Slashdot Mirror
A Look at the Compiz and Beryl Merger
invisibastard writes to mention that Linux Tech Daily has an editorial on the merger between Compiz and Beryl. "This state of affairs was a shame. Something that was finally getting the general public excited about Linux, the 3D desktop, was wasting time with duplication of effort and fighting. There were concerns about the long term viability of Beryl. The perception in the community overall was, Compiz = old and stale, Beryl = fresh and exciting. This despite the feeling in the Compiz community that the "real work" was being done by David Reveman and Compiz, and there were exciting things with Compiz core (like input redirection, etc...) on the horizon."
Chilly urine is all I have to contribute to this story.
Is this a sign of how the merger will turn out?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Error 500 - Internal server error
Server committed seppuku rather than face a slashdotting.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Forgot a URL for that. (And no, it is NOT flamebait.)
6 &postcount=432
http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=349555
http://lists.beryl-project.org/pipermail/beryl-dev /2007-March/000371.html
(ok, so that might go down in flames too)
Just like how everyone stopped making stuff for XP once Vista was released. Also, all developer snapshots for Leopard use the same Finder from Tiger, you might be reading a little much into Jobs saying there are awesome unseen features in Leopard.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
It's really great to see this. One of linux's greatest weaknesses is the amount of duplication that happens. Sometimes it's necessary but a lot of the time the community would be better served by everybody working together instead of against each other. This is one of those times and I applaud the beryl and compiz devs for realizing that and having the good sense to swallow a little bit of their pride on both sides. I'm looking forward to the great things that will come out of this.
I've always pictured the color of OS zealotry as a sort of bright flamingo pinkish hue
corel cache is up here.
http://www.networkmirror.com/9VoYxUYQ4uLdx_2F/www. linuxtechdaily.com/2007/04/editorial-compiz-and-be ryl-merger/index.html
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
I believe it is a pretty generally accepted theory of Computer Science that humble programmers aren't much good on a project. So why would they discuss the inflated egos of programmers on these projects as though it was a bad thing?
For future reference, the formula is:
(BIG EGO == GREAT CODER)
(HUMBLE == BAD BAD BAD CODER)
Are we all clear on this now?
I started reading the article and I felt like this could be really insightful, and then it ended.
I'm glad these projects are merging since eye candy (done properly) is definitely something that can stand to make Linux a player in the desktop market. We'll be able to say to people who catch a glimpse "oh, you can't install that, you don't run Linux".
If Bush wants to kill the terrorists, he should jump off a cliff.
In Flames \m/
Take Compiz's springy windows. It's cute when you play with it, and I thought it'd go great with the whole concept of water that Apple loves. However, when I showed it to a few friends that are not as technically inclined, they said the effect was "distracting." Mind you, these are college students, not grandmothers.
I think eye candy adds to the overall appeal of an operating system, but only if it's tasteful. Take virtual desktop switching—it's great to have a cube rotate, because it establishes what you're doing in spatial terms; however, I don't think anybody who actually wants to use their computer wants to waste time manipulating a cube themselves. I feel that many of the effects in Compiz are too much eye candy with too little usability.
I use the desktop cube in Beryl and I find that it is faster to see what I'm doing and more logical to use it than to go down to the lower right of my screen and click the desired virtual desktop.
Of course, I have the option to use it either way, and the cube still rotates to let me know that something like that has happened.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I personally see a merger of the two communities as being a great thing to attain. After all, they came from the same source, have the same general ideas as to where the projects should go, and it would allow for a more focused attack on the problems stemming from both projects. There would be less man hours wasted on overcoming the problems of each implementation.
I got through after a number of retries...
Editorial: Compiz and Beryl Merger
It isn't official yet, but Compiz and Beryl are merging. For the last few weeks I have been following the mailing list discussions on this topic. A lot of the work has been started. It is sort of unofficially announced, so I feel now is as good a time as any to comment. First some back story:
The war between Compiz and Beryl has been entertaining if counterproductive. Originally I planned to interview Quinn (Beryl's unofficial leader) about the Beryl project. That turned into an interview with the team that never really got anywhere. I dropped the ball. My feelings at the time were typical of those in the community. Beryl seemed to be this fantastic project that saved Compiz from being boring and a slave to Novell. They launched a beautiful website. It was exciting to see the frequency of their releases. At the time, I decided to check out Compiz to see what it was up to. It was surprising. Their forums were very helpful and positive. The more I read, the more I realized that I had made a mistake. There was more to the story than I was aware.
