Enlightenment

Related articles
Desktop environment
Display manager
Window manager
Enlightenment
This comprises both the
Enlightenment
window manager
and Enlightenment Foundation Libraries (EFL), which provide additional desktop environment features such as a toolkit, object canvas, and abstracted objects. It has been under development since 2005, but in February 2011 the core EFLs saw their first stable 1.0 release.
Installation
Install
the
enlightenment
package.
You might also want to install some EFL-based applications that integrates well with Enlightenment:
ecrire
– A text editor
ephoto
– A picture viewer
evisum
– A task manager
rage
– A video player
terminology
– A terminal emulator.
Warning
Some of the following PKGBUILDs use unstable development code. Use them at your own risk.
The following are EFL-based applications, most in an early stage of development and not yet released:
econnman
AUR
– An EFL based user interface for
ConnMan
network manager
edi-git
AUR
– An EFL based IDE
eperiodique
AUR
–
Eperiodique
periodic table viewer
epymc-git
AUR
– A Python Media Center
eruler-git
AUR
– An on-screen ruler and measurement tools
Moksha
For
Bodhi Linux's fork
of Enlightenment, install the
moksha-git
AUR
package with optional
modules
.
It conflicts with
enlightenment
, because it uses the same binary name and config files. Make sure to backup your config files under
~/.e
before switching to it.
Starting Enlightenment
Simply choose
Enlightenment
session from your favourite
display manager
or configure
xinitrc
to start it from the console.
Entrance
Warning
Entrance is highly experimental, and does not have proper systemd support. Use it at your own risk.
Enlightenment has a new display manager called Entrance, which is provided by the
entrance-git
AUR
package. Entrance is quite sophisticated and its configuration is controlled by
/etc/entrance/entrance.conf
. It can be used by
enabling
entrance.service
.
Manually
If you prefer to start Enlightenment manually, enter
startx /usr/bin/enlightenment_start
in the console. See
xinitrc
for details.
To try the
Wayland
compositor, enter
enlightenment_start
instead.
Warning
The Wayland session is broken with recent Mesa versions, and fails to start. See:
[1]
Note
If you use a software rasterizer OpenGL driver under Wayland, specify the
EVAS_GL_NO_BLACKLIST=1
environment variable
, otherwise Enlightenment refuses to start.
[2]
Configuration
Enlightenment has a sophisticated configuration system that can be accessed from the Main menu's Settings submenu.
Network
ConnMan
Enlightenment's preferred network manager is
ConnMan
which can be installed from the
connman
package. Follow the instructions on
ConnMan
to do the configuration.
For extended configuration, you may also install Econnman (available in AUR as
econnman
AUR
or
econnman-git
AUR
) and its associated dependencies. This is not required for general functionality though.
Adding the ConnMan Gadget to the Shelf
Settings -> Extensions -> Modules
under System
Connection Manager
Load that (select then hit
Load
).
Right-click on the shelf at the bottom of the screen.
Go to Shelf -> Contents
Then, just scroll around and find
ConnMan
.
and hit
Add
.
NetworkManager
You can also use
networkmanager
to manage your network connections - see
NetworkManager
for more information.
Note however that the applet will need Appindicator support to show in Enlightenment's
system tray
. See
NetworkManager#Appindicator
. As an alternative to using the applet, NetworkManager includes both CLI and TUI interfaces for network configuration - see
NetworkManager#Usage
.
Polkit agent
Enlightenment version DR 0.24.0 ships with a built-in polkit agent, and no extra polkit package is required to authenticate for privileged actions. Earlier versions of Enlightenment do not ship with a
graphical polkit authentication agent
. If you want to access privileged actions (e.g. mount a filesystem on a system device), you have to install one and autostart it. For that you should go to
Settings Panel > Apps > Startup Applications > System
and activate it.
GNOME Keyring integration
It is possible to use gnome-keyring in Enlightenment. However, at the time of writing, you need a small hack to make it work in full.
First, you must tell Enlightenment to autostart gnome-keyring. For that you should go to
Settings Panel > Apps > Startup Applications > System
and activate
Certificate and Key Storage
,
GPG Password Agent
,
SSH Key Agent
and "Secret Storage Service".
After this, you should
set
the following:
SSH_AUTH_SOCK=/run/user/${UID}/keyring/ssh
This "hack" is used to override the automatic setting of the variable by "enlightenment-start" from "ssh-agent" to gnome-keyring.
More information on this topic in the
GNOME Keyring
article.
System tray
Note
Since Enlightenment 20, Xembed support has been removed
[3]
meaning that many 'legacy' applets can no longer be displayed in the Systray. To use these applets, you will need to use a standalone system tray application such as
stalonetray
instead.
