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1 • Reasons to be a E17 Fan (by Anamezon on 2013-02-04 09:33:04 GMT from Finland)
" ... I strongly suspect Enlightenment's bad behaviour on my machine is not normal, if it were the window manager wouldn't have such a large following of happy fans ..."
my experience with (mostly dev builds of) E17 is rather similiar to yours, perhaps due to the fact that I also modify the settings a lot; nevertheless, I feel that experiencing a crash from time to time is a small trade-off for all the advantages (configurability, snappiness, beauty, etc.) of E17. After all, it is up to everybody to decide what their priorities are ...
2 • E17 Review (by MikeBlumenkrantz on 2013-02-04 09:36:33 GMT from United Kingdom)
It seems that your E17.0 review did not actually review E17.0. Enlightenment switched to an entirely different theme over a month prior, and all your screenshots show the old theme, which is not shipped in any of the distribution tarballs.
3 • Enlightenment Review (by Earlybird - typing in my sleep on 2013-02-04 09:38:20 GMT from Canada)
Really appreciate the Enlightenment review. Always found using Gnome apps to be really dumbed down. As an example, compare Brasero to K3b. In K3b, one can configure everything. Brasero, useless. No ability to add translation tables, modify filing system characteristics, etc. (eg, Jolliette and Rock Ridge characteristics). It would be interesting to know how Enlightenment compares to Xfce in speed and memory usage.
At the moment, I mainly use fluxbox and open box with the necessary libraries to run things like k3b. In thinking about it, rather than enlightenment, maybe I should be considering using a tiling window manager. If you are short of ideas for a future review, maybe you could do a review and comparison of the various tiling managers?
Also, thanks for mentioning the update on Omniboot. One more essential tool to pack in the rescue kit (but at least one that "lightens the load" on the number of disks one has to carry around).
4 • uberStudent, MariaDB (by musty on 2013-02-04 09:40:45 GMT from France)
Another complete review. UberStudent looks not bad and worth a test.
For MariaDB, a switch is possible if you have a dedicated server or on your own machine.But unfortunately on shared hosting there is no choice : it is mysql or nothing. But in few months (or years) mariaDB will be the option to choose.
thanks for your work and your donnations to free and open source softwares.
5 • Desktop Reviews (by Jesse Smith) (by gregzeng on 2013-02-04 09:44:25 GMT from Australia)
"I know the Bodhi distribution has been very successful due to its work with Enlightenment" ...
On my i7-ATI PC, Bodhi's e17 desktop seemed to have display driver errors, which could not be avoided. Unlike Jesse however, I did not have these errors with the Unity mentioned earlier.
Most users seem to have trouble with Nvidia and with proprietary display drivers. What exactly does the 'main machine' use, and was it Bodhi being tested for E17?
6 • Linux Lite (by sol on 2013-02-04 10:12:41 GMT from Hungary)
Linux Lite is now almost identical to Xubuntu. This effort can be merged with Xubuntu project instead. Not in a world where a rebranded Ubuntu is the most popular distro...
7 • E17 (by john lewis on 2013-02-04 10:18:01 GMT from United Kingdom)
I switched my ancient Compaq Evo N160 to E17 when Gnome 3 replace Gnome 2 in Debian Wheezy. I am using the Debian version of E17 so it is a bit out of date but it is much snappier than Gnome ever was on this old laptop.
I like the fact that a left click on the desktop brings up the application menu, (reminds me of Windowmaker, another 90s feel app which I'd used for many years).
I also turned off the several features I didn't like, particularly as I use virtual desktops all the time, running each open application, full screen, in its own desktop.
I don't use the laptop very much these days as I am long retired and don't need mobile computing but E17 seems pretty stable to me, at least in the oldish Debian version.
8 • Re: #2 E17 (by silent on 2013-02-04 10:28:36 GMT from France)
E17.1 is already available, but in some repositories one can find the svn version or older versions. The real fun starts of course with the unofficial extra modules, which are unfortunately not very stable yet and some of them only work with the svn version of E17. The only small problem I have found is that long menu lists are not managed well by E17. Otherwise it is quite fast, stable and easy to use after the initial setup.
