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latz-twn Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 08 Nov 2003 Posts: 95 Location: Luxembourg
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Posted: Sat Mar 05, 2005 11:36 am Post subject: HOWTO: Enlight your desktop with Enlightenment DR16 |
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HOWTO: Enlight your desktop with Enlightenment DR16
1. Introduction
This Enlightenment HOWTO is my first HOWTO I've ever posted on gentoo forums. I am a big reader of the gentoo forums, and I check them nearly every day. The forum I found most intersting during the past 2 years of using gentoo has always been the Documentation, Tips & Tricks forum. On this occasion I want to thank the gentoo developers for gentoo and to all you guys posting in the forum for giving such a great support. Gentoo is so far the best user supported distribution I have seen and I really happy with that. Well but now let's get started.
I've been using fluxbox until now because I wanted simplicity and the power of customizablity! Well and a few days ago I first tried Enlightenment and I am amazed by it. It's a brilliant Window Manager which combines a few very import aspects :
- felxablity
- robustness
- simplicity
- high configurabilty
- graphically rich
So if you like having a nice niffty window manager to work in then try Enlightenment.
Enlightenment has been first released in 1997 by Carsten *Rasterman* Haitzler and it's elease 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.
I based this HOWTO on DR16 because DR17 is still in high development although there are CVS ebuilds available for it already. But as there are still many problems with the ebuilds, and sometimes the CVS Code isn't compiling I decided to use and to write about DR16.
For this HOWTO it is supposed that you have a fully working Xorg installtion on your machine, and use gentoo's Portage.
2. Main Installation
The Installation of Enlightenment is farily easy with gentoo, as we can use the power of emerge.
First of all let's compile & install Enlightenment WM first.
Code: |
emerge -av enlightenment
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Another very useful thing to emerge is edox-data, which is basically a startup documentation and more to help you getting started using enlightenment! It explains for instance how to operate with the mouse in enlightenment and what options you have. Enlightenment makes a lot of use of keyboard and mouse combinations! Which are sometimes very powerful to use. So go ahead and
Code: |
emerge -av edox-data
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As Enlightenment doesn't use ASCII config files but binary config files instead. The config files are enlightenment Data Base files which can be read and manipulated with a toolkit package called edb I strongly suggest you to get this as well.
That's everything for the main installtion, you can now go ahead and restart your Xorg and load Enlightenment by either doing starte16 or selecting the Enlightenment Session in your Graphical Login Manager.
3. First start
When you first fire up Enlightenment it creates your User Menu automatically, which you can always regenerate again! During this generation Enlightenment looks for all available and known X11, Kde, Gnome, Other GUI Programs that you have installed and creates entries in your User Menu.Your desktop should look something like this.
Desktop explained
On the top of your screen you have the so called Dragbar. It's main purpose is dragging desktops arround, so if you have desktop 0 and desktop 1 you could drag desktop 0 into desktop 1 when you are on desktop 1. Note: this only works when you have more than 1 desktop!
On the bottom-left you have Pager which shows you your desktops and what's on them!
On the bottom-right you have Iconbox. When you minize a window it's beeing minized into the Iconbox where you will see a little "screenshot" of that program, and they are identified by notify messages when you move over them with your mouse cursor.
Mouse actions
- Left Mouse clicking on the desktop background will bring the user Menu with various entries of various programs that you have installed. You can leave this menu opend (leave it "sticky") if you hold Left Mouse Button and releasing it on the title of the menu of a submenu.
- Middle Mouse clicking on the desktop background will display Enlightenment's main menu. Here you can access the other menus plus more options like Settings & Configuration. Sticky works the same here just with the middle mouse.
- Left Mouse clicking on the desktop background brings up the main configuration menu, where you can set up How windows behave, special Effects, Virtual Desktops, Multiple Desktops, ....
- ALT + Left Mouse clicking on a Window will enable you to move the window the same way as if you would do Left Mouse pressing on the title bar.
- ALT + Middle Mouse clicking on a Window will enable you to resize the window in the same way you would resize a window using a left mouse click on the leftmost buttom margin.
