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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."
Is this a sign of how the merger will turn out?
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
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.
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 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
Congrats on the first comment... it's a shame you couldn't make it worth the magnetic material it's stored on.
I think that in the Linux world, mergers are a good thing and need to be made across the entire Linux community. Imagine if the Gnome and KDE camps could work together... or how about Mozilla and Opera... or most importantly the package management camps.
Want to bring linux to the mainstream, pick a standard and develop it. Set aside your disagreements and work for the greater good. The world doesn't need another linux distro, it needs everyone working to create a single comprehensive distro.
I hate it when I find a piece of software I want, only to discover there is no binary for my chosen distro. I don't hate it because I don't know how to compile it myself, but because I shouldn't have to.
I hate that I can only seem to get hardware drivers for Suse and Redhat because the vendor couldn't cater to everyone.
And I hate hearing about projects forking because two intelligent people can't come to a compromise.
Choice is good... but only when there is at least one option that meets the need. Too often there is so much competition that none of the products can really fulfill the needs they set out to fulfill because there are not enough developers to go around.
Sometimes the best solution is to stop wasting time looking for an easy solution.
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.
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.
I hate it when the ONLY option I have sucks, which usually happens 99% of the time. Which is why I love Free Software -- I can fork it.
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 don't agree that "[the world] needs everyone working to create a single comprehensive distro". Personally, I think choice is good, and that alternatives can compete against each other, each try out different ideas, and stimulate and improve each other.
What does a "distribution" or "operating system" mean to a large number of computer users ? Nothing. They just see it as part of "the way the computer works". So why do we need more than one operating system ? So let's extend your argument to cover operating systems:
I think that in the [computing] world, mergers are a good thing and need to be made across the entire [computing] community. Imagine if the [Windows] and [Linux] camps could work together... or how about [Windows] and [Linux]... or most importantly the [software installation] camps.
Want to bring [computing] to the mainstream, pick a standard and develop it. Set aside your disagreements and work for the greater good. The world doesn't need another [operating system], it needs everyone working to create a single comprehensive [operating system].
I hate it when I find a piece of software I want, only to discover there is no binary for my chosen [operating system]. I don't hate it because I don't know how to compile it myself, but because I shouldn't have to.
I hate that I can only seem to get hardware drivers for [windows] because the vendor couldn't cater to everyone.
And I hate hearing about projects forking because two intelligent people can't come to a compromise.
Choice is good... but only when there is at least one option that meets the need. Too often there is so much competition that none of the products can really fulfill the needs they set out to fulfill because there are not enough developers to go around.
So......pursuing your argument a little further, should we all just use windows ????
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.
You keep using this word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
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?
'So......pursuing your argument a little further, should we all just use windows ????'
If you are looking for a one size fits all operating system, it'd be Linux, not windows.
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
Sir, please note that I still succeeded in getting my comment's subjectline reproduced by virtue of people replying to it, hence I am more biologically fertile than you.
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)
You want a "single comprehensive distribution" of an operating system, might I suggest Ms. Windows. You want choice, pick something from distrowatch.
Obviously the optimal solution is somewhere in between the extremes being argued. But it becomes rather tiring hearing how "Linux will be mainstream when everything merges." Gnome and KDE are both great because they have pushed each other (and copied each other) over the years. The same goes with Debian and RH.
Competition and Choice are good! (sometimes we have too much, but its better than having none)
"Knowledge is the only instrument of production that is not subject to diminishing returns" -Journal of Political Econom
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.
Can you fork yourself if you suck? Don't you need to remove a rib for that?
;)
Ignore me... posting as AC to not incur the karma hit
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.
Well, competition, even among open source communities can be good sometimes, I believe that's the case specially with web browsers.
What we need is standards. Develop solid, yet flexible standards and allow different implementations. That's how things evolve.
That said, yeah, I'd like for the package management people to get along and develop a standard that could used by any distribution. We are all linux, people. Let's get along.
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.
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.
I don't think Gnome and KDE should merge (it's cool to be able to choose between them), but I definitely agree that they should work together more and share ideas. To take one trivial example, I want KDE to have the ability to stretch icons as on Gnome.
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
Lets throw out some rough numbers. Lets say that window's has 60% of the desktop market share, OSX has 25%, and Linux has 15%. Competition is a good thing i'm sure we all agree on that and 15% of the desktop market share is nothing to laugh at. The problem is the 15% linux has is then divided up. Say Red hat has 4%, ubuntu has 6%, suse has 3%, and other has the rest. Linux doesn't have enough market share to have this much competition. Once most of the main distros have 10-20% of the overall market share then they will be in a better position to compete.
.deb to Ubuntu). I think he is saying instead of having 3 developers per project on 8 similar projects, maybe it would be better to have 8 developers per project on 3 similar projects. To often someone comes along and reinvents the wheel.