9 • E17 (by Pierre on 2013-02-04 10:30:09 GMT from Germany)
It's really nice to see that another person shares my experiences with Enlightenment 0.17.
Bodhi Linux and Snowlinux's E17-version both received quite some resonance in the past few months. Both deserve that attention.
Nevertheless - and although I like that some developers are doing things different - the nice alien feel of the desktop simply does not help but keeps me away from getting things done.
I found E17 to be an exciting experience for some hours but was back quite fast to my customized Xfce 4.10 or my custom configuration of i3 after the first excitement lowered and settled.
Additionally I had a lot of bugs as well. If you are coming from rock solid i3 and Xfce this is quite disappointing.
I always come to the conclusion that E17 does look quite great and simply different to what became common in the past years. Nevertheless they never succeeded in making E17 stable and appealing for more than a short visit.
But, as pointed out by Jesse, a lot may be due to questions of taste.
Greetings from Germany.
Pierre
10 • @ 3 Enlightenment Review (by Earlybird) (by Pierre on 2013-02-04 10:40:23 GMT from Germany)
I am using the tiling window manager i3 since half a year now. I am happy since and never looked back.
Additionally I wrote a german article with little comparison to awesome and how it is installed and configured on openSUSE (what might be adaptable to other distros as well). Maybe I find some time to reactivate my blog (or start a new one ;) ) and then to maybe publish a translation of that article.
But even if not, have a look on awesome and i3. Both have their pro's and con's and these decide which you will prefer.
Both are quite flexible and configurable to you tastes.
A link to i3: http://i3wm.org/
A link to awesome:
http://awesome.naquadah.org/
To see how they look like and how interaction works there are a few videos hosted on youtube about both. Just search them there. :)
11 • Uberstudent (by Dave Postles on 2013-02-04 13:29:32 GMT from United Kingdom)
It's an educational distro because it includes not only academic note-taking utilities, but also integrates bibliographical apps like Zotero and connects to sites about academic writing. LyX (for academic papers in TEX) is included, but that's easy enough to download in any distro. The idiosyncracies are: (1) the structure of the menu (but which is aligned with its purpose for US education); and (2) the very fact that it is designed for US education, which renders it less useful in, say, the UK - because our undergrads and faculty are less tech-savvy (e.g. how many actually use Zotero?).
12 • uberStudent (by dragonmouth on 2013-02-04 13:31:35 GMT from United States)
"The project's website and the slide show which runs during the installation process talk of making the user fluent in the realm of computers and I was expecting tutorials or manuals -- some form of hand holding."
In today's world of proliferating Linux distros, a developer needs a marketing gimmick to differentiate his distro from all the other similar ones. Apparently there is very little to distinguish uberStudent from all the other Ubuntu-based distros other than maybe the desktop used. So the claim that the distro will "make the user fluent in the realm of computers" is nothing more than a marketing ploy.
13 • E17 (by Dave Postles on 2013-02-04 13:32:39 GMT from United Kingdom)
I don't like the file manager - it seems cumbersome.
14 • E17 (by mandog on 2013-02-04 13:56:55 GMT from Peru)
It was my desktop for a couple of years and it was great, I used thunar as the file manager. if i recall correct you could detach the clock and resize, there are loads of themes, animated wall paper, and lots of effects for E17, + E17 does not copy its its own desktop that you can do what you want with. Gnome shell does the same. So why did I stop using E17, vlc did not work very well and I moved on to gnome shell discovered anybody can write and test there own extentions with the built in program just like E17, and that was it
15 • E17 (by Michael Raugh on 2013-02-04 15:07:07 GMT from United States)
Ah, E17! I had a love affair with it between about 2006 and 2008, running it on top of Fedora and Ubuntu. Like Jesse, I liked its speed and configurability. The simplicity of it appealed to me, too. E17 had features in 2007 that KDE4 still hasn't figured out, like easily setting a different wallpaper on each virtual desktop. (Yes, I know you can brute force it with activities ... that's not easy.)
Ultimately I left E17 because of its instability. At that time it was still very much a development project and users were warned that it wasn't meant for production, so I can't fault E17. I just couldn't keep taking half a day to fix my E17 installation every few weeks when a new build would break stuff, so I had to say goodbye. From Jesse's review, things have stabilized a lot; maybe it's time to try E17 again.
