Difference between revisions of "Enlightenment"

Revision as of 20:14, 17 January 2014

The Enlightenment desktop shell provides an efficient yet breathtaking window manager based on the Enlightenment Foundation Libraries along with other essential desktop components like a file manager, desktop icons and widgets. It boasts an unprecedented level of theme-ability while still being capable of performing on older hardware or embedded devices.

Enlightenment Desktop Shell (formerly E17)

This is comprised of both the Enlightenment window manager and Enlightenment Foundation Libraries (EFL), which provide additional desktop environment features such as a toolkit, object canvas, and abstracted objects. It has been under development since 2005, but in February 2011 the core EFLs saw their first stable 1.0 release. Enlightenment the window manager was released as version 0.17.0 on December 21st 2012, along with the 1.7.4 release of the EFL libraries. Many people currently use Enlightenment as a day-to-day desktop environment without problems.

Warning: This page refers to both stable and development packages. Any PKGBUILD which ends with -svn or -git will use unstable development code. Use them at your own risk. Since the release of the EFL libraries and Enlightenment itself, it's no longer necessary and even discouraged to build the core programs from SVN or Git. "Unless you're developing E or willing to live bleeding edge, stay away from trunk."(source) Unfortunately, many of the additional software packages have not been released and building from SVN or Git is the only way to use them.

Installing

From the official repositories

Install the enlightenment from the official repositories.

You might also want to install additional fonts. You need at least 1 True Type Font.

If you need/want an Enlightenment package which is not (yet) available in official repositories, see if it is available in the AUR.

From the AUR

Development PKGBUILDs which download and install the very latest development code are available in the AUR as enlightenment-git^AUR and it's dependencies.

Starting

startx

If you use startx or a simple display manager like XDM or SLiM, add or uncomment the following command in xinitrc:

~/.xinitrc

exec enlightenment_start

Entrance

Enlightenment has a new display manager called Entrance, and is available in the AUR under the entrance-git^AUR package. Entrance is quite sophisticated and its configuration is controlled by /etc/entrance.conf. To use Entrance :

# systemctl enable entrance

Other

More advanced display managers like GDM and KDM will automatically detect Enlightenment thanks to the /usr/share/xsessions/enlightenment.desktop file provided by the enlightenment package.

Configuring the network

ConnMan

Enlightenment's preferred network manager is ConnMan available in the official repositories as connman package. For extended configuration, you may also install EConnman (available in AUR as econnman^AUR or econnman-git^AUR) and its associated dependencies.

Finally, configure systemd to start the ConnMan daemon at startup:

systemctl enable connman

ConnMan loads very quickly and appears to handle DHCP quite nicely. If you have installed Wpa_supplicant, ConnMan latches onto that shows all available wireless connections.

NetworkManager

You can also use networkmanager to manage your network connections.

Follow the instructions on NetworkManager to do the configuration. You may also need network-manager-applet to help with your settings.

You may want to add it to the start up programs so every time your E17 starts it appears on systray.

Settings > Settings Panel > Apps > Startup Applications > System > Network

Installing themes

More themes to customize the look of Enlightenment are available from:

exchange.enlightenment.org
e17-stuff.org
relighted.c0n.de for the default theme in 200 different colors
git repo (git clone the theme you like, run 'make' and you end up with a .edj theme file)
packages.bodhilinux.com has a good collection (you will need to extract the .edj file from the .deb; bsdtar will do this and is part of the base ArchLinux install). A nice catalog can be seen at their wiki.

You can install the themes (coming in .edj format) using the theme configuration dialog or by moving them to ~/.e/e/themes.

Note: Enlightenment does not provide a stable theme API, and there have been numerous theme API changes over the years, even after E17 was released. Themes that have not been updated regularly are unlikely to work.

Modules and Gadgets

Module: Name used in enlightenment to refer to the "backing" code for a gadget.
Gadget: Front-end or user interface that should help the end users of Enlightenment do something.

Many Modules provide Gadgets that can be added to your desktop or on a shelf. Some Modules (such as CPUFreq) only provide a single Gadget while others (such as Composite) provide additional features without any gadgets. Note that certain gadgets such as Systray can only be added to a shelf while others such as Moon can only be loaded on the desktop.

"Extra" modules

Warning: These are 3rd party modules and not officially supported by the Enlightenment developers. They are also pulled directly from SVN, so they are development code that may or may not work at any time. Use at your own risk.

Beyond the modules described here, more "extra" modules are available from e-modules-extra-git^AUR and e-modules-extra-svn^AUR.

Places

Places is a gadget that will help you browse files on various devices you might plug into your computer, like phones, cameras, or other various storage devices you might plug into the usb port.

Available from places-git^AUR.

Note: This module is no longer required for auto-mounting external devices in Enlightenment

Scale Windows

The Scale Windows module, which requires compositing to be enabled, adds several features. The scale windows effect shrinks all open windows and brings them all into view. This is known in Mac OS X as "Exposé". The scale pager effect zooms out and shows all desktops as a wall, like the compiz expo plugin. Both can be added to the desktop as a gadget or bound to a key binding, mouse binding or screen edge binding.

Some people like to change the standard window selection key binding ALT + Tab to use Scale Windows to select windows. To change this setting, you navigate to Menu > Settings > Settings Panel > Input > Keys. From here, you can set any key binding you would like.

