On Sun, Mar 26, 2000 at 06:57:58PM +0000, Tom Gilbert wrote:
: I'd like to use this forum to attempt to get a straight answer from
: Redhat on this one :)
Well, I'm not from RHAT, but I've got what I feel are some perfectly good
reasons for what's been done.
: I work on this wm, and would like an explanation from someone at Redhat
: please. We have worked hard to improve the product, and 0.16.x is a
: league ahead of 0.15.x in terms of useability and performance. We have
: written several gui config tools and lots of documentation.
:
: I have read the explanation on the site, which is basically "we couldn't
: be bothered to configure it, so we stuck with the old version", and am
: rather annoyed as a result :)
That's not what I got out of the explanation at all. What I got was
more along the lines of "E16 adds a lot of cruft that doesn't build
on the functionality present with E15 + GNOME."
Let's face it, Raster has stated, publicly, I might add, that it is his
intent for the E project to create its *own* desktop environment that
is in no way connected to GNOME. It sure looks to me (someone who isn't
involved in either project), that Raster has a bad case of sour grapes.
The whole finger-pointing thing when he left RHAT, and now GNOME is
phasing out using Imlib in favor of GdkPixbuf, in order to overcome
shortcomings of Imlib that Raster doesn't seem willing to fix.
: The only change that could explain this is the fact the current
: Enlightenment version doesn't come perfectly configured for use with
: GNOME out of the box, but actually requires two config files to be
: changed slightly (wow), and one compile-time option to a supplementary
: package (epplets), whereas the last version was ideally suited out of
: the box.
Did it ever occur to you that it's got nothing to do with the fact that
TODAY you need to do two minor changes? Again, consider Raster's
statements about creating E's own desktop environment. RHAT has a large
investment in both time and resources in making GNOME a success. Why
would they want to deride their own work? Don't believe me? Read it
for yourself at:
http://www.enlightenment.org/about.html
His attitude smacks of "Bah! Who needs GNOME or KDE?!?!?". Now that
the shoe's on the other foot, you're complaining.
If it were up to me, I probably would have included E16, with the couple
of changes, but dumped it the second it added more "changes" for the
maintainers of the packages to maintain.
: The 0.16.x documentation includes several FAQs on configuring
: enlightenment for use with GNOME, and it is extremely easy to do. E is a
: very configurable window manager, and many people use it in conjunction
: with GNOME, no problem at all.
It also eats memory like crazy! On my desktop, when I switched from E16
to Sawmill, memory usage was cut in half. The machine was appreciably
faster as well. The machine's no slouch either. See:
http://www.jasons.org/anthrax.php
: And finally, every support request for 0.15.5 that comes from a redhat
: 6.2 user will be forwarded to this list. Thankyou.
Hmm.. I don't see:
XFce
IceWM
Blackbox
in RH 6.2 either. Maybe they should moan and wail too.
Hey look, tcl/tk are 8.0.5. The scriptics people aren't screaming bloody
murder.
When building a software release consisting of parts taken from numerous
sources, you go with what best fits your needs. E16 adds a lot of stuff
that RH 6.2 doesn't need. Personally, I didn't care for E15 either.
At the time, it was all we really had that did the things I wanted, but
that time has passed, at least for me. To me, it would all be the
same if RHAT didn't even include E.
One of my co-workers summed it up the best when he said (and I wrote
down), "Window managers should be just that - a piece of software that
manages windows. It gives you borders and window controls and stays out
of your way by not littering your screen with extra stuff. It should be
attractive, lightweight, configurable and not be loaded down with all
sorts of dancing baloney that just sucks up more RAM and CPU." That
little statement is the first thing that we hand new programmers as a
part of our programming style guide.
--
Jason Costomiris <><
Technologist, cryptogeek, human.
jcostom {at} jasons {dot} org | http://www.jasons.org/
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