16 • E17 interface animations (by Arkanabar on 2013-02-04 15:34:39 GMT from United States)
Jesse, my experience with e17 (with Bodhi 2.0.0) was that some themes had titlebar animations for gaining focus (and similar animations for menu items when selected, or buttons on click or dwell) and others didn't. Odds are that the only way to correct that would have been to use a suitable theme. Also, a lot of interface elements (buttons, especially) didn't scale when I increased default font size, which was nearly always too small for my taste.
17 • E17 = Ewwwwww x 17. (by Sam on 2013-02-04 17:26:22 GMT from United States)
Dear Linux Geeks. For all the times I see Enlightenment described as "beautiful" or whatnot, I always want to wretch. Maybe, just maybe that desktop was beautiful in 1995. Compared to Windows 95, it is quite nice. But certainly by Windows 98 Microsoft was clobbering Enlightenment. Why? Look close at E17. What's wrong with that font? Why are icon edges so blocky even on a high res screen? Where's the design consistency? Why do no two icons look even remotely alike? And with all the configuration options, who the heck has the time to sit and twiddle with the icon sets, the desktop theme, wallpaper, etc., etc., up to the point where looking at the UI doesn't turn your stomach?
18 • Uberstudent (by Sam on 2013-02-04 17:28:20 GMT from United States)
YADUC!
Yet another dumb Ubuntu clone.
Seriously. I downloaded Ubuntu once and installed Grass and QGIS from the repo. Maybe I should have changed the wallpaper, burned it as an ISO and released it as "GEO Linux - Linux for Geographers"? No, on second thought, I'm not that lame.
19 • YADUC (by sunga on 2013-02-04 18:16:29 GMT from Hungary)
Good insight.
Hobby distro builders could not create much innovation in Linux desktop. But when they do like Elementary team does, the result will be unfinished like elementary os. I feel tired when working apps replaced with new unusable replacements.
Today I read that Canonical makes hidden steps to the unknown... http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2013/02/canonical-working-on-new-display-server
This innovation will be proprietary? Who knows? Shuttleworth has enough money to create something new that similar to android's proprietary code.
20 • MariaDB (by San on 2013-02-04 18:33:26 GMT from India)
Looking forward to implement MariaDB on my next project, I admit libraoffice is better as it now in hands of open source , oracle soon realize the power of open source soon
21 • @ 18 & 19 (by mz on 2013-02-04 18:59:02 GMT from United States)
I heard some of the same type of comments about Mint a while back, but they developed their own Shell, Software Center, etc. & are now superior to Ubuntu in the minds of many. Given that this distro seems to only be on their second release I would lay off on the criticism & see what happens in the future.
22 • @18 Uberstudent (by Dave Postles on 2013-02-04 19:49:40 GMT from United Kingdom)
OSGeo does that job - Xubuntu with a vast range of GIS.
23 • MariaDB (by Jeff on 2013-02-04 20:50:29 GMT from United States)
Another great decision for a donation - MariaDB.
24 • Count me among those who've had issues with E17 (by Caitlyn Martin on 2013-02-04 22:53:45 GMT from United States)
I always have liked Enlightenment and the very different approach they bring to the desktop. Sadly, like Jesse and others in this thread, I've just never found it stable enough to use on a regular basis. Oh, and yes, that includes recent builds.
25 • E17 Dissapointment (by RollMeAway on 2013-02-05 00:19:36 GMT from United States)
I have been an avid fan of E17 for the last couple of years.
I find it is very sensitive to themes. Typically you have a good build, most things working, and an new release version breaks the system.
Most times if you change to the "Default" theme, it works again.
Bodhi offers supporting evidence in the fact all their themes have to be rebuilt for Ver. 2. If you are running bodhi-2 make sure your themes are version 2+ or something will not be working.
I am still in disbelief that the "team" is now working on e18, instead of fleshing out and polishing e17. see: http://trac.enlightenment.org/e/wik/CompositeManager
"For E18, the plan is to move to full composited system and maybe even drop the non-composited support. The core will be changed to make better use of this feature."
Sounds like the gnome3/unity/smartphone bug has bitten enlightenment devs also.
