Enlightenment 0.18 Released With Many New Features

[rudregues]

Yes, come to me!

Just waiting gentoo's ebuild coming :-)

[Awesomeness]

under wayland yes
but under X11 it is, performance wise, BAD

so dont talk shit...

Your lies don't become true just because you sprinkle them with nasty words.
Compositing does, in fact, improve performance.

Several clueless people confuse compositing with graphical effects. Compositing is a prerequisite for semi-transparent windows with a blur effect and those effects can be taxing on the hardware (esp. with buggy drivers) but effectless compositing on its own should improve rendering in every real-world scenario.
Compositing on its own is also not tied to hardware-accelerated OpenGL. KWin 5's QPainter-based compositor is an example of a software compositor running smoother than a non-composited environment.

If compositing is OpenGL-accelerated, the CPU's resources are freed.

Extra memory consumption is a disadvantage. Does the benefits greatly out weight such a disadvantage in most cases? Yes. Is it non existent? Not at all.

It's not a legitimate argument because it only applies to fictional hardware. Even old computers have more than enough video memory to handle a few windows. I type this on a notebook from over 6 years ago that wasn't even remotely high end when it came out and compositing is beneficial here.
Hardware that would be challenged by compositing has other factors that prevent modern DEs from running in the first place: Too small hard drives, unsupported CPU extensions, Linux distributions are not shipped on floppies any more, etc.

[mrugiero]

It's not a legitimate argument because it only applies to fictional hardware. Even old computers have more than enough video memory to handle a few windows. I type this on a notebook from over 6 years ago that wasn't even remotely high end when it came out and compositing is beneficial here.
Hardware that would be challenged by compositing has other factors that prevent modern DEs from running in the first place: Too small hard drives, unsupported CPU extensions, Linux distributions are not shipped on floppies any more, etc.

It's not legitimate in almost any case to discard the technology, but it is still part of the trade off. I already stated the benefits out weight this cost.
Also, six years is by far not the oldest computers I can see running nowadays.

Also, for all of the factors you list, there are workarounds for hardware that wouldn't work great with compositing. My first computer, an Intel 486DX2, had a CD-ROM reader, for example. The minimal HD space required for Xubuntu to install is 4.7GB. My computer had 2GB, so I guess 4.7GB was around what was supported in that time. For extensions, one can make a custom build. But this computer had 32MB of RAM (and at the time that was a hell of a big amount of RAM).
Not that I'm crazy enough to try to run any modern software on it (aside from the fact it was stolen in 2005), but the thing is compositing can be a show stopper in some (really, really unlikely) scenarios. In real life, though, even a Raspberry Pi seems to have no problem with compositing.

[Ericg]

In real life, though, even a Raspberry Pi seems to have no problem with compositing.

This is an important part to put things in perspective. Let's call a $35 Rasberry Pi that absolute WORST baseline for technology going forward...

Under Wayland, that $35 ARM board can output accelerated 1080p video at 24+ FPS under a composited desktop with active transparency effects.

With that in mind, sorry if I don't feel bad that your pentium 4 with the crappiest integrated graphics Intel ever put out, that are reverse-engineered and so spotty that its borderline useless, doesn't work so well going forward.

[monohouse]

what software runs on this toolkit

compositing or not, what interests me the most at the moment is what software runs on this toolkit ?
I can swallow a video card upgrade if necessary, but from what I can tell there isn't any software for this platform other than terminology (a fancy terminal emulator) ?

[mrugiero]

compositing or not, what interests me the most at the moment is what software runs on this toolkit ?
I can swallow a video card upgrade if necessary, but from what I can tell there isn't any software for this platform other than terminology (a fancy terminal emulator) ?

Enlightenment is not the toolkit, is the DE. And you can run whatever software, using whatever toolkit. The only difference is that the desktop will not share the libs, leading to a slight increase in memory use. But again, if compositing is not a problem, an extra library in use is probably not a problem either.
On the video card upgrade, what for? Compositing should work in almost any card from 2006 and later, probably some older ones too.

What I wonder is if it bypasses composition for fullscreen applications.

[monohouse]

I mean what applications does the DE provide, surely a DE is not empty, there must be some applications with it, and it looks like their website indicates that there is a toolkit, the EFL/Elementary ? my question was whether there are applications for these toolkit.

yhe memory is sure not a problem, I have 4 GB on that system and 90% of it are used for cache, but video card may be necessary because I am using S3 Virge DX and im almost certain that wayland doesn't support it (that's not a problem, I will have to X for the time being, I will also have to build new drivers and wayland for the new video card anyway), what I am saying is that I am trying to determine if the applications that are provided by the DE and toolkit of this platform are something worth turning the entire system upside down

[mrugiero]

I mean what applications does the DE provide, surely a DE is not empty, there must be some applications with it, and it looks like their website indicates that there is a toolkit, the EFL/Elementary ? my question was whether there are applications for these toolkit.

I'm not a user, so I can't give you a proper answer to that question. I assumed you meant the EFL, that's why I commented on Enlightenment not being the toolkit.

yhe memory is sure not a problem, I have 4 GB on that system and 90% of it are used for cache, but video card may be necessary because I am using S3 Virge DX and im almost certain that wayland doesn't support it (that's not a problem, I will have to X for the time being, I will also have to build new drivers and wayland for the new video card anyway), what I am saying is that I am trying to determine if the applications that are provided by the DE and toolkit of this platform are something worth turning the entire system upside down

Personally, I'm always more to the "stick to what works for you" opinion. If your system currently fits your needs, there's no reason to switch. Anyway, as I already said, I don't know how many or which applications target EFL.

[89c51]

I mean what applications does the DE provide, surely a DE is not empty, there must be some applications with it, and it looks like their website indicates that there is a toolkit, the EFL/Elementary ? my question was whether there are applications for these toolkit.

There aren't many. Or at least there isn't something to write home about. Except terminology. It's not a popular toolkit.

[gens]

...

...
why so much insults
i do know what compositing means...
whats your problem ?

anyway i have said that from past experience with compositing
last time i tested (yes tested, not theorized) compositing was really heavy on X and on the compositor program itself
now since that was a relatively long time ago i went to test again today

the rather scientific and highly complex test was to open 2 terminals
first one was running htop while the 2nd one was moved in an ellipse (im no michelangelo to be able to draw perfect circles)

e17 w/o compositing had rather low cpu usage
fluxbox even lower
e18 with no GL used many plenty resources
e18 with GL used about as fluxbox did, maybe a shade less, but the window movement was slightly delayed after the mouse cursor
(not tested now but i remember e17 with compositing to be rather heavy also, but that could be my memory going up in smoke)

all compositing tests were without any effects, what only really helps e18 with no GL
also the cpu was on the performance governor so the percentages are what it says

i didn't think to check gpu memory usage
but guess the driver would free some memory for full screen aps (maybe putting it to ram ?)
RAM usage went up and is now, with e18 GL, siting at 138MB for just enlightenment with a rather full desktop (more then twice as much it used to be)
X usually caches a lot of data so its not clear (its at 100 now)

so you were right, even thou not all the way
no need to insult random people on the internet for it


now that it's installed i'l stick with e18
mostly 'cuz i grown rather fond of the blend desktop flipping animation