
Compiz: Ubuntu Desktop's little known best friend - MattyRad
https://code.mradford.com/post/the-ubuntu-compiz-desktop
======
lxe
"Little known?" Compiz was the hotness of the century about a decade ago. Fire
effects on minimizing windows and the famous "cube" to switch desktops. Compiz
definitely propelled Ubuntu and desktop Linux in general to where it is now.

Check out this Google Trends chart to get the picture of where it was in 2007:
[https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=C...](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=Compiz)

~~~
tjr225
Trying to get compiz/beryl to work on my crappy dell inspiron was probably one
of a few indirect factors that resulted in my cushy tech job.

~~~
SpaceGorilla
Oh man, the memories! I saw the title of this thread and thought "no ways its
the same compiz".

Somewhere on YouTube is a pretty cringworthly video of me demoing beryl by
drawing fire anarchy symbols

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yason
I still remember when Gnome 2 reached its peak with Ubuntu in the early
2000's. It was pretty much the complete, reliable, configurable, and robust
desktop that Linux ever needed. Anything since that has been a downhill, with
new features being presented at the expense of other features and no-frills-
but-functional design. I sometimes feel for Windows users whose basic desktop
proposition has remained largely unchanged for quite a many years,
disregarding some cosmetic updates.

The endless need to change things eventually caused Gnome 2 to gradually
become unavailable. It would've needed maintenance, updates to support new
library versions, and nobody was interested. There's MATE but each time I've
checked is a non-polished mess based on Gnome 2 codebase. The original Gnome 2
was lean and tidy on the surface with lots of power underneath, possibly
thanks to curation by Ubuntu.

The Gnome Classic in Ubuntu is okay-ish but it has a lot of leaky abstractions
as well, and you feel it's sort of out of place. It takes some tweaking to
change the window manager as the newer window managers tend not to be
configurable enough so that I can't set my keyboard bindings to what I've had
for decades.

The only thing that does remain the same is the shell which I gladly accept.
Having grow up using an Amiga, however, it still feels weird not to have a
fully-integrated, native desktop GUI that very much defines the feel of the
operating system itself. Gnome 2 had that chance. Other Linux environments
before and after Gnome 2 are mostly just a shell to run terminals, the editor
and the browser.

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joshstrange
Um, Compiz is far from little known. When I was in high school (2005-2009) I
remember installing linux for the first time on my main computer because of
Compiz. The animations for switching between desktops looked very futuristic.
It was cool to play with but because I built my computer for gaming Linux
didn't really cut it for me. I even tried it again after watching a video
about how WoW ran faster on wine on Linux than it did on XP. I distinctly
remember the cube desktop switcher animation from Compiz in that video.

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Khaine
Compiz kick started the belief that Linux "Year of the Desktop" could be a
realt thing. Wobbly windows, fire and the cube were great demos to get people
interested in Linux

~~~
buboard
i never believed that hype, but i loved the wobbly gobbly effects. Given linux
desktop's general unsatisfaction, they were making it quite fun. The fact that
it didn't crash easily helped.

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kbumsik
Unfortunately, Compiz seems not to be actively maintained since 2016. It looks
like the development is suddenly stopped. It is quite surprising to me
considering the fame in the past. I'm kinda wondering what happened to them.

[1]: [https://launchpad.net/compiz](https://launchpad.net/compiz)

~~~
pnloyd
Huge amounts of fragmentation in the dev community for one.. there were
several major forks.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
What else could possibly have happened? Fragmentation is the favorite sport of
Linux devs.

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filmgirlcw
As others have said, total throwback to 2005/2006 for me — my last proper
attempt to make Linux everyday OS. The early Ubuntu days were so fun!

I remember ordering the free CDs for Warty Warthog (Which I still have
somehere), just for fun - absolutely installing that initial release,
alongside some Compiz/Beryl packages in an attempt to have fun.

And then I remember upgrading to Hoary Hedgehog either early or right on its
release — and downloading a brand new show that ABC was airing called “Grey’s
Anatomy” — that I was angry had forced my favorite show “Boston Legal” into
early hiatus. I have distinct memories of watching the pilot in one of the
rotating cubes — but Wikipedia indicates Compiz’s initial release was later so
I may have used a pre-release or another WM effect thing.

Anyway. It’s nearly 14 years later. Grey’s Anatomy is one of the longest-
running TV dramas of all time. It’s creator signed a huge deal with Netflix
after basically turnjjg Thursday nights into the biggest night on TV for ABC,
and apparently, wobbly Windows are still a thing.

