enlightenment desktop on antiX

[Member PPC]

A while ago I tested the enlightenment desktop on my Mx and antiX office computer, but I haven’t touched it since. This week end I had enough free time and installed it on my home computer…

* How to install:
I used synaptic and installed “enlightenment” and, to be on the safe side, logged out. Pressed F1 until I saw “enlighenment” as the selected desktop and entered my password to log on.

* How to use:
It even appears on the antix “desktops” menu to it’s easy to switch to it…
It’s a bit quirky. But I have to be honest- a desktop that offers a toolbar with live previews of open windows, quick launch icons, wallpaper, desktop icons, composition and window animations for just 186mb of idle RAM? It sounds too good to be true… But it was what I got on my 64bits antiX.

It takes a while to configure it- once you know where to find the right menus, it’s only a couple of minutes…
For the volume manager to work I had to left click it and change the program that was used- and it worked flawlessly
The “System” (“exit”) menu entries where grayed out, except for the first too- fine, from the log in menu, I could use “halt” as user, and restart. Since then I had to troubles with it, even suspension works fine.
If you reorder and remove useless stuff from the toolbar, it kind of looks like a cross between Icewm and Windows 10 (the quick launch icons- or “ibar”, like e. calls it also displays icons for running apps.

-Adding quick launch icons is a breeze- right click the title of any open window > click the first entry on the menu, with the application name > “add to ibar” > default. That’s just it.
-Reordering the toolbar items: right click any empty space on it and choose “Move gadgets”- drag what you want, where you want it. Repete the process to disable to “Stop moving gadgets”.
-Stoping jumping to the next/previous desktop when the mouse is at the left/right side of the screen: Menu > Settings > All > Input > Margins associations > and then select and remove from the list the entries for the right and left side of the screen…
– To change the toolbar size: it took a while to get there: Menu > Settings > Panel > Select “shelf” (the’s the toolbar, wierd names, I know, Linux programmers love that) > “Settigns” button. Selec the tab you want and change it to your liking (size, height, position, auto hide, etc)
– To change the wallpaper – that’s easy- Menu > Settings > wallpaper
– To keep it sane, I only left this on my toolbar: the “Start Menu”, the “ibar” (that serves both as a place to store quick launch icons and icons for running programs, almost like the Windows 10 taskbar), “tasks” (that show running apps icons and names- trust me, it’s the fastest way to change running application windows, leave it there), The network manager icon, the volume icon, the clock, and I added a power button…
– I had to disable the feature that auto focus the mouse pointer on new windows, it looks nice but feels confusing… (I don’t even recall how I did it)

The good part- it looks and feels amazing- it’s fast, and all that not using much of my precious system resources… A bit more than IceWM, in fact. It’s been ages since I had window animations (since my mint days). The “everything” launcher it’s a piece of art- an almost impossibly fast way to launch applications and look for files! You have almost all eye candy a modern OS can have, fast as always antiX is, with an inbuild amazing launcher and network manager…

The bad part- icons.
This is wierd- for a desktop that looks so amazing, it has an huge bug with icons- it refuses to show some of the default antiX apps icons, and even those that show on the menu/window title, if you put it on the ibar, as soon as you look at it side ways, they are gone- the space is there, you can click it to launch the application, but the icon itself… gone- most people depend on icons to launch applications- this, for me is a deal killer…
Too confusing- it’s almost the same feeling a windows user has when facing Linux for the first time- the bar has so much goin on- a huge chunk of it is used to display workspaces!!! It has a dedicated part to display icons for minized windows!!! WTF??? I had to take notes on how to make it look usable on my screen…- But once that’s done, it’s a quite nice desktop to use- a pity about the long standing icon “bug”…

Is it worth using in antiX?
Yes, if you miss having eye candy and don’t mind the icons problems- it fits the antiX paradigm- its small, usefull, fast, low on resources…
It’s probaly worthy to being on Package installer- so more people can try it on antiX…

P.

[Member olsztyn]

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PPC wrote:

Is it worth using in antiX?
Yes, if you miss having eye candy and don’t mind the icons problems- it fits the antiX paradigm- its small, usefull, fast, low on resources…
It’s probaly worthy to being on Package installer- so more people can try it on antiX…

Thanks for the info and I will try to test myself soon. Not that I envision this desktop to replace current, painfully configured and ‘debugged’ IceWM any time soon though but just out of curiosity. It took me lots of time and effort to ‘debug’ various quirks and set various timings in IceWM to make it finally rock solid just very recently so to jump to another, even much more quirky desktop implementation on antiX would be hair raising.
Just curious – how much do you see as initial idle memory use and do you see memory leaks after some use?
In any case,
Thanks and Regards…