Enlightenment has support for a system tray but it is disabled by default. To enable the system tray, open the Enlightenment main menu, navigate to the
Settings
submenu and click on the
Modules
option. Scroll down until you see the
Systray
option. Highlight that option and click the
Load
button. Now that the module has been loaded, it can be added to the shelf. Right click on the shelf you wish to add the Systray to, hightlight the
Shelf
submenu and click on the
Contents
option. Scroll down until you see
Systray
. Highlight that option and click the
Add
button.
Notifications
Enlightenment provides a notification server through its Notification extension.
Notifications may be displayed in any corner of the "screen" as defined below
Available screen policies are Primary Screen, Current Screen, All Screens, and Xinerama
Notifications may be filtered based on urgency (Low, Normal, or Critical in any combination)
A default notification timeout may be set and optionally enforced for all notifications
The notification server may also optionally ignore replace ID requests
Themes
More themes to customize the look of Enlightenment are available from:
enlightenment-themes.org
relighted.c0n.de
for the default theme in 200 different colors
git.enlightenment.org
(git clone the theme you like, run 'make' and you end up with a .edj theme file)
packages.bodhilinux.com
has a good collection (you will need to extract the .edj file from the .deb; bsdtar will do this and is part of the base Arch Linux install). A nice catalog can be seen at
their wiki
.
exchange.enlightenment.org
(archived)
You can install the themes (coming in .edj format) using the theme configuration dialog or by moving them to
~/.e/e/themes
.
Note
Enlightenment does not provide a stable theme API, and there have been numerous theme API changes over the years, even after E17 was released. Themes that have not been updated regularly are unlikely to work.
Tip
To make GTK and Qt applications match the default theme of Enlightenment you can download a theme like the
E17 GTK theme
. Place it in
~/.themes/
or install the
gtk-theme-e17gtk-git
AUR
package and select application themes from Enlightenments settings, and set it to that, this will make all GTK2 and GTK3 applications match the default Enlightenment theme, you can then configure Qt applications (or configure Qt's default settings) to use the GTK theme so it will mimic the theme your GTK applications are using, this way you can make sure most applications will blend in perfectly with your default enlightenment theme. See also
Uniform look for Qt and GTK applications
.
GTK
To alter the GTK theme, go to
Settings > All > Look > Application Theme
.
Modules and Gadgets
Module
Name used in enlightenment to refer to the "backing" code for a gadget.
Gadget
Front-end or user interface that should help the end users of Enlightenment do something.
Many Modules provide Gadgets that can be added to your desktop or on a shelf. Some Modules (such as CPUFreq) only provide a single Gadget while others (such as Composite) provide additional features without any gadgets.  Note that certain gadgets such as Systray can only be added to a shelf while others such as Moon can only be loaded on the desktop.
"Extra" modules
Warning
These are 3rd party modules and not officially supported by the Enlightenment developers. They are also pulled directly from git, so they are development code that may or may not work at any time. Use at your own risk.
Beyond the modules described here, more "extra" modules are available from
e-modules-extra-git
AUR
.
Scale Windows
The
Scale Windows
module, which requires compositing to be enabled, adds several features. The scale windows effect shrinks all open windows and brings them all into view. This is known in "Mission Control" in macOS. The scale pager effect zooms out and shows all desktops as a wall, like the compiz expo plugin. Both can be added to the desktop as a gadget or bound to a key binding, mouse binding or screen edge binding.
Some people like to change the standard window selection key binding
ALT + Tab
to use Scale Windows to select windows.  To change this setting, you navigate to
Menu > Settings > Settings Panel > Input > Keys
.  From here, you can set any key binding you would like.
To replace the window selection key binding functionality with Scale Windows, scroll through the left panel until you find the
ALT
section and then find and select
ALT + Tab
.  Then, scroll through the right panel looking for the "Scale Windows" section and choose either
Select Next
or
Select Next (All)
depending on whether you would like to see windows from only the current desktop or from all desktops and click
Apply
to save the binding.
Available from
upstream git
.
Default Keybindings
Key
Effect
Shift+F10
Maximize vertically
Ctrl+Menu
Show "Clients" (windows) Menu
Alt+Esc
Show "Everything Launcher" (apps, windows, etc.)