The communities were getting along a lot worse than I had realized. People in the Beryl camp dismissed David Reveman (creator of Compiz and XGL among other things) as a bad coder. Compiz dismissed Beryl as hacky code. Personal attacks flew around. Through decisions made with (hopefully) good intentions, like the insistence that Beryl code be GPL (thus unable to move upstream to the MIT licensed Compiz core) or the desire on some Beryl developers part to rip apart the Compiz core and " improve" it, it looked as if the teams were hopelessly split.
Meanwhile, Beryl continued to grow. Resentment grew in the Compiz community. One estimate was that Beryl used 95% Compiz code while taking all the credit. YouTube filled up with tons of spinning transparent cubes and burning windows. Any Digg story mentioning Beryl received a lot of Diggs. Flamewars in comment sections broke out regularly. Things reached a low point when a frustrated Compiz community member hacked the Beryl site.
This state of affairs was a shame. Something that was finally getting the general public excited about Linux, the 3D desktop, was wasting time with duplication of effort and fighting. There were concerns about the long term viability of Beryl. The perception in the community overall was, Compiz = old and stale, Beryl = fresh and exciting. This despite the feeling in the Compiz community that the "real work" was being done by David Reveman and Compiz, and there were exciting things with Compiz core (like input redirection, etc...) on the horizon.
It was a pleasant surprise to see talks of a merge start to show up on the mailing lists. This article by Kristian Hogsberg seemed to kick it off. The talks so far have been bumpy. There are fights about whether to rename the communities. There are heated discussions about what the merger means and where things should go from here. Old wounds have been reopened. There are complaints about the egos of the developers in the forums. At one point, reading a twenty-four page forum discussion, I wondered if the merge was a good idea after all. Little by little things seem to be working out, though. Quinn mentioned in one forum post that the fork was a mistake and regrettable. It takes a big person to make an admission like that.
I have to hand it to both communities. This is a brave and bold step. Not many of us can check our egos, put hurt feelings aside and move forward. The road ahead won't be easy, but the benefit to the Linux community will be immense. Energy won't be wasted on fights and duplication of effort. Confusion over what to use will be eliminated. Hopefully more effort can be spent by the distributions on getting the combined product packaged properly (How many times can I install a distro and the 3d desktop only to have no window borders in KDE?). The discussions I read are passionate. It looks like the project will be a meritocracy,
thegodmovie.com - watch it
Specially when competitor projects are based on different developments models. Merger of Beryl and Compiz will take quite some time and effort, both of which can instead be efficiently used while developing separately. Not to mention the obvious embarrassment that would arise from another disagreement between developers ...
There is always place for multiple projects. Different focus, different personalities even different geographical location. Multiple projects encourage innovations that wouldn't be thought about otherwise.
Maybe Apple users will finally be able to resize a window from any edge or corner after spending $100 upgrading to Leopard?
Yes, that's right Linux / BSD and Windows users, OS X will only allow you to resize via the bottom right of the window!
If you believe that all GNU/Linux users will leap on Leopard when it comes out then you are sadly mistaken. Some of us demand FLOSS (Free/Libre Open Source Software), this is the reason we choose our software. Spangly, OMGPONIES!!!!1 GUI effects are far down on the list of requirements, that something like this is being developed is a sign that GNU/Linux is maturing.
But just because we insist on running open, Free software does not mean we don't want nice effects. It just means we'll do it our way: Freely (and with flame wars, separations, bad blood, complaining, forks etc).
If you love your Mac, that's great, but don't think that because you love it the rest of the world has to. They have different requirements.
I'm going to transform myself into a mighty hawk. Either that or I'll just go and work at Dixons, haven't decided yet.
Springy windows are a neat effect, and tunable so they aren't distracting. You can tune the friction and spring strength so they barely wiggle at all. But they are also incompatible with the window-snap module, which I prefer. A separate but similar effect is the focus-shiver effect, which I find very useful, as it makes the window that receives focus shiver a little, calling attention to it. The really useful window-movement plug-in is transparency, to make windows semi-transparent while dragging.
