- Sid repo based on version 70492-2 according to package name

I don't have the time to go through all the changelogs now, but I guess that something might have been upgraded, seen the number of releases in-between, but if you say Sid packages are fine, even better!
Unluckily experimental does not include any newer e17 packages (any at all, actually).
Anyway, e17 developers do say that they might be coming to a stable release...(unbelievable!!) http://e17releasemanager.wordpress.com/2012/07/06/10/ and therefore let's hope to get a stable release and maybe a usable official repo for sid.

Said so, I'm really curious to check out the sid version one of these days!

Cheers

[der_bud]

This thread forced me to do just a short "it works" study in my virtualbox-installation:
Siduction noX spiced up with e17 = http://paste.siduction.org/20121106151923.jpg (should have posted this in Show Your Desktop, though).

[ralul]

I would like E17, but I cannot bear the theme:
This glittering glory might resonate on some multimedia device. But if you want to work with your desktop for a few hours you want something smart, nothing that gets your eyes tired

[devil]

Well, at least nox gets put to some use.

[titan]

I would like E17, but I cannot bear the theme:
This glittering glory might resonate on some multimedia device. But if you want to work with your desktop for a few hours you want something smart, nothing that gets your eyes tired

ralul, as you are an experienced siduction user (1436 posts) I find it hard to believe you cannot install an e17 theme you like, it took me just a few minutes to find and install a suitable theme. To reject an easily  configurable WM because of one element of the shipped  configuration you don't like seems an illogical criticism.  

[turtaf]

ralul, as you are an experienced siduction user (1436 posts) I find it hard to believe you cannot install an e17 theme you like, it took me just a few minutes to find and install a suitable theme. To reject an easily  configurable WM because of one element of the shipped  configuration you don't like seems an illogical criticism.  

LOL

Other good news coming on the topic
http://enlightenment.org/p.php?p=news%2Fshow&l=en&news_id=62

And for the themes, I think it should be easy to install them after downloading from here http://e17-stuff.org (pick the newest ones, which should work on newer enlightenment versions)
On the other hand it looks like the official enlightenment site for customization is no longer maintained (http://exchange.enlightenment.org/theme)

Installed from sid repo yesterday evening, didn't do that much, but nothing bad to report so I'm keeping it together with the awesome xfce 4.10 provided by siduction repos (:idea:)

Have a nice day everyone!  [/img]