Compiz 8.9 vs Compiz 9.X

rabcor · 2014-09-02 06:17:36

I decided I wanted to try compiz for a highly customizable window manager with advanced compositing (over Openbox with Compton which I have so far used, any recommendations are of course welcome)

I noticed on the wiki that there are installation instructions for compiz 8.9 and compiz 9.x, and I noticed that 9.x seems to have most of the plugins and utilities all merged together into one neat little package, whereas 8.9 seems tot have it all in pieces.

From this I can deduce that Compiz 8.9 is a bit more modular as in minimalist friendly, so that users can avoid installing features they don't really need. In my case though I don't think that would be worth it over a feature complete up to date version. But I was wondering if there is anything more to it (for example are the differences more like between enlightenment 16 and enlightenment 17, where the two can't even be compared, and are being separately maintained)

I tried googling this up but I didn't really find any topic discussing the differences, is what I just said above really all there is to it? or is there something I'm missing?

clfarron4 · 2014-09-02 10:43:48

rabcor wrote:

I noticed on the wiki that there are installation instructions for compiz 0.8 and compiz 0.9, and I noticed that 9.x seems to have most of the plugins and utilities all merged together into one neat little package, whereas 8.9 seems tot have it all in pieces.
From this I can deduce that Compiz 0.8 is a bit more modular as in minimalist friendly, so that users can avoid installing features they don't really need.

Compiz was always split up into smaller packages because there were some features that always worked, others that worked most of the time, a couple that might work and other plug-ins which should work in theory (but no-one had time because they were unofficial plug-ins).

With the 0.9 series, Canonical (I think it is) decided to restructure Compiz, chose the features it wanted and left the others behind, so it doesn't contain as much as 0.8 did.

rabcor wrote:

I tried googling this up but I didn't really find any topic discussing the differences, is what I just said above really all there is to it? or is there something I'm missing?

As I said above, Canonical decided to restructure Compiz, mainly for Unity. Beyond that, I haven't a clue because I don't use Compiz 0.9.

Silex89 · 2014-09-02 13:40:51

The biggest difference is that the 0.9.x series was rewritten in C++, instead of C in the 0.8 versions. So, since the latest compiz version is, in my opinion, a fork of itself (a port of the window manager to a different programming language, to be fair...), the stability of the two versions differ (being the 0.8 series much more stable and reliable). The 0.9 version is not really meant to be used as a standalone window manager, see what clfarron4 told you.

I built several compiz standalone sessions in the past, using three different versions (0.8, 0.9 and 0.9 with the buffer_age patch from Sam Spilsbury) and the best results I got in terms of performance and stability came from the older version.

Best of luck in building your session!

rabcor · 2014-09-21 00:53:28

Sorry for the late reply, thanks for your help guys

It's a real shame this WM isn't being developed anymore.

Arch Linux

#1 2014-09-02 06:17:36

Compiz 8.9 vs Compiz 9.X

#2 2014-09-02 10:43:48

Re: Compiz 8.9 vs Compiz 9.X

#3 2014-09-02 13:40:51

Re: Compiz 8.9 vs Compiz 9.X

#4 2014-09-21 00:53:28

Re: Compiz 8.9 vs Compiz 9.X

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