Impressed with GL Desktop


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Gnome does have it, Metacity can act as a compositor. It's very simple though, it does drop shadows and window thumbnails in the alt+tab list, that's it.

That's what I was saying. GNOME should by now have an advanced window manager that can handle those effects. Not something so limited that doesn't even have a configuration window and has to be configured using the GConf tool.

Others have that, look at KDE, even XFCE has something better lol....

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That's what I was saying. GNOME should by now have an advanced window manager that can handle those effects. Not something so limited that doesn't even have a configuration window and has to be configured using the GConf tool.

Others have that, look at KDE, even XFCE has something better lol....

I disagree. Why re-invent the wheel? Compiz does a great job with GNOME and so there's no need to duplicate that functionality in Metacity.

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^ Agreed. Each window manager should try to innovate new ideas to improve usabilities and improve performance instead of duplication functionalities. maybe they can do something so that they can easily share functionalities from other window manager without starting from scratch.

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I disagree. Why re-invent the wheel? Compiz does a great job with GNOME and so there's no need to duplicate that functionality in Metacity.

But Compiz is not GNOME. It's not integrated with GNOME, it's a separate project.

I do agree that the wheel doesn't have to be re-invented, GNOME could take Compiz or just some code and integrate that into their project. The fact now is it doesn't have its own solution for this task. It's behind others in this area.

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Compiz is not yet a very good "standard" WM, it is only good when compositing is availible, it is what block it from beeing adopted by gnome. But now they are porting it to C++, so forget gnome. KDE(4) did evaluate the possibility of replacing kwin with compiz, but it was rejected due to non-object oriented programming, GTK deps, stability and WM features. After, this looked if it was possible to reuse compiz plugins (fusion) un Kwin, but it was impossible after all and they had to rewrite all plugins.

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But Compiz is not GNOME. It's not integrated with GNOME, it's a separate project.

I do agree that the wheel doesn't have to be re-invented, GNOME could take Compiz or just some code and integrate that into their project. The fact now is it doesn't have its own solution for this task. It's behind others in this area.

Compiz doesn't need to be part of the GNOME project or have very tight integration with GNOME. It works very well as a separate project and should stay that way, if anything, to stay away from the stupid religious wars of KDE vs. GNOME.

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Compiz doesn't need to be part of the GNOME project or have very tight integration with GNOME. It works very well as a separate project and should stay that way, if anything, to stay away from the stupid religious wars of KDE vs. GNOME.

That's not the point.

Currently to be able to use advanced compositing and all of those GL effects, GNOME users have to use a third-party tool (let's call it this way), replace its own window manager with another. This is not the best solution.

If you can't see what's wrong with this, just think of Compiz++.

KDE users don't need Compiz, they already have Kwin.

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That's not the point.

Currently to be able to use advanced compositing and all of those GL effects, GNOME users have to use a third-party tool (let's call it this way), replace its own window manager with another. This is not the best solution.

...

Window Managers are supposed to be a replaceable module under the Desktop Environment.

I am sure you remember that sawfish used to be GNOME's WM of choice. And that it was replaced by Metacity. And any user is free to likewise replace his or her WM with another, if they prefer.

I think that equating a replacement of a WM to using a "third party tool" is a bit extreme. Did I use a third party tool when I decided I preferred using Fluxbox on my Xubuntu install? Nah. I just changed my WM.

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Window Managers are supposed to be a replaceable module under the Desktop Environment.

I am sure you remember that sawfish used to be GNOME's WM of choice. And that it was replaced by Metacity. And any user is free to likewise replace his or her WM with another, if they prefer.

I think that equating a replacement of a WM to using a "third party tool" is a bit extreme. Did I use a third party tool when I decided I preferred using Fluxbox on my Xubuntu install? Nah. I just changed my WM.

Maybe the "third-party tool" wasn't a good analogy... Will try to explain my point better.

Compiz is not integrated in GNOME. If you are to use a DE you don't need to be using any other tools that don't belong to that DE. A complete desktop environment is supposed to cover all the needs of the user, from file manager to media player it should have all of those. Now, a good window manager is one of the most important parts of the DE. That's not what GNOME has these days, metacity currently is an ancient, limited window manager. It doesn't fit in the current desktops.

An advanced window manager has to be able to handle GL effects. For that task GNOME users have to install Compiz.

Wouldn't it be great if GNOME could make its own window manager for this task?

With it I don't mean the GNOME desktop should drop its current modular approach and limit users to using metacity only. It should provide its own alternative with an advanced window manager.

Edited by Lechio
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So like KDE's kwin includes effects, although there's nothing to stop a user from using Compiz as their window manager.

Nothing. Kwin can be replaced with another window manager and work the same way.

The difference is you can use KDE with all of those effects Compiz provides, but running Kwin as your window manager.

I was under the impressions that metacity had it's own compositing nowadays.

And what can metacity do? :)

Even XFCE has a better composite with nice configurable options available with a GUI configuration tool.

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Nothing. Kwin can be replaced with another window manager and work the same way.

The difference is you can use KDE with all of those effects Compiz provides, but running Kwin as your window manager.

And what can metacity do? :)

Even XFCE has a better composite with nice configurable options available with a GUI configuration tool.

Maybe I misunderstood, I've been out of the DE camps for so long now that I don't know what foo fahs they have or don't have. Hence my ignorance.

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Metacity seems completely different from "desktop effects" (compositing) . . . or am I misunderstanding something?

In more simple terms, compositing allows desktop effects. Compiz provides a lot more effects than Metacity, XFWM, or Xcompmgr, but they all provide a composite "layer" to the desktop. All four will allow real transparency and drop shadows, for example, but Compiz can do this and a whole lot more. I've never really looked into Kwin, but from what I understand it is more akin to Compiz in what effects it provides.

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