"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.<p>Check out this Google Trends chart to get the picture of where it was in 2007: <a href="https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=Compiz" rel="nofollow">https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=C...</a>
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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.
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.
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
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.<p>[1]: <a href="https://launchpad.net/compiz" rel="nofollow">https://launchpad.net/compiz</a>
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!<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>The Tumblr Pop Culture Died in 2009 is correct. Also, #getoffmylawn because I’m now in my 30s and old!
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!!)<p>But... I have NO desire to go back to Win(10/8) horrible user/developer experience.
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.
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?<p>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?
Wow, this takes me back to 2004 or 2005.<p>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).<p>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.<p>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.
There is also bumptop from roughly the same time period <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0ODskdEPnQ" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0ODskdEPnQ</a>
One page 30Mb of GIF files.<p>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).
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.
Anyone know if this could solve VirtualBox's drop of support for 3D acceleration <i>for Linux guests using Wayland</i>?<p><a href="https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/18116" rel="nofollow">https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/18116</a><p>> 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.<p>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).<p>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?
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.
Wobbly windows just recently made a revival with the original author separating it from compiz:
<a href="https://github.com/endlessm/libanimation" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/endlessm/libanimation</a><p>far more info here: <a href="https://smspillaz.wordpress.com/2018/09/10/libanimation-for-everyone/" rel="nofollow">https://smspillaz.wordpress.com/2018/09/10/libanimation-for-...</a>
Having flashbacks to the cube with gears in that everyone used to love.<p>I hate animations now, they make the desktop feel less responsive in my opinion.
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.
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.