Compiz story end

[cariboo]

I have to agree with kansasnoob, I find on my Compaq netbook, Atom N270, 1GiB ram and Intel 945 graphics, seems to perform better running gnome-shell, than when running Unity. I'm running the Quantal version at moment, and the one thing I found, is that I can now play flash videos at 720p, and they are quite watchable. With all the previous versions of Unity 720p was just horrible, the audio would continue but the picture would be frozen, or there would be stuttering of both audio and video.

I plan on creating a raring install of the gnome-remix, as I saw on the dev mailing list that there will be changes coming to the Intel i945 driver, so I'd like to test it to see if these changes actually do make a difference.

Overall performance on my main system running Raring, seems to be quite good, now that I have found a bootable kernel. I do have some memory leakage, but it looks like the problem may be chromium, I'm going to use firefox for a day on my days off, to see if I can narrow the problem down.

To get back on topic, it seems Sam is still working on compiz, even though he no longer works for Canonical, if you check his blog on December 13 he mentions creating an experimental ppa with a newer version, that he would like tested before the merge into the main trunk.

Here's a direct link to the blog post:

http://smspillaz.wordpress.com/2012/...-improvements/

[kyleabaker]

I've gotta give Sam props on being firm about not porting Compiz. While its been a blast seeing Compiz, Beryl, Compiz-Fusion, ..then Compiz over the years... Compiz has just never panned out to what it's always been talked up to be.

My personal opinion is this:
Canonical/Ubuntu invested way too much with 11.04 and depended far too heavily on Compiz. I think now is one of the worst (late announcement) times for Sam to ditch Compiz. Ubuntu needs a stable release for 13.10 and there's clearly not enough time to shift to an alternative between now and then. Ubuntu is kind of in a shifty spot, meaning they have to determine an alternative, develop it, AND make it stable again. There's been sooooo much work stabilizing Compiz and improving performance. It's going to be a step back for a brief period, but I hope the emphasize performance from the start.

I'm sad to see Compiz go, but seriously (as much as I love it) Canonical should have started working on an alternative 2 years ago. Open source is great and its my preference, but the cold hard truth is that stability and permance in open source takes a really long time to accomplish. I just hope they focus of that from the start... with Wayland. yay

[mc4man]

on December 13 he mentions creating an experimental ppa with a newer version, that he would like tested before the merge into the main trunk.

Here's a direct link to the blog post:

http://smspillaz.wordpress.com/2012/...-improvements/

Could be interesting to ck. out - though if anyone doing so would suggest a new, dedicated install.

Atm fairly easy to set up though compiz is completely broken on DnD (nux), maybe not surprising since nux just updated in the experimental ppa.
(the Ex. ppa is getting fresh builds so I guess it's still viable??

Setting up is fairly easy with both ppa's enabled, found it best to do in synaptic & 1st. remove unity. Then update compiz*, bamf*, nux*, ect. After that re-install the Ex. ppa unity.

[Stinger]

I've been digging round a bit and as cariboo907 pointed out and here on Phoronix, it seems that compiz isn't in such a bad shape after all but you have to use the ppa:smspillaz/compiz-experimental to get all the improvents.

As you can see in this article from Phoronix dated December 26, 2012, Ubuntu 12.10 Now Unredirects Fullscreen Windows.

This was done in Mutter back in 2011 as you can read about here

Unredirect override-redirect fullscreen windows, such as full-screen 3D games to avoid any performance impact [Adel; #597014]

I found this on the KDE blogs from 24 Aug 2008 by Lubos Lunak

Oh well. Second improvement is unredirecting fullscreen windows

Unredirecting is not the whole truth as you can see in this benchmark made by Owen Taylor back in June 2011, but if you use full-screen 3D it will improve performance.
The Compositing manager benchmark tool is Owen's own creation, Xcompbench.
KWin 4.6.3, Compiz 0.9.4 and Mutter 3.0.2 are benchmarked.


The essence of this is:
The Improvements seems to land in Kwin and Mutter first, maybe because they have more developer power and a larger audience.

[zika]

you have to use the ppa:smspillaz/compiz-experimental to get all the improvents.

Caveat: That ppa needs ppa:unity-team/staging also, as far as I know... Also, be ready for some (at least) packages waiting and some heavy dist-upgrade resolutions...
Update₁: Unity is work in progress but Fallback (with effects) with this compiz is like an aeroplane... Flies fast but can crash without warning...
Yes, I know, I've made my install again to live on the edge but it is kind of nice...

[Stinger]

Caveat: That ppa needs ppa:unity-team/staging also, as far as I know... Also, be ready for some (at least) packages waiting and some heavy dist-upgrade resolutions...
Update₁: Unity is work in progress but Fallback (with effects) with this compiz is like an aeroplane... Flies fast but can crash without warning...
Yes, I know, I've made my install again to live on the edge but it is kind of nice...

Sounds like compiz is picking up speed when it's not crashing

I really don't get why Ubuntu has stayed true to compiz for so long when there are more mature and faster solutions available as Kwin and Mutter ?

[zika]

Sounds like compiz is picking up speed when it's not crashing

I really don't get why Ubuntu has stayed true to compiz for so long when there are more mature and faster solutions available as Kwin and Mutter ?

I have to be truthful. As of couple of minutes ago my machine is fully up-to-date to new compiz so real test starts now... It does fly but we will see if it will crash... It did before, but it was not fully up-to-date... Partial upgrade was/is not allowed...

Update₁: It did crash... But I managed to get without reboot, just tty and xinit and back to safe awesome...

[dino99]

Seems the plan is changing:

*** Ubuntu 13.04 Will Enable Wayland Support In GTK+ ***

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...tem&px=MTI3MDY

[mc4man]

Atm fairly easy to set up though compiz is completely broken on DnD (nux)

The break on DnD appears only if the unity launcher is exposed (auto-hide never), no problem if the launcher is hidden away - EDIT; DnD issues returned after a reboot
Other than that runs well, the only other issue seen atm is that lowering panel opacity any amount causes menus with sub-menus to act poorly, also has same effect on plank

[fjgaude]

It worked just fine with Lucid. Ok .. I conceed then I guess Mark's goal of 200 million users will have to be most likely 60% of tablet users because the way things are going now there will be a lot of old towers and desktops going to the recycle bin (with the exception of those die hard hanger-on-ers with Lucid .. etc..

Well, with my Dell mini-10 I'll stay with 12.04 LTS, Unity2D, for another four years. By then I'm sure I'll have bought something like a Surface, one that's both tablet and laptop. I'll be sticking to my desktop running the latest Ubuntu Unity until the cows come home, doing graphic design.