- ALT + Middle Mouse clicking on the desktop background will bring up a title list of active application windows. By using CTRL instead you will get a title list of all active applications on the current desktop. By selecting an application in that list will bring that application to the front.
- Wheel-Mouse will scroll through the desktops.
- Right Mouse click on a title of a window will give you options such as remembering the current position of an application so the next time you start that application it will appear on the same position.
Keyboard actions
- Shift+ALT + (Right arrow or Left arrow) to navigate through your virtual desktops.
- CRTL+ALT + (Right arrow or Left arrow) to navigate through your desktops.
- CRTL+ALT + K kill current on focus application.
- CRTL+ALT + Home shuffle windows on screen to be clean. (funny)
For more information consult the edox which we already installed. It's a very helpful guide if you want to know more, and if you want to do more with your enlightenment. To see the documentation just open up a console and type
Code: |
edox /usr/share/enlightenment/E-docs/
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4. Changing menus
To change menus in enlightenment there are two ways to do it. The hard way, or the easy-use-a-gui way. The hard way is going into your ~/.enlightenment/ directory and editing the files yourself. But that's really straight forward and easy to do.
Basically the main Menu is stored in the file file.menu, just open it and then you see the syntax which is pretty easy to understand. Every submenu is stored in a subdirectory holding a index.menu which again holds information about the applications you want to start. Here's my files.menu and one index.menu file for example, I haven't finished my whole menu yet how I want it to be.
file.menu
Code: |
"User Menus"
"aTerm" NULL exec "aterm"
"Enlightenment Epplets" NULL menu "epplets.menu"
"Network" NULL menu "menus_Network/index.menu"
"KDE" NULL menu "menus_KDE/index.menu"
"GNOME" NULL menu "menus_GNOME/index.menu"
"Other" NULL menu "menus_Other/index.menu"
"Restart Enlightenment" NULL exec "eesh -e 'restart'"
"Log Out" NULL exec "eesh -e 'exit'"
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menus_Network/index.menu
Code: |
"Network"
"Firefox" /usr/share/pixmaps/mozicon16.xpm exec "firefox"
"Licq" /usr/kde/3.3/share/icons/default.kde/16x16/apps/licq.png exec "licq"
"RealPlayer 10" /home/latz/.enlightenment/icons/realplay.png exec "realplay"
"Chat" NULL menu "menus_Internet/chat/index.menu"
"Browsers" NULL menu "menus_Internet/browsers/index.menu"
"FileTransfer" NULL menu "menus_Internet/filetransfer/index.menu"
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The easy way is using the e16menuedit, which is also available in the gentoo portage. So just go ahead and emerge e16menuedit
and start e16menuedit.
5. Changing Keybindings
You can change your keybindings as well, by copying keybinding.cfg to your home .enlightenment/ directory and editing it. This file can be found in /usr/share/enlightenment/config/.
Code: |
cp /usr/share/enlightenment/config/keybindings.cfg ~/.enlightenment/
nano -w ~/.enlightenment/keybindings.cfg
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There is a gui for changing the keybindings aswell, it's called e16keyedit and is also available in gentoo's portage, so
and start e16keyedit.
6. Installing Thmes
You will find a bunch of good themes on http://themes.freshmeat.net/browse/60/ to install them is pretty easy. Just download the file, decompress them and mv them into ~/.enlightenment/themes/. Here an example with aada's Aqua Theme, which is a MacOS X Inspired Theme, Execute as same user as you are using for your enlightenment session. Note: for most themes you don't need to create a new directory, but remember every theme has to be in a seperate subdirectory in .enlightenment/themes/
Code: |
cd
mkdir .enlightenment/themes/aqua
mv ~/aqua_-DR16.tar .enlightenment/themes/aqua/
cd .enlightenment/themes/aqua/
tar xvf aqua_-DR16.tar
rm aqua_-DR16.tar
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Now restart Enlightenment and you can select the theme by doing Middle Mouse click on the desktop background.
Here a list of sites where to find E16 Themes (i will add more if I find more) :
7. Final words
I am not going into making enlightenment even nicer, maybe later, but here just a few hints. There are so called epplets, which are little dock apps for enlightenment, there is an ebuild for that as well. Another really nice thing to install is engage, which is a MacOS X like Program bar.