For a really fun time, try turning on springy windows, turning the spring strength all the way down and the friction all the way up. Then try to drag the window. You can stretch it practically all the way around your desktop cube.
All in all, this reminds me of way back in the day when Enlightenment (the window manager, kdawson, not the metaphysical oneness-with-all thing) first came out. Everyone started making these obscenely complex themes showing off how cool E was. Then it seems like everyone uttered a collective "Meh," and went back to FVWM. I did, anyway.
Beryl/Compiz does have other modules that enhance functionality such as tiling/cascading, and some that are mostly for show but have some use, like trailfocus. Perhaps the most interesting thing is that all the effects are scriptable, so that different effects or placement schemes can be applied to different classes of window
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Yes it is still flamebait, 3d desktops for Mac and Linux will not instantly make Windows irrelevant, furthermore Linux's relevance is usually found when running it without a desktop at all. Personally, though I would enjoy it immensely if Vista was the only OS on the market that wasn't 3d.
Under the influence of Post-Cyberpunk Gonzo Journalism
Personnally I believe the future is not Beryl or Compiz but already existing window managers like Metacity and KWin, seeing how both of them should provide 3d effects in their next version. Once everyone can get their wobbly windows and other useful effects with the standard window manager, no one will care about Beryl or Compiz anymore.
Mada mada dane.
Editorial: Compiz and Beryl Merger
It isn't official yet, but Compiz and Beryl are merging. For the last few weeks I have been following the mailing list discussions on this topic. A lot of the work has been started. It is sort of unofficially announced, so I feel now is as good a time as any to comment. First some back story:
The war between Compiz and Beryl has been entertaining if counterproductive. Originally I planned to interview Quinn (Beryl's unofficial leader) about the Beryl project. That turned into an interview with the team that never really got anywhere. I dropped the ball. My feelings at the time were typical of those in the community. Beryl seemed to be this fantastic project that saved Compiz from being boring and a slave to Novell. They launched a beautiful website. It was exciting to see the frequency of their releases. At the time, I decided to check out Compiz to see what it was up to. It was surprising. Their forums were very helpful and positive. The more I read, the more I realized that I had made a mistake. There was more to the story than I was aware.
The communities were getting along a lot worse than I had realized. People in the Beryl camp dismissed David Reveman (creator of Compiz and XGL among other things) as a bad coder. Compiz dismissed Beryl as hacky code. Personal attacks flew around. Through decisions made with (hopefully) good intentions, like the insistence that Beryl code be GPL (thus unable to move upstream to the MIT licensed Compiz core) or the desire on some Beryl developers part to rip apart the Compiz core and " improve" it, it looked as if the teams were hopelessly split.
Meanwhile, Beryl continued to grow. Resentment grew in the Compiz community. One estimate was that Beryl used 95% Compiz code while taking all the credit. YouTube filled up with tons of spinning transparent cubes and burning windows. Any Digg story mentioning Beryl received a lot of Diggs. Flamewars in comment sections broke out regularly. Things reached a low point when a frustrated Compiz community member hacked the Beryl site.
This state of affairs was a shame. Something that was finally getting the general public excited about Linux, the 3D desktop, was wasting time with duplication of effort and fighting. There were concerns about the long term viability of Beryl. The perception in the community overall was, Compiz = old and stale, Beryl = fresh and exciting. This despite the feeling in the Compiz community that the "real work" was being done by David Reveman and Compiz, and there were exciting things with Compiz core (like input redirection, etc...) on the horizon.
It was a pleasant surprise to see talks of a merge start to show up on the mailing lists. This article by Kristian Hogsberg seemed to kick it off. The talks so far have been bumpy. There are fights about whether to rename the communities. There are heated discussions about what the merger means and where things should go from here. Old wounds have been reopened. There are complaints about the egos of the developers in the forums. At one point, reading a twenty-four page forum discussion, I wondered if the merge was a good idea after all. Little by little things seem to be working out, though. Quinn mentioned in one forum post that the fork was a mistake and regrettable. It takes a big person to make an admission like that.