To replace the window selection key binding functionality with Scale Windows, scroll through the left panel until you find the ALT section and then find and select ALT + Tab. Then, scroll through the right panel looking for the "Scale Windows" section and choose either Select Next or Select Next (All) depending on whether you would like to see windows from only the current desktop or from all desktops and click Apply to save the binding.

Available from comp-scale-git^AUR.

Engage

Engage is CairoDock/GLX-Dock style docking bar for both application launchers and open applications. It requires compositing to be enabled and has full controls for transparency, size, zoom levels, and more.

Available from engage-git^AUR.

Gnome Keyring integration

It is possible to use gnome-keyring in Enlightenment. However at the time of writing you need a small hack to make it work in full. First you must tell Enlightenment to autostart gnome-kering. For that you should go to Settings Panel > Apps > Startup Applications and activate Certificate and Key Storage, GPG Password Agent, SSH Key Agent and "Secret Storage Service". After this you should edit your ~/.profile and add the following:

if [ -n "$GNOME_KEYRING_PID" ]; then
    eval $(gnome-keyring-daemon --start)
    export SSH_AUTH_SOCK
    export GNOME_KEYRING_CONTROL
    export GPG_AGENT_INFO
fi

This should export the variables you need for your key management at your next login.

Note: You may additionally want to add an auto-unlock of the keyring to your login manager. Here is an example for LXDM. More information on this topic in the Gnome Keyring article.

Troubleshooting

If you find some unexpected behavior, there are a few things you can do:

try to see if the same behavior exists with the default theme
disable any 3rd party modules you may have installed
backup ~/.e and remove it (e.g. mv ~/.e ~/.e.back)

If you are sure you found a bug please report it directly upstream.

Compositing

When the configuration is messed up and the settings windows can no longer be approached, configuration for the compositor can be reset by the hardcoded keybinding Ctrl + Alt + Shift + Home.

Screen unlocking does not work

If screenlock does not accept your password add the following to /etc/pam.d/enlightenment:

auth required pam_unix_auth.so

Unreadable fonts

If fonts are too small and your screen is unreadable, be sure the right font packages are installed. ttf-dejavu and ttf-bitstream-vera are valid candidates.

Failure in mounting internal partitions

Check if user is in storage group:

# groups <user>

If user is not in storage group:

# groupadd storage 
# gpasswd -a <user> storage

Then create this file as root:

/etc/polkit-1/localauthority/50-local.d/10-storage-group-mount-override.pkla

 [storage group mount override]
 Identity=unix-group:storage
 Action=org.freedesktop.udisks2.filesystem-mount-system
 ResultAny=yes
 ResultInactive=yes
 ResultActive=yes

For more information, see http://bbs.archbang.org/viewtopic.php?id=2720.

Enlightenment DR16

Enlightenment, Development Release 16 was first released in 2000, and went 1.0 in 2009. Originally, the DR16 stood for the 0.16 version of the Enlightenment project. As simply "Enlightenment" now in the Arch repositories, it is still under development today, regularly updated by its maintainer Kim 'kwo' Woelders. With compositing, shadows and transparencies, E DR16 kept all of the speed that presided over it's foundation by original author Carsten "Rasterman" Haitzler but with up to date refinement.

To install E16

Install enlightenment16.

E16 can be quite different from the other WM's out there, read /usr/share/doc/e16/e16.html after installation to learn more The man page is at man e16, not man enlightenment, and only gives startup options.

Basic Configuration

Most everything in E DR16 resides in ~/.e16 and is text-based, editable at will. That includes the Menus too.

Shortcut keys can be either modified by hand, or with the e16keyedit software provided as source on the sourceforge page of the e16 project, or from the e16keyedit^AUR AUR package.

Background images

You have to copy the desired wallpapers into ~/.e16/backgrounds/

MMB or RMB anywhere on the desktop will give access to the settings, select /Desktop/Backgrounds/

Any new image copied in the ~/.e16/backgrounds/ foldere will get the list of available backgrounds auto-updated. Select desired wallpaper from drop-down menu. Inside the appropriate tabs in the global e16 settings, you can adjust things like tiling of the background image, filling screen and such.

Start/Restart/Stop Scripts

Create an Init, a Start and a Stop folder in your ~/.e16 folder: any .sh script found there will either be executed at Startup (from Init folder), at each Restart (from Start folder), or at Shutdown (from Stop folder); provided you allowed it trough the MMB / settings / session / <enable scripts> button and made them executable with chmod +x yourscript.sh. Typical examples involves starting the blueman or your favourite network manager applet.

Compositor

Shadows, Transparent effects et all can be found in MMB or RMB /Settings, under Composite .

External Links

@@ Line 93: / Line 93: @@
 You can install the themes (coming in .edj format) using the theme configuration dialog or by moving them to {{ic|~/.e/e/themes}}.
-{{Note|There have been numerous theme API changes over the years. Themes made before E17 was released (2012-12) and not updated are unlikely to work.}}
+{{Note|Enlightenment does not provide a stable theme API, and there have been numerous theme API changes over the years, even after E17 was released. Themes that have not been updated regularly are unlikely to work.}}
 === Modules and Gadgets ===