Samsung may be sponsoring the Enlightenment window manager project and Enlightenment may be a component in Samsung's bada mobile operating system. The Enlightenment project, which has been around since 1997, announced today that it was working with a "top-tier electronics maker" which "produces millions of mobile phones, televisions, sound systems and more".

This tutorial is supposed to show some features of the Enlightenment window manager as an alternative to the often used Gnome and KDE managers. I will install Enlightenment on a desktop computer with Ubuntu 11.10 installed.

Back in June Enlightenment E16 reached version 1.0.0 and then a few weeks later there was an E17 development snapshot released, but there hasn't been a whole lot of news out of the Enlightenment camp over the past year. Fortunately though it now has the backing of a major electronics manufacturer.

While Enlightenment E17 is still undergoing development, the Enlightenment E16 window manager has finally reached version 1.0.0.

It has been awhile since anyone has posted any updates about e17 (myself included). The enlightenment project is still moving along at good speed. The window manager for enlightenment - simply called e - is stable. I have been using it constantly since 2004 as my X desktop on both Linux and FreeBSD without any issues.

Every once in a while we here at MakeTechEasier like to take a look at where things stand with the notoriously still-in-development Enlightenment window manager. I say “notorious” because version 0.17 (hereafter called E17) has been in development almost 10 years, long enough to invite a fair share of Duke Nukem Forever analogies.

Enlightenment is perhaps the least known and the oldest Windows manager still being actively developed. Enlightenment features an iconbar, which the “Dock” of OS X is based on, and is quite different from the traditional WM and DE that we are used to. Here are eight beautiful E17 themes that really stands out from the rest.

ELIVE is a live Linux CD showcasing the Enlightenment window manager/desktop shell. The Belgian project's slogan, "Where Debian Meets Enlightenment", provides us with an early hint that here is a Linux distribution built on very strong, very deep foundations.

Like any good window manager, Enlightenment is themeable. But Enlightenment E17 takes themeing a step further than most window managers. Instead of having to manually edit flat text files, piece together a theme by changing various elements, or find the directory where themes must be saved, E17 themes a pre-packaged, all-in-one files that are imported with the push of a single button.