Enlightenment (software)

History

Features

E16

• Enlightenment allows the user to have a grid of workspaces called virtual desktops. Switching between them is achieved by hurling the mouse cursor to the edge of the screen, at which the desktop appears to slide across to reveal the next. The maximum grid size is eight by eight desktops, and the user can have 32 grids, making 2048 total possible desktop spaces.
• The desktop dragbar allows a desktop to be 'slid back' to reveal the desktop 'underneath'. The E team use the analogy of sheets of paper, stacked on top of each other, where the user can slide off a piece partially to reveal what's beneath.
• Window grouping: the ability to put windows into groups so that they can all be moved, resized, closed, etc. together.
• Iconification: reducing windows to an icon, stored in 'iconboxes' that can be placed about the screen.
• Ability to change window borders.
• Users can create keybindings for actions such as maximizing windows, launching programs, moving between desktops and moving the mouse cursor, hence making it possible to use Enlightenment solely with a keyboard. e16keyedit is a graphical program for simplifying keybinding creation.
• It contains a command line interface, eesh, which affects the window manager actions, and makes it possible to write powerful shell scripts controlling most features on the desktop, from settings to single window manipulations.
• Newer versions include compositing effects such as fading and transparency.

E17

• Fully themeable, with both a menu-based and command-line theme-changing interface
• A built-in file manager
• Icons on the desktop
• Virtual desktop grid feature
• Modular design: can dynamically load external modules. Currently available modules include:
• * Pager: Switching between different virtual desktops
• * iBar: Launching applications
• * iBox: Holding minimized applications
• * Engage : A dock similar to the Mac OS X dock
• * Dropshadow: Provides a drop-shadow for every window
• * Clock: Analog and digital clock
• * Battery: Monitoring a laptop battery
• * CPUFreq: Monitoring a laptop CPU
• * Temperature: Monitoring laptop temperature
• * Illume: Modifies the user interface of enlightenment to work cleanly on a mobile device
• * Composite: Allows the user to run enlightenment with composite effects
• * Tiling: Allows setting up tiling on specified virtual desktops
• One or more shelves to manage the gadget placement and appearance on the screen
• Animated, interactive desktop backgrounds, menu items, iBar items and desktop widgets are all possible
• Window shading, iconification, maximising and sticky settings
• Customizable key bindings
• Support for internationalization
• Standardized: supports all needed standards

  E21

• Greatly improved Wayland support
• New gadget infrastructure
• Wizard improvements
• Video backgrounds

  E22

• Greatly improved Wayland support
• Improvements to new gadget infrastructure
• Added a sudo/ssh askpass utility gui
• Meson build system
• Tiling policy improvements
• Integrated per-window volume controls

  E23

• New padded screenshot option
• Meson build now is the build system
• Music Control now supports rage MPRIS dbus protocol
• Add Bluez5 support with totally new and redone module and gadget
• Add dpms option to turn it off or on
• Alt-tab window switcher allows moving of windows while alt-tabbing
• Many bug fixes, compile warning fixes, etc.
• Massive improvements to Wayland support

  Release history

Developers

• Carsten "Rasterman" Haitzler: lead developer
• Kim "kwo" Woelders: E16 maintainer
• Hisham "CodeWarrior" Mardam Bey
• Christopher "devilhorns" Michael
• Mike "zmike" Blumenkrantz

• Geoff "Mandrake" Harrison