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Compiz is a composition application of desk for Linux. This means that it brings a lot of visual appeal to the desktop. It's based on OpenGL and you need a hardware relatively powerful to be able to run it, both in terms of processors and graphics cards.
Unfortunately, several factors make this project that used to be one of the most popular today is in frank extinction. |
Compiz was one of the first composition window managers for Linux. It uses hardware-accelerated 3D graphics to create stunning effects, at astonishing speed, and giving users incredible utility. In recent times, the Compiz project has undergone numerous changes. These changes have caused a bit of confusion in the community. To clarify, let's see exactly what has happened ...
- Compiz is born.
- Beryl, another composition window manager, started life as a fork of Compiz.
- After a year, Beryl merges again with Compiz creating Compiz Fusion. At this time, Compiz and Compiz Fusion were different projects with their own goals.
- Around the fourth quarter of 2008, two separate branches of Compiz were created: Compiz ++ and NOMAD. Compiz ++ was looking to separate the composition and OpenGL layers from the window manager. NOMAD was geared towards Compiz remote desktop performance.
- In February 2009, Compiz, Compiz Fusion ++, Nomad, and Compiz were merged into one project under the name Compiz.
Jack Wallen in a recent article pointed out that there is currently only one Linux distribution that still uses Compiz: Ubuntu. Before, it was used by Fedora, Gentoo, openSUSE, GNOME, and many other Linux distributions.
For some time now Compiz has lost much of its relevance. The main person in charge of its development announced long ago on his blog his retirement from the project, and that news has joined others in which we have seen how many distributions have stopped using Compiz. To such an extent that there are even rumors that Ubuntu and Unity end up using Mutter - the GNOME 3 composition window manager - instead of Compiz, which would leave the latter in a very bad situation.
Despite the visual appeal produced by Compiz, it no longer puts the Linux desktop at the forefront. Why? The main advantage of Linux is that it can be installed on an “old” system with “minimal” specifications, and Compiz does not work on those systems. Also keep in mind that Linux was developed mostly on servers and the command line is what is most used in those situations. Compiz does not serve any real function in those cases either.
The common desktop user doesn't care too much about visual appeal either, as long as they can get their work done quickly and easily. It doesn't matter if you are running Linux or Windows. Aero isn't very popular with Windows users either, as very few will have the hardware capable of running it. Apple is different, since Apple controls both hardware and software, being able to make both compatible.
These are difficult times for a project that transformed our desks over several years. What will happen to him?
Hmm, I do not agree when you say that the common user does not care about the visual aspect, what happens is that compiz is not compatible with gnome 3, you have to disable it to make compiz work ... but if you are right that you need better hardware and at final what users want is a good performance with a good appearance without having to update your hardware with each version of your favorite distro ... otherwise we would be falling to windows 🙂
What a great time with Compiz, I remember the first time I installed it and impressed my friends with its effects.
Well, when I have a windowsero friend I show them compiz and it remains x_X, hopefully compiz does not die with a friend we wanted to install compiz in mint 12 and it took us a little more work
The XGL project based on opengl was born with novell linux, although it depended on video memory it ran perfectly with 64mb with proprietary drivers from Nvidia, Ati and Intel were somewhat short, so you could also configure the graphics with direct or indirect acceleration through from xorg and gdm2, we are talking about times of opensuse 10.1 .., ubuntu 7, debian 4-5 and slow processors and ide disks for the possibility of normal users, but beryl, esmarald, compiz-fusion facilitated the effects. Every ubuntu 9.4 was evolving perfect, debian 6 perfect, but gdm3 came out with a tablet run and everything got worse on the desktop, the usability of the parallel work areas, the gdm2 themes, etc, disappointed me. but it was to improve xorg and gdm security. Today in the days of kalilinux 2.0 there is no desktop that fills the gap of gdm2: (… and compiz needs new enthusiastic developers 🙂 Greetings….