I’ve just finished my first run at building E16 .debs for the RISC-V 64bit architecture. They actually appear to run! I’ve been addicted to this WM since the early '00s. Its lighter than most light WMs. Its gorgeous when equipped with the right theme. Its lightning fast even with several hundred (literally) windows on the screen. It has capabilities that no other WM that I’ve used has. Many of those things I’ve come to rely on over the years.
NOTE: ‘e’ is somewhat weird in naming and versioning. This is not the current release of the new generation “Enlightenment” (E25). The Debian/Ubuntu repos have that. This is the latest release of the previous generation, which you can find @ SourceForge. The new generation still doesn’t have all of the features and its too much more in many ways… but I won’t digress. For more information there is a footnote of sorts on the Enlightenment site. And I won’t bore with any more history…
I could prattle on all day about why I use e16 but I have other things to do. I wanted share these packages, JIC anyone else is also an e16 fan. WMs are a very personal choice. e16’s spartan appearance isn’t for everyone. But the control is unparalleled.
NOTE: I said e16 is “gorgeous”, but the default theme that comes with e16, like that of its current generation off spring, is extremely boring. I have not packaged my theme collection yet. But I think a few themes can be found on that SourceForge link above. Many years ago there was an offshoot of FreshMeat.org for themes. I think it was something like “themes . org”. It had more Enlightenment themes than for any other environment. Unfortunately most of those are gone now. For those unfamiliar with FreshMeat: it later was renamed FreeCode.com and then they quit and the whole site was archived for posterity at SourceForge (the previous link).
WARN: Unlike most theming systems e16 themes are about more than looks, they also have a great deal to do with functionality. Due to the long time with which e16 has undergone changes and due to the theme author’s varying skills some themes can break e16, or at least portions of it. Kind of a bummer… because the alien heads (from the movie “alien”) in the “alien” theme were killer.
So e16 may not be for the casual user. But we are running RISC-V here… so we’re apparently willing to take a risk. I certainly need e16 on my DevTerm so I thought I’d share my .debs. Currently there are only two packages: binary & data. There are several more to build: epplet collection, key binding editor, menu editor, theme collection and docs. I think I may be the only one left with some of these theme files… ::sigh:: the good tech always dies.
There are a few themes available at the SF link above in a single tar ball. I’ll have to poke through their various collections. Installing a theme is as simple as moving the theme folder into ~/.16/themes
. Then selecting it from the theme menu. Don’t put spaces in the folder names.
The app menu is accessed by clicking the desktop. This was compiled from hacked Debian packaging so all of the Debian app menu should be there. The configuration and control menu is accessed by right-clicking the desktop. Not having dedicated screen space for the app menu was one of the things I loved leaving behind when I left windoze. With this little screen I really need to conserve screen space! But then again I usually don’t use the app menus either! I think I may end up turning off gkrellm for that reason. But I like its meters…
The built-in “tool tip” feature should be good to get you started. Then you can turn it off. It gets annoying quickly. Still it can be useful to learn about theme features too.
When e16 starts up it has a pretty cool “sliding open” animation. This, of course, doesn’t work too well on the RISC-V. So you will likely want to turn that off in the settings after the first start.
The tar balls can be downloaded from this link:
http://pkgs.yeolpishack.net/ChipMaster/tar/e16_1.0.25-1jfp_riscv64.tgz
Download the tarball, extract it. Then install the packages. Something like this should work:
cd
mkdir tmpdeb
cd tmpdeb
wget 'http://pkgs.yeolpishack.net/ChipMaster/tar/e16_1.0.25-1jfp_riscv64.tgz'
tar xzf e16_1.0.25-1jfp_riscv64.tgz
sudo dpkg -i *.deb
Then you can delete (or keep) the residue.
To use “e16” you just need to launch it from the ~/.xinitrc
. Change the line that usually reads exec twm
(if you haven’t changed it) to exec e16
. Then exit your current WM and it should auto-log you into e16. To simplify shutdown of the DevTerm you may want to enable the “shutdown” option in the logout box from the “settings” panel. Then you can click the shutdown button when you log out. FYI: besides the logout on the menu e16 defaults to the typical 'doze keystroke of [CTRL][ALT][DEL], which on the DevTerm requires the addition of the [FN] key. And the the three-finger salute becomes four!
I’ll eventually get these in a proper Debian style repository… but as usual they broke stuff. I’ll have to figure out a way hack around it.
EDIT: As of now that tar ball also contains the key binding editor, menu editor and “epplet” collection. “Epplets” are basically like “dock” or “wharf” apps, without needing any particular construct to put them in. They stay put wherever you place them around your desktop. They automatically remember to restart or not based on whether they were running when you logged out. They are significantly less space consuming than gkrellm. Still needs some good testing… but that will happen as I get my desktop setup for my day-to-day use.
EDIT: I noticed the “e16” man page is missing. I’ll have to figure out why it didn’t build when the package compiled…
EDIT: I have restored the man pages into the e16
package.