In the late 90s our desktops on Linux literally looked like this [1]. Of course, that seems to have become lost to history. I bet E is still themable but you have to go back to 1999 when it was super exciting.
I saw it, it's actually pretty cool. But I suspect it's a very niche thing, and you might see someone build a third party extension.
Most people agree that a screen should feel like a physical desk where windows can pile, overlap, and scatter naturally. Would you use a tiling "system" for your physical desk? I highly doubt it.
Niri's infinite scrolling approach makes that into a rigid filmstrip sequence. It might be interesting for some people though.
The question is whether most people use a screen like a desk. Nearly everyone I know has a window maximized all the time, and occasionally floats a window to drag or something extremely temporary (e.g. calc). Niri has a significantly lower impedance mismatch with that workflow (and it can temporarily float windows).
Where they could improve is hotkeys: they are all heavily reliant on them, which is unreasonably hostile to non tech users.
Humans aren't very good at identifying what they need from tech. The earliest example is the spreadsheet: no average user would have asked for it because there was no skeomorphism to draw from. We would have had graph paper with a single char per cell if we went with skeomorphic.
Cascading window managers are objectively terrible. Obviously we don't force better solutions onto people, but they have very few redeeming qualities.
Papers in piles on a desk, where each paper is in active read/write mode can’t be optimal in any shape, way or form?
A tiling wm, or scrolling such as niri, solves this very well
It’s of course designed for people actually using a computer for work rather than leisure.
Once you are used to it it’s hard to move back to windows being scattered all over.
This is nice and all, but it doesnt fit my workflow. I have a 4k monitor so I can have 5-6 windows open at once, they are all of different sizes because they are all showing different info and they are all in different places because its physical place is determined by its usage frequency.
In this setup theres the assumption that theres only ever two things Im looking at, and they are equally important because each one is 50/50.
Even if two can be configured to 3, and the 50/50 ratio can be changed, thats not the point, the desktop arrangement is a reflection of the task I am working on, not a rigid pattern enforced by a window manager.
I find these types of wms very bizarre. They must fit some people's mental model but its so far from being useful for me, I just find it fascinating that anyone could find this useful.
Sadly enlightenment broke backwards compatibility with old themes so often basically nothing works anymore. You have to search for themes specifically made for the new versions, of which there are very few.
Quite a problem since the default theme (of the prior version at least) was a mess.
Day #1277 of wishing xfce rewrited all their stuff in the E libraries so they and Enlightenment did a dragon-ball-style fusion and became the one lightweight desktop environment to rule them all.
Yeah, they all have one quirk or another which seems to make the app your trying to work on impossible. For me, it was always the integration of async event loops w/ the widget framework.
As for the decade old roast, theres a few things I disagree with.
...
Using Qt, one would write:
auto widget = new QWidget{parent};
widget->show();
2 lines, all obvious, all working as expected.
...
No. It's 2 lines, which makes it "not at all obvious." Those 2 lines have so much baked in functionality, I have no idea what its doing until I read 100 pages of documentation and become an "expert" on the internals of that specific UI toolkit.
...
But let’s go into some details. Remember the quote about types? EFL takes that philosophy seriously. Everything is a pointer to something called Evas_Object, which translates to void *. Those knowledgeable in the horrible language of C know it’s a pointer to anything. And so it is.
...
Okay, now we see where the motivation to roast comes from. This guy hates the C language itself, so he's going to hate any GUI toolkit coded in C.
Theres no argument from me that C's syntax makes coding GUIs based on object hierarchies more difficult than languages with proper OO support, but the alternatives have their own problems as well.
Which is odd, because I've written a bit of gtk 3 code.
I don't know, I don't want to say anything negative, only that I'm looking forward to using enlightenment again. :|
Much like physicists who spend their careers searching for a "grand unified theory of everything," I'm a software engineer searching for the UI toolkit that runs on everything.
I wanted it to be enlightenment, way back in the day,
Before becomming enthralled with the widgets of gtk,
Gave both IUP and Agar a try, but much to my dismay,
There were quirks to be found, so I tossed them away.
Delighted to see Enlightenment going strong. Brings back great memories of my first dive into linux in high school in ‘96. I was blown away by the creative breadth of desktop choices.
Totally. I don't even know why we're still talking about that obscene glob of bloatware. Now excuse me while I get back to hacking up some Lisp in ed on my 80x25 text console.
In the late 90s our desktops on Linux literally looked like this [1]. Of course, that seems to have become lost to history. I bet E is still themable but you have to go back to 1999 when it was super exciting.
[1] https://i.redd.it/fravza9fzie31.jpg
(In fact, it's kind of funny and sad that the state of the Linux desktop and the ambition level hasn't really changed much in 25 years)
> the Linux desktop and the ambition level hasn't really changed much in 25 years
I find that totally wrong. Look at niri - I can imagine MS and Apple will introduce scrollable wm features in the coming years.
I saw it, it's actually pretty cool. But I suspect it's a very niche thing, and you might see someone build a third party extension.
Most people agree that a screen should feel like a physical desk where windows can pile, overlap, and scatter naturally. Would you use a tiling "system" for your physical desk? I highly doubt it.