Super+Left
Maximize left
Super+Right
Maximize right
Alt+Shift+F10
Maximize horizontally
Alt+Shift+Left
Flip to the desktop on the left
Alt+Shift+Right
Flip to the desktop on the right
Ctrl+Alt+d
Show the desktop
Ctrl+Alt+f
Toggle fullscreen
Ctrl+Alt+i
Toggle iconic mode
Ctrl+Alt+k
Kill window
Ctrl+Alt+l
Invoke the screensaver
Ctrl+Alt+n
Maximize Window
Ctrl+Alt+r
Toggle shade up
Ctrl+Alt+w
Window menu
Ctrl+Alt+x
Close a window
Ctrl+Alt+Down
Lower
Ctrl+Alt+Up
Raise
Ctrl+Alt+Left
Flip to desktop on left
Ctrl+Alt+Right
Flip to desktop on right
Ctrl+Alt+Del
Show "End session" dialog
Ctrl+Alt+Ins
Launch the default terminal
Troubleshooting
If you find some unexpected behavior, there are a few things you can do:
try to see if the same behavior exists with the default theme
disable any 3rd party modules you may have installed
backup
~/.e
and remove it (e.g.
mv ~/.e ~/.e.back
)
If you are sure you found a bug open an issue for the relevant component at
https://git.enlightenment.org/
.
Compositing
When the configuration needs to be reset and the settings windows can no longer be approached, configuration for the compositor can be reset using the hardcoded keybinding
Ctrl + Alt + Shift + Home
.
Unreadable fonts
If fonts are too small and your screen is unreadable, be sure the right font packages are installed.
ttf-dejavu
and
ttf-bitstream-vera
are valid candidates.
You also should consider just increasing the scaling size under the Scaling. You can set scaling under
Settings > Settings Panel > Look > Scaling
.
Backlight always dimmed
You may find that Enlightenment routinely dims the backlight to 0% on logout and will only restore it to 100% when you log into another Enlightenment session. Enlightenment assumes that whatever comes after it will set the backlight to whatever it prefers, if anything as this is what Enlightenment does at start. This is especially problematic when using another desktop environment alongside Enlightenment that cannot control backlight as the backlight will not automatically be restored to its normal level when using that desktop environment. To fix this issue, open the Enlightenment
Settings Panel
and, under the
Look
tab, click on the
Composite
option. Tick the
Don't fade backlight
box and click
OK
.
Inconsistent cursor theme
You may find that the cursor theme for the desktop is different to the one used in applications such as
Firefox
. This is because desktop applications are using X cursor themes whilst Enlightenment has its own set of cursor themes. For consistency, you can set Enlightenment to always use the X cursor theme. To do this, open the Enlightenment
Settings Panel
and click on the
Input
tab. Click on the
Mouse
option. Change the theme from
Enlightenment
to
X
and click
OK
. You should now find that the same cursor theme is used everywhere. If the X cursor theme itself is not always consistent, see
Cursor themes#The default cursor theme
.
Background images
You can just select wallpapers in the wallpaper settings dialog and import any image with the provided settings dialog, or you can put desired wallpapers into
~/.e/e/backgrounds/
LMB anywhere on the desktop will give access to the settings, select
/Desktop/Backgrounds/
Any new image copied in the
~/.e/e/backgrounds/
folder will get the list of available backgrounds auto-updated. You can drop animated gifs and even mp4 and other video files in here and use them as wallpapers if you want. Select desired wallpaper from drop-down menu. Inside the appropriate tabs in the global settings, you can adjust things like tiling of the background image, filling screen and such.
Enlightenment DR16
Enlightenment, Development Release 16 was first released in 2000, and reached version 1.0 in 2009. Originally, the DR16 stood for the 0.16 version of the Enlightenment project. It is still under development today, regularly updated by its maintainer Kim 'kwo' Woelders. With compositing, shadows and transparencies, E16 kept all of the speed that presided over its foundation by original author Carsten "Rasterman" Haitzler but with up to date refinement.
To install E16
Install
e16
.
e16-themes
provides some additional themes to change the visual look.
See
/usr/share/doc/e16/e16.html
for in depth documentation.
Basic Configuration
Most configuration files for E16 reside in
~/.e16
and are text-based, editable at will. That includes the Menus too.
Shortcut keys can be either modified by hand, or with the e16keyedit software provided as source on the
sourceforge
page of the e16 project. Note that the keyboard shortcuts file is not created in
~/.e16
by default. You can copy the packaged version to your home directory if you wish to make changes:
$ cp /usr/share/e16/config/bindings.cfg ~/.e16
Start/Restart/Stop Scripts
Create an Init, a Start and a Stop folder in your
~/.e16
folder: any .sh script found there will either be executed at Startup (from Init folder), at each Restart (from Start folder), or at Shutdown (from Stop folder); provided you allowed it through the MMB / settings / session / <enable scripts> button and made them
executable
. Typical examples involves starting
PulseAudio
or your favorite network manager applet.
Compositor
Shadows, Transparent effects
et al
can be found in MMB or RMB /Settings, under Composite .
See also
Enlightenment Homepage
Enlightenment Developer Documentation
DR16 download resource
Enlightenment users mail list
Enlightenment developer mail list
ircs://irc.libera.chat/e