Thanks for reading my HOWTO, I hope it was useful and easy to understand for you.
Cya _________________ LinuxCounter: #353618
Last edited by latz-twn on Sat Mar 05, 2005 1:05 pm; edited 5 times in total |
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COiN3D Guru
Joined: 02 Aug 2004 Posts: 543 Location: Munich, Germany
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Posted: Sat Mar 05, 2005 12:04 pm Post subject: |
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Hi there,
well-written introduction. But there's something I don't like: there are no really good themes. Freshmeat is the only archive which has some e16 themes. But I think all of them suck more or less. The most look like a as when they were 3 years old theme. Aqua is an exception.
Bye, _________________ e17 documentation | Be free and use Jabber as your IM! | Combine IRC and IM |
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latz-twn Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 08 Nov 2003 Posts: 95 Location: Luxembourg
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Posted: Sat Mar 05, 2005 12:14 pm Post subject: |
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Thanks first of all!
With the themes you are actually right, my favourite theme so far is winter. But do you know any other site with a good index of themes for E16? If so I could add it to the HOWTO...
Thanks in advance _________________ LinuxCounter: #353618 |
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COiN3D Guru
Joined: 02 Aug 2004 Posts: 543 Location: Munich, Germany
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latz-twn Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 08 Nov 2003 Posts: 95 Location: Luxembourg
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Posted: Sat Mar 05, 2005 12:54 pm Post subject: |
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thx a lot re-nice, I've added them to the HOWTO! _________________ LinuxCounter: #353618 |
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steveb Advocate
Joined: 18 Sep 2002 Posts: 4564
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Posted: Mon Mar 07, 2005 3:43 pm Post subject: |
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Very nice how to. Thanks for that.
cheers
SteveB
Last edited by steveb on Mon Mar 07, 2005 4:01 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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AllTom Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 26 Nov 2003 Posts: 147 Location: Wherever danger lies...
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Posted: Mon Mar 07, 2005 3:50 pm Post subject: Re: HOWTO: Enlight your desktop with Enlightenment DR16 |
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latz-twn wrote: | It's a brilliant Window Manager which combines a few very import aspects :
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Gotta have the felxabilty.
Very good introduction you have here. I wish I'd known all this when I first tried Enlightenment. _________________ rtylershaw: "My computer doesn't even work and I love this distro. Weird." |
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latz-twn Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 08 Nov 2003 Posts: 95 Location: Luxembourg
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Posted: Tue Mar 08, 2005 12:49 pm Post subject: Re: HOWTO: Enlight your desktop with Enlightenment DR16 |
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AllTom wrote: | Very good introduction you have here. I wish I'd known all this when I first tried Enlightenment. |
That's exactly why I wrote this, because it is kind of hard to find stuff about enlightenment on the web! The next thing I want to write about is DR17! But only once it has become really useable! Because atm, I have it running, but there are so many things that really annoy me! Just for a little example that you don't have an iconbar! Well I suppose I could use engage to do that! But there are many other things which haven't been implemented yet! So that's probably why I will stick to DR16 for a while now!
Well thx of course for your replies! _________________ LinuxCounter: #353618 |
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latz-twn Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 08 Nov 2003 Posts: 95 Location: Luxembourg
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Posted: Tue Mar 08, 2005 4:54 pm Post subject: |
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Who thinks that this how-to can go wiki? _________________ LinuxCounter: #353618 |
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COiN3D Guru
Joined: 02 Aug 2004 Posts: 543 Location: Munich, Germany
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Posted: Tue Mar 08, 2005 7:43 pm Post subject: |
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latz-twn: I have a question. Do you know whether I can change on which mouse button which menu should open? For example, I'd prefer it to open the applications-menu with a right click, like in fluxbox.
