The Enlightenment Window Manager was first released in 1997 by Carsten "Rasterman" Haitzler
It's release revolutionized the face of desktops on UNIX platforms and beyond,
featuring a more graphically stimulating enviroment than ever previously seen on a conventional
desktop. Since that time the window manager has been emulated and has driven the graphical appeal
we see on desktops everywhere. In 2000, the latest major release occured with the release of DR16.0,
a release that remains in heavy usage today. In 2003 Kim "kwo" Woelders took over
management of the DR16 codebase and released DR16.6, improving opon the window manager and
modernizing its dependencies, and even now the DR16 window manager has a long life ahead of itself,
even after the release of DR17.
The Enlightenment DR16 Window Manager is a robust, flexable, highly configurable, graphically
rich yet unobtrusive desktop enviroment for the X11 windowing system. It is fully themable and
easily configured. There are a wide range of configuration options to suite any taste. DR16
provides an innovate way of managing applications found no where else, allowing for not only virtual
desktops, but also multiple desktops (a seperate set of virtual desktops). A unique snapshoting pager
allows for easy management of application placement and even will zoom on on mouse-over of a
window in the pager for easily locating applications. Support exists for up to 32 multiple desktops,
and virtual desktops up to 8x8 in size! (Thats 2048 possible desktops!) Standard options such as
focus settings and autoraise are extremely configurable to fit your individual tastes. Several
different types of move and resize effects exist, including Opaque, Technical, Box, Shaded,
Semi-solid, and Translucent, depending on your preference and CPU requirements. "Remember"
settings can be assigned to each window allowing it to be placed and configured just as you want on
each startup of the window manager without having to edit any files. Windows can be individually
configured to meet any desire, to change stacking payers, border styles, window size, grouping,
tab skip, stickiness, and more. And EESH, the Enlightenment Shell, allows for complete remote
control of the window manager and easy scripting.
The menu system is flexable, providing easy access to applications, theme selection,
documentation, settings, and background selection. DR16 uniquely allows background selection
to be done from the main menu system using thumbnailed views of the background providing a
quick and easy way to change wallpaper. In addition, desktop "FX" exist that can
add a unique flare, including a ripple effect at the base of your desktop.
A simple group of flat text files allow for easy editing of user appliation menus,
including the ability to create hierarchical user menus to suite your various needs. At first
startup DR16 will even scan for your KDE and GNOME menus to add an application menu for them.
Standard mouseless features such as tab switching exist, but we've built on even more than that.
Virtual desktops can be navigated using the keyboard arrow keys and nearly anything including application
launching can be keybound via e16bindings making DR16 an excellent choice for users who want a graphically
rich enviroment that doesn't require constant intervention of the mouse.
A built in help system called "eDox" provides an excellent resource for learning the
wide variety of diffrent methods of interaction and configuration. Graphical Tool Tips can also be
enabled to assist normal usage.
Enlightenment DR16 integrates well with both GNOME and KDE. Replace the default window
mangers for each with Enlightenment and you'll have the power to leverage the best of GNOME and
KDE at the same time, while enjoying the superior windowing interface that Enlightenment provides.
EESH, the Enlightenment Shell, allows for complete remote control of the window manager and easy scripting.
Enlightenment DR16 is highly portable, with binaries avalible for or testing done on all
Linux platforms, Solaris X86 and Sparc, HP-UX, AIX, IRIX, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OS/2 and
more.
Enlightenment DR16's project manager is Kim "kwo" Woelders.