The Tumblr Pop Culture Died in 2009 is correct. Also, #getoffmylawn because
I’m now in my 30s and old!

~~~
colemickens
This comment was fun to read. I'm a couple years younger, but that Boston
Legal part hit like a truck. Maybe it was the suggestion, but I can't knock
the mental image of wasting hours futzing with compiz/Beryl/fuzion with Denny
Crane in the background.

Thanks for the nostalgia trip and smile!

------
canada_dry
I've been using Ubuntu/Compiz for a couple years and it has some annoying
quirks e.g. child windows that pop up on the wrong monitor! (thank goodness
for WIN+SHIFT+arrow keys!!)

But... I have NO desire to go back to Win(10/8) horrible user/developer
experience.

~~~
Townley
How did I not know about this keyboard shortcut until now?!? Being able to
move a window between different monitors is such a great feature.

Thank you so much. Life will never be the same.

~~~
canada_dry
Merry Christmas!

Now if someone can fix another bloody annoying thing i.e.: file dialog box...
filename is highlighted... start typing... it directs the input somewhere else
(into a search field). Such a basic and annoying UI faux pas!

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marcoperaza
I've never seen an expose knock-off that captured the magic. Even Apple
managed to bungle it in recent releases. At it's peak, the feature really was
perfect: perfectly smooth animation and a perfect-feeling organic layout. It
didn't try to do too much and it didn't have an agenda of pushing some other
feature down your throat.

~~~
rickycook
i wouldn’t necessarily call it a knock-off. i could be wrong, but looks like
spaces first came to OSX in 2006, which is the same year that compiz launched

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaces_(software)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaces_\(software\))

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compiz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compiz)

~~~
SllX
Exposé predates Spaces by a couple of years. The two wouldn’t really be
properly integrated (along with Dashboard which was practically abandonware
even by this point) until Mission Control came along.

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hiisukun
Compiz may be great but unless I am mistaken, these features are in a default
gnome-shell install. Perhaps the Ubuntu version of gnome is very different to
a Fedora install?

On Fedora, the 'windows key' by default shows me a mission control esque view
of all my open windows, and ctrl+alt+arrow keys moves to other virtual
desktops. They can be changed to directly from the right hand side of the
'mission control' overview. Are these features both off/disabled on Ubuntu?

~~~
arbol
Yep, this is what I was thinking. Ubuntu 18.04

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jlarocco
To each their own, but I really don't like the Compiz style of window
managers. I have better things to watch than my windows moving around.

~~~
pnloyd
I appreciated the novelty as well, fast forward many years later and I'm doing
a bunch of Googling figuring out how to disable the fancy animations on the
work issued osx laptop.

~~~
wutbrodo
It's funny how common this story is in this thread; my first Linux system was
Ubuntu + compiz and I loved every little effect; now that I'm old(er) and
boring, I'm running a stripped-down Debian on i3wm. It's pretty amazing that
I've managed to run such vastly different systems over the course a decade
with only incremental changes and have it fit me like a glove the entire time.

~~~
pjmlp
During my Linux zealot years (started with Slackware 2.0 back in the day), I
used to experiment and play with any window manager I could put my hands on.

Nowadays I just use the default configuration of whatever OS I am on, just
with some minimal configuration changes like icon size or mouse double click
behavior.

~~~
wutbrodo
I don't think the level of customization has changed too much for me, but the
objective of my customization has. In college having it be cool looking
mattered a lot more to me, and now having it be fast and have an efficient and
highly customized interface is.

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danimal88
Sticky/Elastic windows was definitely my favorite compiz option. It was just
so ridiculous and entertaining.

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upbeatlinux
Wow, this takes me back to 2004 or 2005.

I put together a compiz/beryl demo using the flame effects and cube switch in
2005 or 2006. It help converted a few friends over to run Linux on their home
PCs (OpenOffice, Thunderbird, Firefox, Gaim (Pidgin) and Citrix).

The flame effects were really the wow factor that sold it. I think only one
person stuck around past year 3 but it really help prove to me that non-tech
folk could be somewhat productive on the Linux desktop.

It also legitimized a Linux loner laptop in the laptop pool of the company
where I was working at the time. Not too shabby for 2006.

