I have been seeding the OpenGEU ISO for a few days now. No reason, I just grabbed it and added it as a test for my Pentium machine running as a torrent slave (which is doing quite well, by the way). Since I installed both Jaunty betas and gave one screenshot apiece, I figured I might as well round out the Ubuntu-based desktop frolic with one more.
I don’t have much to say about this one; if you know my tendencies toward software, you probably can predict my reaction. It’s pretty, that’s for sure. But it’s almost overdone — too much sugary sweetness. I have a hard time seeing a lot of the smaller animations and scrolling effects. I have no idea what some of the installed software is, because I get no tooltips and I don’t know the icons. Some of the fading effects and shadows obscure the menus, particularly in the default theme (which of course, is not what you see above 😉 ).
All of these things would probably be solved with a screen of lower resolution, or perhaps after adjusting them somewhat. And I know, and preach, that aesthetics are a myth that has very little bearing on function, since there will always be someone who dislikes it.
Englightenment, in my experience though, is all about desktop glitz, what with the animated wallpapers and throbber selection bars. That’s fine; there are plenty of people who subscribe to pretty. Enlightenment is great for them.
And I know from past experience that some versions of Enlightenment actually perform rather well on older machines, but this is thrashing away at my 1Ghz machine, to the point where I prefer not to keep it around.
Personally I blame it on Gnome. I blame everything on Gnome, though. Feeling cranky in the morning? Must be Gnome’s fault. 👿
Anyway, I had a look and I moved on. A different machine, a different user and perhaps it’s something appealing. Not for me though. I demand performance over pretty, every day of the week.
You are not alone. I tried out its hardy release once and I immediately thought it was too cluttered. You know it’s a bad thing if you can’t tell what several buttons on the main panel do. I’m not one for too much graphical effects, though.
Btw, you’ve totally addicted me on lightweight apps, and I wanted to tell you that your site works perfectly even in dillo (though it mentions 15 bugs).
I suppose the one nice thing about using WordPress.com for hosting is that in this case, I get to blame those 15 bugs on them. 😈 😉
It also works in Midori, except Midori crashes on scripts, plugins, and using the mouse wheel for scrool. When Midori crashes though, it just, closes!
I hear you. I like Enlighhtenment as long as I have to do nothing except staring at the screen. As soon as I actually have to start doing some work, all the prettyness is in the way.
Maybe the now-slow Xubuntu Jaunty? Too bad the Wubi devs are quite rude about implementing Ubuntu alternate.
I checked out OpenGEU a while back and I have to agree. It’s pretty, but just not my cup of tea even with customizations. I tried E17 on my Arch install for a couple of weeks, and it just never felt quite right. Although, I loved the menu-on-mouse-click-on-desktop thing. In the end, I ended up on Openbox. It’s a good mix of “pretty” while still being actually functional.
@ thealphanerd
Have a look in Ubuntu forums Cafe and find the Midori thread. Theres a link to the new webkit repo. I found upgrading webkit added a lot of stability to Midori. Well, guessing webkit is what crashes more than Midori, but you know what i mean ^^
Yeah. Getting the new version of Midori from getdeb.net helps.
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Should try again – I use to look down at software that did not work first try but I must say that I try E17 here and there and now it is my default – very nice, snappy – depending on what modules you try to install and the setup panel is now running smooth enough to set quite a few options, override themes, combine themes…etc. Just my 2 cents.