Enlightenment (window manager)

History

E16 and before

The first version of Enlightenment was released by Carsten Haitzler in 1997. Originally, it was just a window manager before the addition of the EFL in E17.

With the release of E17 written with the EFL in 2012, Enlightenment went through a major rewrite, splitting the codebase into 0.16 (E16) and the versions after (E17). Some of the community decided to stay with the E16 codebase and continue development of this version, releasing under an independent versioning scheme from E17. It reached the 1.0 milestone and is still actively developed as of 2025.

E17 and later

In 2000, the development of the Enlightenment Foundation Libraries started to create a toolkit for writing applications that interoperate with Enlightenment, as well as other X window managers, too. As the EFL was built up, Enlightenment was rewritten to utilize the EFL, and in 2012 version 0.17.0 was released. As this version was completely rewritten to use the EFL, it is incompatible with E16.

The current version as of January 2025 is E27.

Usage

Bodhi Linux was built around the Enlightenment 17 desktop, but forked it to create the Moksha desktop.

Elive Linux also used a fork of E17 as its main desktop environment until 2019, when the 3.7 series was released. It also features E16 and has future plans to integrate the new E26 version.

Reception

A 2011 review of E16 found it was highly customisable, featuring per-window configurability, support for virtual desktops with much larger screenspace than monitor size, and that "nearly everything can be done with the keyboard." While the appearance was praised, the desktop environment was criticised as being somewhat unstable due to bugs at the time. While E16 could be used as a window manager for GNOME or KDE, the review found they had poor compatibility.

A 2014 review of E17 found the design to be fast, touchscreen friendly and have a nice appearance, but was annoyed by the small selection area to resize windows. The appearance of the default terminal with the desktop environment, called Terminology, was also praised and the author personally liked the desktop left and right click menus.

A 2017 review found E18 to have lightweight performance, remarking a similar appearance to Mac OS, but also mentioning a steep learning curve due to the desktop left and right click menus.

A 2020 review praised Enlightenment for its high number of keyboard shortcuts, and that it was lightweight enough to run well on older hardware, with low idle CPU and RAM usage. However, it criticised the desktop left and right click menus for having too much complexity.

Release history

References

References

1. "Enlightenment/COPYING at master".
2. "Enlightenment DR 0.20.0 Release".
3. Zinoune, M.. (10 July 2012). "Enlightenment distributions that are still alive!".
4. (2012-12-21). "Portal:Enlightenment". en.opensuse.org.
5. "The windows manager Enlightenment – MVPS.net Blog".
6. "Enlightenment DR16". Enlightenment.
7. Germain, Jack M.. (2014-05-16). "Enlightenment Linux: It's Not What You Think".
8. "Enlightenment E16".
9. Zinoune, M.. (2024-06-28). "Enlightenment 17 is soon to be released! {{!}} Unixmen".
10. "Enlightenment 0.27.0 Release".
11. "Moksha Desktop – The future desktop environment of the Bodhi Linux project.".
12. (2011-07-03). "Best lightweight window managers for Linux".
13. "The desktop-a-week review: Enlightenment (E17)".
14. Perkins, John. (2020-10-01). "Enlightenment Desktop Review: A Beautiful, Lightweight but Different Desktop Manager".
15. "Legacy sources".
16. "enlightenment-1.0alpha-1.i386.rpm". CDrom Archive.
17. (19 January 1998). "New E Already Released". Slashdot News.
18. (18 July 1998). "Enlightenment 0.14 release". Slashdot.
19. ""E news"".
20. (16 July 1998). "Official Word on Enlightenment DR14". Slashdot.
21. (12 March 1999). "Enlightenment 0.15". Slashdot.
22. ""E news"".
23. "Enlightenment E16".
24. (21 December 2012). "After 12 years of Development, E17 Is Out". Slashdot.
25. (22 December 2013). "Enlightenment DR 0.18: Improved Compositing, Wayland Support". slashdot.
26. "v0.19.0". git release.
27. (December 2015). "Enlightenment E20 Released With Full Wayland Support". slashdot.
28. "v0.21.0". git release.
29. "v0.22.0". git release.
30. "v0.23.0". git release.
31. "v0.24.0". git release.
32. (2021-12-16). "Enlightenment 0.25.0 Release".
33. "v0.25.0". git release.
34. (2023-12-23). "Enlightenment 0.26.0 Release".
35. (2025-01-11). "Enlightenment 0.27.0 Release".
36. "v0.27.0". git release.