Do you know whether this is possible? _________________ e17 documentation | Be free and use Jabber as your IM! | Combine IRC and IM |
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jxn Guru
Joined: 27 Aug 2004 Posts: 327 Location: south dakota
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Posted: Tue Mar 08, 2005 9:17 pm Post subject: |
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latz-twn wrote: | Who thinks that this how-to can go wiki? |
I do. In fact, would it be possible for us to set up An Unofficial Enlightenment User's Manual at wikibooks.org featuring your content as a starting point? I've always thought the theming guide/etc needed to be documented more comprehensively...and I think wikibooks.org is the place. I was planning on starting this book up sometime soon -- covering the basics of installation and configuration of both e16 and e17...so whaddya say? _________________ My Last.fm profile | get e17! |
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latz-twn Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 08 Nov 2003 Posts: 95 Location: Luxembourg
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Posted: Fri Mar 11, 2005 12:11 pm Post subject: |
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Hey, jnx I find it actually a brilliant idea and I would love to help writing it! Sorry I was busy the last few days as I played Half Life 2, brilliant Game i am really amazed by it! Really looking forward to the mass of Multiplayer Mods.
Ehum first of just send me a pm with your Icq and stuff! so we can talk to each other a bit easier! Cyas _________________ LinuxCounter: #353618 |
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vrln Guru
Joined: 11 Sep 2004 Posts: 534 Location: Finland
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Posted: Sat May 14, 2005 11:25 am Post subject: |
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jxn wrote: | latz-twn wrote: | Who thinks that this how-to can go wiki? |
I do. In fact, would it be possible for us to set up An Unofficial Enlightenment User's Manual at wikibooks.org featuring your content as a starting point? I've always thought the theming guide/etc needed to be documented more comprehensively...and I think wikibooks.org is the place. I was planning on starting this book up sometime soon -- covering the basics of installation and configuration of both e16 and e17...so whaddya say? |
What's the point in re-inventing the wheel? (regarding E17 installation and configuration, not E16). We already have a 30 page guide translated into 8 languages, and can easily add/rewrite anything that's missing/lacking something (feedback is welcome - I'm not aware of anything missing right now though). I also think everything in one central location would be better.
If your referring to the E17 theming guide that used to be on get-e a while, it was nowhere even near complete, which is why we took it down. If you want to write one for us (the problem is that not many people know Edje well enough to write it, I sure don't), that would be great, as the current author doesn't have much time for it. We are always looking for new staff who have something important to contribute to the project. _________________ Interested in E17? Get Enlightened by reading the user guide. |
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Sheepdogj15 Guru
Joined: 07 Jan 2005 Posts: 430 Location: Backyard
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Posted: Sat May 21, 2005 4:56 am Post subject: |
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hey sweet. it seems to work so far. Elightenment is a bit confused which monitor is my main one (i have multiple monitors)... [edit to add] Nope, it's just me who is confused [end edit]... and i have to get my mouse buttons back the way i want them, but otherwise i like what i see so far.
so much to monkey with, so little time! _________________ Sheepdog
Why Risk It? | Samba Howto |
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NightTwix n00b
Joined: 06 Jan 2005 Posts: 58
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Posted: Tue Jul 05, 2005 10:34 pm Post subject: |
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thanks for your article!
i just installed e16 and your tips was exactly what i was looking for.
I especially missed the window resizing feature. I used this heavily under xfce
oh, and of course engage looks nice but need lots of ~
EDIT:
btw
i'm not able to start engage -> https://forums.gentoo.org/posting.php?mode=quote&p=2555489&sid=4e0758717e430c6ff12febbbc195fe5b
maybe the actual version in portage (0.0.9.20050220) doesnt work with e16? |
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dwblas Guru
Joined: 14 Jul 2003 Posts: 525 Location: Southern California (No jokes please)
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Posted: Sat Jul 09, 2005 10:07 pm Post subject: |
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This is a bit confusing:
Left Mouse clicking on the desktop background will bring the user Menu
Left Mouse clicking on the desktop background brings up the main configuration menu
One of those is a typo. Emerging now. |
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tecknojunky Veteran
Joined: 19 Oct 2002 Posts: 1937 Location: Montréal
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Posted: Sun Jul 10, 2005 1:48 pm Post subject: |
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dwblas wrote: | Left Mouse clicking on the desktop background brings up the main configuration menu | I don't know exactly what is meant by the "configuration menu" as there is no such thing per say in enlightenment. It should either be... Right Mouse clicking on the desktop background brings up the settings menu; or... Middle Mouse clicking on the desktop background brings up the main menu _________________ (7 of 9) Installing star-trek/species-8.4.7.2::talax. |
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frozenJim Guru
Joined: 18 Jun 2004 Posts: 341 Location: Montreal, Quebec, Canada
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Posted: Wed Aug 03, 2005 12:31 pm Post subject: |
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COiN3D wrote: | Do you know whether I can change on which mouse button which menu should open? For example, I'd prefer it to open the applications-menu with a right click, like in fluxbox. |
What you are describing is part of theming. If you use the Aqua theme then the mouse-clicks do one thing, if you use the BlueSteel theme they do something entirely different. With a bit of playing, you can learn to edit your themes to do whatever you like. Otherwise, just choose a theme that does what you like and you're all set.