Live antiX Boot Options (Previously posted by Xecure):
https://antixlinuxfan.miraheze.org/wiki/Table_of_antiX_Boot_Parameters

[Member olsztyn]

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PPC wrote:

Is it worth using in antiX?
Yes, if you miss having eye candy and don’t mind the icons problems- it fits the antiX paradigm- its small, usefull, fast, low on resources…

I have just tried out of curiosity.
My very first impression: It is not my cup of tea, based on personal taste. However ‘De gustibus non disputandum est’ as used to say my ancient European folks, so it is possible others could like it…
On idle memory use I measured just over 425M, which is 100M more than my fully loaded IceWM desktop. So it is not too bad, comparing to memory hogs.
Thanks again and Regards…

Live antiX Boot Options (Previously posted by Xecure):
https://antixlinuxfan.miraheze.org/wiki/Table_of_antiX_Boot_Parameters

[Member PPC]

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@olsztyn: Sorry for the late response:
I got my 186mb of idle RAM value if I but straight to E., it’s about 100mb more if I change from another desktop to it… If I use it for a while- opening office documents, using Firefox, etc, and close everything down, I get less than 270mb of idle RAM… Still almost 100mb than IceWM,

After some use, I noticed that no more icons went missing (that tends to happen when the user moves widgets on the toolbar), but I did notice that the suspend,etc buttons are greyd out again. Strange, because using antiX’s desktop-exit script works like a charm… I put it’s icon on the desktop…
That’s another no-no on using E. on antiX, because I found no way to manually edit the menu and put the desktop-exit script on the first level, so I can just click it from the menu… I do love how antiX’s default desktop allow the user to fine tune the menus… E.’s menu seems to be hardcoded- you can disable the “favorite apps” and little more…
E. seems to be good for a small change of scenery, not as stable as antiX’s other desktops…

P.

[Moderator Brian Masinick]

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Choice is good, so allowing people to use what they want is a good thing.

Enlightenment is actually a very old window manager and for a long time it made it to V0.16 and went no further.

After many years I believe that 0.17 emerged. I’ve not checked since then to see if there are newer versions available. If not, that would explain why it doesn’t interact cleanly with our icons.

Enlightenment has always been a quirky tool. Some aspects of it are “fascinating”, others are “exasperating”. It’s definitely for those who are appreciative and tolerant to quirkiness.

--
Brian Masinick

[Moderator BobC]

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Olsztyn,

Since you have gone to the effort of tweaking IceWM settings to improve them, could you zip them into a file and post it? Any explanation for the changes to the settings would be appreciated.

If anticapitalista would like me to, I would offer to clean up the IceWM settings and include your tweaks while doing so, and then we could test the result, and once everyone was happy with them, he could include it in the repos.

I believe the 19 settings I helped with were an improvement on the past, but if you have ways to improve on them, IMO we should try to get them included if possible.

[Member olsztyn]

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BobC wrote:

Since you have gone to the effort of tweaking IceWM settings to improve them, could you zip them into a file and post it? Any explanation for the changes to the settings would be appreciated.

@ BobC:
I have done a bunch of tweaking on IceWM only because on all my (many) laptops I experienced some malfunctioning, which was more like annoyances. One of such was that right mouse click most often produced a hand holding a document instead of menu if mouse slipped even a bit on desktop. If I remember nobody else except Xecure acknowledged such issue so I accepted the fact I was on my own but not have given up due to a significant nuisance to me. The hand holding document was attributed to Space, as I was using Space-IceWM at that time. After taking ‘Space’ out of equation and flipping to pure IceWM the artifact of hand holding document instead of menu was gone but menu still failed to appear with slightest drag of mouse on IceWM. As such malfunctioning was not happening on Fluxbox or other desktops this was clearly IceWM ‘feature’, be it just my experience.
This I was able to fix by tweak in IceWM preferences, both must be done:
”
# Pointer motion distance before click gets interpreted as drag
ClickMotionDistance=32 # [0-32]…. Default was 4

# Delay before click gets interpreted as drag
ClickMotionDelay=2000 # [0-2000]…. Default was 200
”
Since nobody (except Xecure) acknowledged any existence of mouse drag impact on displaying menu I did not bother to post this tweak, due to no interest.

Another tweak I have done on IceWM was due to annoying, unnatural behavior on mouse pointer impact on windows. This was quite annoying me for a long time as unnatural, different behavior than typically found in other desktops. This met again with no interest in this forum so being on my own took me a long time to discover that among a multitude of settings in IceWM documentation, such terminology as ‘bringing window into focus’ is not what does the trick but ‘raising window’ does…

These are two examples that made it possible for me to tweak IceWM to work as expected, with no more annoying, aggravating and time wasting malfunctioning that was driving me nuts for a long time…

There were some more, but these two above were major ones.
Thanks and Regards.