I have to hand it to both communities. This is a brave and bold step. Not many of us can check our egos, put hurt feelings aside and move forward. The road ahead won't be easy, but the benefit to the Linux community will be immense. Energy won't be wasted on fights and duplication of effort. Confusion over what to use will be eliminated. Hopefully more effort can be spent by the distributions on getting the combined product packaged properly (How many times can I install a distro and the 3d desktop only to have no window borders in KDE?). The discussions I read are passionate. It looks like the project will be a meritocracy, which works the best in Free Software. My take is
It's not ego! A good programmer is simply right about everything and has brilliant design ideas. If other people (Managers, other programmers, etc) would simply realize his inherent superiority and let him do what he wants, much more work would get done. Good programmers HATE to have other people fight with them about their designs, which are quite clearly Good and Correct!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Did you know that the default gnome keys are cntl-alt-arrow to move to new workspaces and cntl-shift-alt-arrow to bring the focused window with you? I jump around so fast that any animation just annoys me.
I'd love to see common driver abstraction layer implemented so the BSD projects can share drivers without reimplementation, this would free up a lot of developers to do real kernel work.
How about a functional maximize/restore button? The green button in OSX is completely useless. Actually, it's less than completely useless. If it were just useless, it would have no function at all. But the green button seems to perform some kind of anti-intuitive function where it grows/shrinks the window based on data gathered from /dev/random.
And please replace the ultra gay and totally useless dock with a real dock.
And window shading would be nice.
And being able to double click the title bar to do [assigned function] would be nice. (Hide window.)
And being able to right click the title bar to do [assigned function] would be nice. (Move window back 1 layer.)
And... ah, forget it. I'll stick with OpenBox.
I normally have my left hand on the keyboard and my right hand on the pointing device. Doing desktop publishing must look on video a lot like someone playing a first person shooter, although you might have to speed up the video before they'd look the same. Regardless the point is that hitting control-alt-arrow with the left hand is very difficult and moving one's hand back and forth between input devices causes RSI. I quite simply want to use the mouse. There are times when I want to use the keyboard. This is not one of them. If I cared what the key combination was I'd have looked it up.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Those high priced Mercedes, Jaguar, Toyota's and Honda lost out to the much lower priced Ford, GM, Jeep, Buick, and Traubaunts.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I use the desktop cube in Beryl
I haven't used Beryl, but I'm curious. Don't you end up with a desktop that's upside-down once in a while?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
This comment will probably get lost in the general hubub of Slashdot, but I find it somewhat amusing that I've spent my day trying to get Beryl to work in a VM of OpenSUSE (my first time working with Beryl at all) and then come to Slashdot on a mini-break and find myself faced with it again. Is Slashdot reading my mind like Google, or is Beryl taking over the universe?
Compiz and Beryl are mostly eye candy. I don't see much useful in either. Metisse looks much more interesting. I'm anxiously awaiting the release of Mandriva 2007.1.
Regarding the springy windows: Mine snap to where they're supposed to go, which works. As for "distracting", I've gotten used to it, and really don't see what the big deal is. It seems like, to a certain extent, we're all luddites -- take drop shadows. A waste of resources? Maybe, but it's also very useful for showing, visually, where the border of a window is, and which window is on top of which.
Regarding the cube: No one understood virtual desktops until I got a similar effect on OS X, and now I can actually rotate the cube slowly enough to show them what's going on. I can still do a quick ctrl+alt+left/right, though, and it's ultimately no slower than when I did the same thing in Fluxbox -- even half a second is just not going to make any dent on the system's usability.
For that matter, here's the real difference: With Quartz Extreme, you get the features they give you, and that's it. With Beryl/Compiz, you get all kinds of plugins, which you can enable or disable at will. If you don't like the wobbly windows, disable them -- it doesn't mean the rest of the desktop is suddenly unusable. A favorite plugin of mine is "put" -- you can use the number pad to place windows, for instance, startkey+1 places the current window in the lower left corner. Here, the eye candy is really useful -- I see the window actually move to there, without any lag or tearing, and I imagine it would just be disorienting without any animation at all.
I like Quartz Extreme, but the fact is, Linux can now do any of the visual effects that OS X can do, so your argument here basically boils down to how you don't need more than OS X -- which is simply not a problem. You can tweak it, easily, and I'm sure someone will create one button or plugin or something which duplicates the OS X experience here, probably everything short of the unified menu bar.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
OK - we'll settle and give you the title of 'Great Java Programmer'.