dwblas wrote: | This is a bit confusing:
Left Mouse clicking on the desktop background will bring the user Menu
Left Mouse clicking on the desktop background brings up the main configuration menu
One of those is a typo. Emerging now. |
3-button clicks:
Left Click: User Menu
Middle-Click: Super Menu (includes User Menu as first item)
Right-Click: Settings Menu
If ya don't have a 3-button mouse:
CTL-Left-Click: Super Menu (includes User Menu as first item)
But again, once you get going with Enlightenment, you will soon build custom menus anyhow. Heck, that's the awsome part of Enlightenment - it is entirely up to you to make it into the perfect desktop. _________________ Who controls the past, controls the future. Who controls the present, controls the past. |
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demon3x n00b
Joined: 04 Oct 2005 Posts: 7
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Posted: Wed Oct 05, 2005 11:18 pm Post subject: |
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When I use
emerge -av edb
It asks me which one to choose
app-emacs/edb
dev-db/edb
I chose the last one, hope thats right |
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dellaxim Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 04 Mar 2005 Posts: 138
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Posted: Tue Oct 11, 2005 9:41 am Post subject: |
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demon3x wrote: | When I use
emerge -av edb
It asks me which one to choose
app-emacs/edb
dev-db/edb
I chose the last one, hope thats right |
yep, that is right mate, the other one for text editor emacs. |
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bytenirvana Apprentice
Joined: 10 Jun 2006 Posts: 218 Location: Volksstaat Hessen
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Posted: Sun Jul 23, 2006 11:01 pm Post subject: |
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hi,
I followed your guide, restarted, and typed starte16, but enlightenment doesn't find my display. how can I solve this? |
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nico_calais l33t
Joined: 09 Jun 2005 Posts: 628 Location: Saint Julien en Genevois
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Posted: Mon Jul 24, 2006 7:01 am Post subject: |
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In your .xinitrc, add :
And type :
_________________ "Unix IS user friendly... It's just selective about who its friends are." Tollef Fog Heen tollef@add.no |
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bytenirvana Apprentice
Joined: 10 Jun 2006 Posts: 218 Location: Volksstaat Hessen
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Posted: Mon Jul 24, 2006 11:20 am Post subject: |
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yes this works. thx
However if I want to start a DE with startkde or starte16 I get the error message $display is not set.
enlightenment is very good. At first I thought it would be to "heavy" for my little Laptop but it works flawlessly. |
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dylan_stark Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 30 Aug 2005 Posts: 135 Location: Belgrade, Serbia
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Posted: Thu Sep 28, 2006 6:46 pm Post subject: |
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How do enable/turn on this engage/edb?
I'm using e16. |
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gcyoung Apprentice
Joined: 04 Jul 2007 Posts: 171 Location: England
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Posted: Wed Dec 30, 2009 5:38 pm Post subject: |
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In the event that this subject is still read --I note the last date is 2006!
I use e16 all the time and wouldn't change, but I do miss a direct command line such as that given in kde by alt+f2. It means I must always open up a terminal if I want a command that is not in one of my menus (which I like to keep small)
Does anyone know of an applet or other way of implementing this ? |
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