I've been looking at Beryl and Now Compiz Fusion.
Both look very fun on You Tube, but I was wondering who on the list has used them and could give an opinion on which is better.
Obviously, noone NEEDS fancy 3d desktops and flipping cubes, but it is fun!
TIA ~Lee
On Friday 28 September 2007 09:00:52 pm leenix wrote:
I've been looking at Beryl and Now Compiz Fusion.
(Someone will no doubt correct me on this, but the general idea is:) Compiz was a SuSE project to out-eye-candy Vista. (From what little I've seen of Vista so far, Compiz is actually more like the next-gen Apple interface.) Because of the positive, contributing, community minded <choke, cough> attitude of the Novell team, a fork was started as an actual OSS project called Beryl. The progress made on this branch made the Novell team re-consider some of their hereditary corporate attitudes, and the Beryl team admitted they could use some resources. Beryl has re-merged with Compiz, hence the Fusion name. Some updates have been released but last I looked there was not a full, post-merger release available.
None of it will run on many current computers. With a lot of luck, a hot PC with a recent NVidia graphics card may do well. People with ATI cards have acquired entire new vocabularies, as have some NVidia owners. Intel and SGI need not apply - except sometimes, when the moon is just right.
It's unstable, alpha-grade software that will be the default desktop on the next release of most distros. Ain't support fun?
was a SuSE project to out-eye-candy Vista. (From what little I've
seen of
Vista so far, Compiz is actually more like the next-gen Apple
interface.)
Since there maybe others on this list that don't use Windows at all, and since your information helped quite a bit, I'll share what I know about Vista, for what it is worth. I use Vista at work (I'm a programmer) and I gotta say, even with the new look, not a lot has changed with the Windows products. I like some of the new features of IIS 7, but Apache still has it beat in flexibility and speed. The newest (release) version of their Development Suite (Visual Studio 2005) actually complains to not be compatible with the new OS (although, I've no problems and I've done some pretty hairy stuff). I couldn't believe it. The previous version, Visual Studio 2003, won't even work on a Vista system (Can you say "UPGRADE OR DIE?") leaving developer, like me, who still have 1.1 apps to support to use Virtual PC to do it.
So far, what I've seen of the "New" Vista is all design. Different colors for the backgrounds, buttons and task bar. Other than that, it's all marketing (quite a bit like MS themselves).
I am not a total MS basher, but I hate watching people calling themselves innovators, when mostly what they do is copy other people's innovations (badly).
*steps off soap box*
~Lee
I am not a total MS basher, but I hate watching people calling themselves innovators, when mostly what they do is copy other people's innovations (badly).
I'm not a total MS basher either. I've used MS stuff since the Radio Shack Color Computer then to an IBM compatible using every version of MS stuff since DOS 3.2. And it's fair to say when Microsoft finally comes out with something good and/or innovative I'll be sure to give them credit.
--- "James R. Sissel" JimSissel@yahoo.com wrote:
I am not a total MS basher, but I hate watching people calling themselves innovators, when mostly what they do is copy other people's innovations (badly).
I'm not a total MS basher either. I've used MS stuff since the Radio Shack Color Computer then to an IBM compatible using every version of MS stuff since DOS 3.2.
I remember all the new features in each new version of MSDOS, starting with 3.2 as well. I also remember the folks on UseNet News technology groups pointing out that all of Microsoft's new MSDOS features were "borrowed" from UNIX. I definitely remember thinking "why can't I just use UNIX on this PC?"
It was only later on that I discovered that the PC version of UNIX, Xenix, was also owned by Microsoft.
And it's fair to say when Microsoft finally comes out with something good and/or innovative I'll be sure to give them credit.
Didn't they come out with a particularly innovative joystick about ten years ago?
____________________________________________________________________________________ Need a vacation? Get great deals to amazing places on Yahoo! Travel. http://travel.yahoo.com/
Maybe, their force feedback joystick right? I think I remember playing with one on a store display when I was a kid. But I highly doubt they came up with the technology, they might've been the first to market though.
There's always http://www.vcnet.com/bms/departments/innovation.shtml for record keeping, although the site seems years out of date.
On 9/29/07, Leo Mauler webgiant@yahoo.com wrote:
--- "James R. Sissel" JimSissel@yahoo.com wrote:
I am not a total MS basher, but I hate watching people calling themselves innovators, when mostly what they do is copy other people's innovations (badly).
I'm not a total MS basher either. I've used MS stuff since the Radio Shack Color Computer then to an IBM compatible using every version of MS stuff since DOS 3.2.
I remember all the new features in each new version of MSDOS, starting with 3.2 as well. I also remember the folks on UseNet News technology groups pointing out that all of Microsoft's new MSDOS features were "borrowed" from UNIX. I definitely remember thinking "why can't I just use UNIX on this PC?"
It was only later on that I discovered that the PC version of UNIX, Xenix, was also owned by Microsoft.
And it's fair to say when Microsoft finally comes out with something good and/or innovative I'll be sure to give them credit.
Didn't they come out with a particularly innovative joystick about ten years ago?
Need a vacation? Get great deals to amazing places on Yahoo! Travel. http://travel.yahoo.com/ _______________________________________________ Kclug mailing list Kclug@kclug.org http://kclug.org/mailman/listinfo/kclug
On Friday 28 September 2007, Jonathan Hutchins wrote:
None of it will run on many current computers. With a lot of luck, a hot PC with a recent NVidia graphics card may do well. People with ATI cards have acquired entire new vocabularies, as have some NVidia owners. Intel and SGI need not apply - except sometimes, when the moon is just right.
