Enlightenment on an aging system. Dare I?
 

I recently got my hands on a Latitude D810 and free license to play around with it. I'm kind of interested in trying out Enlightenment, right now I'm running Debian Etch with whatever GNOME it came with. Thing is, not only is this an old system, but it's a dying system, with a crippled ATI card that causes trouble anytime it has to work hard enough to build up heat.

Do you think Enlightenment is worth messing with for a [relative]noob who probably couldn't fix stuff if he broke it, running on a dated system, whom also is not interested enough to suffer a significant performance hit if thats what it will take?

(if not, do you have any suggestions of a customizeable, purdy-lookin', alternative?)

First of all, any (relative or non-relative) noob can install and use Enlightenment if you're willing to read some of the documentation.
Because Enlightenment is lighter and uses less resources than GNOME you shouldn't have to worry about a performance hit, it'll probably be a bit faster.

PS. If you're looking for a quick window manager that's (relatively) easy to configure, try fluxbox!

Thanks, looks like I have a task tonight. (I <3 documentation)

Mostly, I wanted to try Enlightenment because I understand it comes recommended, and I can really personalize the hell out of the interface. Generally I prefer the terminal, the amazing speed and power is. . . amazing (*facepalm*), but until I can run a system GUI free, may as well get creative with it.

It depends on what version are you talking about and what your hardware is.

It also depends on what version of enlightenment are you talking about (e17 vs e16). Can't be more concrete without any real information.

A quick google search for "Latitude D810" would return as much hardware info as anyone would need, in the top few results. Seemed more elegant than making a huge - or even small - list, I certainly didn't say I had a D810 for bragging purposes. :P

I was using E16, attempting to upgrade to E17, but fast was not something I found enlightenment to be, so I booted it and just went with Fluxbox, thanks for the post though.

"upgrade" is not the correct term. e16 and e17 are completely unrelated things. The similarity is on the name, and that's all. e16 is a simple wm (with some advanced features, but still, a wm) based on imlib, which is a simple tiny graphics library for -very fast- 2d operations.

e17 is a full desktop (or desktop shell like they like to call it) which has everything (or at least, it aims to) that a modern desktop needs. It's not based on imlib, but in a built-from-the-ground framework with lots of pieces and with a level of complexity which is above this of e16.

About it being fast... well, it's got lots of useless eyecandy. For the amount of eyecandy that it does, yes: it's fast. Any other wm not based on imlib would be much slower with that amount of "nice" things, because here there's no compositing involved, and as such, there's no hardware acceleration.

I have very little experience with e17, but I really don't like the project very much (with all due respect to the great work of mr. rasterman and co.) About e16, it looks nice to play with it for a few hours, but I never found it usable for any practical purpose.

Fluxbox is overall a very good window manager, a good choice. With the time you can always investigate and migrate to something that fits you better, if you decide that flux is not enough for you.

In any case, the choice is yours ;)

might explain the dependencies e17 had. i didn't really do much research, which was a folly of overzealousness, and assumed it was a little bolt on system. I saw a few themes that I wanted to rip apart and poke around inside that reqed e17, and tossed out the notion when confronted with that list.

fluxbox is really awesome, though I've run into a customization headache or two, the configuration scripts are clean and powerful, but have been occasionally persnickety for me. I think i'll keep it, but i'm still a nub so i have gnome for when i get stuck, which hasn't happened yet. wanted to replace it with xfce, which I'm passably familiar with. debian didn't quite like it though. haven't tried to build it from source though. i don't think i will until i get bored and restless one late night or something.

I just want to encourage anybody I can to use Enlightenment, so I'd say yes. If your video card blows up or something, you can buy another one, right? :)

^Unfortunately these cursed dells aren't so easily dealt with. I could buy a new card, but it would probably be as outdated as the rest. That would be compounded in difficulty by the fact that the very silicon of the video cards on these bastards are custom cut, and the model is very near to the point of no ongoing support.I also have no moneyz :*{
I tried Enlightenment, and my computer sure didn't like it (i wasn't a big fan either). I think I'll punish this thing until the magic smoke escapes, but it has much more suffering ahead. Don't want to let it off too soon or easy.

When I can afford an additional computer, I think I might cut this thing open, and cannibalize it's sweet entrails. I figure *in theory* I should be able to make a mini-ish computer with the right parts in the right spatial configuration, at less monetary cost, and at greater intellectual gain than actually purchasing a real mini-computer. I have opposable thumbs, damnit, but what good are they without half-cocked mad-science schemes?




window managers today, THE WORLD tomorrow. . . .

MUAHAHAHAHAHA!