When comparing Enlightenment vs GNOME, the Slant community recommends Enlightenment for most people. In the question“What are the best UNIX-like desktop environments with high DPI support for retina displays?” Enlightenment is ranked 8th while GNOME is ranked 9th. The most important reason people chose Enlightenment is:
Configuring the environment of Enlightenment is done through a UI, so no prior knowledge of coding languages or editing of config files is needed.
Specs
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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 Very polished
GNOME has a well-rounded set of features meaning that any user will be able to get around it and not miss anything from other desktops.
Pro Lots of apps
Dozens of great apps are made specifically for GNOME.
Pro GTK >=2 is written for GNOME
GTK is now a GNOME project so the desktop will be compatible with the latest versions.
Pro Extensions
They provide the user with a plethora of customizations and tweaks.
Pro Dynamic workspaces
Setting provides for effortless workspace management.
Pro Activities overview
Grid-style app menu.
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 Hides many settings
GNOME sometimes reduces the whole interface to the absolute minimum, a few examples:
- GNOME hides many advanced options/settings in its interfaces
- Toolbars can't be edited without external tools
- Menubars have been removed in favor of a hamburger menu
- Newer GTK versions remove icons inside popupmenus and menu mnemonics
Con Standardized
The desktop layout is not as modifiable as some other options, and certain settings require additional software (such as Gnome Tweak Tool) to reasonably modify.
Con No tray support by default
An extension has to be installed to get tray support.
Con Designed for tablets before desktops
Said a million times already by the other cons but the design is for tablets, even though the primary usecase is on laptops.