this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2024
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Linux

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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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[–] [email protected] 41 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Enlightenment was such a cool window manager. Shame the development pace was (and still is) slow and it never really took off.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I think even Samsung was funding it for a while. They took a long time building libraries supporting rendering on X11 what I remember. I used the 0.16.x version with my 1GHz Athlon years ago, it was very cool.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

I believe they actually adopted it for their Tizen OS, unless I completely invented that memory.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Is there even someone left?

I only tried it around 2008 or so and it was extremely slow paced back then while looking like the interface from a sci-fi movie.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago

There are still some people doing commits but I think the original devs have moved on.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

it's definitely progressed a lot since 2008, but the last couple of years have been extremely slow

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

You don't update the perfection

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

having support for the newer wayland protocols in the wayland session wouldn't hurt

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 month ago

I love seeing these screenshots of old Linux distributions as it makes me realize how much things have improved.

I’m just a consumer but I really appreciate the work everyone has done and I ain’t going back to Windows anymore.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 month ago (1 children)

That was probably close to one of the last versions of enlightenment I used regularly. It was such a fun WM to use at the time. If I remember correctly, GNOME and KDE were really ramping up about then and e fell behind.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago (1 children)

TRANSPARENT TERMINALS! Haha it felt so futuristic and to this day I can't run a terminal without a little transparency. Enlightenment was my first experience of it.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

I mostly use it because it looks nice, but I've found that with limited screen space, they're actually really useful! I can have the man pages or a stack exchange open in the background, and don't need to constantly switch back and forth

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I ran enlightenment for a long time. It was great.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

If there was an updated version these days i'd be fully inclined to run it, haven't followed the project in more than a decade though

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago

I ran Storm Linux for a short while in about.... 2001-2002. Got it on a CD in a misc pack of disks from some Linux distro vendor.

It was supposed to be a server oriented distro, secured more than others, and ran Enlightenment for a desktop. Overall, it was a reasonable distro, but didn't gain enough general support and devs to keep it up and running. The group behind it folded after a short while.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Do you ever miss something you've never had?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (2 children)

It looks quite usable, to be honest. I would have loved to use it back then.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

I really enjoyed the diversity of WM/DE back then, and the innovation when new ones like Enlightenment were released!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

E was one of the best. They even created their own sound subsystem, ESD, which became the de facto default for Linux desktop sound for quite a while.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Text rendering sure has come a long way. Those topic links look absolutely horrendous.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

Well also, 1024x768 was wicked sweet at the time

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I have to say these desktops look to damn confusing

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

There are way too many bars that look like dockable windows, the stuff at the bottom. Lots of stuff looking like decorations (but in general these buttons are confusing af even macOS is better than that.

And at the top it looks like the whole desktop is a window with decoration??

In general low contrast, too many strange thin things, no clear icons.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

This is a screenshot of window running a VM, so yes it is a window running a whole desktop. The top window decoration, menu bar, and the very bottom panel are not part of the old desktop, but rather from the modern host system.

I agree though, it is confusing. Main problem (and I remember this) is that this is Gnome with Enlightenment as a wm, and Enlightenment had aspirations to be more than a wm. So there's some duplication of effort there, and no integration/communication between the two projects (Gnome in the next version used sawfish/sawmill as wm, which was more coordinated with Gnome).

Enlightenment has/had its own toolkit, which you can see here in the DOX window, which is different from Gtk. Enlightenment also has a bunch of widgets, like the top bar and the stuff in the bottom corners, which are non-Gnome and clash with and are on top of the Gnome panel. The desktop icons are also zero pixels under the Enlightenment top bar, which suggest the people responsible weren't coordinating at all.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

Interesting! This explains a lot, thanks!

Happy to be a Linux user in 2024!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Of course I am not talking about Windows ;)