Introduction

Enlightenment, also known simply as E, is a free software/open source graphical interface system under the BSD 2-clause license. It can provide an X Window System window manager for use with GNOME or KDE, or it can also be deployed as a substitute for a full desktop environment. Enlightenment has a rich feature set - extensive support for themes and advanced graphics without sacrificing good performance.

Installing E17

E17 is old and stable version that is quickly becoming out of date

Install e17 from the Universe repository.

Go to the top right of your screen and in the User Switcher select Log Out. At Login Manger window choose: Options/Session > choose: Enlightenment.

Installing E21

Current stable version is E21 which can be installed from the PPA niko2040/e19 Although the above PPA is named E19 it does contain the latest E21.

To install simply type:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:niko2040/e19
sudo apt update
sudo apt install enlightenment terminology

The above commands install the default Enlightenment packages and the Terminology terminal emulator which is recommended by the official enlightenment website to be installed.

Installing E23 and later

Since Ubuntu 20.04, enlightenment is available in the default repositories without needing any PPAs. Simply type:

sudo apt install enlightenment terminology

The PPA stopped being updated for Ubuntu releases after 22.04. The default repositories still have up-to-date versions as of 25.10.

External Links

• E Home Page - The home page of Enlightenment.

• Wikipedia page - Wikipedia page on Enlightenment.