More Enlightenment FAQ

While the Enlightenment desktop is fantastic, there is no doubting that in all it's grace and glory it is a bit different from other desktop environments. While I know there are some people (such as myself) that like to just muck their way through things on their own, I also know that others like a bit of a guide to follow along with. A couple of months ago I made a post detailing the answers to some common questions those new to the Enlightenment desktop have. Today I would like to address a few more such questions and give a few tips I have picked up over the years.

Your Desktop is a Menu:
Because most Enlightenment distributions have a "main menu" button on one of their shelves, I think many miss (or forget) the fact that the entire desktop acts as a menu. Left clicking on any open space on the Enlightenment desktop brings up the main menu:


Right clicking on open space on the desktop brings you directly to your "favorites" menu:


Run Everything (without Do!):
One application you often see recommended for Linux desktops is Gnome Do, a quick launcher that allows you to quickly find and launch applications that are installed on your Linux desktop. There is no need to install Gnome Do under Enlightenment so long as you have the Everything Applications module loaded. You can launch Run Everything from either the main menu or by hot key (alt+escape or super+space). Once it is launched simply start typing the name of the application you are looking for and then press enter once it is highlighted.


You can also navigate the listed applications with the arrow keys. The launcher also remembers which applications you use - so after a day you can find your applications even more quickly!


Key Bindings:
There are a lot of useful (non-standard) key binding setup under Enlightenment by default. It is worth searching through them to see what is there. One of these I would like to mention is that alt+fX will change to your desktop X (Through 12 of course).


Enlightenment Crashes:
Something I sometimes forget is that the Enlightenment desktop is still in an alpha state, because of this it does have hiccups now and then. If you have been using the Enlightenment desktop for some time then you may have seen this message before:


Once you get past how intimidating this message looks - take a deep breath - and press F1. Your screen will flicker for a moment and then everything should return to normal. Enlightenment is the only desktop that can crash and still save the state of all the applications you have open. It is important to note what you where doing when the crash happened and then report it to your distro creator (or right to the Enlightenment folks if you are compiling from SVN).

If you think of any other Enlightenment questions I haven't covered thus far - please feel free to drop a comment below asking.

~Jeff Hoogland