Performance is fine with an old Radeon 9200.
I've played with Beryl and Compiz before the merge. I would only guess that it's about the same after the merge. In my experience, it was impossible to get any stability out of Beryl with an ATI card. Only marginal stability with Compiz and an ATI card. Definately run an NVidia card with this stuff. Compiz was very stable for me running an NVidia GeForce 7950 GT (fairly heavy video card), while Beryl was not. It seemed that there was certain settings that I could turn on and lock the machine. If I stayed away from those certain settings, all was good.
As for eye-candy, definately beats anything I've ever seen. Brings a new level of workstation goodies to play with. True, it's a waste of system resources, but it didn't seems to slow my machine down much, if any. BTW - I'm currently NOT running any of these addons.
As far as Vista, it sucks. Same with Microsoft products, they suck. I work with both Linux and MS stuff all day long. MS stuff sucks. Am I biased? YEA! With reason.
On Sat, 2007-09-29 at 03:14 -0500, leenix wrote:
You mean extremely counterproductive.
Yes Luke, that's exactly what I meant. Thanks.
Kclug mailing list Kclug@kclug.org http://kclug.org/mailman/listinfo/kclug
--- Ty Unes riverty@kc.rr.com wrote:
As for eye-candy, definately beats anything I've ever seen. Brings a new level of workstation goodies to play with. True, it's a waste of system resources, but it didn't seems to slow my machine down much, if any.
This got me thinking: Linux can run, with minimal hardware, the Beryl/Compiz desktop. The only thing you have to consider is the video card.
With all of Vista's extra resource requirements for its DRM "Treacherous Computing" additions to Windows, how on earth are you going to be able to find a PC which can run both Vista *and* Aero?
I have visions of 5Ghz PCs with 2GB of RAM and a 512MB nVidia card running Vista plus Aero at about the speed of a 1Ghz PC running Linux. Naturally such visions frequently include customers who are annoyed about this, and say, "Is there an alternative to this?"
____________________________________________________________________________________ Boardwalk for $500? In 2007? Ha! Play Monopoly Here and Now (it's updated for today's economy) at Yahoo! Games. http://get.games.yahoo.com/proddesc?gamekey=monopolyherenow
OK, I've turned Beryl on in my Intel chipset Compaq replacement to an HP laptop. Kudos to HP support! They rock! Just wish they were a bit more Linux friendly.
It seems a bit flaky, it thinks all my apps are in Desktop 1. I'm not sure why it is using that naming convention. I may be missing something. I dragged several now very rubbery apps (that's kinda creepy), into different desktops. I then moved one app to a different desktop via the menu, now I can't get it back. Also all the rubbery motion effects have given me a headache, so I don't think I'll be using Beryl much. But then Quake makes me nauseous to watch, motion sickness and all that. So YMMV.
I'll be glad to test out Beryl, on this PC for anyone who want me to.
Specs: Compaq Presario V6000, Intel Centrino Core2 Duo T5300 1.73GHz, 2GB RAM, Intel 945GM/GMS/940GML Express Integrated video, rest of the Intel chipset, other Bells and Whistles.
Now all I have to do is find that missing app...
--- Ty Unes riverty@kc.rr.com wrote:
I've played with Beryl and Compiz before the merge. I would only guess that it's about the same after the merge. In my experience, it was impossible to get any stability out of Beryl with an ATI card. Only marginal stability with Compiz and an ATI card. Definately run an NVidia card with this stuff. Compiz was very stable for me running an NVidia GeForce 7950 GT (fairly heavy video card), while Beryl was not. It seemed that there was certain settings that I could turn on and lock the machine. If I stayed away from those certain settings, all was good.
As for eye-candy, definately beats anything I've ever seen. Brings a new level of workstation goodies to play with. True, it's a waste of system resources, but it didn't seems to slow my machine down much, if any. BTW
- I'm currently NOT running any of these addons.
As far as Vista, it sucks. Same with Microsoft products, they suck. I work with both Linux and MS stuff all day long. MS stuff sucks. Am I biased? YEA! With reason.
On Sat, 2007-09-29 at 03:14 -0500, leenix wrote:
You mean extremely counterproductive.
Yes Luke, that's exactly what I meant. Thanks.
Kclug mailing list Kclug@kclug.org http://kclug.org/mailman/listinfo/kclug
Kclug mailing list Kclug@kclug.org http://kclug.org/mailman/listinfo/kclug
On 9/28/07, leenix leenix@kc.rr.com wrote:
I've been looking at Beryl and Now Compiz Fusion.
Both look very fun on You Tube, but I was wondering who on the list has used them and could give an opinion on which is better.
Obviously, noone NEEDS fancy 3d desktops and flipping cubes, but it is fun!
I've been occasionally checking in with both projects for a while and while they ARE exciting and interesting, they are not ready for prime-time. The compositor provided by these projects is only one piece of a large "video offloaded to GPU" project that needs to happen across the whole desktop.
Currently, applications are talking Xlib to an offscreen pixmap, the pixmap is scraped and turned in to a texture and then the texture is displayed on a floating rectangle (two triangles conjoined). What needs to happen is that applications need to render fonts, buttons, splines, and gradients directly in terms of OpenGL primitives. This is exactly what Qt's Arthur and GTK's Cairo are headed toward. However, it's not there yet.
As it stands, the compositing method is SLOW on a number of applications that assume to have direct bitmap access to a window. For example, Gnome Games playing field for the game Aisleriot renders at a stunning 2-3 frames a second when redirected while the window is too large. I co-maintain this program and I can tell you that we are NOT looking foward to rewriting our renderer from scratch...
Maybe some day.