Assimilating E17 and Gnome (was: E17 in ubuntu and themes)

[Lee Braiden]

On Wednesday 20 July 2005 19:36, Matthew S-H wrote:
> I am just looking at the snapshots (not yours -- the ones on the E17
> home page), and I LOVE what I see.
> I think that this kind of window manager is EXACTLY what Ubuntu
> needs.  It looks awesome, has great functionality, and a lot of
> potential for improvement.

Well, it looks nice; I'll give you that :)

I used Enlightenment in the past, before GNOME and KDE were "ready".  But 
Enlightenment (even the new E17, or perhaps *especially* the new E17) isn't 
the most practical of window managers or desktop environments.  Personally, I 
agree with the KDE folks when they refer to KDE as "a desktop for grown-ups" 
who just want to get their work done: a desktop should be something that just 
works, and something that makes it easier to do what you need to get done, 
something that looks pretty and distracts you as you rearrange windows around 
icons, etc.  Of course, if you're an artist or something, an artistic desktop 
might fit that description :)

Again, just speaking personally, the only feature I know of in E17 that will 
be *truly* useful is ACL support.

>      •    Is it possible to try to assimilate E17 into Gnome/KDE?
> The interface is awesome.  I am not quite familiar with the
> underlying parts, so I don't really know about this.

Yes, it should be.  Most of the X window managers have standardised on some 
underlying protocols now, so you should be able to run KDE or GNOME apps in 
it without too much trouble.

>      •    Would it be possible to run E17 without losing any of the
> advantages that come with using a de-facto standard like Gnome or
> KDE?  I know that there are issiues with libraries, but I don't
> understand them.

Most Linux non-KDE– and non-GNOME–specific apps should not care what window 
manager you run.  There many be some openGL issues, if you run E17 with 
OpenGL acceleration, since few desktops have done that before.  But they'll 
all be doing it eventually, so that shouldn't be a deciding factor, probably.

>      •    Could this be added to Ubuntu?  I know this would probably
> be a huge undertaking, but I think it would be important.  Pretty and
> easy GUis are a big turn-on for 98% of the world (noobs), and I think
> that E17 is great in this aspect.  Apple has gained a lot of ground
> with its interface in OSX, and E17 could do the same for the Linux/
> Debian/Ubuntu community.

I believe it's being added in pieces, as each piece becomes ready, but I'm not 
100% sure.

>      •    Are there copyright/patent issues with using an interface
> so similar to that of OSX?

Probably.  But Apple has tried to argue that sort of thing before, and I think 
sanity won :)

-- 
Lee Braiden
http://www.DigitalUnleashed.com
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