Hey, at least I didn't say J#.
*DUCKS*
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
You see it a lot in government and other large organisations, in the space programme for example. A single direction dictated from above which turns out to be completely inappropriate after billions or trillions have been spent. ESR called it the cathedral, it's just a form of totalitarianism and it's the antithesis of freedom. Choice is good... but only when there is at least one option that meets the need No. Choice is always good. It means that if there's a gap, someone, somewhere will fill it. Without that choice it will take a lot longer to fill. You're essentially serialising the process. The world doesn't need another linux distro, it needs everyone working to create a single comprehensive distro. You should read the mythical man month. More people on a project doesn't necessarily make it faster or better.
Deleted
Is that in a WordPerfect file format?
I think Beryl and effects like http://beryl-project.org/images/cube_full.jpg look fantastic, but I currently use a Mac with Virtue Desktops, which provides virtual desktops, and one of the options is to show an effect when switching desktops, including a spinning cube effect. I have had it enabled for maybe 2 minutes, it's fun but annoying when you want to do real work.
Beryl might be a little better, because you can drag and drop between desktops, and with the transparent "backs" of windows, you can orient yourself better. But otherwise these are all really gimmicks until the way individual apps work changes, for example, Sun's innovative lg3d has had a "turn the window around" feature for a while, and you can do things like write notes about apps, but that's not useful until there is a real app - operating environment integration. Which requires very integrated cooperation and support.. the wm has to know what document or page an app is displaying. This is something like what MS OneNote offers, since you can make notes and relate documents.
I've had a variety of problems, but never that one. Is this some kind of joke?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
No. It always shows the desktops right-side up. It's a 'cube' but only 4 sides, not all 6, are used. Although I wonder what it'd do if you had 6 desktops?
My blog
Contrary to what is claimed, the war between Compiz and Beryl was productive. It did three things:
1) Forced David and friends to restructure his development process to be more like Beryl's
2) Forced Quinn and friends to realize that maybe David was right on some issues
3) Allowed Beryl to experiment with alternative ways of developing Compiz without destroying Compiz's approach.
Okay, maybe the conflict was a bit less civilized that than it could have been, but sometimes you need a good fight to raise the issues and so you can look for ways to solve them. You can't fix what you won't even acknowledge. The approach taken before the split up was disfunctional and didn't give people what they wanted. It's likely the new approach will be a lot better since it'll allow David to focus on what he's best at and Quinn to focus on what he's best at without stepping on each other's feet.
Excuse me, Opera is closed-source and sells their browser (on other platforms) for a price. How exactly would you go about merging that with Firefox?
"No. It always shows the desktops right-side up. It's a 'cube' but only 4 sides, not all 6, are used. Although I wonder what it'd do if you had 6 desktops?"
Then it gives you a hexagon to spin around (still with no top or bottom)
No. It always shows the desktops right-side up. It's a 'cube' but only 4 sides, not all 6, are used.
Oh well that makes sense.
Although I wonder what it'd do if you had 6 desktops?
Well seeing how you're not using the top and bottom faces, they don't really have to be square. So some sort of hexagonal prism is in order.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I'm not the original poster, but I'd assume he's talking about the fact that rotating a cube that has sides with a fixed orientation will occasionally rotate it to a point where one face is upside-down. For instance, if you are looking directly at a side of a cube, then rotated the cube to see the face on the top, it would be in a different orientation than if you were to see the face on the left or right before going to the one on the top.
I've also never used beryl, but I'd assume it rotates the screen to the proper orientation, or doesn't rotate the cube on more than one axis. It would be rather humorous to see the desktop rotate to find an upside-down screen. It would be great if it were set to do that on a certain day, as a joke. April 1st seems like a good day for that...
warning: This post is likely to contain gobs of dripping sarcasm. Consume at your own risk.
Ahhhh, I see. I've never tried the cube with more than four desktops so I've never tried to rotate the cube in any direction other than around the Y axis (left-handed view.)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
No. The ways in which you are able to manipulate the cube prevent you from doing this. Left and right arrows flip it left and right, and you can flip to the top of the cube, but when you flip over, the cube rights itself. Dragging the cube around is transformed in a way that will also prevent you from ever flipping the graphics upside down. The only faces that it's possible to get into a weird orientation are the top and bottom of the cube, and there's a setting in the beryl settings manager that causes the image to flip when it's not straight up and down.