Turning OFF composting is one of the first things I do with any system.
26 • Elightenment review (by Earlybird on 2013-02-05 00:28:28 GMT from Canada)
10) Pierre- That was the information I was looking for. Thanks. Greatly appreciated.
17) Sam and 24) Caitlyn Martin - Your comments are appreciated. So I will concentrate on looking at tiling window managers that enhance my workflow, rather than a pretty, buggy, interface (Enlightenment).
Nice thing about this site is the user feedback. For the less experienced who do not want to be beta testers, it is really helpful to get an idea of what you may experience BEFORE getting bitten by bugs. If you are experienced and want to contribute to the development of software, that's great. That's part of what makes open source software so successful. For those of us with limited time, or limited experience, these reviews are really helpful. Question is, do developers of controversial software (eg. - Gnome) even look at, let alone value feedback on sites such as this? (Hope I'm not stirring up a "hornet's nest" by asking....)
27 • Try e17 again with sparkylinux (by stratus on 2013-02-05 01:22:01 GMT from India)
Although I had this e17 working for me, the distro I tested at that time, seems to be old. Now, e17 is coming with sparkylinux (a debian testing - Wheezy distro) I am going to test again.
e17 is a beautiful wmn and uses low resources, and it deserves it had its gtk2, gtk3.
28 • Uberstudent (by Taigong on 2013-02-05 02:17:01 GMT from Canada)
Uberstudent is just what I need: an alternative to Ubuntu ever since they put Unity as the default user interface. I do not install Linux on to any of my computers, just use it on a live USB. I want it be fast to start, good hardware recognition, Asia language input and come with GIMP, Libra Office, multiple browsers, Blender, good draw program, etc . I used to use Ubuntu which took only 45 sec. from push the botton to the system ready. But, Ubuntu switched to Unity, so I start to look for alternative. Uberstudent is the only one that fit my needs. Yes, there are many so called "light weight" distros. They maybe light on the user interface (many of them are not really light), but, they are also light on software in the distro. Therefore, not useful to me. Uberstudent is the first one that fits my need.
There is a previous post criticize it lack of innovative desktop. To me, no innovation in desktop is exactly why I like Uberstudent. All those new distros that came up with those so called innovations in user interfaces made Linux further away from the 99% computer users and made Linux merely a toy for hobbyists.
29 • Fork Oracle! (by M. Edward (Ed) Borasky on 2013-02-05 02:34:34 GMT from United States)
Well ... while we're forking Oracle, how about we take *Java* out of their hands?
30 • @15-setting different wallpapers for different virtual desktops in KDE *is* easy (by Ralph on 2013-02-05 02:54:38 GMT from Canada)
Possibly I misunderstand what you mean by "bruteforcing acitivities" -- but simply going to system settings > workspace behavior > virtual desktops and checking the "different widgets for different desktops" box, allows you to do practically anything with a given virtual desktop. Once this is done changing the wallpaper *at any given time afterward* is just a right click (on the appropriate desktop) away....
31 • Java - another fork? (by Fossilizing Dinosaur on 2013-02-05 08:28:43 GMT from United States)
What, IcedTea wasn't enough? Maybe there's just something wrong with giving someone swiss-army-knife access into your system.
32 • OmniBoot (by greg on 2013-02-05 11:01:21 GMT from United States)
Thanks to Don Manuel for OmniBoot. As a distrohopper, this cuts down on the number of dvds I would otherwise burn. Nice job.
33 • @ 26 Elightenment review (by Earlybird) (by Pierre on 2013-02-05 11:57:33 GMT from Germany)
I am happy if I was able to give some help. :)
I really appreciate that the distrowatch sites give some central platform for discussion on some recent topics.
I guess that developers will check feedback here when their work gets some attention by the distrowatch team, but I doubt they really always are looking for the feedback by the users in the comments section. Or at least I cannot see that any feedback would have let to some elementary change at any project. ;)
And an addition:
I chose i3 over awesome because it is a lot easier in configuration because it's using plain text config files which are very easy to read and understand. awesome uses Lua files as configuration files which makes them a lot more flexible but more difficult to understand.
