Enlightenment DR17 on openSuSE10.2

Hi Community

I gave a go on Enlightenment DR17 lately. Got pros & cons, but on the Look side it's a winner.
[more on the pros & cons later, including comparison with DR16 which is still my favorite]




This is running on openSuSE10.2, using the .rpm package available on the GURU repositories, buid date is 01/01/2007. Not flawless, it's PITA to start, especially if youy want your Flashdrives to show up.

No Scanning & Printing tested yet, just fooled around with these screenshots listening to a webradio, watched a DVD in Borderless mode, fiddled whith this & taht, you see. Pottering around.








To get this as my workhorse, I need to sort out this automount of Flashes, find an easy way to log in (what I found on the net on this topic is frightening, the kind of edit of Config Files you'll be damned rather than touch them by any means)









As of now, I log as normal user with KDE, check my flashes, then start another session in Failsafe mode in the terminal of which I can then order "enlightenment_start" & get in. Pff...





The image above are some shots of my usual 9 virtual desktop setup. You'll recognize the Baby from previous deskshots, this time inside a gnome-terminal without Toolbar & borderless.

And, these backgrounds: yes, moving, animated ones. Funny, an not that ressource-inetnsive (these one at least, more heavy ones do not run that smoothly on this ol' 1.6 box).

Easiyer to handle than DR16 actually, more feature-packed (so, more confusing at first), it missed the straightforward, sleek & fast look & feel of DR16. My 10-years old daughter favour it, though, as there is proper menu lauch and these so funny backgrounds.

openSuSE 10.2

I am testing openSuSE 10.2 on a spare partition as of now. Can't determine if it's truly better, it just seems not to share the same bugs with SuSE 93 !

In 10.2 there is serious trouble managing multiple panels - managing them, not using them. It seems that the properties of each panel does not reflects the one you find in "configure desktop" window, and you need to reboot to see the destroyed panels disappear from the said window. Well, when your layout is done, it's not an everyday trouble anymore.

Very nice start menu by the way, clever & fun. Unusual, excellent in KDE, not as good in Gnome.

The main drawback everyone complains about is the software manager, for me it's slow but OK (Using YasT); I've got more inconsistencies with the auto-updater which sometimes throw 32 updates @ me & sometimes Zero. With my connection here in Cambodia, 32 updates overkills the connection anyway.

I may use it for real though, if Enlightenment works: I love this WindowManager, never got it right on SuSE 93.

Improving my Graphic Skills

I did some banners yesterday to advertise our organisation on the web, using The Gimp. Lately, I had a short argument about Win vs Linux, where I stand to the point that Linux is good enough as long as you can do everything you need with it

Isn't that true ? Look at your needs, and then define what you buy/use/promote. If I am not wrong, unless you are desperately a fashion victim, that's the way we do in every other field, buy things, when we can afford them, depending on usage of it. Err, OK, mostly or hopefully, I agree.

So, if that's the way you buy a book, a car, rent a house, shop for food, why not applying the same to software? This Linux box of mine, SuSE93, does it all. Almost:

On the Pro Front:
-No equivalent to Adobe Premiere, so can't edit our promotional DVD's, but given my processor age, it's an issue I can't really address,
-Haven't found yet Animated GIF soft, but sure it should exists somewhere.

On the Leisure Activity side:
-No Easy 3D modelling tool. several available, all a nightmare to use if you are not Milkshape/StudioMAX specialist,
-Not the latest in 3D games, but plenty of them anyway.

Out of this scope, I can't see anything missing: kmail is the best-ever email client I worked with, OPERA & FIRFOX are great web browsers, OpenOffice does the job pretty well if you have not too much of charts in it. Only the equivalent to PowerPoint is under-average in terms of compatibility, but not to the point I can't send presentations to colleagues.

So far, so good: there is actually a lot of different choices out there (where I would not actually recommend anyone going for an OS/2 install).

One small point: it's free. Looking at all I got in my box & in the laptop - what a value here, without license expiration, shareware online payments, secret codes not to loose after install.

And one, main point, that makes the full difference: If you need a soft, you'd usually google it, right ? browse through 1 thousand vendors site, try to find a demo, download & try, get expired, re-install, run into compatibility issues and so on... Given the very nature of Open Source, you don't do that with Linux: You got this "repertoire" of available softs tailor-made for your flavor of Linux, choose them using keywordsearch, the soft then checks compatibility & missing items that are needed; Click start & you got it! Currently, UBUNTU has 17.000+ softs available, not somewhere on the net, not by outside vendors, no, just trough a simple interface which allow you to browse & select!

That Soft-at-hand feature, and the Multiple Virtual Desktops, makes me an addict.