I'm not sure if it's default, but using the mouse wheel for me rotates the cube as well when hovering over the desktop. I'm not using Beryl atm (found it too slow for what I'm doing right now) and I'm reaaaaallly missing that feature, amongst others.
Agreed. Looking at the comments on the compiz forum, it seems that compiz will stay compiz and the Beryl brand will be destroyed, to be replaced with whatever they decide on when they merge compiz-extras and beryl. This is too bad. Beryl had (a) a cool mineral-themed branding [beryl/emerald] (b) a fast capable development team (c) strong dedication to GPL licensing and (d) was basically responsible for much of at least my excitement around 3D window managers with their outstanding plugins. And (e) their settings manager was always the better one as well.
Then what happens? They come up with an agreement that destroys the Beryl brand and remerges essentially back into compiz? If they are in their right minds, they will at least insist on keeping the beryl name.
I would consider OSX if it came with a decent package manager and repositories stocked with the same great software I can find in my Ubuntu desktop.
Until then, it's a cute toy that may work for you, but doesn't work for me.
That said, I wish my Linux notebook had better hardware support, but the fact that I can live without multi-touch scroll on the trackpad and a close-to-zero configuration wireless network says a lot about how important the other, deeper, things Linux has to offer are.
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
That's the nice thing about the modular construction of X11 and so on. That stuff is already done by virtue of the apps not knowing or caring about the window manager, they just do their thing, and the window manager manages the windows.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
>I haven't used Beryl, but I'm curious. Don't you end up with
>a desktop that's upside-down once in a while?
In theory, yes, but in practice, I've always seen it self-righting, or the cube only turns left and right.
Which leads me to conclude the whole "cube" thing is just a flashy fiction with nothing to do with "reality".
Seriously, why limit yourself to thinking in a cube? I've a had multiple virtual screens for years. Anyone with an IQ above room temperature should be able to handle such abstration.
Putting it on a cube is just making it a cutesy OMG!Ponies! sort of thing...real men could map virtual screens onto 5-dimensional teseracts, but realize a command line is far more powerful.
It doesn't come with OS X, but Fink is easily installed, and is quite an excellent .DEB based package manager. Tons of packages in Fink. :)
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
You *can* rotate the cube "over the top", but basically it will flip over as it rotates, so, no, you never wind up with an "upside down" desktop.
Now, to get back to the OP of this thread: Leopard may - or may not - incorporate these kinds of "blingtop" technologies when it comes out this summer. Beryl (and Compiz) are available now.
#!/usr/bin/english
I tend to think of Sun, HP, and IBM *nix line as being the Jags/Mercedes, while the Apple is more akin to Toyota and Honda. Basically, they are slightly more expensive than the GM/Ford type cars, but offer so much more.
That was not meant to be a troll. Just sarcasm. It find it silly that ppl are trying to claim that Apple is so expensive, when they are right in the same price range and in reality, you are getting a system that last longer and works better (and that is just the hardware, let alone the software).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Scenario 1: Apple releases something first.
Verdict: Wickedest thing evar!!!!
Scenario 2: Someone else releases something first, Apple follows suit in me too fashion.
Verdict: It sucks anyway, Apple's approach is better.
I normally have my left hand on the keyboard and my right hand on the pointing device. Doing desktop publishing must look on video a lot like someone playing a first person shooter
What kind of pointing device are you holding in your right hand exactly to make it shoot?
The too-many-chefs-in-the-kitchen problem does not apply if a project is organised efficiently. Compiz or Beryl (or KDE or Gnome) are not singular projects but made up of multiple smaller largely self-organised entities quite capable of absorbing surplus egos. Individual coders are able to work on specific areas of interest outside "the whole."
To say that moving all developers from one to the other would create an lossy overload (a.k.a. mythical man month) is nonsense. If developers lack the initiative to allocate themselves appropriately I would have serious doubts for their value.
Most projects split for ideological reasons - not practical, technical or sensible ones.
Python coder | PyQt Applications | Writer
I know - I used it for some time.
In the end, there appears to be a separation between the OSX side and the "Finkspace" that's really less comfortable than a plain Linux install. And comfort is _the_ reason to have a Mac.