Niri's infinite scrolling approach makes that into a rigid filmstrip sequence. It might be interesting for some people though.
The question is whether most people use a screen like a desk. Nearly everyone I know has a window maximized all the time, and occasionally floats a window to drag or something extremely temporary (e.g. calc). Niri has a significantly lower impedance mismatch with that workflow (and it can temporarily float windows).
Where they could improve is hotkeys: they are all heavily reliant on them, which is unreasonably hostile to non tech users.
Humans aren't very good at identifying what they need from tech. The earliest example is the spreadsheet: no average user would have asked for it because there was no skeomorphism to draw from. We would have had graph paper with a single char per cell if we went with skeomorphic.
Cascading window managers are objectively terrible. Obviously we don't force better solutions onto people, but they have very few redeeming qualities.
Papers in piles on a desk, where each paper is in active read/write mode can’t be optimal in any shape, way or form?
A tiling wm, or scrolling such as niri, solves this very well It’s of course designed for people actually using a computer for work rather than leisure.
Once you are used to it it’s hard to move back to windows being scattered all over.
This is nice and all, but it doesnt fit my workflow. I have a 4k monitor so I can have 5-6 windows open at once, they are all of different sizes because they are all showing different info and they are all in different places because its physical place is determined by its usage frequency.
In this setup theres the assumption that theres only ever two things Im looking at, and they are equally important because each one is 50/50.
Even if two can be configured to 3, and the 50/50 ratio can be changed, thats not the point, the desktop arrangement is a reflection of the task I am working on, not a rigid pattern enforced by a window manager.
I find these types of wms very bizarre. They must fit some people's mental model but its so far from being useful for me, I just find it fascinating that anyone could find this useful.
I miss the days when my Linux desktop looked like the cover art of a Fear Factory album.
Sadly enlightenment broke backwards compatibility with old themes so often basically nothing works anymore. You have to search for themes specifically made for the new versions, of which there are very few.
Quite a problem since the default theme (of the prior version at least) was a mess.
E16 was the height of cool when it came out. I would have people see my desktop and wonder what the hell I was running.
If my memory serves my right, theming was built on-top of C preprocessor.
Strong Kaleidoscope vibes. I love it!
Day #1277 of wishing xfce rewrited all their stuff in the E libraries so they and Enlightenment did a dragon-ball-style fusion and became the one lightweight desktop environment to rule them all.
Funny how Enlightment was "too heavyweight" at the time it was released, and is now considered lightweight.
Nice to see this project moving forward.
Enlightment is the most complete ( although not complete ) UI ecosystem in C that I've seen.
Yet not without its detractors. I still remember this brutal roast of its C API from over a decade ago.[0]
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20150308153847/http://what.theda...
Yeah, they all have one quirk or another which seems to make the app your trying to work on impossible. For me, it was always the integration of async event loops w/ the widget framework.
As for the decade old roast, theres a few things I disagree with.
...
Using Qt, one would write:
auto widget = new QWidget{parent}; widget->show();
2 lines, all obvious, all working as expected.
...
No. It's 2 lines, which makes it "not at all obvious." Those 2 lines have so much baked in functionality, I have no idea what its doing until I read 100 pages of documentation and become an "expert" on the internals of that specific UI toolkit.
...
But let’s go into some details. Remember the quote about types? EFL takes that philosophy seriously. Everything is a pointer to something called Evas_Object, which translates to void *. Those knowledgeable in the horrible language of C know it’s a pointer to anything. And so it is.
...
Okay, now we see where the motivation to roast comes from. This guy hates the C language itself, so he's going to hate any GUI toolkit coded in C.
Theres no argument from me that C's syntax makes coding GUIs based on object hierarchies more difficult than languages with proper OO support, but the alternatives have their own problems as well.
At the end of the day, its good to have choices.
More than GNOME?
You got me there.
I forgot about GNOME/gtk+
Which is odd, because I've written a bit of gtk 3 code.
I don't know, I don't want to say anything negative, only that I'm looking forward to using enlightenment again. :|
Much like physicists who spend their careers searching for a "grand unified theory of everything," I'm a software engineer searching for the UI toolkit that runs on everything.
I wanted it to be enlightenment, way back in the day,
Before becomming enthralled with the widgets of gtk,
Gave both IUP and Agar a try, but much to my dismay,
There were quirks to be found, so I tossed them away.
:|
Delighted to see Enlightenment going strong. Brings back great memories of my first dive into linux in high school in ‘96. I was blown away by the creative breadth of desktop choices.
This bring happy memories of picking WM here https://web.archive.org/web/20110718042510/http://www.plig.o... Too bad the web-site is no longer alive.
I remember trying to compile it on my 486DX2 with 16MB of ram. I ran out of swap at some point.
Totally. I don't even know why we're still talking about that obscene glob of bloatware. Now excuse me while I get back to hacking up some Lisp in ed on my 80x25 text console.
Does it work with Wayland yet?
In the article: “Enlightenment 0.28 continues to boast both X11 and Wayland support”
Last time I tried (few years back) Wayland support was at alpha basically and too buggy for actual use...
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