Enlightenment for openSUSE

From openSUSE

“Enlightenment is a new philosophy in Window Managers. The premise is simple enough - complete control” (Rob Malda)

Contents 1 Intro 2 Ignition 2.1 Installation from scratch 2.2 Enlighten your default openSUSE! 3 Life in the E-world 4 Extras 5 How to contribute 6 Acknowledgements

Intro

The time has come and we have an option to use the current Enlightenment-DR16 and Enlightenment-DR17. This page is dedicated not only to the Enlightenment. It will show you the way how to 'enlighten' your openSUSE.

Ignition

Here's one rule you must accept to go further: "You are the BOSS". All is up to you. Decide what exactly you wish, set your goals and achieve the results. There'll be no dumb "click-me-here" or a recipes how to save the Universe. All we can do is to offer an option. It's up to You whether to use it or not.

In general there're only two cases to discuss:

• you have a strong desire to get Enlightenment, some space on your hard drive and Internet connection
• you have an openSUSE installed and wish to 'enlighten' the system

To simplify the typing we will use 'E' as a reference to the 'Enlightenment'. E16 will refer to our stable rock solid Enlightenment-DR16 which was released in 1999 and still under development. E17 is a new 'built from scratch' Enlightenment-DR17 which will be released as soon as it'd be ready for release ('release for the developers' is not the option here). Despite on a visual difference they all has a heritage, talented Development Team and strong community.

The following resources might help you:

• Enlightenment thread in the OpenSUSE forum -> welcome to ask any E-related questions there!
• Enlightenment site
• Enlightenment wiki
• Raster's vault
• Exchange
• Enlightenment forum
• E various stuff
• Themes and various resources for E16
• Extra themes for E17 and misc stuff
• Detour project
• Blog of DaveMDS
• E17 Binary Packages Wiki Page
• Freenode IRC channel where you can ask your questions online

Installation from scratch

We'd recommend to start from here:

• Brief Welcome PDF

This Enlightenment LiveCD is not official openSUSE/Novell distribution and not affiliated with any party. It is based on the latest openSUSE release and uses the public trusted repositories only. If you like the content -> welcome to proceed. Grab the iso:

Download page

You get all you need right out from the box. Image is updated once per month along with the contents of the Enlightenment OpenSUSE Build Servise (OBS) repositories. All required repos are set and enabled by default. If you decide to install system to the hard disk all presets will remain the same.

Just FYI:
The core 'Enlightenment' repo which is used to build this LiveCD located here:
Enlightenment core
The default is openSUSE_11.1. We're using gwdg.de mirror because a lot of users experience issues 
with the 'redirector' of the http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/ . 

After installation of the system to the hard drive the maintenance require your attention:

• installation of a proprietary ATI drivers (NVIDIA is already included)
• prevent the system from bloating

We advise you to build and install both ATI and NVIDIA drivers from scratch using official binaries. Please, proceed to the following wiki pages to get the basic idea how to complete this exercise:

ATI Driver HOWTO

nVidia install HOWTO

Enlighten your default openSUSE!

The root of the repo you need to add is here:

http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/dmitry_serpokryl:/Enlightenment-cvs-core-metapackage/

Choose the one according to your version of openSUSE. You're welcome to use the gwdg.de if our famous 'redirector' point you to the mirror which has no desired content:

http://ftp5.gwdg.de/pub/opensuse/repositories/home:/dmitry_serpokryl:/Enlightenment-cvs-core-metapackage/

Time to decide which version of E you wish to explore: E16 or E17. You can have them both without any doubts. There're no issues and no mess to have both E16 and E17 installed together.

Assume that those who use E16 need nothing we can offer except our packages. This WM is a well known for its blazing performance, astonishing effects/themes and outstanding flexibility. But the price of 'management' is pretty high for average users. Manual adjustments of the configuration files (especially if you wish to improve something in your beloved theme) and extensive learning of eesh tricks benefit only to the enlightened persons. E16 is the WM for an Artists. The legendary "I am at Your service, Hu-Man..." in front of your speakers after the WM startup back in 1999... It rocks.

