What is the purpose of snazzy Window Managers/Compositors?

[vexorian]

No, a GPU is a processor (not a CPU) designed for graphics, as its name suggests. GPUs have recently been used for other tasks, but that does not mean they have been designed for them.

Silly technicisms. I meant CPU as in processor, it is a strange habit.

Do you know what graphics are? heavy-weight tasks that require tons of parallelism.

Lower resource usage means also that the hardware will be useful a longer time, generating less waste. From an ecologic point of view that's important.

There are not too many hardware components that actually lose life time significantly due to load. I guess the most important one of them is the hard drive. But snazzy window managers don't put load on it, do them?

For CPUs, GPUs and RAM, high load is not as important as high temperature (for life expectancy). A CPU running at 25% that has poor cooling may actually be running at higher temperature than a 100% running CPU with proper cooling.

Of course then we have a better question. If you are only using 10% of your system resources, maybe it would have been better for the environment for you to buy system components that were more suitable for the light use you have. than to put very powerful components to waste.

[tartalo]

There are not too many hardware components that actually lose life time significantly due to load.

That's not what I meant, although what you say is interesting.

I was talking about the false need of replacing the computer that some software updates create.

Example: One friend I usually give support to recently approached me asking for advise to buy a cheap laptop after Unity replaced his Gnome 2 because "the computer was very slow", I proposed him to switch to Xubuntu instead, he liked it, we upgraded the RAM and done. That's a computer that has extended it's life thanks to a lighter DE.

By the way, a test about power consumption of different DEs: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag..._desktop&num=1

EDIT: replaced url with a newer article

[Lightstar]

It's a matter of opinion.

I personally like it. I love polished beautiful desktops.
Some people don't, some just use a tiling window manager and have terminals up.

Luckily you are with linux. If you want something super simple, that uses grey boxes buttons. You can have it.

[Supermouse]

Well, for simple use, there's nothing that a fancy DE will give you that other DEs won't. Maybe cubes and transparencies, but nothing that will reeeealy improve your productivity and stuff.

But a fancy DE with compositing and benefiting from hardware graphics acceleration, in the proper hardware, will take some load of your CPU and pass it to the graphics adapter, who usually stays idle, and that is the purpose of a snazzy window manager.

[KiwiNZ]

Well, for simple use, there's nothing that a fancy DE will give you that other DEs won't. Maybe cubes and transparencies, but nothing that will reeeealy improve your productivity and stuff.

But a fancy DE with compositing and benefiting from hardware graphics acceleration, in the proper hardware, will take some load of your CPU and pass it to the graphics adapter, who usually stays idle, and that is the purpose of a snazzy window manager.

Working environment is an important factor in productivity levels.

[fontis]

Because at the end of the day you are interacting with a device and you want that experience to be aesthetically pleasing.

If it would suffice to just run **** for the sake of running them then we would still be using terminals with binary code only.

The level of ease with which you interact with a device evolves from the GUI that follows alongside it. Psychologically speaking this can be rooted back to how we as children play with symbols and images rather than plain lines drawn on a paper.

The more "fun" you have interacting with something the more productive you are

[forrestcupp]

I was talking about the false need of replacing the computer that some software updates create.

That's true. But I suspect most people buy upgraded computers because they want them, not because they actually need them.

But a fancy DE with compositing and benefiting from hardware graphics acceleration, in the proper hardware, will take some load of your CPU and pass it to the graphics adapter, who usually stays idle, and that is the purpose of a snazzy window manager.

That's the best point anyone has made in this thread, yet. People tend to forget that the whole purpose of compositing is to pass the graphical workload off to the GPU, which is where it should be. Without that, all of the workload for everything goes to the CPU, which is worse than not having compositing. The snazzy effects are just an added bonus.

[vexorian]

Why would they have to update software anyway?

10.04 is LTS, which means you can use it with update support till 2015 if your computer is old. You can for example get new software versions of Firefox or LibreOffice without leaving 10.04 thanks to ppas.

And old is the keyword here. My 2GB of RAM, Core 2 duo is running incredibly well with 12.04.1 with all default effects on. We are talking about the lower end of the previous generation in processors running an ubuntu version that was just released. Computers that really can't use unity nor unity-2D must be quite old. Also, XCFE and gnome-fallback are supported by 12.04.1 anyway, letting your friend and many people with older systems still use the same OS.

We are not nearly close to having a planned obsolescence issue in the Ubuntu/Linux world. The computers that are truly so old that are no longer getting supported are living a case of true obsolescence rather than planned one

.

That's the best point anyone has made in this thread, yet. People tend to forget that the whole purpose of compositing is to pass the graphical workload off to the GPU, which is where it should be. Without that, all of the workload for everything goes to the CPU, which is worse than not having compositing. The snazzy effects are just an added bonus.

It is a good point. But I think it is not working that well in practice. compiz tends to use 10% of my CPU. When I switch to unity 2D, CPU usage of the DE tends to be about the same.

[Paqman]

10.04 is LTS, which means you can use it with update support till 2015 if your computer is old.

It's actually only April 2013 for desktop. Five year support for desktops didn't come in until 12.04.

[effenberg0x0]

There's no single answer to this question. All technical, economic, sociological, etc args will be valid. And all viable answers will be questioned.

The answer I accept is: "People tend to choose good looking things" or "it's easier to sell good looking things".

The long version of that reasoning is: "If we are to compete with other successful OSs, which currently hold a larger market share, we must do so in the same grounds, offering end users the same things they see as benefits, whether we accept these features as real benefits or not".

However, as all other args, it ends up going down to: "Most people can't understand/don't care about technical aspects such as the use of hardware resources/That's not what drives large scale adoption".

Then it turns into a flame war when the discussion is moved from these reasoning to "but we are a FOSS project, we should focus on the OS technical quality, not on the market. We should leave the market discussion to proprietary software companies".

And then we realize we're growing old and the discussion is still the same.

So, IMO, a similarly pointless question would be: "What is the purpose of discussing desktop environments". And the rationale would be "it wastes valuable resources and there's no possible final conclusion".

And the real question no one wants to talk about is "If there's freedom and options, why do we feel a need to understand, evaluate/judge, discuss and/or change the choice of others".

Regards,
Effenberg