Changelog (12-Sep-2024)
Credits
All credits for Moksha go to the developers of Moksha.
Moksha is a fork of Enlightenment release E17, and focuses on stability and low resource usage. It is developed for Bodhi Linux, but can also be used on other distributions.
In 2010 the Moksa fork was created to get more focus on quality and stability. Also the resulting Window Manager and Desktop Environment were integrated with a Ubuntu distribution. This became the Moksha Desktop Environment on Bodhi Linux
Moksha is known as a Window Manager but provides most of the functionality found in much more resource-hungry Desktop Environments. You could say that it straddles the line between a Window Manager and a Desktop Environment.
Moksha is written using the Enlightenment Foundation Libraries (EFL), and remains in active development to this day.
According to the developers, two ideals of Moksha are:
In 2021 work began to build Moksha on Artix Linux completely from source. The first release was finished by the end of the year, and available in the omniverse repository. This was followed by overhauls and other improvements and in August 2024 Moksha for Artix was moved to the galaxy repository.
Random Moksha Desktops for Artix Linux can look like this (click on image for full size):
Note: the EFL package has support for Wayland included, but this has not been tested
The Moksha Desktop for Artix has 3 menu items for getting help:
To install Moksha, the galaxy repository needs to be enabled.
The Moksha Desktop for Artix Linux can be installed completely using:
pacman -Sy moksha-artix
This will install the Moksha and EFL core modules and programs, extra modules, themes and icon themes
Alternatively, these groups can be installed separately
This is the core Moksha package with the EFL library package and the dependencies
These can be installed using:
pacman -Sy moksha
These are the extra modules (and their respective package name) with which Moksha's functionality can be extended. These can be installed separately or all - with the exception of the Mixer module - at the same time using:
pacman -Sy moksha-modules-extra
These are the themes (and their respective package name) for Moksha, and can be installed separately or all in one go using:
pacman -S moksha-themes
A thumbnail picture of these themes can be found here https://www.bodhilinux.com/softwaregroup/themes/
These are the themes (and their respective package name) for Moksha, and can be installed separately or using the first or both:
pacman -S moksha-icon-themes-basic
pacman -S moksha-icon-themes-extra
These are some EFL based programs (and their respective package name) for Moksha:
Sample programs (not for daily use): ecrire enventor rage empc entice eovim epour espionage express
It is also possible to start Moksha by inserting command 'enlightenment_start' in file .xinitrc and running command 'startx'.
TuiGreet
Moksha integrates nicely with TuiGreet. To use this install greetd, greetd-runit/openrc/s6/suite66/dinit and greetd-tuigreet, eg:
pacman -S greetd greetd-openrc greetd-tuigreet
In file /etc/greetd/config.toml set 'vt = 7' and 'command = tuigreet' and enable and start the greetd service
A major advantage of TuiGreet / Greetd is that it starts Xorg as the login user, not as root
LightDM
Moksha can also be used with eg. LightDM. To use this install eg. lightdm, lightdm-runit/openrc/s6/suite66/dinit and lightdm-gtk-greeter, or as alternative for lightdm-gtk-greeter install and set up lightdm-slick-greeter, eg:
pacman -S lightdm lightdm-runit lightdm-slick-greeter
and enable and start the lightdm service
Install acpid and its service for power events, laptop lid events and backlight, eg.:
pacman -S acpid-runit
enable and start the acpid service.
By moving the mouse over the Main Menu items you get to sub-menus, and mousing over these may lead to further sub-menus (sub-menus may sometimes 'disappear' off the right of the screen; if this happens simply move the mouse pointer to the right edge of the screen and the menus will shift to the left).
These can be enabled in the Applications section of the Settings menu.
To specify commands and scripts to be executed when Moksha starts, these need to be inserted in file .e/e/applications/startup/startupcommands as eg.:
conky -p 1 -d | \ picom
Note: The pipe symbol '|' is needed to separate commands in this file
Depending on the init system that is being used, specific arguments have to be set for the shutdown and reboot commands. This is done in file: /etc/enlightenment/sysactions.conf which is updated automatically by pacman.
# ENLIGHTENMENT SYSTEM ACTIONS CONFIGURATION # # ... # # shutdown and reboot commands commands for dinit: action: halt /sbin/shutdown -p action: reboot /sbin/shutdown -r
Note: When switching to another init system, these commands might need to be updated.
To configure the screen setup:
When using multiple screens it can be useful to set up the login screen identical to what is used and saved for the session. For LightDM this can be done as follows:
The Print-Screen key starts the Shot module which can be use as a simple screenshot tool. Package moksha-modules-screenshot can be installed to obtain the Screenshot module which has more features. Once this module has been enabled it is available as a systray icon. It uses the emprint program which can also be called directly using eg:
emprint --region screenshot`date "+%D-%T"`.png
for which eg. a keybinding can be created.
The configuration files for the Moksha modules are in binary format. For each module up to 10 numbered backups are stored in directory:
~/.e/e/config/default/<module>
To make a complete backup of the Moksha configuration setup, simply copy directories ~/e and ~/.elementary
When downgrading, file /etc/enlightenment/sysactions.conf might be overwritten, so backup this file as well.
A reboot or shutdown resulting in a hanging popup showing "Resetting" is most probably caused by an incorrect reboot or shutdown command in file /usr/etc/enlightenment/sysactions.conf Also see Shutdown and Reboot Arguments
To fix this, open the Settings Panel for Windows / Windows Display, and select Allow windows partly/completely out of visual screen limits.
Not all icon themes contain icons for all items. Select another icon theme to have these displayed: Settings / Settings Panel / Look / Application Theme
An issue with a newly installed theme can often be solved by restarting moksha or the session.
With some display managers (DM) extraneous messages from Moksha Desktop's module 'EINA' can be shown at logout or shutdown. These can be ignored, or prevented by adding the following to the DM service script or custom procedure before the command that starts the DM:
source /etc/profile.d/eina-log.sh
Maintainer: artist for Artix Linux