Compiz Gets Thumbs-Up for Gutsy Gibbon

Da Chronic writes "After a vigorous debate at the last Ubuntu Technical Board meeting, the board decided to ship Ubuntu 7.10 with Compiz enabled by default. The decision was made despite the fact that Compiz still has some significant issues relating to drivers and Xorg. 'For instance, there are some problems — like accelerated video playback issues with Intel drivers — that can only be resolved by using the EXA accelerated rendering framework which is still not ready yet. When asked why Intel isn't addressing the driver issue, technical board member Mathew Garrett explained that "Intel are working on the basis that composited desktops won't be ready for rolling out until EXA is stable enough anyway, so it's not a concern [for them].' In the end, all but one member voted to include Compiz in Gutsy."

and Compiz is what again?

Here's your wikipedia. Thanks, submitter.

Compiz is one of the first compositing window managers for the X Window System that uses 3D graphics hardware to create fast compositing desktop effects for window management.

Re:and Compiz is what again?

Look at how long the submission is. Why would you make it even longer by including a definition of what a relatively popular software component is? You might as well include definition for Ubuntu, Gutsy, and Xorg while you're at it.

Keep up with the times or use Google/Wikipedia when you don't know what something is (like you just did).

Re:and Compiz is what again?

Actually, I'd say the technology is being tried by nearly every desktop user. And subsequently disabled. My roommate turned it off because it was too distracting. I keep it off because it tends to freeze X on me on feisty.

It's neat, but I suspect that it's not very well engineered. [ohloh.net]

Re:and Compiz is what again?

If you want examples, look at the bug list for compiz. 175 bugs. You can't even configure compiz by default, beyond "none, some, and more". The fire module tends to choke up starting apps that start maximized. The optional preferences manager in universe hates gconf. And it doesn't even call the burn module by the same name, sometimes calling it fire. And of course, it breaks GL apps that don't do some fullscreen magic. It resets your number of workspaces to 1, and doesn't replace them with viewports. But most of all, it won't really work out of the box in most cases. They try to detect when it won't work and prevent it from activating in those situations. Only the Intel integrated stuff will likely be able to handle it out of the box. Compiz won't be enabled by default if you upgrade, I hear.

These are nitpicks and serious bugs I've found while testing for a few hours. Most are already in launchpad. Bugs don't go away because you don't like me. If you want people like me to go away, report and fix bugs. There's nothing wrong with the software existing -- it's a great tool to experiment with, and impress people. And it's certainly better than what Vista provides. I just think it's important to provide people with a flawless experience out of the box, and let them explore the more adventurous packages Ubuntu provides at leisure.

What's worrying me...

What name will they use for the release that comes after the "zesty zebra" release?!?

Re:What's worrying me...

What name will they use for the release that comes after the "zesty zebra" release?!?

anonymous anorexic anacondas

Compiz is...?

Sorry, pardon my ignorance, but what is Compiz?

Perhaps giving a brief description of what Compiz does in the article is in order?

Don't get me wrong, I would consider myself a fairly adept GNU/Linux user, but that does not necessarilly mean I know everything :/

Help computer...

Re:Compiz is...?

This is simply unacceptable behavior for a Slashdot reader. You never admit that you were wrong, and you certainly never apologize. Next time, reply with something like "The article was Slashdotted, you insensitive clod!"

I'll forgive you this time, though.

Re:Compiz is...?

Guide to Slashdot Etiquette

Never Ever Read the Articles.. That is for people with time to spare, and we are busy geeks..

Never Admit Being wrong, Just post that your being misunderstood, and what you were trying to say was....

If there have been more than 4 articles about google or apple this week, we hate them!

If the day ends in "Y" you hate microsoft

Corollary to above, If you post a genuinely well thought out, insightful comment about maybe MS is not all that bad This time you will be marked as Troll or Flamebait.

If a post is made by a "4 digit" user, even if they claim the Iraq war was started by Ceasar in 42BC, for control of the moon and the entrances to the caverns beneath the earth were the Hobbits live, you may never comment against them, or mod them down..

Funny Beats Intelligent comments any day.. (see this comment for reference, which is also a reference to the next rule!)

Last and most important, always try to Karma Whore!

Re:Compiz is...?

It's like Beryl. Hope that helps! ; )

Re:Compiz is...?

here, watch it.. better than any wordy description.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4Fbk52Mk1w [youtube.com]

Re:Compiz is...?

Compiz is the thing that MS gets criticized to death when they dare to use it in their OS (called sometimes bloat, or stupid effects, shit, etc), and that is critically aclaimed when Apple, some Linuzzz distro or use it in their distributions.

Bloat++

guh. Why not make a package w/ auto-configurable scripts available for install? Put a box in adept, or something "Click here for flashy graphics!!11". I run Kubuntu because I like having a *nix compatible desktop, not because I want another toy. I understand that some people are turned to linux for stability, and some for flashy graphics, but why include by default? Aero competition? Hope it's easily (and completely) removable. -z

s/compiz/kwin/

You realize that Kwin is including all of the 3D graphical foofah in new versions, right? Compiz is a WM that you can swap out with Metacity (or anything else) whenever you want, but your desktop is coming with the special effects built-in to the default window manager.

Thankfully, you're using KDE, so you'll have at least 8 checkboxes to disable it. ;)

PureEyeSugar

OOOOOHHH!!! My Eyes! They have Diabetis now! Too much candy!!

Re:Bloat++

No one is hiding a root password from anyone. Ubuntu by default install with no root account. The idea is that you will do all your administrative stuff using sudo. You can easily enable the root account with the password of your choice.

As to removability, I would assume a single apt-get call or a couple clicks in a graphical window manager will remove Compiz completely. (You'd sudo the tasks if you are not root.)

Re:Bloat++

It's not that there is no root account. There is a root account that cannot be logged into without first setting a password (using sudo from a user account that is allowed to run sudo).

The idea is that no one needs to be root except to run particular commands (using sudo or gksudo). If you do need to run root you will create the root password and log in as root and be able to shoot yourself in the foot if you point the run in the wrong direction (ie: rm -R /. instead of rm -R ./).

I don't get it

Maybe I'm becoming more and more of a luddite... I played with compiz a bit maybe a year ago using XFCE and it was pretty cool, but that's all it was. It didn't actually do anything to improve my computing experience other than look cool. That makes it mostly a waste of electrons, IMO.

But then, I now use wmii [suckless.org] almost exclusively, if I'm not just using plain ol' screen [gnu.org].

damn, you be a good poster and go check your links and there goes that frsit psot. oh well...

Re:I don't get it

I've been running Compiz in its various forms (compiz-quinnstorm, beryl, now compiz-fusion) on Gentoo since around March of 2006, and while I can see where you're coming from I have found some of its features actually useful. The ones I particularly like are: the expose clone (google 'expose mac to see what I'm referring to), the live alt-tabs (you see what's running in the alt-tab windows), it allows for extensive key bindings (I know you can use other programs like xbindkeys, but it at least beats Metacity's binding capability), and transparency (compiz isn't required to do this, but it makes it a lot easier than other WM's -- basically it's designed with that in mind).

Most of the eye candy doesn't eat too much CPU, and it all easily be enabled and disabled from it's control panel (compiz-fusion uses ccsm which works great, beryl-settings-manager was also pretty good). I was also impressed by beryl-manager (now fusion-icon) which made switching windows and decoration managers easier than ever.

Re:I don't get it

For me it's a convenient way to answer someone who asks me "Linux? Why do you use _Linux_?"

Not much of a meaningful answer, but then again when posed like this it's not really a meaningful question.

Re:I don't get it

I originally thought the same thing with Beryl (the breakoff from Compiz, which is now remerging into compiz-fusion), and thought, "hey it looks nice, but that's about it". I left it installed on my machine as it was pretty stable and didn't see a need to remove it. After a while I started rearranging and managing my desktop-- all development work in one window, terminal windows in another, email/web browser in another, and the last for visualization apps (imageJ, matlab, etc.). It wasn't until I had all four desktops being active used that I realized how much easier it was to multitask with a more sophisticated windows manager. I could actively switch between desktops fast, drag and drop items from one desktop to the other, separate global and local task switchers-- all much faster and with less downtime than before. Now I find it rather limiting to use a linux box that doesn't have it installed.

The only thing really holding it back is the stability issues (my desktop has no problems, but my laptop crashes at least once a day with it enabled). It doesn't hurt to install it and give it a try-- if you don't find it useful at first but it runs stable, then leave it installed-- you might come back and find it useful someday.

Re:I don't get it

They did quit arguing. Beryl is merging back into compiz as compiz-fusion.

to boldly go...

or to crash and burn, that is the question. Ubuntu might be making a brave move, or a bad move, but only time will tell. If their gamble pays off, they might be on the cutting edge, and with a marketable, noticeable advantage. If not, well... there's always Knoppix.

well...

as long as that "fallback configuration tool" that was linked here a few weeks ago works properly, i guess it shouldnt cause too many problems. lets hope that the installer will intelligently choose the correct manager.

Does Beryl = Compiz now?

I played around with Beryl a while back. Unfortunately, it was during a period when they were having problems with SVN and their website was hacked and taken down. Since then, I got the gist that they were working towards an un-fork with Compiz.

I really liked it, but there were a lot of problems - nothing insurmountable, but it did take a lot of work searching through forums and playing around with configurations to get everything the way I wanted it. There were stability issues, but I was using a lot of pre-release features and plugins.

So question... does Beryl = Compiz now? And if so, is it stable, or is it just expected to be once 7.10 is ready to go?

Re:Does Beryl = Compiz now?

The old Compiz team is concentrating on the Compiz-Fusion core, while the old Beryl team is concentrating on the plugins (eye candy goodness).

So, Compiz + Beryl == Compiz Fusion.

On I8K/GeForce2Go?

How about running on my Inspiron 8000 nVidia GeForce2Go?

I thought it would work in 7.4, but it didn't seem to make any difference. Maybe I'm not just setting it on right. I just want to offload some X processing from my CPU to my graphics chip, to make the workstation run faster overall. I don't need the fancy tricks to work, though it would be nice to try them once.

Is there a list of testing progress per graphics chip somewhere?

What happened to Ubuntu?

Dapper was the last decent release. Since then, every release seems on a downward spiral in terms of stability. Now they're adding buggy compiz _by default_ What was wrong with that 1 click enable system they previously had?

some one has to say it

the decision to include Compiz by default certainly is Gutsy.

XGL or AIGLX

I browsed the article but didn't see it specify how they'll be going about getting the effects. I presume AIGLX, although in personal experience (been running compiz since the coffee-buzz days on Gentoo), XGL has been the better performer (albeit it requires the proprietary ATI fglrx drivers). For the last couple months I switched to the r300 drivers on my Dell D610 laptop with the X300M card, and while I like the fact that it's free, I do admit I got better performance from fglrx (which doesn't support AIGLX at the moment). ATI's recent moves to open their drivers more may be interesting, I just hope that offering compiz too soon without good hardware & driver support may spoil some peoples experience on it (I am aware Fedora has had beryl since FC6, but it wasn't set by default).

On a side note, I upgraded to Xorg 7.3 (xorg-server-1.4) on Monday, and that seems to have broken compiz-fusion (probably due to the new ABI changes). This is on the same ati card with the r300 drivers mentioned above, re-emerging my xorg/compiz components didn't help (I haven't tried since than though).

window redraw problems

Anyone else experience window redraw problems with the latest compiz?

Windows won't redraw (no text as you are typing, no scrolling, no menu's) until I drag them or toggle their level of transparency.

Using an nVidia 7600GS here.

View from the bottom

I teach at a technical high school, and I use Ubuntu, Vista, XP, and OS X in the course for integration lessons. The kids Ooooh at Vista and OS X but when they discover that Ubuntu can do compositing in a flashier way (with Compiz Fusion) than either of the other two platforms and that it is free they immediately ask for one of the Ship it CDs that I happen to keep around.

I'm not saying that I evangelize Linux but since it is free, and I do teach it I find it very convenient to be able to just furnish them a copy on the spot. Flashy sells. It sells cars, bombers and hookers why not use it to sell an OS? Before anyone posts a response about bloat please remember that these are primarily 15 year old kids and the concepts of bloat are just academic to them. They won't care about bloat until they are running their own network.

Re:View from the bottom

They won't care about bloat until they are running their own network.

Or until they find it in one of the hookers you mentioned.

A Compo-whating Window Manager?

I still read that as "A Composting Window Manager".

I guess it depends on what kind of windows you have open.

What about the baby pooh brown theme?

Developers should really concentrate their efforts on more important things like getting rid of the baby pooh by default colour scheme =) /me runs and hides

And now...

The main reason so many new, unfamiliar users are converting to Ubuntu (yes, sadly the eye candy) is coming as a default?

Man your battle stations, Ubuntu Forums.

Stability Now

Depending on how stable all related drivers and devices are by the time Gutsy rolls out, this may very well be the worst thing that could happen to Ubuntu since that bad Xorg update last year.

Ubuntu is cherished by new-to-linux users as being zero-configuration and extremely hardware-compatible. Now they are introducing features which may fail to work with certain hardware. Why on earth would they do this?!

Why is it Intel's problem?

They have released the docs for their GPU. I have been told time and time again on Slashdot that all that has to happen is to document your hardware and a legion of FOSS programmers will write a better driver than you could.
So why does Intel need to address anything?

"on supported hardware"

In the Tribe prereleases, basic visual effects are enabled by default on supported hardware, and more sophisticated visual effects--like wobbling windows--can be enabled with a configuration utility.

Ya see that? "on supported hardware", it means it won't break X on unsupported hardware. don't think Ubuntu developers are dumb enough by force enabling it all the time.

Compiz-Fusion is of value even without the fancy..

Since the 3D engine and direct rendering features accelerate rendering windows, toolbar, systray etc.. it ought to be of value to all, even the X users that only use X to open terminal windows and|or use multiple monitors. (most of you guys use web browser also anyways).

I have not yet used compiz-fusion, although I have made sure the graphics card and the freebsd+xorg installation are prepared, when I do I sure hope that it is fairly simple to install a configuration that can be stripped down, so only the the cpu+mem eating code that are needed to render window, toolbar, systray and alike are active, making it efficient. Then I hope it is also easy to enable/disable simple features that suits my liking, with and option to save and switch between different profiles.

But I still wonder if what I dream of is simply a fairytale, or whether this can be expected?

Yikes

If there has to be "vigorous debate" about something like this, then it is not ready to be turned on by default, plain and simple. The article says the developers don't know how stable Compiz-Fusion is, because they don't have data, etc. But they have doubts, which is all that matters. It would be fine to go forward with turning it on by default if all the devs ran it and none experienced any problems. Instead, there are known problems (such as this Intel problem) and some of the devs acknowledge that the thing can crash once a DAY, which is consistent with other experiences I have read as well.

New users (Ubuntu's target, I believe) will try Ubuntu, see this thing crashing all the time, and think "why did my geek friend tell me this Linux is more stable than Windows? My XP doesn't crash once a day."

One dev said "if we don't get it out there at some point it'll never get good enough." I don't see how foisting it on new users will help get it into shape. Are the Compiz-Fusion devs not busy enough already? There are apparently already KNOWN ISSUES that aren't being fixed, so how is turning it on by default going to improve anything? It surely will not generate better bug reports--new users will not know Compiz-Fusion is the problem; how are they going to bugreport it?

I hope Compiz-Fusion shapes up soon or that Ubuntu reverses itself; if not, this release will be a slide backward for many users--it will resemble Vista: a release with lots of paint, but with no improvements under the surface.

Re:Yikes

If we don't get it out it'll never be good enough
The basic idea here is that by shipping it with bugs, you'll motivate a few people who wouldn't have otherwise used it to investigate. In some cases, this is true. But realistically, we're not sitting on a pile of unused openGL / video driver development talent. Any such slack was picked up by Intel and put to work on what they felt pressing, and as such is not available to meet Canonical's unpaid requests.

We don't even know how bad it is
There are 150 open bugs against compiz, and only 3 labelled critical. But we really don't know how perception of compiz affects bug reporting. We know not all bugs found are reported by it's finder. It's possible that compiz is known to be unstable and rather than report, people just disable and get on with life, assuming compiz stability will continue to be a back burner issue. Dropping compiz into gutsy by default would likely expose more users to bugs.
This exposure is theoretically what testing is for, but for various reasons, hasn't come to fruition. One is that upgrades don't enable compiz. Another is that people come to testing not for Ubuntu's sake but for theirs. They're interested in significant new software, or preserving some hardware compatibility.

Or it's simply possible that that's all the bugs there are. But I doubt that.

However
Ubuntu does have a significant support structure in place capable of dealing with all but the most egreious failures (think broken X server pushed out). Launchpad does a good job of searching for duplicate bug reports to bring people together, and test workarounds / patches. It's also got a way to attach to upstream bugs to follow on with. This is good because compiz's bugzilla is a nightmare.

Xubuntu

Is it fair to assume it will be turned of by default on Xubuntu? Doesn't make much sense to enable shiny desktop effects on a distro designed to be compatible with older hardware...

Also, while many people seem sceptical about stability I guess we will just have to wait and see how well they handle the cases where 3D acceleration is a problem. I.e, will it be careful about enabling it if a proprietary driver is needed? How well will the crash handler manage to respond if it doesn't work etc... Under the assumption that it will gracefully disable itself when it notices problems it may not be too bad.

There are, or will be, oher ses for this technolog

While people complain about needless flashy graphics what this is really intended for is a framework for putting the GPU to work on tasked like image processing. See how Apple's "Core Image" works.

Is it important?

As long as they make it easily turn off and onable I do not think that is really too important. It is definitely not something I ever worried about and having it or not having it makes really no big difference.

I wish as much work would go into all those things that DO make a big difference, like syncing my mobile phone (not possible), moving mp3s to my mobile phones memory card (not possible), using my mobile phone for internet access (not possible), using my GPS device (not possible), remotely operating my digital camera (not possible), etc.

Awesome! Dell users will love this.

http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=dell+8600+glitchy+ubuntu+7.04+lines&btnG=Search&meta= [google.com.au]

I mean it wasn't like the 8600 was *the* desktop replacement to buy about 2.5 years ago,......

Great

Never got it to work sufficiently well. There was too much ugly tearing that I couldn't find a way to get rid of, and anyway Maya won't seem to run with compositing enabled. Oh well, as long as you can still disable it...

Compiz brings out instability.

I can't help but think this is a mistake. Unless nVidia releases fixed drivers in the next month, this is going to make the Ubuntu distros look very unstable.

From what I've read, the problem is actually nVidia's: Their drivers are sync'd up with Xorg versions prior to the 132_compositing patch. This patch fixes an underlying Xorg issue required for mobile Ubuntu, but it changes the ABI ever so slightly. So, when you try to use Compiz and an OpenGL program with compositing... BLAM, X crashes and you're back to your login prompt.

This is completely reproducible and affecting lots of testers - just read the bug reports at launchpad.net. It seems to affect users of newer cards, going back to at least the 7600 series.

The bug has been around for a while (people reported it upwards of nine months ago on Fedora, according to what someone said in one of the launchpad reports) and nVidia has not released a new version of their drivers built for the new Xorg ABI. I sure hope someone there gets the idea that maybe this needs to be fixed before Gutsy final.

-J

A *very* bad move

I've used recent versions of Compiz, but it is far from ready to become a part of the Linux desktop experience. For me at least, it has the potential to cause the entire system to hang, and OpenGL applications show a significant drop in framerates. While I wish that I could use such an impressive piece of technology, it just isn't ready (I'd wait another year). For some reason, I feel this move is to try to one-up Microsoft and Apple, which both have gee-whiz graphics that are currently more stable than what Linux has to offer right now...

I have issues

I have an Intel chipset. When I try to use miro (or any accelerated video player) or webcam software they crash. I just turn off Compiz temporarily with Gutsy's nice control panel it works great. I'd say this is fine to ship, just put big disclaimers in the installer or something explaining how to turn it off temporarily. Alternatively modify the X server code so that the crashes suggest turning off Compiz.

Lol

I am reading so much complaining comments about this decision that I would guess ubuntu is going to be very succesful for this. (Sorry but you guys are simply not good at predicting success or failure...)

Anyways it will not enable them by default it is a misunderstanding , it will enable them on capable systems with good drivers, there's a difference.

Bloat is a complaint that comes from guys with computers they should have trashed 5 years ago.

My computer is 4 years old and it handles compiz fusion with quite some stability, I just disabled it since Java hasn't fixed issues with it.

If you hard core Linux geeks don't like the idea, just... do what you are doing already, use another 1337er distro.

And some rather obvious usability bugs

I use linux every day all day on at least one of my machines. It is my primary machine. I have ubuntu and compiz installed. Have had beryl installed long before that. My viewpoint is that beryl was a better product, more stable, and better designed. This current iteration demonstrates that some of the programmers just went hog wild with their choices. For instance, the rules thing is going to be a bit hard for many people to grasp. Some may never. But, not only that, there are tons and I mean tons of bugs in this release that really need to be resolved and quickly. Some of the defaults are way out there and a lot of things just don't need to be a plugin. They went to a rule based system with plugins galore but wound up making it confusing and problematic. Most mom and pop won't even know what to do--and yes, Ubuntu is geared for the mom and pop.

I'm torn

I think that overall it's the right decision. One of the benefits of being the underdog (as linux is on the desktop) is that we are less tied to legacy issues. We can make wholesale changes like this with, frankly, not much blowback (in the big picture sense).

On the other hand, I still can't get Ubuntu to let me play a 3D game (e.g., Tremulous or Guild Wars) while Compiz is active. That and other issues are substantive hurdles that they need to overcome if they intend to push it out and on by default. I'd hate to think that by defualt I couldn't run any 3D games. That would kinda suck.

Tom Caudron
http://tom.digitalelite.com/ [digitalelite.com]

I'm all for bells and whistles...

but can someone tell me what the "next gen" windows manager does for me, productivity-wise? I'm not trolling -- I'd really like to know why/what people are raving about with MacOSX/Vista/Beryl/Compiz and what they couldn't live without. I'm using Windows XP/2000 for 99% of my desktop use so obviously I'm missing something.

My Anecdotal 2c

So, my wife has Edgy installed on her laptop alongside Windows (jealous?). She recently wanted to upgrade to Fiesty, but I indicated that Gusty is about to ship in October, and that you can just apt-get update your way to final when it's released, ahead of everybody else. She thought this sounded great, and so we installed it, and everything was working without a hitch, except for two small problems:

* The restricted bcm43xx driver wasn't loading via the restricted driver manager no matter what. (Fixed by "cutting" the firmware ourselves).
* Compviz was pretty, but too slow (simply went in and disabled it).

The specs on her laptop are P4M 1.4Ghz, 1GB ram, ATI 9000 video card, and 80gb hd. This more than Linux worthy machine was having a noticeably hard time with the graphics. Doing simple day to day tasks were noticeably slowed down. Every window operation now took a few seconds instead of being instant, and this wasn't acceptable for my wife.

My suggestion for the Gutsy team is to put together a benchmark for systems, and advise users regarding 3D window management (ala Vista). Barring that, I wouldn't have Compviz enabled by default, but there's nothing preventing stuffing an icon on the desktop asking for users to click on it and try it out.

gutsy woops

if you plan to use any 3d games, turn compiz off: bzflag, SOF, doom3, all will crash X under nvidia drivers otherwise.

I just tried it, and turned back within 5 minutes

I just tried turning on "Desktop Effects" on my Ubuntu Gutsy install. I didn't get excited by the basic effects: soft shadows around the windows. I like a crisp picture. The full effects, well the only thing I saw was the wobbly windows, which are pretty but seem to get in the way of nice, simple moving a window to where I want it.

But the real reason I turned it off again was Firefox suddenly wedged at 100%, with blank windows (at first) and then rendered, but still not responding to clicks in its windows. Never mind.

Re:i for one

> welcome our gusty gisbo overlords.

We set AC up with the perfect opportunity for a Goatse Gibbon, or a Gutsy Goatse, or a Goatse's Guts, and he swings and misses.

*sigh*

General public

general public is not going to buy into this.

Actually I love Ubuntu and am looking forward to upgrading to Gutsy when it comes out.

Re:Ubuntu is just Eye Candy

I got bored with Slackware and various other distros... and one day I decided to try Ubuntu's latest release. I was pissed off at XP and said, flatly, if Ubuntu gives me shit, I won't use it.

It's worked since day one. Anything "extra" I've gone and screwed up, I've done on my own. I use the terminal almost exclusively. (Shh: for nethack when I'm not doing other things in vi.)

I just wanted a lazy OS that wasn't XP. Would another distro fully recognize my wifi card, wired card, usb devices, etc? It was easy as pie to get my Microchip PICKit2 working. I am sure it would be just as easy in another distro; but at the point I usually want to work on other things, in other distros, I'm still either playing with ifconfig or getting X to work properly...

Plus, Beryl actually does good things for me: I'll run WoW (via Wine) fullscreen, and still have access to other desktops by simply twisting the cube around to another side...

Re:Ubuntu is just Eye Candy

Just because many of the people who post on the Ubuntu forums are noobs doesn't mean that the distro itself is only for noobs. Sure, Ubuntu is just Debian with lazy defaults - but for many applications that happens to be exactly what is needed.

Re:This is just typical stupid Canonical thinking

Compiz disables automatically in computers that doesn't have enought horsepower to run it.

Re:This is just typical stupid Canonical thinking

Not to mention that many people who might want to run the latest Ubuntu simply don't have video cards or PCs with the horsepower to run this.

Say what? Who doesn't have even a basic 3D accelerator, these days? I mean, sure, Ubuntu *could* tailor their distro to the few people out there still running Mach64 cards, but why would they bother?

Re:This is just typical stupid Canonical thinking

Not enough horsepower?! Please! Are we talking about Vista here?
I have been using beryl on 16Mb integrated video card from Intel. Disable most resource-consuming features and it works just fine. You really need no powerful PC to use Compiz.
You need anything more than Nvidia GeForce MX 440 only for very few effects.

Re:This is just typical stupid Canonical thinking

It's just typical stupid geek thinking. For a distro which is supposed to be for new users of Linux, load it up with crap that is guaranteed to blow the install or first boot for a new user.

Actually, this won't happen, because before Ubuntu made this decision, they developed a default graphical failsafe mode. The story was here on slashdot, so you of all people should have seen it.

I think that Ubuntu has made a smart decision with this. They're taking a small risk because there's some certainty that a noticeable minority of desktops won't be able to run Compiz, but they've hedged their bets by ensuring that these users will not be left with an unusable X Window system. Additionally, turning the compositing features off is trivially easy.

Looks to me like they've got the best graphical Linux behaviour no matter how you look at it.

Re:Ubuntu is just Eye Candy

As a long time Ubuntu user (almost 4k posts on the Ubuntu forum)I learned some things 1. Eye candy will always be worked on over functionality. 2. Ubuntu is a word that means "I don't know Debian exists"

4000 posts? What do you use your computer for? Posting to the Ubuntu forum?

I've used Linux since 1995 (and different flavors of UNIX before that), was a Debian user for several years, and now use Ubuntu and think its quite good (not perfect but I am happy to use it). If Debian had a 6-month release cycle, I might still be using it, but Ubuntu is the best choice for an apt-based up-to-date Linux distro.

At least someone is working on user interface improvements. But I agree that Compiz Fusion is just not ready to be turned on by default, regardless of what the users want.

Re:Ubuntu

So does your mom... troll.

Re:This is just typical stupid Canonical thinking

Which computers are these? My 6 year old PC runs it with some 70 fps. The gentleman doth protest too much, methinks.

Re:Ubuntu

He's clueless. Ubuntu is awesome.

Re:Ubuntu

Sorry, I don't have time to read your whole post. Could you summarize your thoughts for me please?

Re:Another stupid name

Another stupid name
For another shitty distro. Get with the program folks. The general public is not going to buy into this.
I, for one, don't give a teflon turd about what the general public buys. I like it, and will be using it.

Re:Why not the latest?

hardy herron (which i presume your "hairy hardon" was a derogatory reference to) doesn't even exist yet. Yes the name has been announced as has the fact that as expected it would be a LTS release but there is no hardy directory on the mirrors yet and there won't be until a couple of days after gutsy releases.