Compiz Gets Thumbs-Up for Gutsy Gibbon 303
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."
What's worrying me... (Score:2, Insightful)
Bloat++ (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't get it (Score:2, Insightful)
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 (Score:4, Insightful)
Not much of a meaningful answer, but then again when posed like this it's not really a meaningful question.
Re:Compiz is...? (Score:5, Insightful)
View from the bottom (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Compiz is...? (Score:3, Insightful)
With Linux, you at least get a chance to find a distro without it, or be able to remove it completely .
Stability Now (Score:3, Insightful)
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?!
Re:Compiz is...? (Score:3, Insightful)
or the stability of all of those window managers that don't do the worthless fancy stuff.
Re:and Compiz is what again? (Score:5, Insightful)
Keep up with the times or use Google/Wikipedia when you don't know what something is (like you just did).
Re:Yikes (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Why is it Intel's problem? (Score:3, Insightful)
On the flip side, it's becoming easier and easier to get involved, for those who are interested. XFree86's project management effectively prevented a community of graphics driver coders from forming in the same way that a community of kernel driver coders did. This was compounded by the fact that graphics chip specs have long been withheld, making it difficult for new people to get on board. Many people have asked over the years on the X.org devel list about how to help with driver development, and even though they've been pointed to some information by the community, there's been very little available for them to get going. This has been a serious problem. Luckily, the formation of X.org has solved the first problem, and now with Intel providing well documented drivers and ATI providing specs we should see people who want to learn have that ability to contribute.
Opening up the specs is, as has been said so many times before, no panacea, but Intel has benefited very noticeably by opening up their development process. They've gained a lot of goodwill and undoubtedly a lot of customers who just want the best Free drivers available. AMD stands to gain the same, which is something they simply can not get if they keep things closed. So there's a real tangible monetary benefit to opening up the process so that the community can contribute. The result of this is that people from several groups including AMD, SuSE, Redhat, and Tungsten Graphics will be working on the new driver (many of these people are the current ati driver maintainers, so they're seasoned and knowledgeable) so I wouldn't worry about manpower there.
Finally, it's very important to note that Intel itself doesn't maintain the driver that gets shipped in your distro, X.org does. Intel employs a lot of people to help maintain it, but they do their maintainance on X.org machines. So anyone who's a X.org developer (and you can become one the same way you can in other free software projects) can become an intel driver maintainer, even if they're not employed by Intel. So if you want to contribute to the driver and other components needed to make the composited linux desktop a reality, you can do so. Intel isn't stopping you, nor is anyone else.
Re:What's worrying me... (Score:3, Insightful)
I have to agree with GP. In my experience, although the 3d effects aren't implicitly useful, they tended to make my computer FEEL more interactive, and I tended to feel less tired after using the computer.
Which I guess sounds weird. Maybe I can get a government grant to study wobbly windows.
Re:Compiz is...? (Score:2, Insightful)
In addition to these suggestions:
Never use the contraction you're, no one will understand you
it's is possessive
alot is one word
there, their and they're are interchangable
you dinfinately hang lose and loose your car keys
Re:Another stupid name (Score:2, Insightful)
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:and Compiz is what again? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.