XGL + Compiz

Originally Posted by Cless

My philosophy is that compositing windows in 3D should be about improving UI speed and smoothness, plus allowing for useful window transformations [...] not useless eye-candy

I agree with you on that, but I don't believe that XGL is already on the wrong track. Those demos and early implementations already floating around are of course loaded with eye candy but as part of the regular distros to come or respectively their desktop environments, it'll be up to the user wether those new capabilities are employed solely for fancy special effects or time saving usability features. When the time comes, both kinds will be available in abundance (open source does that to software ). It's like those virtual desktops you mentioned, some don't use them, some got eight. I use two, by the way.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by OnlyJedi

My thoughts are that while the average user, indeed, doesn't really know what they want in a UI design, more advanced users are capable of that decision. Which is why the important thing is to provide sensible defaults; the defaults should be optimized for the standard user who doesn't know anything about tweaking, while the ability left open for an advanced user to customize everything to his/her taste. But then again I'm a Linux user, and that seems to be what most Linux users think.

Yes, that's the way it should be and probably already is on the big Linux desktops. Reasonable default settings coupled with lots of well placed options for customization.
And while I don't want to start an OS war and personally never used a Mac (and I'd love to, just to broaden my horizon), quite a few people, especially experienced users told me that they felt somewhat belittled and patronized by OS X's overall look and feel, due to a lack of options in some areas.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

@ BurningRanger
At this point you can get it to sorta run with KDE but only with the Gnome extension for Compiz. So no QT window decorations for now. Personally, I'll wait until someone integrates the XGL features directly into KWin.

@ Magic
OnlyJedi already mentioned that live CD in the inital post ... and indeed it's pretty cool. You'll probably like it.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

You see, Compiz a window manager of its own, so while running it replaces KWin of KDE and Metacity of Gnome. Without a window manager all programs run without title or scroll bars, you cannot resize or switch between them and so forth. Now in Ubuntu besides "compiz" there are packages called "compiz-gnome" and "compiz-kde" which provide better integration of Compiz into the respective desktop environment. And so far, the one for KDE hasn't reached any usable level so KDE users who experiment with XGL use the Gnome one.

Check out the Ubuntu Forums, they have quite a few guides on this topic.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Aww give it a rest, will ya? And get some sleep - exams go 1st.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Has the KDE extension for Compiz made any progress or is the one for Gnome still required?

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?