Live antiX Boot Options (Previously posted by Xecure):
https://antixlinuxfan.miraheze.org/wiki/Table_of_antiX_Boot_Parameters

[Member olsztyn]

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Brian Masinick wrote:

Enlightenment has always been a quirky tool. Some aspects of it are “fascinating”, others are “exasperating”. It’s definitely for those who are appreciative and tolerant to quirkiness.

Thanks Brian…
I am not familiar with Enlightenment beyond my test install above, so I may be missing a lot of experience beyond just first impression, which was not encouraging to spend more time on it…

MHO as a rather new antiX user is that antiX needs to focus (as it does now) on a limited few, but rock solid window managers. These rock solid ones at this point are IceWM (after fixing some silly but annoying quirks) and Fluxbox (Rock Solid!).

I think the reason people are looking at other WMs and DEs is to expand antiX to different and refreshing desktop experience…
In my quick test experience the lowest ‘hanging fruit’ for an antiX refreshing desktop seems Budgie or Mate, but mostly Budgie, rather than looking to old and practically dead desktops, such as Enlightenment (Sorry PPC…).
Now, this MHO is not meant to influence antiX’ future strategy, so I am confident antiX leaders are not (as usual) paying any attention to this my musing of a random user…
Thanks and Regards…

Live antiX Boot Options (Previously posted by Xecure):
https://antixlinuxfan.miraheze.org/wiki/Table_of_antiX_Boot_Parameters

[Moderator Brian Masinick]

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olsztyn wrote:

masinick wrote:

Enlightenment has always been a quirky tool. Some aspects of it are “fascinating”, others are “exasperating”. It’s definitely for those who are appreciative and tolerant to quirkiness.

Thanks Brian…
I am not familiar with Enlightenment beyond my test install above, so I may be missing a lot of experience beyond just first impression, which was not encouraging to spend more time on it…

MHO as a rather new antiX user is that antiX needs to focus (as it does now) on a limited few, but rock solid window managers. These rock solid ones at this point are IceWM (after fixing some silly but annoying quirks) and Fluxbox (Rock Solid!).

I think the reason people are looking at other WMs and DEs is to expand antiX to different and refreshing desktop experience…
In my quick test experience the lowest ‘hanging fruit’ for an antiX refreshing desktop seems Budgie or Mate, but mostly Budgie, rather than looking to old and practically dead desktops, such as Enlightenment (Sorry PPC…).
Now, this MHO is not meant to influence antiX’ future strategy, so I am confident antiX leaders are not (as usual) paying any attention to this my musing of a random user…
Thanks and Regards…

I’m all for people who use the software that they want to use.

Enlightenment is installable as some people have found out.

I don’t mind having tools that makes it easier to customize each person’s system.

I’m not very keen on putting a lot of choices into the primary setup. I love the lean system we’ve always had.

--
Brian Masinick

[Anonymous]

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PPC, thanks for the clear Tips and Tricks writeup.
For me, the primary takeaway was “Enlightenment is easily installable in antiX“.

[Member olsztyn]

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@ BobC:
Just want to clarify that the fix to IceWM as referenced above and quoted below was originally recommended by ModdIt. I did not come to such solution on my own. At first I tested these parameters separately and this my mistake did not result in fixing IceWM behavior. They must be set both for resolving this issue.
Thanks to ModdIt for help!

olsztyn wrote:

This I was able to fix by tweak in IceWM preferences, both must be done:
”
# Pointer motion distance before click gets interpreted as drag
ClickMotionDistance=32 # [0-32]…. Default was 4

# Delay before click gets interpreted as drag
ClickMotionDelay=2000 # [0-2000]…. Default was 200
”
Since nobody (except Xecure) acknowledged any existence of mouse drag impact on displaying menu I did not bother to post this tweak, due to no interest.

Still @ BobC:
Since hardly anyone else complained about IceWM quirks I do not suppose any such IceWM tuning is of any urgency though, particularly if without antiX leadership support. Myself having resolved these IceWM issues as the only complainer I am set now with IceWM working correctly and am careful enough to carry over IceWM fixes to new installations. IceWM is now rock solid and working as reliably as Fluxbox. Great WM IMHO…
Thanks and Regards.

Live antiX Boot Options (Previously posted by Xecure):
https://antixlinuxfan.miraheze.org/wiki/Table_of_antiX_Boot_Parameters

[Member ModdIt]

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Hi all, perhaps it might be a good idea to modify the mentioneed settings in the standard antiX icewm config.
With higher screen resolutions becoming more and more common the present defaults can cause real frustration.

