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Comment by a_a_r_o_n | Hacker News Reader

Compiz is cool, but ... Since moving to an LXDE-based environment, I have really enjoyed not seeing my desktop. All I see is what I'm doing.

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One random thing I liked doing with a compositing window manager is to put a music video behind my browser window, and then reduce the opacity of the browser slightly. That way I can read, and watch a video at the same time :)

Cool for you (really). For me, that's worse than multi-tasking. It's muddy-tasking. :)

But I tend to max every window I open, except for terminals which are set to 80 god-given columns.

You might like a tiling window manager if you happen to be using a large wide screen format monitor. If you use a small screen laptop, disregard this!

Tried one; I'm not. I do; thanks.

The thing that I've used comviz/compositing for is multiple desktops and Firefox; it used to be that redrawing anything in Firefox was about a 2-second operation and by far the most painful part of desktop switching. Compositing means I'm not redrawing, just shifting it in.

Other than that... it's neat, it's nifty, but when you get right down to it it's still pretty much a parlor trick. I'm yet to see a really critical use case that it meets. If Firefox gets to the point where the redraw pain isn't there for me I'd shut it off entirely.

I find compositing to be quite useful on a few scenarios. Hovering the icon over a program in the task bar makes it simple to quickly monitor the operation of a terminal app or what have you whilst reading something in a web browser without having to go through the trouble of rearranging your windows around. Also, the semi transparency while moving windows makes it easy to just click on the title bar and see what's going on in a window underneath. I love the scale effect where you can mouse to a corner and all of your windows show ike on Mac osx. That is a boon for window management when you have a lot going on. I also like the ease of compiz's zoom effect. Makes "full screening" flash videos much less of a hassle. Its the little things like all of these that add up to a great user experience for me from compiz.

Compiz is an important part of the default Ubuntu Unity desktop. Ubuntu is approaching the 12.04 release which will be a long term support release, the first with desktop support for five years. The release schedule is at

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PrecisePangolin/ReleaseSchedule

I think it is only the 11.04 and 11.10 releases that have had compiz enhanced desktop as the default - thus no doubt exposing a lot of hardware and graphics driver issues for the first time to a wider range of users.

I can see where 'pressure' might be coming from, but I hope there is also some help on offer from stakeholders as well!

Well I think the lack of redrawing is great. I can move, minimize and restore windows without triggering their UI threads at all, they don't stutter to redraw things. It means I get to have live thumbnail previews of all my windows without slowing anything down (it just reuses the same off-screen buffer).

And Compiz isn't just about compositing gimmicks. I like that I can hold the Super button (the "Windows" key on PCs) and scroll to zoom in, or click and drag to take a screenshot of any part of the screen.

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