Compiz - does it have a purpose?

[igknighted]

Productive, I wonder.

After installing it; it worked for awhile until I hooked up an external monitor, then things got all confused, spent quite a bit of time trying to figure things out; ended up doing a fresh install. Now rather leary of trying again.

This is on a laptop where you have to deal with all of the driver issues, wish "they" could just make that more straight-forward.

Graphics cards, resolution settings, implementing cool effects on a laptop with a graphics card that should "just work", all could be a little more less involved. The journey, in this case was not worth the destination.

Spin up a Mandriva One liveCD or a Sabayon Live CD/DVD and see how hard it is to set up desktop effects. These distributions can handle it without the user ever seeing what is going on. So while it may take effort to set up in some distributions, that is not universal.

[blueturtl]

Never having had a PC with a spec good enough to run clever stuff like Compiz, I am wondering what the point of this app is.

I know you can show your desktops on a cube and then rotate it, along with other tricks such as transparency, but how does this actually improve productivity? I find the standard multiple desktops invaluable but cannot see any advantage with the cube system.

Are there any real advantages with Compiz, or is it just more eye-candy bloatware to slow the PC down - something we despise about Windows!

When you get right down to it Compiz is just hardware accelerated user enhancement. I'm not sure the Compiz people see it that way, or even if the Ubuntu team sees it that way, but for me it's obvious that the effects are supposed to help people visually grasp what their system is doing.

During the days of 5.04 I tried to explain to an (older) friend the concept of multiple desktops and he had difficulty understanding where the windows on my desktop were disappearing. Nowadays I rotate the cube and 'lo and behold they now get it. Also having the windows go into the taskbar with an effect (like the genie for example) helps people realize what minimizing a window is. Yes, there really are people who think that a minimized window is as good as a closed application - they then proceed to reopen through the menu icon which sometimes causes problems. Finally, for those with poor eyesight the magnifying glass is no effect, it is a godsend.

There are many more useful effects, though not all effects were meant to help people. Some are just for fun. If you start examining the effects though you can find that a surprising amount have some hidden meaning or lesson they're trying to teach to the viewer.

For those of us who understand the concepts using a 2D desktop Compiz is pretty much useless, but you know what they say about aesthetics...

[Washer]

Here is an old video of Freescale (which was integrated into Freewins)

hmm looks good. I'll get it.

[klange]

When you get right down to it Compiz is just hardware accelerated user enhancement. I'm not sure the Compiz people see it that way, or even if the Ubuntu team sees it that way, but for me it's obvious that the effects are supposed to help people visually grasp what their system is doing.

During the days of 5.04 I tried to explain to an (older) friend the concept of multiple desktops and he had difficulty understanding where the windows on my desktop were disappearing. Nowadays I rotate the cube and 'lo and behold they now get it. Also having the windows go into the taskbar with an effect (like the genie for example) helps people realize what minimizing a window is. Yes, there really are people who think that a minimized window is as good as a closed application - they then proceed to reopen through the menu icon which sometimes causes problems. Finally, for those with poor eyesight the magnifying glass is no effect, it is a godsend.

There are many more useful effects, though not all effects were meant to help people. Some are just for fun. If you start examining the effects though you can find that a surprising amount have some hidden meaning or lesson they're trying to teach to the viewer.

For those of us who understand the concepts using a 2D desktop Compiz is pretty much useless, but you know what they say about aesthetics...

I think that really is the best way to look at it. Tons of effects really help you visualize things better. Other plugins do add functionality - I couldn't live without Scale.

Compiz's benefits can fit into a couple of categories:
1. The useful stuff - Scale, opacity, zoom, mag
2. The visualizing stuff - Cube, minimizing animations, etc
3. The eye candy - Wallpaper, blur, reflections
4. The unique - The Wiimote Compiz "Project"
and
5. The just plain cool - Firepaint (unless you think it can be called eye candy...)

It's the people that complain about not liking the effects that really get on my nerves. If you don't like them, that's your opinion, don't complain to us because you think the cube is stupid, you're just wasting our time which could be better spent fixing the problems presented in legitimate complaints.

[drbob07]

I generally do think Compiz has quite a bit of usefulness associated with it.

First off, it's eyecandy, first and foremost, the most impressive eyecandy across any platform. Lets face it, if you have Dual 8800GTX's under the hood, and you're not playing some serious games under Linux, you should put them to use somehow, why not dazzle your friends and get them to switch

Secondly, it does add some much needed functionality. It's just that it adds them in "overly-spectaluar" ways. For example Desktop Cube, it gives a nice view to multiple workspaces, but it's entirely eyecandy, aside from say unfold cube (ctrl+alt+down), or using the Expo plugin (Super+e)

So in my opinion, it's just a way of making old, "boring" features, into new "visually appealing" features.

[Zill]

When you get right down to it Compiz is just hardware accelerated user enhancement. I'm not sure the Compiz people see it that way, or even if the Ubuntu team sees it that way, but for me it's obvious that the effects are supposed to help people visually grasp what their system is doing.

During the days of 5.04 I tried to explain to an (older) friend the concept of multiple desktops and he had difficulty understanding where the windows on my desktop were disappearing. Nowadays I rotate the cube and 'lo and behold they now get it. Also having the windows go into the taskbar with an effect (like the genie for example) helps people realize what minimizing a window is. Yes, there really are people who think that a minimized window is as good as a closed application - they then proceed to reopen through the menu icon which sometimes causes problems. Finally, for those with poor eyesight the magnifying glass is no effect, it is a godsend.

There are many more useful effects, though not all effects were meant to help people. Some are just for fun. If you start examining the effects though you can find that a surprising amount have some hidden meaning or lesson they're trying to teach to the viewer.

For those of us who understand the concepts using a 2D desktop Compiz is pretty much useless, but you know what they say about aesthetics...

blueturtl: I think you may have hit the main purpose of Compiz as I have worked with the people you have described

It seems that there may be a place for Compiz but I do hope that it does not become part of the default Ubuntu installation. Many users have low-spec PCs that would be crippled by the overhead of this app - and other users would find many of the effects plain irritating! However, choice is good so let's keep Compiz as an option for those who really want it