Every now and again I try to give Enlightenment a shot instead of KDE and such, and while every time I think it's pretty neat in general, I end up being turned away by the fact I just don't want to have to go through all the configuration that seems to be necessary to set it up like I'd want. As a result, I decided this time I might as well just ask for a few tips. Firstly, is there some easy way to import menus from KDE or another window manager so I don't have to use a text editor to create and maintain my menus when I install new software and such? Secondly, although I know I can use apps like Kicker within Enlightenment, I'd prefer to avoid doing that. What software should I look into to make up for some of that functionality, though? Looking at my desktop at the moment I'm particularly wishing I had a clock and a battery monitor somewhere, considering this is a laptop. Any suggestions? For those of you familiar with Enlightenment, how did you set things up?

For E configuration you should look for e16menuedit and e16keyedit. Those are GTK apps that ease atleast partly the configuration of Enlightenment. There is a tool which is supposed to convert Gnome and KDE menus to Enlightenment menus (altough I though E does it itself when installed (there is by default KDE menu under User Menus)), but I haven't tested it myself.

Then there is this: Genmenu and Menushki (converter), and I haven't tested either of those :)

Perhaps you're intrested in epplets as a replacement for kicker.. here's some including fancy looking E-FancyLauncher (haven't tested ;)).

Or perhaps Gkrellm suits you better..

I made this to deal with the bad menu generation problem. As for the monitors gkrellm is pretty much a must for the enlightenment desktop(I've heard some success with gdesklets but have not confirmed it).

i agree on gkrellm. I can't live without it. If you get gkrellm though, get the Launch plugin so you can start apps with a single button click.

If you use Debian or Mandrake, they both keep your menues in sync with the system automatically. I have never had to manually edit the E config files for menues.