Additionally the i3 team has a great documentation on their homepage and although it is less flexible in configuration and using extensions it is more flexible by organizing the windows on the desktop because it is not using fixed schemes. You decide on your own by starting new programs how they will align and you can easily reorder the windows with simple keyboard shortcuts.
With dmenu as launcher you have a very nice, fast and easy way to find and start the apps you want, no taking care or searching for the right menus - but this is usable in awesome as well. :)
And the big advantage over KDE and co: very fast workflow, starts extremely fast, no bling-bling that interrupts the workflow additionally.
With getting more used to it there are a few more very nice features like the scratchpad, which makes it easy to have a frequently needed program always at hand.
The video that made me use i3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wx0eNaGzAZU
You see, I really love my i3 window manager. :) Before that I switched frequently between Xfce and KDE with looks at Gnome and Enlightenment, openbox etc. from time to time.
Now I just use the apps I prefer most. Configured Qt and Gtk+ to look quite the same but 'oldish'.
34 • i3 Window Manager (by DavidEF on 2013-02-05 14:48:20 GMT from United States)
I've never heard of i3wm. I was curious, so I went to their website and read their stated goals. Does anyone know how well they meet each of those goals? I'm especially interested in the one about multi-monitor support. I've never seen it done right in linux. Has the i3wm dev team finally figured it out? What do they mean about not being bloated or fancy? Do they limit the user's ability to make their desktop pleasant to use? And what about the other goals they listed? Please be as objective as possible. Thanks!
35 • Java Fork (by Arkanabar on 2013-02-05 19:32:46 GMT from United States)
@29: Isn't there already a Java fork in IcedTea? Now all we have to do is drive its use and adoption forward.
36 • Java - or not. (by Fossilizing Dinosaur on 2013-02-06 05:02:59 GMT from United States)
Or maybe we should stop going down the Java trail ...
37 • Maui OS (by Alex on 2013-02-06 05:27:43 GMT from Canada)
Has anyone tried this out? Looks interesting.
38 • @ 34 • i3 Window Manager (by DavidEF) (by Pierre on 2013-02-06 11:08:21 GMT from Germany)
Hey David,
it is hard to be objective when it comes to personal considerations about how well developers meet a project's goals or not.
Multi monitor support is working great for me, because the multiple virtual desktops and the different monitors are handled in a way that suites my style of working a lot.
Nevertheless that might differ much from what you think about it.
In fact I find it the most logical way of working with different monitors because switching the virtual desktop on one monitor does not change the virtual desktop of the other monitor. Which is in fact the case for most of the common WMs and DEs.
Would be the best, if you try that for yourself.
"What do they mean about not being bloated or fancy?"
I think they mean that the window manager does nothing you did not want or did not configure, it delivers only the things you really need of a window manager to work. In fact this means no 'bling bling' or effects you simple do not need to get work done because they see this as a swiss army knife for developers and administrators or any average user that loves to use a computer as efficiently as possible. A i3-developer's podcast tells that they aim at stability, usability and documentation more than to have a lot features which only a handful of people might even recognize. Additionally they try to keep things minimal so you never lose oversight of things and the ways you might be able to do things.
"And what about the other goals they listed?"
Because I do not know which exactly you mean, just let me tell this: They aim at having a very well documented window manager that is comparable to wmii but, as mentioned, better documented, better hackable and easy to be configured.
They try to keep things as simple and stable as possible.
So hope I was able to help you out.
Greetings from Germany
Pierre
39 • @38 i3wm (by DavidEF on 2013-02-06 14:01:09 GMT from United States)
Thanks Pierre! That was pretty much the kind of response I was looking for. I did also watch the video linked by Earlybird above. And, I've read some of the documentation on their website, as well.
I'm starting to see that the configurability of the desktop is purposefully limited by the scope of the devs' vision of what a desktop SHOULD BE. In other words, there are certain things they don't want you to have in your desktop environment, so they make no provision for those things to be added in. Seems they "know best". I suppose it won't be my new desktop of choice. I would recommend it for anyone looking for minimalist, however, as it does have some cool minimalist features.
40 • @39 • @38 i3wm (by DavidEF) (by Pierre on 2013-02-06 14:44:45 GMT from Germany)
You're welcome! :)
I already had the idea that this might be a possible answere.
