The Enlightenment 0.25 released as a major update with new features and improvements. In this post, we wrap up the release.
Enlightenment is one of the oldest window manager in the Linux space, and a compositor for X11 in Linux.
This decade old desktop is one of the first “eye-candy” desktop environment. It consists of core libraries called EFL (Enlightenment Foundation Libraries) which provides features such as widgets, networking, graphics and more. Enlightenment evolved over the years to be suitable for Mobiles, Wearables, TV UI and of course vanilla desktop environment.
What’s New in Enlightenment 0.25
Enlightenment 0.25 released more than a year after 0.24 release. This release introduces a flat look overall, which matches the new flat theme. Earlier variants of this desktop mostly featured a 3d look of the icons and windows. That is changing in this release and I must say, it looks stunning.
Moreover, this new release brings new gesture bindings for touchpads, a new binding actions that lets users switch profiles, fingerprint support in desk lock via the libprintf library and a new tool to configure fingerprint.
Other new features in Enlightenment 0.25 includes a procast module which displays memory and CPU information in the titlebar, new settings for set up animation multiplier to speed up or down, recent files menu to access recently opened files and a new screen setup menu in the Quick settings.
One of cool feature that is introduced is the preview of folders on mouse over which gives some information of the directory without opening up the properties window. The temperature monitor now uses hwmon devices and supports multiple instances, the Shot tool revamped its workflow which lets you copy the screenshot and paste it to other app.
Furthermore, the scaling module now allows you to modify the DPI to force the non-EFL apps to scale properly, the Battery now includes a new popup with detailed battery information on the mouse-over.
On top of that, the Enlightenment logo during init phase of the boot now always shows by default, a Spotify fix, a bunch of new high quality wallpapers, various under the hood performance updates that makes this desktop one of the unique one to try it out. Checkout the full release notes for more information about these changes, alongside additional details.
Download and Install
The Enlightenment desktop and its components soon be arriving in the official repository of various Linux distributions.
While writing this, the Ubuntu repository still have the earlier 0.24 version. So wait until it arrives in Ubuntu repo. You can check here whether the latest 0.25 landed or not using the below link.
https://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=enlightenment&searchon=names
However, a clean script is available in below GitHub page to get it installed right now in Ubuntu systems. Detailed instructions also present in the below link.
https://github.com/batden/esteem
As of writing this, it’s already landed in Arch repository, which you can easily install if you have an Arch setup by following the below commands. If you need more details, you can read our guide on how to install Enlightenment desktop in Arch Linux.
sudo pacman -S efl sudo pacman -S enlightenment sudo pacman -S --needed terminology
Closing notes
Honestly, I really like Enlightenment desktop. It’s different, intuitive with its unique widgets and interactions. A fresh air among GNOME or KDE Plasma based Linux desktop. I wish more people start using this desktop, and it becomes more familiar to attract more developers and testers.
