Confused about Natty, Wayland, Compiz, Unity and Gnome

[SGAZ]

I'm hoping somebody can clarify the upcoming Desktop Environment changes in Ubuntu 11.04 for me.

I love my Compiz setup. Will Compiz implementation change at all with the new version of Ubuntu? Wayland, Unity, no more X are all just confusing me at this point.

Is it still going to be a simple matter of "compiz --replace", "unity --replace", "metacity --replace"?

Thanks for any enlightenment.

[Frogs Hair]

Here are a couple of links .

http://www.webupd8.org/2010/11/ubuntu-1104-natty-narwhal-update.html

http://stuff.techwhack.com/10145-wayland

[Decatf]

From what I've seen so far Unity is just a dock/panel plugin for Compiz. Running compiz will run unity as long as the plugin is enabled.

Unity is not a window manager like Compiz, Metacity, Mutter, KWin, etc...


Wayland is probably far enough off that most Ubuntu users probably should have to be too concerned with it. If/when it does come it should be as transparent to the user as possible anyways otherwise there's gonna be a crap storm to follow.

[SGAZ]

Thanks to you both. A Compiz Plug-in and a way off update are pretty much non-issues.

Thanks again.

[Decatf]

Well actually Unity may be an issue considering it is replacing the current interface in Ubuntu. On systems which can run Compiz, Unity will be the default in place of the standard Gnome 2 desktop. Up till now Compiz has been mostly an extra feature to provide a composited desktop with flashy graphics. Now that Unity is integrated into Compiz, it is becoming a more of a core element of the interface.

[SGAZ]

Yes, I agree. Speaking from the perspective of someone who already uses Compiz it sounds like it will simply be another alternative. But clearly, for folks who (already) experience performance issues with Compiz this could be problematic.

I guess Wayland could be problematic too when it becomes default depending on it's OpenGL requirements re: video cards.