When comparing Enlightenment vs Gnome, the Slant community recommends Gnome for most people. In the question“What are the best UNIX-like desktop environments for convertible laptops?” Gnome is ranked 2nd while Enlightenment is ranked 18th. The most important reason people chose Gnome is:
GNOME 3 has been designed to make it simple and easy to use. Press a button to view your open windows, launch applications or check if you have new messages.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro No programming experience required to configure the environment
Configuring the environment of Enlightenment is done through a UI, so no prior knowledge of coding languages or editing of config files is needed.
Pro Beautiful interface
Enlightenment offers a beautiful interface with eye candy: it can be themed easily to the user's liking and includes an optional compositor.
Pro Highly customizable, easy customization
There's a ton of settings stacked into a quite compact settings menu that is easy to navigate.
Pro Tiling or stacking
This Wm can handle both.
Pro Havn't found a WM that beats e16 in 20 years.
I've been using e16 for about 20 years and tried quite some other WMs, but always returned back to e16. It's fast, doesn't use much resources, is highly customizable and is rock solid (I cannot remember it crashing). It's combination of simplicity and beauty is unmatched.
The default theme on e16 is kinda disappointing. Try B-42 or Dark-One.
Be careful if you enable Composite. It works flawless, but you can screw your menus when playing around with the transparent settings in the settings menu. Making a backup-copy of your .e16 preferences beforehand might save you some trouble.
Pro Quick mouse-driven menus
Enlightenments menu is easily and quickly accessible by left-clicking anywhere on the desktop.
Pro Fast and good with battery life
Great for laptops.
Pro Virtual desktop previews
Enlightenment allows for virtual desktop previews within its desktop widget for switching desktops within its thumbnails.
Pro Unique workspace set ups
You could have a screen cluttered with panels and another with none.. A feature that is easy with enlightenment.
Pro Lots of themes available
There is a large selection of themes available for the Enlightenment window manager, meaning that customization to one's preference is very straight-forward.
Pro Easy on ressources
Doesn't use much RAM and doesn't hog your CPU.
Pro Lightning fast
Startup of e is lightning fast -- as it is during working with the WM.
Pro Easy to use
GNOME 3 has been designed to make it simple and easy to use. Press a button to view your open windows, launch applications or check if you have new messages.
Pro Very productive
With a clean layout and well-thought keyboard shortcuts, Gnome 3 is simply the best for people looking to be productive with their computer.
Pro Online account management
GNOME 3 integrates with your online accounts, so that all your data can be accessed from the same place.
Pro Adheres to standards
Allowing for interoperability and shared technology for X Window System desktops.
Pro Does not get in the way
GNOME 3 lets you do the things you want without getting in the way. It won't bother you or badger you with demands, and it has been designed to help you comfortably deal with notifications.
Pro Great for high dpi displays
Adjustable scaling factor makes it great for high resolution laptops and far away TVs.
Pro Powerful search
A powerful search feature lets you access all your work from one place.
Pro Easy theming
Changing the look (and feel) of Gnome Shell is easy, shell theme, icon, windows and graphical elements (gtk). individually for each user. Mostly its installing some packages or unpacking some archive to a themes folder and using selecting the new theme in e.g. gnome-tweak-tool. There a lot of really good theme on deviantart.
Pro Fallback mode offers a classic look
For people looking for older, more classic looks, Fallback mode offers just that. Ubuntu users can have this option by installing a package called "GNOME-Session-Fallback." In the future to be released GNOME 3.8, the Fallback Mode will not be included, so this is really not a long-term solution.
Pro Customizable with easy-to-install extensions
With the right plugin enabled in your browser (comes with Firefox by default) you can browse and install with two clicks the many Shell Extensions available from http://extensions.gnome.org. These are listed automatically based upon the version of Gnome Shell you currently have installed.
Pro Touchscreen friendly
It works well with any touchscreen-enabled system, including newer laptops, even to the point of including a well-designed on-screen keyboard.
Pro Keyboard friendly
It's (mostly) usable without touching a mouse, so you can keep your hands on the keyboard. Shortcuts can be defined in the gnome setting. There are even more shortcuts available when using the gesetting or dconf tool, e.g. switch to desktop 5 to 9.
Cons
Con Sub-menu does not change direction when out of space
When you right-click for the menu in the right part of the screen but there is insufficient space for the cascading menu, you have to interrupt your selecting and move your pointer to touch the right edge of your screen - this manually moves the menu over to the left a little bit, so it has space. If there is a sub-menu, you have to once again move your pointer to the extreme right edge of the screen, for it to move over - and so on, for each level of sub-menu.
Every other OS and app/program in the world today, simply changes direction to where the sub-menus cascade. Whether that be upwards because it's too close to the bottom (we see this in the selection menus in our browsers in forms, or to change sides as we are accustomed to in all programs). This is logical, universal, expected behavior. But not in e17.
Con Not many themes for enlightenment
... and most of them are not really beautiful. For example, a Dark-One on e16 has a simple and clean look and is really beautiful (if you like dark themes).
Con More than a WM now
There are more applications and tools available than on xfce or lxdm.
Con Ugly default theme
The default theme is rather ugly so it's necessary to apply a new theme as soon as you install Enlightenment.
Con Minimal set of utilities
Enlightenment only comes with the bare essentials, meaning there is little that can be done upon first install in comparison to other more fully featured desktops. This does, however, leave all the customization of what apps to install up to the user, which may be a plus to some and is directly comparable to most other bare bones Window managers.
Con e16 has to be compiled from source
e16 packages seem to be no longer available in any distro. So you should at least be able to handle compiler warnings/errors and fix them, which in most cases is installing missing libraries.
Con Backlight and bluetooth can be hard to set up
There seem to be issues with some DRM laptops.
Con Non-tiling
Overlaps and spaces between windows are both pointless.
Con No taskbar by default
GNOME doesn't have a taskbar by default, and might be confusing to people migrating from Windows for that reason. It is however possible to install it through http://extensions.gnome.org.
Con Some areas are unpolished and lack features
Some aspects are still unpolished and lack features - the gnome design team works well, but seems to not be taking input from the outside world.
Con Extension system is basically unsupported
Backward compatibility is not guaranteed and extensions seems like second class citizens in the GNOME environment.
Con It tries to reinvent the wheel
It isn't a traditional interface. Very different to adjust to.