May 27, 2009

Enlightenment on Fedora 10

 
Enlightenment desktop looks very interesting and claims to use very little resources but that it also gives you a lot of bling. That got me hooked immediately. To install and tryout Enlightenment on Fedora you only need to install one package: enlightenment.
 
Next time you get to your login screen and click on username in bottom part of login screen you can choose different desktop interface.
 
I really liked Enlightenment and it really has light resource requirements and it looks gorgeous. There are lots of light desktop environments but they all look too spartan even for Fedora Leonidas (pun intended) or for my taste ;)
 
There are two mayor issues that prevent me from using Enlightenment as my everyday desktop. First is the lack of support for NetworkManager. In order to connect to wired or wireless networks I had to use command line, so users that don't know how to use cli to setup network can't use Enlightenment at all. Second one is no usb hotplug manager for usb memory sticks.
 
If somehow these two features can be made to work on Fedora then we would have one great desktop for low powered machines. I know about LXDE, Openbox, XFCE and others but IMHO Enlightenment is a better looking and therefore more likable lightweight desktop.
 
What is your favorite lightweight desktop? Why do you prefer it? Have you used Enlightenment? What do you think about Enlightenment desktop?