The i3 window manager is configurable but only considering the delivered features. As already told in an other post the awesome window manager might suite you or many other much more, because you can quite easily extend it with Lua and there are many extensions already available.
For me i3 fits 'like the fist on the eyes' as we german guys would call it (in german actually). For others who need more possibilities for tweaking their window manager, want and need it a little more feature rich and can or even want to live with preset schemes and orders for windows, awesome might be the better choice. :)
So, awesome might be awesome for you too and you maybe want to have a look at it.
A link can be found at post #10.
Greetings from Germany
Pierre
41 • @40 Awesome (by DavidEF on 2013-02-06 16:48:41 GMT from United States)
Pierre,
Thanks again! I looked at the Awesome website a little, and it does seem to be a little more like what I would be looking for. I personally don't mind utilizing my computer's resources for more feature-rich DE's, but I do have some older hardware that could benefit from something more minimalist, yet still extensible, like Awesome WM. It just makes sense to me to let the user decide how much "bloat" they really want. I will look into it a little more as I have time.
42 • Enlightenment... drool and hope (by bakanaika on 2013-02-06 19:40:24 GMT from Sweden)
If there is one theme that comes to mind with successive Linux reiterations and releases is the simplification and winnowing of all the apps, programs and wigits with all their cool, cute and sometimes valuable settings controls. When posing the question of why anyone chooses a particular distro cool and qute (a pun) are not to be ignored.
every time a control is added it increases complexity which means it has to be checked and verified for compatibility with each successive update. Bugs are of course a huge problem and apparently the solution most window managers (Gnome, KDE, Cinnamon, etc.) utilize is not to use many of them (simplicity.) Some might call this dumbing down but the distro managing team might call it sanity (another attempt at humor.) I like the ability to control EVERYTHING but understand the higher challenge.
the Enlightenment unstable user experience... seems logical in this light. With a bit of debugging related to current drivers, kernels and such it might be usable. For me stability is important. When reading about a cool program like Enlightenment all I can do is drool and hope.
Am I wrong on this? It seems to be a managerial trend. A juggler can only keep so many balls in the air so to speak.
:)
43 • E17 (by Arve Eriksson on 2013-02-07 06:02:10 GMT from Sweden)
I've always wanted to try Enlightenment seriously, but I've always ended up configuring it to bits within days (hours?). Maybe it's my graphics hardware - normally an ATI-powered machine, but I have an Nvidia card too - but as soon as I enabled compositing, it crashed - and I could never get back in to change it back... I'll have to see about giving it another live fire test.
I have to say I'm very happy to see reviews of actual desktops, and not only distributions.
44 • Enlightenment (by Landor on 2013-02-08 08:07:43 GMT from Canada)
I personally can't take Enlightenment as a serious project. Oh, I know, a few of you are going to start waving your arms around over that one, but the bottom line is that it's completely true.
All of the people used E-17 and got caught up in how 'cool' and 'flashy' it was. The whole, 'Ohhhhh, Shiny' concept. They baited the hook well too. There was always rumours of it going stable, and talk of whiz-bang features. Now what? Now they're going back to development of a (you watch) completely new version that won't be anything like the old one.
When (and if) E-17 support drops, and they whip out this new version that throws everyone in a panic, what happens? Jeff Hoogland (or whatever) might pick up development of it to keep it going for his 'userbase'? lol Seriously too. Funny stuff.
The Enlightenment Devs seem to love just hacking away, period. E-17 finally reaches some sort of stability and they're giving it up for E-18. Amazing. That's not a project anyone can take seriously.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
45 • e17 (by David L on 2013-02-08 13:28:04 GMT from United States)
I have said it before but will say it again. If you want a stable e17 experience built on top of a stable distro try Slacke17 on top of Slackware 14. You can always spice things up with Slackbuilds. I have not had any problems on my machine : DELL INSPIRON 9100 2.4 P4, ATI 9700, 2 G's of Ram.
David
46 • UberStudent (by bengalbard on 2013-02-08 15:41:36 GMT from India)
Uberstudent is way better than other education oriented spin-offs like Edubuntu. Off course I can install vanilla ubuntu and download all the educational packages from repositories. Uberstudent does that job for me saving a lot of time and headache. For the students and researchers, it provides really essential tools that work flawlessly.