DR17 of the Enlightenment window manager represents an evolution into the next generation of desktop environments: the desktop shell. DR17 will provide integration between files and your environment in a seamless manner while encompassing a graphically rich and flexible architecture. It will not compete with GNOME or KDE, but be a completely new way of visualizing your desktop, based around the EFL which was built from the ground up for this task. Still under development but it works stable enough for every day usage.

Users of openSUSE-10.3 may notice that the packages are slightly outdated comparing to the ones available for other openSUSE versions. We're trying to do the best to eliminate this. How-to add our repositories and install Enlightenment-DR17:

• openSUSE-10.3

sudo zypper ar "http://ftp5.gwdg.de/pub/opensuse/repositories/home:/dmitry_serpokryl:/Enlightenment-cvs-core-metapackage/openSUSE_10.3" Enlightenment
sudo zypper mr -r Enlightenment
sudo zypper ref -r Enlightenment

and browse the desired components

sudo zypper se -r Enlightenment

or look at our 'patterns' (One-Click .ymp files located in the repo's base). We'd recommend to select the 'E17' and 'e_modules' packages at least:

sudo zypper in E17 e_modules

The next question is: "How to launch the installed E17?". If you're using 'gdm' or 'kdm' from KDE4 there should be no issues. Just select the 'Enlightenment' session from the list. If you're using KDE3 and 'kdm' from KDE3 is your login manager than you need to make a link:

sudo ln -sf /usr/share/xsessions/enlightenment.desktop /opt/kde3/share/xsessions/enlightenment.desktop

• openSUSE-11.0

sudo zypper ar "http://ftp5.gwdg.de/pub/opensuse/repositories/home:/dmitry_serpokryl:/Enlightenment-cvs-core-metapackage/openSUSE_11.0" Enlightenment
sudo zypper mr -r Enlightenment
sudo zypper ref -r Enlightenment
sudo zypper in E17 e_modules

• openSUSE-11.1

sudo zypper ar "http://ftp5.gwdg.de/pub/opensuse/repositories/home:/dmitry_serpokryl:/Enlightenment-cvs-core-metapackage/openSUSE_11.1" Enlightenment
sudo zypper mr -r Enlightenment
sudo zypper ref -r Enlightenment
sudo zypper in E17 e_modules

To explore the 'Entrance' instead of boring *dm's you should make some adjustments to the system configuration:

sudo zypper in entrance
sudo chkconfig earlyxdm off
sudo chkconfig xdm off
sudo chkconfig gdm off
sudo chkconfig kdm off
sudo chkconfig entrance on
then check the existence of a proper .desktop sessions in the /usr/share/xsessions/ (you may link/copy some from /opt/kde3/share/xsessions/ if any)

Please report any issues or ask your questions in our forum:

Enlightenment thread

Life in the E-world

You're welcome you join us on E channel. The transparent trac system allow users to monitor the project development.

It's planned to update Enlightenment OBS repos on a monthly basis and provide you a stable and comfortable environment. Right now openSUSE has a quite impressive selection of available E/EFL packages and E itself properly patched to provide the extended UTF-8 support (comparing to the default E-svn).

E17 is a Desktop Shell, not DE. Each toolkit has it's own 'default settings'. GUI of the application is completely independent from the 'core program'. You can build GUI binary in Linux and use it in OpenBSD. You can draw a circle for your background and it'll keep the aspect despite on resolution if you wish. Or you can write a DVD-player app in a 14 lines of code using EFL 'Emotion' library. E is the place where you can take a look at the future.

The more you're using E the more experience you get. The following links might help you:

FAQ

User Guide

Desktop Shell

Freedesktop Icons and Menus in E17

E Wiki page

You may wish to look at some tips how to prevent your system from the bloatware:

Bloating prevention tips

Extras

Ecomorph

How to contribute

Please find the Contribution section

Acknowledgements

A lot of people helped to manage this. THANK YOU VERY MUCH! My deepest apologizes that I can’t mention all of you by name. I’ll try to make it ‘in general’:

Enlightenment Development Team

Enlightenment Community

OpenSUSE Build Service Team

OpenSUSE KIWI Team (schaefi, cyberorg, pzb, cgoncalves - THANKS!)

Stalwart, thanks for the hosting of our Enlightenment LiveCD!

Packman Team

Novell

Dear engineers and developers, THANKS!

to be continued...