Enlightenment

Enlightenment is a light-weight and eye-candy desktop environment.

There seems to be a confusion over enlightenment versions. There's the git repository with what would later become version 0.20 (or E20). The latest released version is 0.19 (or E19). There are older versions E18 and E17, the latter being still very popular for its stability and is still the latest stable version in Gentoo. Various dependencies (notably ) have their own versioning schemes and often you can build multiple different versions of against a single version of. If unsure, follow the instructions for individual versions later in this page.

There is also an even older version called E16 whose apparent version in Gentoo is 1.x, which unfortunately makes it appear newer than E17 and later. Because of that, you need to be careful which version you are installing. While the version numbers reflect actual versions of the upstream tarballs, it's very confusing.

Enlightenment 0.17
For installing Enlightenment and the needed libraries, just issue the following command:

For svg support e.g. for previews or menu entries, you can additionally install evas_generic_loaders with the svg USE flag enabled. Addition to (unless you already have the svg USE flag globally enabled) and install the package:

Enlightenment 0.18
At the time of writing, you need to install E18 from testing.

Enlightenment 0.19
Make sure you have installed Layman. Now you can add the ixit overlay.

Now you can install Enlightenment 0.19.

Enlightenment has been recently bumped to 0.19.2 which fixes an issue causing excessive CPU and RAM consumption. For any issues, contact User:Pavlix.

The correct build is 0.19.4.

Note: The original E19 page linked to the enlightenment-niifaq overlay that features some other packages, you may want to check whether it's up to date and use it instead. It features @enlightenment and @enlightenment and @enlightenment-extended package sets.

Enlightenment live ebuilds (future 0.20 release)
The process is a little different because it's recommended to always rebuild all of the components using their current state in Git. Make sure you have installed Layman. Now you can add the ixit overlay.

Make sure to install all core enlightenment packages using live ebuilds. You can update using the exact same command to ensure that all core packages are updated.

If anything goes wrong, contact User:Pavlix. Those are live ebuilds and therefore they can occasionally need updating. I'm also considering starting a separate overlay just for Enlightenment, let me know if that would help you.

Enlightenment
Enlightenment's configuration is all handled through the settings editor from within enlightenment. There's also a command line tool called, especially useful in emergency.

Entrance
Once entrance is set up, themes and such can be managed from within entrance.

Tips and Tricks
Now one can start Enlightenment desktop environment by launching the default Display Manager (DM).

You may have to add an entry to your X sessions directory, if you use SLiM for example

Or else, opt for a DM free set up. See X without Display Manager for more info on starting a X Session without a DM.

And do not forget to install NetworkManager and or else a light weight network manager like Dhcpcd+Dhcpcd-ui or even  for which there is an Enlightenment applet.

Multi Layout Keyboard
For using a multi layout keyboard, install this package:

External Resources

 * GTK Theme to match the new dark default theme
 * Homepage
 * Wikipedia article