Enlightenment's status with regard to 14.2? Or other minimalist WM/DM's

So one of the last times I tinkered with the idea of running E on slackware was in 2003... I ended up writing this guide for those that wanted to install E16 on slackware 9. I believe this was just before or after Pat pulled Enlightenment due to conflicting libraries or something to that effect.

This was a long time ago, soon after I dove into my professional career and got away from desktop linux in lieu of solaris/rhel in the global corporate IT world. Im so far removed from desktop linux it isn't even funny... That being said, I'M BACK!

I've cobbled together a test setup on a laptop with 14.2, works great, but now I'm jonesing for some E. Is that the cool minimalist setup to run these days? Or have others taken over (*box, fvwm, kde, etc?) Recommendations welcome!

If you search this forum, you'll find an Enlightenment thread where someone has taken the effort to create an Enlightenment install for Slackware.

I run XFCE now, but I was an fvwm2 fan for a looong time.

I typically run XFCE, but, if I want something lighter then I'll go with Fluxbox.

Originally Posted by Richard Cranium If you search this forum, you'll find an Enlightenment thread where someone has taken the effort to create an Enlightenment install for Slackware.

Here.

But a window manager is only one component of a graphical environment.

So what do you call minimalist: is it the window manager or that graphical environment as a whole, which can also include one or more panels, a graphical file manager, a session manager and more?

Slackware contains several windows manager: twm, blackbox, fluxbox, fvwm, xfwm4, kwin, wmaker

Some are usually used as component of a desktop (xfwm4 in Xfce, kwin in KDE), others also include some other features of a desktop like fluxbox.

The LXDE desktop usually includes the openbox window manager but others can be used instead like fvwm (that's what we do in Slint).

And in most desktops it is easy to replace the window manager. For instance Slint ships marco with MATE, but you can replace it easily with compiz or metacity or even kwin of xfwm4. marco, compiz and metacity are easy to set in MATE using mate-tweak, but I just tried in it "kwin --replace &", "xfwm4 --replace &" and "fvwm2 --replace &": all work.

Oh, and I don't think that you can get anything more minimalist than just an xterm without a window manager

Again, please elaborate of what you want to be minimalist: the graphical environment or just the window manager?

I use spectrwm, its a minimalist tiling wm in the style of dwm and xmonad, but without requiring editing config.h or any hefty dependencies. The window manager itself is a little smaller than twm and with a lot more functionality.

https://slackbuilds.org/repository/1...ktop/spectrwm/
https://github.com/conformal/spectrwm/

I personally build with a clone from their github repo, here is an alternative SlackBuild that makes that easy.

https://notabug.org/orbea/SlackBuild...sktop/spectrwm

It is my understanding that the Enlightenment devs got a major "shot in the arm" a few years ago when Samsung and a few others inversted heavily in it hoping to be able to compete with Android on smartphones. They did this because Enlightenment was already extremely lightweight but managed to have a full-featured GUI with plenty of eye candy. It is also my understanding that Enlightenment has a selectable alternate tiling interface somewhat similar to i3. There are both advantages and disadvantages to how much smartphones affect SOHO/Desktop systems but a major benefit is getting the most out of the fewest resources. Even KDE has been affected which has kept me using it for my main but I sincerely hope Enlightenment enjoys great success if only to send a message to the others that efficiency earns adoption or at least trials that may result in adoption.

Originally Posted by Richard Cranium If you search this forum, you'll find an Enlightenment thread where someone has taken the effort to create an Enlightenment install for Slackware.

Unfortunately an older version, I'm going to see if I can get it working though. Wondering if I can get the oldddd E working again, that would be an interesting project to say the least.

I definitely fall in love with cwm. Fast and furious. Once I run it I realized how tiresome are all these title bars, candies - only the plain screen with my preferable picture (or preferable movie) as background. I combined this with slim as login (session) manager. Even Xfce looks dull. I still cannot however manage window grouping - little tricky. But with window grouping one can emulate at most nine virtual desktops. Simply window grouping allows minimize/restore group of windows at the same time. Definitely one of wm worthy to try by everyone - even by candy-addicted people.

Traditional windowmaker here, forever. Nice little panel called taskbar, plus rox-gtk1 filer which handles desktop icons and actions.

I'm currently using Fluxbox on Slackware. It works like a charm.

Enlightenment 16 is still maintained and updated, along with all the more modern rewrites. I still prefer E16 to the newer variants.