Enlightenment (software)

Enlightenment (usually abbreviated with E) to German "enlightenment", is an open source desktop environment for X and Wayland, which was launched by Carsten Haitzler 1997. The first version was a hack of the famous Window Manager FVWM and was called fvwm XPM (raster Mans FVWM ). Over time, the number of components and the functionality is as far grown that currently there is no longer a mere window manager, but rather a full-fledged desktop environment.

History

Enlightenment, however, was subsequently developed as a standalone system and enjoyed great popularity for a long time due to its high configurability compared to this time common systems like TWM or FVWM. With the published 1999 version 0:16 (also E16 or DR16 ) it reached its greatest stability and distribution (including as a base for GNOME 1). Over the following years, the development seemed to fall asleep and bug fixes, it has only been published. While Haitzler focused on a completely new development, took over in 2003 with the release of DR16.6 Kim " kwo " Woelders the care of the DR16 branch.

Haitzlers design goal with the version 0:17 (also E17 or DR17 ) to design Enlightenment as configurable as possible in the areas of appearance and operation, and to be guided by work environments in the function is. This means that in addition to the Enlightenment window manager has also a built-in file manager and several combined under the name of Enlightenment Foundation Libraries (EFL ) function libraries.

For a long time the successor in development E17 was released for download only in an alpha version in CVS. In November 2009 it was announced that the electronics giant Samsung will support the development of Enlightenment in order to use the program in their own products. Presented in November 2010, Electrolux ( Frigidaire ) in initial cooperation with Profusion a refrigerator before, its embedded system with the EFL libraries is operated.

The first E17- Release (ZERO ) was published on December 21, 2012. It is available in the official repositories of Debian, Sabayon Linux, Ubuntu, Arch Linux, Fedora, PCLinuxOS and OpenSUSE. It is the default desktop in Bodhi Linux.

Enlightenment Foundation Libraries

The Enlightenment Foundation Libraries, or EFL short, are a set of open source software libraries for graphics that have arisen out of the Enlightenment project. They are developed (now acquired by Fixstars Solutions) of Enlightenment.org with some assistance from Terra Soft. The aim of the project is to create the EFL a flexible, yet powerful and easy to use set of tools, both the possibilities of Enlightenment as well as other projects that are based on the EFL improved. These libraries should be kept portable and optimized to work on devices such as PDAs even. Libraries written for the development version 00:17 window manager.