I can't say it was a happy choice, but there are days for Porsches and days for Humvees, but I am currently in a Humvee phase and enjoying it thoroughly.
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
I don't know how you control the desktop cube in Beryl, but if you can't make a normal 2-d window manager use similar controls I'll eat my hat. The fact that Beryl has a nice control method really doesn't have anything to do with 3-d desktops.
I would love to take advantage of the eye candy a 3D accelerated desktop provides, but until I can do it with a multi-head setup it won't get used by me. The COMPOSITE extension doesn't play well with the XINERAMA extension. It's a showstopper for me.
Mouse gestures. Case Closed.
How is that interesting? FVWM, which you even mentioned using, has had that ability for years (I use it very infrequently because consistency is good). So Beryl is bringing that aspect of FVWM back to the mainstream? I guess that's nice, if people find use in it, but it's hardly interesting.
Aside from controlling it precisely the same way you control virtual desktops in pretty much any window manager, which is to say through key combinations or clicking on the icon, you can middle-drag on the desktop to rotate the cube. You can also move the mouse to the edge of the screen and rotate the scroll wheel, but I think it's the middle-drag that we're talking about here.
2D window managers without gestures cannot do this. Those with probably can - but it will simply not be the same. It could fulfill the same purpose of course.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
BIG EGO == I PRETEND I'M A GREAT CODER
HUMBLE == I KNOW I'M A GREAT CODER
"We can't all be heroes because somebody has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by." -- Will Rogers
I would probably consider OSX a lot more seriously if they weren't sapping performance by encrypting several key executables in the OS, purposely hobbling performance just to control piracy. Yet out the other side of his mouth Steve Jobs espouses hatred for the record companies and their insistence on using DRM to control piracy. Why nobody has picked up on this and skewered him with it is beyond me, but I suppose it's because of the RDF.
Tying the hardware to their own platform in that manner isn't really necessary. People that can't be bothered to hack around encryption (which others have gotten past) won't be bothered to hack around, say, making just one little part of how OSX boots up incompatible with anything lacking a certain flag in the BIOS. They're not stopping anyone that wants to run OSX on non-Apple hardware from running it on non-Apple hardware. They're just sapping performance from legit customers.
Kinda leaves me disinclined to drink their Kool-aid when they're pissing in it then calling it sugar.
Ya know... on further reflection, I have to admit it is flamebait. Someone go ahead and kick my karma in the crotch.
:-P
In my defense, however... in a nerd forum, practically any statement about Macs is flamebait.
Indeed. I somehow managed to have three desktops so that it made a triangle. I never did figure out how to change it back. I dropped beryl because scrolling through pages was painfully slow and I lost the ctrl-alt-Fkey access to virtual consoles.
KDE allows you to switch virtual desktops by scrolling the mouse wheel on an empty space of desktop.
Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
You can buy a Mac mini from MacMall (in Southern California, iirc) for $575.
But a Yaris is stripped-down, feature-wise. The Mac mini comes with every luxury feature of its bigger brothers, namely iLife.
Plus every Mac comes with the equivalent a Lexus sport engine... namely Mach and BSD.
If anything else, this story made me laugh. It's like a food fight in the nerd headquarters.
The green button is a simulation of the right-size button in OS 9. That button actually worked. The green button is, as you say, worse than useless. However, your other criticisms are off-base.
The dock is not homosexual, afaik.
The default behavior for double-clicking a window in OS X 10.4 is to minimize the window.
Command-clicking the text in the title of a Title Bar allows one to navigate the folder's entire directory tree. This has been true for all OS Xs. There's also the sidebar in Tiger which gives one powerful navigation tools.
It sounds like you're judging OS X based on version 10.1 or 10.2. You may want to give 10.5 a try.
Ever heard of interface hacks? There are about a billion for OS X. Most of then require typing one line in the shell.
And more to the point, there is a decided dis-advantage to being "able" to resize from any side of a window. First, you have about two pixels you have to grab; that's a real pleasure, especially for older people. Then what... you start dragging each side of the window to the exact position on your screen you need at that moment? Who has time for that crap?
XFCE and FluxBox also do this, in addition to mouse wrapping.
Just move your mouse off the edge of the screen and it will switch desktops accordingly.
