Carsten Haitzler has released Enlightenment 0.28, a significant update to the Enlightenment desktop environment. This release follows a period of approximately two years without a major feature update, marking a substantial shift from the project's typical 12-month release cadence. Enlightenment is a desktop environment designed to provide a complete user interface ecosystem, maintaining support for both X11 and Wayland display protocols.
This image illustrates the general user interface of the Enlightenment desktop environment discussed in the article.
One of the primary technical shifts in version 0.28 is the introduction of native PipeWire mixer support. While the update retains compatibility with PulseAudio, the addition of PipeWire support aligns the environment with modern Linux audio standards. Furthermore, the release expands the platform's reach by adding initial support for the NetBSD operating system. Networking capabilities have also been modernized through the inclusion of a NetworkManager module, which facilitates the management of wired and wireless connections as well as VPNs.
Beyond networking and audio, the update includes several refinements to the user experience and low-level system handling. These improvements include new window actions, enhanced client-side decoration handling, and improved display mode sorting. On the backend, the release addresses technical debt with improved pixmap handling, X connection recovery, and nested Wayland compositor shutdown. These changes aim to stabilize the environment's performance and reliability across different hardware configurations.