I think what the grand-parent was going at is that there is to much competition within linux, and that there needs to be some mergers. He isn't saying that ubuntu and suse should merge together, but maybe it would be beneficial for them to share a package management system, like how Ubuntu and Debian do (ok so they don't share perfectly, but its easy enough to move a
I believe the grand-parent is trying to say that if your a developer and you need features X, Y, And Z, then it might be ideal to add them to an already existing program rather than starting your own. Simply saying: linux is spreading its developers thin would be sufficient.
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.
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.'"
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
There will never be a unified package management system. [to the general public] Stop asking. There are too many incompatibilities between naming conventions and versioning between various systems. Let each distro do things how it wants to. Let it make its system work well. If worse comes to worse install from source. Stop thinking like a Windows user; the system has its advantages, however every distro has chosen the system it likes best and will not start doing things the way other distros do just because you want compatibility.
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.
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?
That has to be one of the worst set of reasons for anything I've ever seen. We're not saying that old people have to resize windows that way. They don't have to do anything. But don't prevent the rest of us from resizing that way. Secondly, there's nothing about dragging to the "exact" size that's needed. Whenever I resize by dragging, it's ALWAYS approximate. I resize until it gets to about where I want it and leave it at that. Of course, if I do need it to resize up to the edge of another window, at least in KDE, there are sticky window borders, so the WM will automatically finish the resize if I drag it close to the edge of another window.
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
IT'd be nice if Gnome moved to Qt. I'm a bit tired of the ugly-ass gtk libs, but for some reason, more 'complete' software is written in gtk.
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"He isn't saying that ubuntu and suse should merge together, but maybe it would be beneficial for them to share a package management system, like how Ubuntu and Debian do (ok so they don't share perfectly, but its easy enough to move a .deb to Ubuntu)."
.deb to a mountable option, like SquashFS, rather than the strictly nonmountable .ar archive with .tar.gz's within it that dpkg normally uses.
What would be really nice is a conversion of
The benefits are obvious: not only are you able to extract and install via apt as usual, but you can mount as in a live CD and save an assload of RAM, or add it to a LiveCD or LiveUSB for static low-impact installs. apt and dpkg need only be extended to support this, rather than entirely rewritten. Slowly, the various repositories would convert entirely to SquashFS.
Once a standardised structure for mountable packages is decided upon by a big distro, the Carryable OS becomes more than a hobbyist's nifty trick; it becomes an easy, accessible, and even necessary solution for the User without a home base.
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"I think that in the Linux world, mergers are a good thing and need to be made across the entire Linux community. Imagine if the Gnome and KDE camps could work together."
That's all well and good, unless of course the "merger" involves one player essentially subsuming the other.
I like Gnome. I can't stand KDE. If Gnome and KDE were to merge, only to become basically the new version of KDE, then I would be royally pissed off. I'm sure there are plenty of KDE fans who would be just as pissed if KDE became more like Gnome.
Sorry, but you clearly have no clue as to what the free/open software world is all about. If you don't like choice, then there is a corporation based in Redmond that has just the operating system for you.
"You can't fight in here, this is the war room!"
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?
Yes, lets lose all the freedoms and other advantages we get from using linux and move to windows!!!
Lets throw years of people's work down the drain and support another nasty Trans-national company that, ultimatley, is only out for itself and doesn't give a damn about its users
Choice and variety is a good thing and should be encouraged, people aren't all the same and cannot be expected to agree on everything, there are bound to be differences along the way and this is why, in the open source world, there are different pieces of software that do similar jobs.
Remember: nobody forced a variety of distros and desktops into the open source world, they developed naturally, because different people have different values and those affect what they believe makes better software, ultimatley the variety induced by these naturally differing values is what makes Linux and Open source software so great
"I could be bought, but Linux couldn't be." - Linus Torvalds
> 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.
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.
What I don't fully understand is why one MUST emulate the other if they merged. So you have GDE (Gnome + KDE)... it has a toggle that allows you to switch between KDE style and Gnome style interface.
To the user, they still have the choice, to the coder, they can merge many of the features of both and work on a common code foundation for both.
Essentially it would make most of the functionality optional, to be turned on or off at will... so you could have your Gnome, I could have my KDE, or we could both have a hybrid that uses the best features of both.
Once you have this, you will find that the great majority of the users will select a similar subset of features, and slowly the two will become one standard interface with a large number of options.... all the choice but with a common core.
I realize that my ideas are pie in the sky... and I am talking about a Utopian situation where there is no waste and everyone can work together. I never expect this to be true... I just would love to see people working toward it.
Sometimes the best solution is to stop wasting time looking for an easy solution.
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
I think that as with most things in life, it really depends. Split development can drive competition and put pressure on developers to keep up, especially when no one else is stepping up to the plate to offer any. Like many other things in the open source world, when proprietary software can't provide, we make our own, including competition.