Very hand for multitasking.
Money is the root of all evil?
3D, whatever. Just as long as they've got my X system using the superfast graphics coprocessor for rendering, offloading from my CPU, they can keep it looking "old and stale", by doubling (or more) my old, stale PC power. If they actually find some 3D features, like rotating idle objects into profile for less screen real estate, or 3D pipes among onscreen widgets for dataflow direction among app GUIs, then that's great. But not nearly as great as offering multiprocessing desktops on these multiprocessor machines.
--
make install -not war
"A Look at the Compiz and Beryl Merger"
I'm much more interested in their shader support. I assume pixel and vertex shaders can be written and easily inserted into either one.
What does the composite extension actually do? I have an ATI x1600 and have not been able to try this - and I can't find much info on this online either. Does it have something to do with layering and transparency?
> We've got the source, so stuff can be rebuilt every time backward compatibility breaks. But that's definitely *not* a good thing
MOD PARENT UP! Agreed! I for one *hate* having source code. It makes no sense to me - especially when written in some crazy out-dated language like C++. I'd much rather just get the binary, or if it has to be source, then I want it in something that doesn't need to be compiled like Python or Unlambda.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
I use those and still use the cube spin. Just up the speed a bit and set zooming to occur only when scroll-clicking or left+right-clicking the desktop. I work just as fast as before using 3D effects but the added percepted fluency of the action makes work a bit more... "mentally ergonomic", if you will.
As long as the effects are not irritating, i.e. fast-moving and fluent, it's a win-win situation for me.
... does it run with ion?
(Captcha: "adultery" -- does that mean I should switch window manager?)
It's a shame someone doesn't fork metacity though;
Compiz was built as a quick hack and wasn't meant to grow into a proper window manager originally.
Metacity has years of window management work in it that is a shame to throw away for some eyecandy.
The codebase is pretty stable so they don't want to make any big changes though, to get the best of both worlds it needs to be forked, all this work should be going into it's compositer.
The only way for this to happen is to fork it.
metacity-ng anyone ?
How can you convince people that Beryl/Compiz IS NO BIG DEAL. Just a window manager with 3000 lines of code to use the xgl functions.
\
liquid - shiny - translucent
Here's the mascot.
On the other hand, there are a lot of people out there who use Thunderbird (or KMail or other graphical clients like *gasp* Outlook) to read mail. Personally, I think that's just so much eye candy. Can't everyone just use a terminal to read mail? And why do people insist on sending me crappy HTML mail?
I think that everyone has their own tolerance level to graphics bling/efficiency. When I try to explain desktops to my grandmother, manipulating a cube might allow her to grasp the concept of multiple desktops. Right now, I've had to configure her box with a single desktop since the idea of multiple desks was too complex for her.
Short, sweet and to the point. Bravo my friend! There is great levity to be had in the brevity of wit.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
It's interesting because it has interesting effects to script, which FVWM never had.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Well when I get a chance to set my new imac up with ubuntu and thus beryl, I'll give it a shot!
Sitting on my computer yesterday I noticed why I like Beryl more than a non-3D desktop: When changing workspace from left to right with CTRL-ALT- the windows on the next desktop redraw. The thing is, the controls in each windows are redrawn one by one and it feels slow. It feels like I lose a second or two or work every time I switch workspaces to refresh the webpage I just changed two lines of CSS in.
With Beryl the desktop just spins to the next workspace, and the windows there are already redrawn.
Huh. I actually think that holding a cube at partial rotation has very, very limited utility (if it has any at all). You'd almost always get more use out of the old 2D idiom of a big desk with multiple screens that can be smoothly scrolled between, because the stuff on your screen would actually be readable. I wouldn't be surprised if some window manager has used a similar control scheme... in fact, I would be very surprised if it couldn't be done with ease in FVWM. Although I'm not sure that it's a better way to move around a big desk than the ways we already have.
It's useful because it's a more reasonable metaphor than just smooth-sliding over to one side. Why? Because when we have a real desktop, we don't see all of it, but we just turn our head and so we are not really consciously aware of that fact. You have to take conscious action to change desktops, so rotating a cube makes more sense. In addition, the cube is a three-dimensional object, which is also more natural to humans, who live in a three (and a half, ho ho) dimensional world.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"