shiny desktop, anyone?

[Valent Turkovic]

On 5/29/07, David Nielsen <david at lovesunix.net> wrote:
> > The problem with such a maneuver (as I bet the Mandriva users are finding out,
> > and the Vista users can testify to) is that there is no really effective way
> > to predict how well the system would perform with Compiz/Beryl on or off;
> > cards that seem fine may actually give horrible results in reality (like my
> > ATI Radeon 9200, which can run Beryl but does so horribly slowly; but a
> > detect would come up positive because the OSS driver can handle Beryl).

I ran Mandriva 2007 with berly with so-so speed but not too bad on a 5
years old laptop with really crapy onboard S3 graphic chip - ati 9200
is light years ahead performance vise.

> I'm not convinced Compiz is the key to winning users, sure it's
> compelling at first glance but scrolling in your web browser is
> painfully slow and it can't handle accelerated video playback so
> fullscreen videos turn into a grainy slideshow. I think there are
> serious problems still to be worked out before this can be relied on

These all are valid points - and I agree - but still users should be
given a choice and an message saying this is a new technology and
should be taken with a grain of salt. So then users can play with it
and if it doesn't play as it should on their system there should be an
easy off switch.

> even on hardware we have good drivers for so please don't make the
> argument that all we need is to enable such technology to compel users
> to try Fedora.. they help but they certainly also currently hurt.

So users should be at least aware of it, most new users that try out
Fedora desktop probably don't know 3D desktop even exists.

> As with technology like Beagle (or Tracker), the key is not enabling
> them by default, it's making them useful. Beagle does nothing in our
> default install when the technology could be used for media players to
> index your music and videos automatically or say in Nautilus to make


Beagle+deskbar is IMHO the best thing that has happened on linux
desktop (and especially gnome) for a loong time. Now if they could
implement an gnome clipboard manager like klipper that would be
insane!
New (and probably even old) Fedora desktop users don't know what is
BEagle, what it does and how it can help them easily use linux desktop
for their tasks...

> sort by type actually do what you'd expect. What does Compiz do that
> enhances the experience, for me generally it makes the desktop a bit
> more fun but when push comes to shove the scale plugin is what I use the
> most. I think we need to make Compiz do more useful stuff in addition to
> the incredible cracktastic funfilled bling it does currently.

Beryl does a lot of usability tests and I can say that I also use
scale plugin the most - as it enhances the usability of the desktop.
Burning windows is not much more that pure eyecandy - but guess what
will win new users over? We need both - better and more usable desktop
and also pure eyecandy.

Regards
Valent

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