E17 Window Manager issues

1. Almost all of the security tools are lumped together under the Other Menu, under the Applications Menu, which may cramp your style somewhat.

1. If you open the click menu too close to the right-screen border, the submenus are offscreen. The effect of Other Menu overcrowding is shown in the following screenshot:

1. This version of Enlightenment is several years old. The current major version is 22. Perhaps the folks at Offensive Security who created Kali decided to freeze Enlightenment at major version 17 because the Enlightenment developers are moving toward using the Wayland windowing system, and by default Kali-E17 is using the xorg windowing system.

To check whether your version of Kali is running xorg or Wayland, type xdpyinfo on the command line. If it is running a pure Wayland environment, the command will fail. If it is using xorg, it will produce several lines of information about your video configuration. The following screenshot shows a truncated screen of the results on the default installation:

1. The easiest way to get at all of the security tools would appear to be opening the Applications | Run Everything dialog, as shown previously. I discovered that this returns an error code when I attempted to open xterm, the default terminal emulator in E17, to install my favorite software installer app, Synaptic. I had to go to the Applications | System Menu and open xterm from there. There does not appear to be a simple fix for the failing Run Everything widget. Perhaps upgrading to the current stable version of Enlightenment (E22.x) would solve it, but the solution would probably require revamping the windowing system, which is a non-trivial undertaking.

To install synaptic:

#> apt install synaptic

To change wallpaper in E17, click on Applications | Settings | Wallpaper Settings. This opens the dialog that is shown in the following screenshot. You can choose your own desktop image or one of the factory images: