A Look at the Compiz and Beryl Merger 250
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."
Re:Leopard (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Good for them (Score:5, Insightful)
I disagree.
People are not working AGAINST each other; that is what Microsoft does - form teams that actually try to take down competitors by hook or by crook.
With open source, it's more like many different interpretations of what needs be done competing and the end user profits by choosing what lives. There is no active sabotage as in the case of MS, so don't try casting it (even unintentionally) in such a light. Even competing open-source projects can use each other's ideas without fearing repriesals.
They are not working "against" each other, they are evolving in parallel.
Re:Frosty piss! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Good for them (Score:5, Insightful)
It is also one of its great strengths. This one, along with things like the free desktop project are starting to address the next step along. How, once a good decision has been made, to converge multiple projects into the best solution.
Think of it as evolution in action.
Big deal (Score:4, Insightful)
Not at all (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Good for them (Score:4, Insightful)
Having a kitchen-sink approach in order to please everyone usually makes for crappy software. And putting all your eggs in one basket is very bad.
Future (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Frosty piss! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Good for them (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, I've never heard of Compiz until this story.
Re:Humble Programmers Are Bad (Score:3, Insightful)
Meanwhile, he is the nicest, most humble guy I've ever worked with. And I don't know a single person at work that doesn't get along with him.
Re:Leopard (Score:4, Insightful)
Nope. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Frosty piss! (Score:3, Insightful)
If you are looking for a one size fits all operating system, it'd be Linux, not windows.
Re:Here's TFA (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe they should use a license that ask for credit. I have sometime the impression that people don't get what "free" code means... it's even sadder when those people are the one that develop it (or even worse: try to promote the freedom idea without understanding what it means)
Re:Frosty piss! (Score:2, Insightful)
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)
It looks like a victory for compiz (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Leopard (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Here's TFA (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Good for them (Score:3, Insightful)
Come on now. At least they try to maintain backward compatibility (except, of course, when they want to play planned obsolescense with Office). The Linux desktop projects don't even try. And that's been 'good enough' so long as nobody runs anything but the stuff that comes with their distro. Yep. We've got the source, so stuff can be rebuilt every time backward compatibility breaks. But that's definitely *not* a good thing, and people ought to face up to it instead of just chanting "choice is good, choice is good". Sounds like brainwashed red staters chanting "we're fighting them over there, so we don't have to fight them here". Bullshit.
I for one wrote a Windows app years ago in straight C windows SDK, and the executable works unmodified on Win9X, NT, 2000, XP, Vista, AND WINE fer Chrissake. That's a good thing. Maybe a rarity, but along with the CAD guy, this makes 2 of us.
If you want Linux to ever be viable as anything but a basic Internet kiosk, you need to take this issue seriously. Like, say, if you want to be able to work on Linux or write software for it at you job.
Re:Here's TFA (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Frosty piss! (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Leopard (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Good for them (Score:2, Insightful)
That's how backwards compatibility has worked on Unix for years. See POSIX, for example.
Re:Future (Score:3, Insightful)
Better question: why run a compositing window manager? What's the point? My kids LOVE the wobbling windows, but I'm a grown up and wobbly burning windows are nothing but a waste of RAM and cycles that could be better spent making the system more responsive.
Re:Frosty piss! (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Frosty piss! (Score:3, Insightful)
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.