E17 is not only a version but a specific piece of software, it’s main difference is that the composite layer is not integrated in the window manager itself, this allows us to run compiz (ecomorph) on top of Enlightenment 17.
Also, Elive uses a very customized version of E17 with own modifications, features, and some bugfixes backported, it is in the end a strongly stable, and well polished desktop.
Consider E17 as an entire separated desktop, not ‘a version of E’, just like E16 is even much more different and it doesn’t even uses the EFL libraries
So what about newer versions of E?
We selected on purpose to use E17 for the final stable version of Elive 3.0 because of the many reasons, this doesn’t means that we are not going to use a newer branch of Enlightenment in the future, it is just a matter of best choice, with factors like:
new version means more features and improvements, that’s a good thing
we will lost the possibility to use the optional compiz / ecomorph layer on it (that’s bad!)
we need to backport all the work and customizations, adaptations and compatibilities made by Elive (that’s a ton of work)
Who said it is not updated? try apt-cache policy e17-stable , you can see the date build time, it is maintained with bugfixes and improvements for Elive
they are different branches, different versions, and even can be considered different desktops, the e17 of Elive is own maintained and updated with tons of modifications, the number means nothing, just like the name. Example: moksha is a fork of e17, its only because of its name that it can make you think that its updated / maintained, and always in its last version ?
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