The desktop doesn't look nice, its just another ubuntu clone; but it does its job perfectly.
47 • Uberstudent (by Jay on 2013-02-09 05:45:02 GMT from Canada)
I don't know that I'd use this distro or not. I'm not a student but want to do some self-directed studying. So I'd use the research, mental acuity games and productivity apps, but there's a lot of stuff I'd never use. Such as the mla formatting and essay writing stuff and much more.
For me it seems to make more sense to pick and choose what I find useful from Uberstudent and avoid a lot of extra bloat. I've worked hard to remove some of the extra stuff I don't need from Xubuntu 12.04 and adding my favourite applications not mention all the customization and configuration I've done.
(I'm on the fence about Firefox right now may keep it just to test websites in. Would love to hear some of your thoughts on that)
Two good things came from downloading the Uberstudent iso and installing in a VM.
1. I learned how to "intergrate" websites into the desktop experience (opening chrome without the address bar and tabs from a menu entry of my choice). I don't know if ubuntu webapps project would be any better, I've found some tutorials to add ubuntu's webapps intergration but it requires to many dependances for unity so that bloats my system to which is why I don't use vanilla ubuntu.
2. finding many new apps I wanted to try
Finally I did go over to uberstudents forums and thanked Stephen Ewen for his hard work on his project, but I want to thank him again here. Thank you! :)
48 • graphical wizard (by PatrikJA on 2013-02-10 14:45:17 GMT from Sweden)
"The first time I logged into Enlightenment a graphical wizard appeared and walked me through a few initial configuration steps. I think E17 is the only desktop I have used which has an initial setup phase, so right away we are dealing with a unique experience."
Kde3 and now Trinity also have a first-time-guide, even if some distros turn it of. It includes things like language, system behaviour, effects, themes.
49 • Jesse's E17 Review (by Pierre Champage on 2013-02-10 20:35:06 GMT from Canada)
Unfortunately, Jesse's review does not convey the real E17 experience.
If you want to see what Enlightenment is really like, you have to use a preconfigured E17 profile. Try either the latest version of Bodhi or Quelitu Jazz.
Quelitu uses LXDE as its main interface but has a preconfigured E17 profile. With the ISO, logout out and log back in using the Quelitu Jazz session, 'lubuntu' as username, and leaving the password blank. You also need to reset the theme to get the full experience... (see details in video and at website below).
For a quick look and details, see video (Quelitu LXDE & Jazz):
http://youtu.be/HCspWke_RII
and the Quelitu website:
http://wavesofthefuture.net/computers/download-telecharger-descargas-free-gratuit-gratis-quelitu.shtml
CONCLUSION: I tried E17 on Ubuntu 2 years ago just for testing. I have been using E17 exclusively (Quelitu Jazz) ever since.
Although, there are still some need for improvement, E17 is JUST AMAZING. It is actually LIGHTER than LXDE (see Quelitu's comparison chart), and in my opinion even better than Unity.
In Bodhi, it lack a DASH-like feature for quick access to files, but Quelitu offers Qx Hub, which allows you to quickly search and open files, apps, and configuration options similarly to the Dash in Unity.
A year ago, someone I know bought a MacBooks for $1,100 and was showing me all its shiny features... like the toolbar icon animations. I was working with a 5-year-old $150 PC refurbished with $Free Quelitu Jazz... at the time.
I started showing him Jazz, which has the toolbar icon animations as well and a lot more (see video above)...
Then I realized my mistake: E17 is lighter than Mac, has more bling than Mac, and is free! He never talked to me again... Ooops!
50 • E17 (by Jay on 2013-02-11 04:41:04 GMT from Canada)
@ 49 Most anything is better than Unity!
I run two desktops both dual cores (1 is Intel core2duo, other is AMD Athlon X64) both have nvidia cards (For video cards I've tried unity on a 512Mb 8500GT silent, a 1Gb 9800GT and a 1Gb Quadro 600) 3Gb and 4Gb ram respectively and I found unity sluggish on them both. It always felt slow to login to unity, once logged in the dash had an annoying delay before popping up. Btw the Oldest of the two, the intel, is from 2009.
Number of Comments: 50
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