I’ve been very interested in trying Enlightenment E18 on openSUSE since a while, but backed off after doing a global search around the forums and finding that E18 is not installed through patterns and there’s not much people (at least around the forums) who have done this; which means little to no information.
I know about only one user who could know, who goes by the name “simotek”. I already tried to send a PM, but it would seem the user is not around here anymore, even his/her website seems idle during last weeks…
If the user cannot be contacted, could I still ask here? Has anyone succeeded in installing and handling E18 on openSUSE already?
Its been a while now so i am just going off memory but from what I remember you can just 1 click install E18 from the X11 repo. If that doesnt work just search for the pattern and make sure to dup any enlightenment packaged over to the newer repo. From what I remember it was pretty easy to set up.
Hi, Sorry about the late reply, i don’t check the forums often as i don’t have time. Thankfully someone pinged me about the post on irc, we normally hang out in #openSUSE-e on freenode if your looking for us.
I will post your questions + my answers here that way they can be useful for everyone
I browsed the repository link you posted in your website, why are packages named “e16” or “e17” instead of “e18”? In openSUSE 13.1 and earlier for historical reasons Enlightenment e16 was in the package called enlightenment probably due to the fact e17 was no where near release at the time. *As such e17 was always created with the package name e17. For openSUSE 13.2 which is what the X11:Enlightenment:Factory repo is currently targeting **the package enlightenment will contain the latest enlightenment release (Currently e18 but by the time 13.2 rolls around it will probably be e19). As e16 and e17 both offer some distinctly different features to the latest release and arn’t hard to maintain we also maintain e16 and e17 in the respective packages alongside which is why you see them there. *
What would be the right way to install e18? I add the repo, and how do I know which packages exactly to install? Or do I install the entire repository? (holly mother…) You can Just install the package enlightenment it will pull in all required dependencies
If I didn’t install Terminology or Connman, would the corresponding applications from the other installed DE be present instead? Yes this is correct, although i recommend trying Terminology it is a very good and fast terminal emulator.
Here in the forums, it’s fairly advised not to use Factory repos in a stable openSUSE release. I guess it’s different for e18 in this case?
Because I browsed and saw that repos for e16 and e17 are still there… Heck, even openSUSE’s Portal:Enlightenment site advises to use Factory…
*We almost always keep the X11:Enlightenment:Factory repository in a good working state, it will generally have the latest efl and enlightenment release and we don’t often break things. As e18 was released after the feature freeze for openSUSE 13.1 currently it is the most stable way to get e18. I use the X11:Enlightenment:Factory repo on my work computer with very few issues. If you are really concerned about stability though *you should consider staying with e17 until openSUSE 13.2 but i don’t plan on breaking the repo again.
You should note if using this repo with openSUSE 13.1 you will probably need to block the enlightenment with version 1.0.13 because that is really e16, there may also be some minor issues with the openSUSE theme atm because i need to regenerate it.
Is EFL also needed, or is it just an optional pack for developers? Yes EFL is the libraries that enlightenment is built on, like libgtk for gnome.
If I’m doing a clean openSUSE installation I guess I’d have to install it with KDE or GNOME first because Enlightenment isn’t shipped within the DVD. But would it be possible to directly install it as the only DE through Network installation? Yes in theory this should be possible there was a bug with this with e17 due to a missing dependency, i suspect that is fixed now but i haven’t tested it properly yet. In reality you will probably still need to use alot of the gnome or kde apps that you currently use with enlightenment so it may be worth installing one of them anyway. I tend to do a kde install then install enlightenment on top because i still use a large number of KDE apps.
If, just like KDE and GNOME, e18 comes with its own set of stuff such as applications -file browser for example-, tools, daemons, etc, won’t they conflict with other DE’s? And for updates, do I have to log in the corresponding DE to update it? e18 has its own file manager but it doesn’t conflict with kde or gnomes they are different applications, e18 has very few other tools / daemons and they won’t conflict. You should still do all the updates to your system through YAST enlightenment e18 doesn’t have a package update module so you need to use yast directly. e19 does have a package update module that will update everything properly but i still need to configure it for openSUSE which shouldn’t be hard.
Finally, what about drivers and multimedia codecs?
For drivers, I have to install corresponding drivers for my wireless card (Broadcom) and graphics card (Nvidia) in my case. Which goes first after installing with KDE/GNOME, drivers or e18 itself? There have been some issues reported with the mesa intel drivers but the NVIDIA ones seem fine, Installation order doesn’t matter to much, e18 will possibly fall back to software rendering until you install the NVIDIA driver but the software renderer is very fast anyway. Wireless is up to you it depends if you need it to get the packages.
For codecs, you probably know there’s a Multimedia guide here in the forums. The packages to be installed are virtually the same for KDE and for GNOME, excepting a couple ones that are related to the DE itself. How would they be installed for e18? Would it take the same packages the other DE has? And what if e18 was the only DE installed? e18 has no multimedia apps (with the exception of terminology) it does provide some video previews though, these work either with the gstreamer or vlc engine (the same as other DE’s) and the codecs can be installed in the same way.
I apologize beforehand for so many questions. I feel I already did enough trial-error to ask for help, but nevertheless I know I’m asking a bit too much. But if yu could help me, I’d be very thankful.
Thanks beforehand for your attention. thats alright sorry for the long delay, i will try and keep a eye on this thread if you have any more issues.
Thanks very much, Simotek! (Are you mr or mrs?)
I hope I can give it the try in these days, and if I do I’ll try to report back just for the sake of possible future interested users.
Regarding point 4, then would you say e18 is as stable (or almost) as e17 or e16 at least on openSUSE? And I didn’t understand the “block version 1.0.13” thing very well… Do you mean it would be necessary to block if sticking with e17 repo? And if I were to indeed, how would I do that?
Also, if e16 and e17 come with some distinctive features other than e18, which Enlightenment would you suggest assuming the 3 of them are equally stable? I thought latest release of a DE was generally the best as long as it was stable enough…
-E18 is likely a bit more stable than E16 and E17. openSUSE theme is probably alright on E18, though it still needs to be re-uploaded with the new Elementary widget kit release…
-For installation use X11:Enlightenment:Factory repo, but manually pick version 0.18.* and avoid (block) updates to version 1.0.13 since this one corresponds to E16 on openSUSE 13.1. Issue is expected to be fixed on openSUSE 13.2 release, or if using openSUSE:Factory repo.
Thanks guys, this thread made it easy for me to install e18. Up and running and dangerous! hah, it’s working very well and was much easier to install using the pattern from the enlightenment factory repo.
I should update this to say enlightenment e19 and any versions in the future are now in the enlightenment package, as of openSUSE 13.2 e16 is in the e16 package and e17 is in the e17 package, neither e16 or e17 have been heavly tested, but at the same time very little has changed.