Then QT probably would have never been open sourced. It may be obvious now that Gnome is heading down the wrong path with Mono, but back when Gnome was started it was "obvious" then that KDE was headed down the wrong path with QT. Things change, and having options makes it so that when one is wrong, you can still use another.
Do you even know what you are talking about? Ignoring the fact that Opera _isn't_ open source or Free software, Opera and Mozilla have different goals, therefore they have (and rightly should have) different projects. The only standards needed in the web browsing arena are HTML/CSS, and we all know that Mozilla and Opera generally stick to those better than certain other third parties.
The problem here is that it is not technically obvious which package management is superior. Also, this one is partly caused by a popularity problem. When you get that whole "people should use what I think is best!" problem solved, let us know. Especially when you are trying to force it on people who run open source software because it _doesn't_ tell them what they can and can't do.
See Ubuntu
See Debian
That's your opinion and you're welcome to it. It would carry more weight if you actually invented this distro that met everyone's needs and then released it.
This is not a problem with the distros, it's a problem with the distributors of the hardware drivers. I hate that ATI doesn't make .debs for their drivers too, but I don't bitch about it to the Debian developers.
And I hate it when someone who obviously has little understanding of open source in general, not to mention the goals and motivations behind different projects, whines that intelligent, hard-working, dedicated albeit stubborn developers won't do what he wants.
You want something done? Do it yourself, it's the open source way. If that's not good enough for you, fine, either pay someone to do it, or go away. Most of us here in the open source world understand and appreciate the choices offered, and wouldn't have it any other way. Quite honestly, there isn't another way that offers the choices that open source does, so please stop encouraging people to destroy the only option that gives us options
Note to all those people who will flame me or mod me flame: I understand that you see this post as the classic "fuck off, luser" type of post, but the parent was so ill-informed and misguided that I felt a little correction was in order. Obviously, th
Nathan's blog
I may indeed be misinformed, perhaps even misguided, but ironically, the general user population has shown that what I desire is exactly what is wanted.
I assert that the average user of any OS doesn't care about developers' differences of opinion, they care that they can do what they wish to do with their system. You assert that developers don't care what their users' wishes are, they care about what they wish to do with their software. Until this can be remedied, Linux will never overtake the, arguably, more customer centric operating systems.
I understand that Windows and OSX are developed for profit, and thus it is required that they cater to the customer more. However it doesn't mean that the Free Software community cannot work toward providing a reasonable level of customer satisfaction.
In many areas this is already occuring. Redhat and Suse have done very well in developing their respective distros with a customer centric approach, as has Ubuntu and a number of other non commercial distros.
I would just love to see these, and the other major players, come together and say that once and for all there needs to be some standards that are adhered to by the linux community at large. I am not suggesting that what they make standard will be the best, nor that others are not free to pursue the it's something better... just that for the benefit of the community surrounding these products, some standard needs to be enforced.
Imagine if the movie studios all put out their own media formats because each of them had their own ideas of how to implement them. Imagine if websites all used their own language instead of html. Look around you, your world is surrounded by standards... our society exists because of them. Sure, someone's ideas get ignored, someone else's only get partially implemented, and someone usually dominates the discussion and rams their ideas through... but in the end, the customer still wins because they have a standard upon which to build. If the distro producers would develop and conform to just a few simple standards, the entire community would be SOOO much better off.
Perhaps they could agree to use the same kernel versions (+ security patches) for their releases. This way binary, kernel level, driver developers do not need to release as frequently.
Perhaps they could spec out, design, and develop a completely new package management solution that they all agree to use going forward, so that I can install the latest commercial software via a binary compatible with my OS. Maybe we would see greater interest by commercial software vendors.
Perhaps they could all agree on a common arrangement for the file system so that a novice can read a tutorial on installing apache from the apache site and have it applicable to their distro.
Perhaps they could work together to develop relationships with hardware vendors. The combined weight of entire linux community, who could provide them tools to allow them to develop a single binary driver for any distro, would be far more difficult to resist than the demands for specifications or compiled binaries from 10 different linux camps.
I am not stupid enough to believe that the Free Software community will ever achieve this pie-in-the-sky goal... in fact I don't suspect it will ever really come close. But I say it does need to be pursued as much as possible. I suggest people try linux all the time, and most of them turn away when they realize that there are so many choices... people love choice, as long as they know (or think they do) what the best choice is.
Sometimes the best solution is to stop wasting time looking for an easy solution.
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.
Ahem:p e nsing/opensource
http://www.opensource.org/osi3.0/licenses/qtpl.ph
http://www.trolltech.com/products/qt/licenses/lic
"The Open Source Edition is freely available for the development of Open Source software governed by the GNU General Public License (GPL)."
The QPL is compatible with GPL, and is an OSI certified license. I don't see how using it precludes its use in open source software.
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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.'"