Enigma
I own several Dreamboxes and I found this in Reference to Enigma 1& 2 Dreamboxes a cut copy and paste in quotes below. IMHO, It was and has been my impression that when Speaking of Enigma that term is used to discribe the Computer and the Firmware loaded. Example a Dreambox 500 is Enigma 1 and the 7020 is Enigma1. The 7025 is Enigma 2 another words that is the name of the Computer and the preloaded factory firmware that handshakes with the OS loaded by the User or the factory. Most people use PLi Jade as their OS on a Dreambox. Pli is the most popular open source software from what I have read. Lots of other open source software is out there for the Dreamboxes. I have used several Open Source OS's on my Dreamboxes but honestly Pli is by far the best I have seen with far less troubles than other software. It's an excellent OS for FTA and easier to use than some of the other OS software I have seen. AS mentioned below Enigma runs on top and basically allows Jade or other Open Source software to communicate with Dreambox. Pli is legal and most of the open source software used by Dreambox Owners is legal. That being said a lot of the add-ons can found that is not for legal use.
Also note, That some Germans refer to a computer as Enigma...not that it matters to anyone. I guess basically it's just a matter of differences in opinions of what Enigma is...
Dreamboxes do not come preloaded with any software that is illegal or will it do anything illegal. The owners of Dreamboxes will load the 3rd party software on a Dreambox. Out of the box they are FTA and FTA ready. That is a terrible misconception that Dreamboxes are illegal ready, it just simply is not true. The Dreambox can be used with a providers card that is purchased legally. Again it is the end user that makes enigma illegal.
" What is Enigma 2?
When you switch on your DM 7025 and start watching or recording tv shows, Enigma 2 is the application that you see on the tv screen. Enigma 2 receives and processes the button push events from the remote, draws the menus and the windows on the screen, changes the channels and, overall, handles all the interaction with the user. For a remote-contoller wielding couch potato, Enigma 2 is what the DM 7025 is.
But Enigma 2 is not all there is to a DM 7025. There is also the underlying Linux system: with a kernel, drivers, command-line tools, server applications (such as Samba), scripts, shared libraries, a package management system, etc. Together, all these various bits and pieces form the base upon which Enigma 2 is running. Of course, most of these other components are running in the background, deep in the bowels of the device – invisibly, as far as the end user is concerned – but without them the Enigma 2 software wouldn’t work.
In other words, Enigma 2 is a Linux application. It cannot exist alone; it is not a stand-alone “firmware” that would directly access the set-top box hardware at the register level and run independent of any external OS. The firmware images you can download from Dream Multimedia are actually full-fledged mini Linux distributions, with the Enigma 2 application running on the top."
"What happened to Enigma 1?
Enigma 2 is a rewrite of Enigma 1 (or mere “Enigma”), which is another, older set-top box-oriented DVB viewer and DVR application. Without delving too much into historical details, it suffices to say that Dream Multimedia still ships many of the other Dreambox models with Enigma 1, and develops and maintains this “old” branch of Enigma, too. The DM 7025, however, was shipped with the all-new Enigma 2, and the upcoming DM 8000 is expected to be shipped with Enigma 2 as well.
The most striking difference between the two Enigmas is that Enigma 1 is a C++ application through-and-through whereas Enigma 2 only has a relatively compact C++ core for the lower level stuff and handles much of its internal logic in Python. For instance, in Enigma 2, the user interface logic and menu structures are all handled by Python modules and they could be completely rewritten by merely altering the Python code. In Enigma 1, similar changes would require altering the C++ code and recompiling the binary. In addition to that, Enigma 2 also includes a new plugin interface that allows writing plugins as Python modules. The old Enigma 1 only allowed binary plugins.
I do not know the original reasoning behind developing a new, rewritten version of Enigma, but apparently the old C++ codebase of Enigma 1 was somewhat messy and hard to maintain, and it does not handle multiple tuners and DVB multiplexes too gracefully. These points alone could explain the need for something new.
The Python-orientedness of Enigma 2 makes rapid development and changes in the user interface logic easier, and it should also make plugin development much more accessible to the end-users"