Desktops on a diet - old pants back on!
In the race to gain desktop acceptance (and m,imick as much as possible from
the "big" desktops out there (Windows, MacOS-X, etc.), The main Desktop
players (GNOME and KDE) have also gained weight. A lot of it. In that rush
and enthusiasm a lot of people have overlooked the alternatives - Desktop
environments, shells and window managers that consume significantly less
resoruces, and may give sufficient functionality, such as Xfce and
Enlightenment.
This will focus on the upcoming release of Enlightenment 0.17 and it's
featureset, efficiencies and subsystems, and related projects. What it can do
and scale down to, as well as scale up to, what kind of people might have an
itnerest in using it (those without the latest top-of-the-line systems with
modern closed graphics drivers, those in developing nations or those simply
with better things to do with their hardware resources).
This will cover:
* State engines
* Fast rendering engines
* X Xrender, XComposite etc. extensions
* Why open X drivers are better
* File manager and application management basics
* What libraries are behind Enlightenment that can help create efficient
custom UI's
* Pants.