Window manager options.

[Hammer459]

There is pretty much only one Distro that is active enough and has the software anyone could need and that is Mint. Unfortunately Mint does not properly support THE best DE available - Enlightenment - that is lightweight and configurable. The only Distro that properly supports E is Bodhi where the last update was 2 years ago and running on outdated Ubuntu base and old kernel and a limited set of software.

I would suggest considering replacing Mate or Xfce with the far less resource demanding E considering that E is an after install option that sadly does not quite work
I am even half way convinced that the desklet infrastructure from Cinnamon could be implemented on E making Mint both slick and lighweight

With only 2 terminals, Bitwarden and Vivaldi browser, E uses a full GB less ram than Cinnamon...

[nachlese]

In Mint Vera the available version is 0.25.3-1

Looking at the download page, it strangely seems to be newer than the most recent version 0.25.4
The two are from September and October last year - not too old.
https://download.enlightenment.org/rel/ ... ghtenment/

Personally I could never bring myself to like /e/ beyond the very first impression.

Too much stuff is either GTK or QT based.

With only 2 terminals, Bitwarden and Vivaldi browser, E uses a full GB less ram than Cinnamon...

Highly subjective.
Any of the Mint variants will start very low and with only a few hundred MB difference.
As soon as you use a browser with a few tabs, the RAM is of course used, but that is what it's there for.
If a two hundred MB make a critical difference it is too tight anyway.

[Hammer459]

The point is that Cinnamon uses a lot mor memory than E that use about the same as XFfce.
The problem for me is not memory that I have more than enough. The point is that E is IMHO much nicer and I do not want to choose between a DE that I can stand on a great Distro or a DE that is awesom on a Distro that sucks.

[Hoser Rob]

There is pretty much only one Distro that is active enough and has the software anyone could need and that is Mint. ...

Utter nonsense, Ubuntu is at least as active and has as much software as Mint. Most Mint app software comes from the Ubuntu repos actually.

I haven't tried ENlightenment in a very long time. If hardly any distros are supporting it nowadays, that's usually a sign that it's poorly maintained.

[spamegg]

The point is that Cinnamon uses a lot mor memory than E that use about the same as XFfce.
The problem for me is not memory that I have more than enough. The point is that E is IMHO much nicer and I do not want to choose between a DE that I can stand on a great Distro or a DE that is awesom on a Distro that sucks.

This is often why new distros are made Someone feels dissatisfied with something and starts to change it. That's how Cinnamon came into existence. Mint has 3 variants for this very reason. Cinnamon is not made for lightweight purposes, this is a deliberate design decision. There are also many other distros with Enlightenment versions (Fedora, OpenSUSE, Void, Sparky and so on).

So you might want to go down the rabbit hole of taking Mint XFCE and replacing it with Enlightenment, maybe write a step-by-step tutorial about it (which packages to install/remove, which config files to change, etc.) Otherwise, you are looking at starting your own distro. Or, get involved with Bodhi to bring it more up-to-date, I'm sure they could use the help. Or take an existing Enlightenment distro and make it more Mint-like, with the features that you like about Mint (although I don't really get it, since the main appeal of Mint is the Cinnamon DE and / or Mint's many custom tools such as the Update Manager etc.).

You'll have to learn all about how to "make your own distro", this can be done with Arch Linux for learning purposes (there are many videos on the web), you can even learn how to make your own custom ISO / installer. Then you can move to Ubuntu-based distros and apply the same knowledge there. Good luck have fun!

[rickNS]

Unfortunately Mint does not properly support THE best DE available - Enlightenment -

Well I'd just like to point out that 'your opinion' is certainly is not shared by everyone...
Three examples;
https://itsfoss.com/best-linux-desktop-environments/
https://www.bestlinuxdistro.com/best-li ... ironments/
https://www.linuxandubuntu.com/home/des ... -for-linux

Do NOT place 'E' in the top eight (in one case 9) choices.

You can be assured that Mint is NOT going to dismiss MATE or xfce for E.

And as for 'E' not working well on Mint I see several examples of it is...I'd post the links, but they are too easy to find. including Youtube howto's, do your research.

[Artim]

I played around with E for a bit. It's certainly beautiful and much less of a resource hog than any full desktop environment. Support for it is lacking, though, and I didn't find it "intuitive" at all. After a few days of confusion and bewilderment, I came back to Xfce.

[billyswong]

Enlightenment uses its own UI toolkit called EFL. Just this point is enough to throw it away from default Linux Mint desktop environment choices. Cross-DE software provided by Linux Mint team are all done with GTK. Loading GTK+EFL in memory is always going to be more resource consuming than only loading GTK. Your perceived lightness of Enlightenment is going to be trashed. I can't speak for the Linux Mint team but this is probably also why the KDE variant of Linux Mint was given up.

[Termy]

[...]

I know this has already essentially been said, but I think you statement that Enlightenment is "THE best DE available", thus everything built on top of it, is ridiculous. I'm not a 'fanboy' to a given DE. I don't even really use a DE, in the traditional sense. I can still recognise that it's a silly statement. Your statement makes no more sense than my saying that bikes are THE best mode of transport. Saying something doesn't make it true. Feeling something doesn't make it true.

Enlightenment strikes me as an obscure DE which not many distributors want to adopt. Reading here that they use their own graphical toolkit is another reason why I imagine most people don't want to adopt it. Sure, it's cool and very clever, but it's not practical. I'm getting into the GUI development world, and I'm seeing how tricky just dealing with Python's version nonsense is, let alone faffing about with an obscure toolkit! I'm sure 'E' is cool — I used and enjoyed Terminology for years — but it doesn't mean it should be adopted by everyone or that it's "THE best" DE. I can't fathom, honestly, how you thought your post would be received any better.

I mean, I pretty much only use terminals and i3WM, which is far more advantageous for RAM usage and general resource usage. I could make the same sort of statements. There are far too many distributions that provide THE best available window manager, i3WM. Unfortunately, Linux Mint does not provide an ISO with i3WM all set up. It's incredibly lightweight, highly configurable, great for programmers, and just all round bloody fantastic. I definitely suggest distributors like the Linux Mint developers adopt i3WM. My heavily-customized i3WM-based setup based on Ubuntu uses about 260-300M of RAM at cold boot, therefore it's the best.

Do you see now how ridiculous that sounds? Sorry if I went a bit overboard. I can appreciate your passion for 'E', as I am about i3WM, having used it exclusively for about a decade, but let's be realistic; think with our brains, not our hearts.

BTW, if anyone is confused as to why we're talking about window managers and DEs yet still focusing on Enlightenment, it's likely because it's confusingly described as a window manager and a "Minimal Desktop", so described here. It reminds me of the whole Ubuntu GNOME to 'Ubuntu' thing.