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Compiz Project Releases C++ Based v0.9.0
werfu writes "Compiz 0.9.0, the first release of Compiz rewritten in C++, has been announced on the Compiz mailing list. See the announcement for more info." Compiz has for years been one of my favorite ways to make Windows users envious, despite my (Linux) systems' otherwise low-end graphics capabilities. Besides the switch to C++ from C, this release "brings a whole new developer API, splits rendering into plugins,
switches the buildsystem from automake to cmake and brings minor functionality improvements."
I'm excited to learn about more software using this new programming language of the future!
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
The relevant words from the announcement are "complete rewrite". Or in simpler terms for the users, you do not want to run this until it reaches 0.10 (also as per the article.) This is a development and not stable release. (Sure would be nice if they would go 1.0 instead of .10 if it's going to be a stable release...)
Here's the stuff from the announcement interesting to users:
Everything else is of interest only to developers...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Compiz doesn't actually use that much system resources, nor strain your hardware either. It uses your gfx card to do all the work, which otherwise would be doing 99% nothing in most other circumstances anyway.
Fun fact: I knew somebody who added a preprocessor step to his compile process to make every class as a friend of every other class, because he was tired with "not being able to use the pesky private stuff in coworker's cold".
This is a first release after the reunification of the Compiz, Compiz++, NOMAD and Compiz Fusion branches. It's unstable, but at least it's good to see all the effort coming under the same roof again.
It'd be nice if the summary contained at least a sentence describing what the software actually does.
I use a variety of POSIX operating systems 95% of the time, at work through necessity, and at home through choice. And because I use them, rather than despite it, I am compelled to respond.
And drunken cheerleaders get date raped more than shut-in nerd chicks. Personally, I prefer nerd chicks, and you likely do too, but most people don't. Really, they don't, and there's no use telling them that their opinion is wrong.
If you don't value your time. For the latest of many, many examples down the years, I 'invested' 3 hours this weekend trying to get WiFi with WPA working again after upgrading my wife's box from Ubuntu 9.10 to 10.04. Verdict: the rt73usb driver has (yet again) returned to a state of porkage, so it was (yet again) ndiswrapper and Windows drivers for the eventual win.
Until of course you try and run a script written for fooshell on barshell, i.e. when a distro changes its shell.
Can be made to run on it, given enough time.
If you limit "ever" to "older than two years or so". But sure, many of the drivers give the appearance of working tolerably well, for a surprising amount of the time! And when they don't, well, there's ndiswrapper, or we'll-fix-it-in-the-next-release, or you've-got-the-source-compile-a-previous-version-yes-we-know-it-doesn't-build-against-your-kernel-headers-or-gcc-version-fix-it-yourself-you-filthy-M$-shill.
Ain't seen on one Windows for years.
Granted. Oh, unless you've got a driver bug, which you almost certainly do if your hardware was designed this millennium. Then see above.
By that measure, that would mean...
...that.
This is not the year of Linux on the desktop (or the netbook). I thought we were there with Ubuntu 10.04, but it's actually a regression from 9.10. I'd just recommend 9.10, but that's effectively abandonware now, just like all previous versions of all Linux distros, "LTS" included.
Again: I'm writing this from Ubuntu 9.10. I've got RHEL5 in that VM over there, SUSE 11 yonder, Solaris in that shell, and even SUA on Windows (tastes a bit like POSIX). I'm happy with POSIX OSen. But I would not recommend them to a Joe Windows user, ever, since I don't want to be their Support Guy from now until there's a distro that actually Just Works.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
In fact, on old systems with a graphics card it is significantly faster than the traditional way of redrawing windows.
Why? Because:
1. the gfx card can do part of the work
2. all windows are already drawn and kept in the graphic card's memory
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
I understand, but for speed I expect that C++ still outperforms Java, and while C should outperform both of them, C doesn't feature encapsulation, polymorphism and all the other goodies that OOP provides.
No, C is exactly as fast as C++. C++ only becomes slower if you use certain features that have a performance impact. Example: if you use exceptions, there is a performance penalty. If you don't, you don't get the performance penalty. That is one of the design principles of C++: nothing can be included into the language that slows down code that does not use/need it. The main slow downs you will see in your average C++ program, over the corresponding C, is the use of the string class as opposed to the nasty but fast strcpy and friends, and the extra indirect function calls due to virtual functions (which causes a branch misprediction and hence a pipeline flush on modern cpus, costing you a bunch of clock cycles). Still, you only pay for virtual if you choose to use it, and manually implemented virtual function calls are used all over the place in good old C, with the same effect. Furthermore, C++ templates allow code re-use with exactly 0 performance loss and while the error messages are ugly, they're still a whole load prettier than doing the same thing the C way with recursive includes and lots of preprocessor madness. And you can link to existing C code/libraries without any problems. Frankly, there is no valid reason for starting a new program in C in this day and age.
No, karma whoring is to post something completely obvious you know will be modded up and not add anything to the discussion. Like this comment.
Fewer Viruses - While this is technically true, most viruses I've seen installed on users machines are the result of users actively clicking and running an executable on their machine. While not running in root mode by default on Linux helps to prevent some of the damage, I think a virus running as a regular unprivileged user could still cause a lot of damage. This is also ignoring the fact that if the same incompetent users if presented with a message asking them to perform administrator actions for no reason at all would still click on "Yes", even if there should be no reason for them to do so, as long it promises smiley icons.
