OpenSUSE Considers Replacing LXDE With E17

[phoronix]

Phoronix: OpenSUSE Considers Replacing LXDE With E17

In an effort to make Enlightenment E17 available through the openSUSE installer and DVD, the lightweight LXDE desktop environment may be pushed away...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTM3MzE

[plonoma]

fix the YaST installer

This should be a priority over the other solutions because it is about a bug, limitation.

[varikonniemi]

Agreed, they should bundle only one DE and install it by default as "the suse experience", and offer the others as downloadable during install if the user so decides.

That said, i think Enlightenment is a technological masterpiece that could benefit immensely if suse team made a really nice theme for it. The default theme looks like it was made by an engineer, not an artist

[TheBlackCat]

Agreed, they should bundle only one DE and install it by default as "the suse experience", and offer the others as downloadable during install if the user so decides.

There is absolutely zero chance that is going to happen. As far as anyone has been able to determine a majority of openSUSE users use KDE, but not by a huge margin, and there are key developers using both.

You should have seen the ruckus that was caused just by setting KDE as checked by default. Developers and users running Gnome were absolutely furious. One maintainer was so angry he declare that he would not deal with any bugs for his component coming from KDE users.

[Akka]

Last time I installed opensuse I'm pretty sure they had a proper graphical easy to use netinstall where you could chose what you liked from the repos. Is that gone? I thought the dvd was the netinstall but with the dvd as local repo?

[89c51]

Agreed, they should bundle only one DE and install it by default as "the suse experience", and offer the others as downloadable during install if the user so decides.

That said, i think Enlightenment is a technological masterpiece that could benefit immensely if suse team made a really nice theme for it. The default theme looks like it was made by an engineer, not an artist

The black/blue one is quite elegant. The old black/white was hurting my retina. And yes E can benefit massively if a big distro selects it as its main DE.

[Ruse]

I read the messages on the mailing list.
No one... NO ONE even mentions Xfce.

It's basically LXDE done right, with more features, with the same footprint.
I used both on limited-resource machines (P4 and Atom), they perform the exact same.
Heck, even a simple Fluxbox / IceWM runs the same.

This lightweight "buzzword" is also silly. The KDE guy obviously never used an older machine.
Try using KDE4.10 on an Atom and he will know what pain it is. "Buzzword" my ass.

Edit: Nowadays LXDE is just a playground for PCMan. Which is not bad or anything, but people (especially devs) should stop promoting it as a main time desktop environment. It started out to be a new contender, but never managed to catch up. It's been all idle for years. Heck, some of the parts were idle since the start of the project. (Check Sourceforge.)

[TheBlackCat]

I read the messages on the mailing list.
No one... NO ONE even mentions Xfce.

Yes they did, many times.

It's basically LXDE done right, with more features, with the same footprint.

If you had read the mailing list discussion, you would know that if anyone can actually establish that then openSUSE is likely to switch. So far no one has.

[bwat47]

Agreed, they should bundle only one DE and install it by default as "the suse experience", and offer the others as downloadable during install if the user so decides.

I disagree, I like opensuse's stance of being as desktop agnostic as possible. People often say opensuse is a "KDE" distro, which I disagree with. Its true they do have one of the best KDE desktops out there, I find their gnome desktop has always been excellent as well.

And this is talking about the DVD, the whole point of the DVD is that there is multiple desktops available on the DVD, so you can install your preferred desktop straight from the DVD without having to download it. They already offer live cd's for kde and gnome so I don't see the point of "only including one desktop by default"...

[riklaunim]

Maybe it's me, but I can use and work with base LXDE apps. I can't say the same thing about e17. Maybe XFCE would suffice in this case?