Enlightenment has a new release schedule. Find it
here. Now, first of all, this release schedule has initially been posted by our friend Gustavo Barbieri from the enlightenment development team. The schedule has changed a lot from its first form and it has been highly discussed in the Enlightenment Mailing List. At the end, we all decided to try and set up a new snapshot of the E17 development version every month. Quaker from the OpenGEU team is one of the members of the newly formed Enlightenment packaging team. An official E17 deb repository has also been setted on the Enlightenment website. In October an Alpha release has finally been scheduled, but we warned: this is just a suggested date because, even if we discussed a lot about releasing dates, etc., at the end the schedule has been formed merely as a goal to achieve, nothing is absolutely granted.
Now, how is OpenGEU going to handle all this news? As I said, Quaker from our team will package every month a new snapshot of Enlightenment. For this exact reason, you will find in the release schedule various details about feature freeze dates and bug-fixing committing periods. OpenGEU, as you already know, doesn’t use a conventional “vanilla” e17 version. OpenGEU delivers now mainly a special version of Enlightenment based on our advanced 3D composite manager, Ecomorph (Compiz for E17 by the OpenGEU team member Hannes Janetzek). More than this, OpenGEU delivers you also a full set of our special modules! And various special modules not included in the standard E17 too, like Itask NG, Winlist NG, etc.
For that reason, OpenGEU will keep its own E17 deb repository and keep it updated with the latest E17 packaged versions every month :)
Quaker, of course, will take care of it as usual and we’ll test all the packages and produce our own new configuration packages before release. If we didn’t act this way, every new E17 upgrade would break your system (when upgrading E17, remember it’s better to use our OpenGEU Safe Upgrade tool)!
So what about our releases? We are already working hard for Quarto di Luna, with a new UI, new themes, modules, tools, website and a very big OpenGEU Themes Manager surprise that will change it all! Just wait and you’ll see.. we’re trying to deliver you the most advanced OpenGEU ever, with the most exciting and advanced E17 desktop included too ;)
That said, as soon as we have the new E17 packages and end testing and creation of configuration packages for them, an Alpha release will be shipped immediately in packages format and 32 / 63 bit iso too. For this release, no change we’ll already have new themes available. They are completely new themes and only Quaker is available to transform our mockups in code (please contact us if you can help).
After the alpha we’ll go bug hunting and soon release a beta with the first versions of our themes. A release will be short after that and we’ll finish everything for Quarto di Luna in May in any case.
The next release, OpenGEU 9.10 codename Luna Speranza, will hopefully be released on the Alpha E17 version. I say “hopefully” because you read for yourself, in the release schedule, that in October a “suggested” alpha is scheduled, so we cannot grant it for it does not depend on OpenGEU alone but on the Enlightenment team too, and though some members of OpenGEU are in Enlightenment too, we are not so many and not surely all mighty.
Sergey Semernin from the OpenGEU team is hardly working on the Enlightenment File Manager too. We’re trying to transform it in a full featured and usable file manager, powerful like thunar and possibly way faster and easier to use. So, for Luna Speranza I think we’ll be able to deliver you a new EFM! This means that we’ll drop thunar, yes, but it also means a better integration in the desktop and many new features, like full-working desktop icons :)
Hope you’ll enjoy these great news as we do :)