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tscherno
There is also bumptop from roughly the same time period
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0ODskdEPnQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0ODskdEPnQ)

~~~
DanBC
Nooface has a collection of weird desktops. It's no longer maintained, so
here's the Wayback machine link:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20070226171735/http://nooface.ne...](https://web.archive.org/web/20070226171735/http://nooface.net/3dui.shtml)

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edhelas
One page 30Mb of GIF files.

I know that people likes autoplayed animation but please try to use <video/>
tags. It can saves a lot of bandwidth and improve greatly the experience
(especially on mobile).

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SmellyGeekBoy
I'm not sure why so many people here are arguing with the "little known" part.
Like many of you I owe a lot to compiz due to trying to get wobbly windows
working 10+ years ago. But my mother has never heard of it, despite the fact
that she'd have a vague idea of what "Linux" is if I asked her. That's the
point.

~~~
MattyRad
Yeah, I mostly titled the article due to younger engineers not being aware of
how configurable Ubuntu can be (or them possibly being intimidated by Ubuntu).
I didn't anticipate so many compiz greybeards would check it out, haha.

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AltruisticGap
Anyone know if this could solve VirtualBox's drop of support for 3D
acceleration _for Linux guests using Wayland_?

[https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/18116](https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/18116)

> This is a consequence of our 3D acceleration for Linux guests, which was
> designed for a GLX only world and interacts badly with non-GLX applications.
> Since more and more desktop applications are expected to use Wayland rather
> than X11 I have simply disabled it for guests using Wayland, thereby fixing
> this issue.

I really want to update my old 14.04 LTS VM... however I need to find a way to
keep 3D acceleration on (for front end dev, css animations and the like, plus
overall much more responsive).

Though, anyone know what "disabled it for guests using Wayland" actually
means? Will 3D acceleration work if I switch to compiz, or do they turn it off
just based on the fact that it's a "Ubuntu" VM?

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digitalzombie
I remember using Sabayon Linux way in the early days it came with or probably
I tweaked it with Compiz and Beryl. The ATI drivers were something. So
bleeding edge distro that it was crashing randomly. I had a 6 sides cube with
each side representing a different desktop screen and wall paper. Fun times.

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kevinherron
Or use KDE and have all of this out of the box :)

~~~
kgwxd
Or use XFCE, get none of it, stop playing with your DE, and get back to work
:)

~~~
pnloyd
XFCE is a true productivity DE. Gives you a few simple basic apps, and does a
damn good job of managing windows. I so wish I could use it at work..

~~~
Jonnax
I don't get why KDE isn't considered a productive DE.

The dolphin file manager has an integrated terminal that automatically changes
folder to match the one you've browsed to.

There's a ton of these small useful things that a light desktop like XFCE or
LXDE wouldn't implement but are still useful.

~~~
cannonedhamster
KDE has too many options. That's the problem, there's too much desire to tweak
just one more thing. By then you've blown a week of time. I've personally also
had bad luck running KDE. I love the look however it's always run dog slow for
me on any computer I've used it on when compared to other DEs. To each their
own though, that's the beauty of GNU/linux.

~~~
simion314
>KDE has too many options. This a user problem, maybe some personality or
mental issue that makes you waste time or get scared when you see options.

How you should approach this is to use KDE, then if you wonder ,"hi would be
nice if I could put the notifications on left side since my right eye is bad
-> then you go and find the option and move the notifications ,

Installing KDE and trolling to all options is a insane thing to do, do you
also install Firefox and go into about:config and set all this options as you
prefer ? Or you use Ff then ask , hey would be cool if Ff won't do this
annoying thing , then you search the option and hope to find it

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anotheryou
Wobbly windows just recently made a revival with the original author
separating it from compiz:
[https://github.com/endlessm/libanimation](https://github.com/endlessm/libanimation)

far more info here: [https://smspillaz.wordpress.com/2018/09/10/libanimation-
for-...](https://smspillaz.wordpress.com/2018/09/10/libanimation-for-
everyone/)

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rerpha
Having flashbacks to the cube with gears in that everyone used to love.

I hate animations now, they make the desktop feel less responsive in my
opinion.

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COil
I used Compiz with 17.04 and it was nice, but I decided to give a shot at the
native Gnome with 18.04 when I reinstalled from scratch. To be honest, it's
not perfect but it does the job. So I will stick with it. And I don't want to
install something that is not maintained anymore.

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IloveHN84
Little?10 years ago was the main way to get nice desktop effects

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BafS
Lot of nostalgia. For those who want to try on mac you can have something
similar with Deskovery

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coleifer
Wobbly windows. Tiling. Emerald window decorations. Rotate cube. Endless
possibilities.

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asianthrowaway
So it seems that a good chunk of us got interested in computers and
programming due to wobbly windows. I guess that's Compiz' main legacy, heh.

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ArrayList
Just reading the string "Compiz" gave me absolute nostalgia-whiplash.