Or we put the problem and solution in the wiki. Or both, so neither users with an old device and low res screen
or the proud owner of a 4 K device will have to search through and try different settings to fix their particular
problem.

As quoted by olsztyn
# Pointer motion distance before click gets interpreted as drag
ClickMotionDistance=32 # [0-32]…. Default was 4
# Delay before click gets interpreted as drag
ClickMotionDelay=2000 # [0-2000]…. Default was 200

ClickMotionDistance 4 is fine on 640*480, a pain on full HD. Will drive even the most steady handed
user crazy on 4K.
Delay before click gets interpreted as drag 200 is bothering for some users, especialy those with
coordination problems.

This is not an issue with Icewm, just the present defaults might be worth changing..

[Forum Admin anticapitalista]

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ModdIt wrote:

This is not an issue with Icewm, just the present defaults might be worth changing..

Already done.
Next upgrade of desktop-defaults-icewm has these changes.
Users will not notice them since the changes go to /etc/skel
(We will not install files into the installed user account as a policy).

• This reply was modified 2 years, 6 months ago by Brian Masinick. Reason: icewm spelling

Philosophers have interpreted the world in many ways; the point is to change it.

antiX with runit - leaner and meaner.

[Member olsztyn]

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ModdIt wrote:

This is not an issue with Icewm, just the present defaults might be worth changing..

I would like to thank you and anticapitalista for recognizing this issue and that this issue will be addressed soon for antiX as anti described. From my experience changing these defaults proves a good and quick practical solution to resolve manifestation of this issue.

However, to be meticulously precise in representation, this solution is a painkiller rather than actual fix to IceWM, although practical and easy.
In actuality it should be classified as IceWM bug because IceWM should have no business to interpret such move of mouse as drag of object in the first place. Simply there is no object selected by mouse to drag, just mouse movement on empty desktop.

As an example Fluxbox (also gnome or any other) does correctly interpret mouse movement on empty desktop and pops up menu as expected, regardless of distance of mouse move. No ‘drag’ ideas here. In IceWM if you overcome ‘drag’ distance limitation of specified parameters (move your mouse farther) then it still interprets as ‘drag’ and no menu will pop up.

Despite apparent reluctance to accept the fact IceWM is not perfect, nevertheless it is a great WM overall. Considering ideal solution might be difficult to accomplish due to limited development support the above practical circumvention is good enough to make it work well in practice.
Thanks again and Best Regards…

Live antiX Boot Options (Previously posted by Xecure):
https://antixlinuxfan.miraheze.org/wiki/Table_of_antiX_Boot_Parameters

[Moderator Brian Masinick]

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olsztyn wrote:

ModdIt wrote:

This is not an issue with Icewm, just the present defaults might be worth changing..

I would like to thank you and anticapitalista for recognizing this issue and that this issue will be addressed soon for antiX as anti described. From my experience changing these defaults proves a good and quick practical solution to resolve manifestation of this issue.

However, to be meticulously precise in representation, this solution is a painkiller rather than actual fix to IceWM, although practical and easy.
In actuality it should be classified as IceWM bug because IceWM should have no business to interpret such move of mouse as drag of object in the first place. Simply there is no object selected by mouse to drag, just mouse movement on empty desktop.

As an example Fluxbox (also gnome or any other) does correctly interpret mouse movement on empty desktop and pops up menu as expected, regardless of distance of mouse move. No ‘drag’ ideas here. In IceWM if you overcome ‘drag’ distance limitation of specified parameters (move your mouse farther) then it still interprets as ‘drag’ and no menu will pop up.

Despite apparent reluctance to accept the fact IceWM is not perfect, nevertheless it is a great WM overall. Considering ideal solution might be difficult to accomplish due to limited development support the above practical circumvention is good enough to make it work well in practice.
Thanks again and Best Regards…

While you are almost certainly “correct” in that other graphical user environments do not behave the same way as IceWM, it is equally debatable whether or not “IceWM should have no business to interpret such move of mouse as drag of object”. Those are design decisions, ones which IceWM has uniquely held not just for a few years, but for a couple of decades. Therefore, if there was interest or concern in altering the behavior of the configuration, there has been more than ample opportunity to recommend changes or report defects. Since that has not been done, it becomes more of a design preference matter, one you have a right to express, and also a right the designers have to either maintain (which they have) or change (which they have not).

I certainly appreciate your thoughtfulness in this manner; like you and the IceWM designers, what I’ve responded here are my personal opinions based on my experience with the Open Source Software community. What’s also good about the process is that when someone has different approaches, software can be modified, even “forked” from the original efforts (citing any code used or referenced) creating yet another “variety” or “variation”. I doubt that it’s worth doing in this case, but it IS possible.

--
Brian Masinick

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