Lower cost of Ownership - Last time I went shoppping for a computer, I didn't see any discounts for not having Windows installed from the get go. Either you go with Dell/HP/Lenovo, and they only offer windows, or when the offer Linux, it's the same price, or only a little cheaper, but you get a lot less selection of machines you can get. The other option is to build your own machine from off the shelf components. This is my favourite option, as you can get exactly what you want, but you will end up spending more.
CLI/Scripting system - Almost nobody except tech geeks cares about this. Also, Powershell on Windows isn't all that bad. It has its pluses and its minuses.
Most open source software runs on it - Most all of open source that is worth running will run on Windows. Maybe not all of it, but most of the more important stuff. Conversely, almost no closed source software runs on Linux. Which might not matter to you, but if you're trying to get work done, having things like Photoshop, Outlook (hate it but necessary for business), and many other closed source programs, makes a big difference.
Drivers - Sure you get drivers for all the old stuff. But are you sure that shiny new piece of hardware that just came out last week will run to its full potential. Probably not. And there's also plenty of older hardware that I had that I couldn't run on Linux.
No Blue Screen - I haven't seen a blue screen on a Windows machine in many years. And when I do, it's usually because of bad RAM, causing something to get corrupted. Blue screens still exist, but they don't happen quite as often as they used to. I imagine most Linux systems would also crash pretty badly when they have bad memory.
I'm not some Windows Zealot. I use Windows when it makes sense, and I use Linux where it makes sense. But I don't really think that that any of the reasons you mentioned are valid. Especially if you're talking about home desktop use. Which in the case of Compiz, is exactly the kind of people we are talking about.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
* Lower cost of ownership - BS, too much time is spent hacking up config files to make crap work or work right
On Windows, too much time is spent hacking up the registry to make crap work or work right. Just this last Thursday, I had to manually scan the registry to delete every reference to a printer driver that kept killing someone's spooler service... because the spooler service needed to be running to delete the printer normally. If it had been a unix system, I could have just edited a line in a file and been done.
* CLI/scripting system that actually works - BS, anything you can write and make work in Linux, I can in Windows
Using cygwin, bash compiled for Windows or DOS, or other scripting applications that are not guaranteed to be on every Windows system.
* Most open source software runs on it - Show me anything worthwhile that doesn't run in Windows or have a better alternative there
Well, Linux runs in Windows, so I'd say you've won this argument.
* Drivers for just about any piece of hardware ever built - BS, that's the primary thing most users have issues with, half baked drivers
Half-baked drivers in Windows XP, Vista, and 7. That printer driver mentioned above? It was an HP driver written for and installed in Win7 64bit.
* No blue screen of death - Agreed, but I haven't seen one yet in Win7
I haven't either, but I have seen a Win7 machine reboot constantly (the equiv of BSOD since Win7 is set to reboot on fail).
* Not nearly as resource hungry (unless of course you use Compiz :-) - Agreed, but neither was Win98 which is typically how Linux feels
I still have Win98se running on an old machine for old games. Win98se is actually snappier than modern Linux, which is in turn snappier than WinXP/7. How much window compositing did Win98se do? Firewalling? Multi-user? Even the 1998 version of Linux had multi-user support and ipchains.
Mod me down if you want to, but I've yet to have Windows drop me to a command prompt after an video card driver update
I've had it boot up to a BSOD, which looks worse than a command prompt, or a blank screen where I had to remote in or boot up in safe graphics mode.
[I've yet to have Windows drop me to a command prompt after an] OS update (Ubuntu anyone?)
I've had it boot up to a BSOD, which looks worse than a command prompt.
or had to recompile sound drivers after every OS update (Ubuntu on that one too).
I wish I could. Sometimes vendors take years to get their sound drivers working. Google realtek, imac, and Windows 64 bit.
My file manager will display in a column what date pictures were taken so I can categorize them accordingly, can yours do that? It couldn't the last time I checked.
This is the first time that I ever checked. No, it does not, but it could with a little quick editing. Right clicking and selecting properties shows that the Gnome file manager (didn't check KDE) can see the image properties, including "Date Taken", so the information is there. Linux users are probably just better mentally organized, and name their photo directories YYYY_MM_DD
Compiz doesn't actually use that much system resources, nor strain your hardware either.
I have a 3.2GHz tri-core Phenom II system with a GTS 240 (~400MHz, 96 stream processors) and Compiz will easily consume 5% or more if you have a window with continual graphics updates, like a game or a video player. That's a lot of CPU! You can manually disable transforms on that window but that requires a visit to the settings manager that would leave the average user dumbfounded.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
No, karma whoring is to post something completely obvious you know will be modded up and not add anything to the discussion solely because you want to boost your karma. Unlike this comment.
Here be signatures
If you don't value your time.
Linux is only free if your time is worth nothing.
Windows is only $119.99 if your time is worth nothing.
Excuse me, what part of "since this machines are surveillance systems, 4 windows showing 352x288 video @30fps each, plus a fullscreen browser window that is constantly updated. Total CPU usage is ~3.4%." You didn't understand?
It's not compiz itself eating up that much processing power. It's the 4 threads capturing 352x288 video @30 fps, and displaying it in 4 different windows.
Also, it is IMPOSSIBLE for any operating system to be actively displaying how much CPU it is using while using 0% CPU. Answer: WINDOWS IS LYING TO YOU.
On the other hand, even if windows created some magic way to run out of thin air while using 0 processor power, it would mean nothing because it would still be completely useless.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?