A long-standing bug in the Enlightenment E1-six (E16) window manager, which has existed in the codebase since 2006, has finally been identified by developer Kamila Szewczyk.
The issue caused complete desktop freezes when specific files were opened, according to a technical report from iczelia.net.
Szewczyk, who uses the 1997-era window manager daily, discovered the flaw while preparing lecture materials. The freeze occurred specifically when opening a PDF file in the Atril document viewer.
Using debugging tools, the developer found that the system was not deadlocked but was stuck in a continuous loop. The process was caught in a two-state oscillation within the font-measurement functions of the Imlib2 library.
A mathematical error
The root cause of the hang was traced to the middle-ellipsis truncation loop, which attempts to fit long window titles into a limited pixel width. The developer discovered that the logic error stemmed from a faulty implementation of Newton’s algorithm.
"The bug was a show-stopping, rare bug that dates back to 2006 in the codebase," Szewczyk wrote, noting that the issue appeared when the window title was too long for the window decorations.
While most users have migrated to newer versions of the Enlightenment desktop, a dedicated community of enthusiasts continues to use the E16 version for its lightweight performance and high customizability.
The identified fix addresses the logic within the TextstateTextFitMB function, preventing the infinite loop that previously paralyzed the X11 session.