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I tried out compiz-fusion this week. I think I will try xmonad next week.
Having a composite window manager can be very useful. Responsiveness can be improved a lot (not speed-wise, but visually) and there can be many practical uses for it. For example, compiz can zoom in on any region of the screen. I can imagine a few other uses for compositing.
The thing is, compiz is almost only eye-candy. The options are very limited, usually arbitrarily. For example, some actions can be assigned keyboard shortcuts, mouse shortcuts or "point your mouse in this region of the screen" shortcuts, while others support only mouse or keyboard shortcuts. Why? etc.
I am torn because having "composite effects" is quite pleasant, but there are so many limits to the compiz WM. What other composite window managers exist? Do you think that one day soon all window managers would support this?
Is there a way to separate compositing from window managing?
Is there any work being done in this area?
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There may be some very good things to come. Check out this url
---for there is nothing either good or bad, but only thinking makes it so....
Hamlet, W Shakespeare
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There's xcompmgr, a compositor separate from any window manager, but it only has basic effects, is unstable for many, and is no longer actively developed now that Compiz has stolen the show. I'd love to see its development continue, if only to fix some crash bugs.
KWin and XFWM (the window managers for KDE and XFCE, respectively) have basic compositing built in. Metacity, Gnome's window manager, has some advanced (and unstable) compositing features that are disabled by default at compile time.
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Metisse is another option.
As far as "utility" of compiz, one of the things I'm surprised hasn't been taken advantage of yet (to my knowledge) is the ability to rotate windows to arbitrary positions (this is possible in metisse). Having an upside down window is pretty silly, you might say, but its perfect for a bunch of people seated around a tabletop display!
Dusty
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I recently tried compiz-fusion again, and I hated it. In terms of windowmanagement, it simply sucks. It plays horrible with the pager applet and taskbar, but the lack good focus-stealing prevention, the occasional graphical glitches, the crashes when you start wine (and other) apps, the extremely complex config tool, bad responsiveness (can't do anything until an effect is ready doing what it wanted to do) - bleh.
I must say I'm thinking about proposing to keep compositing of by default in Kwin in KDE 4, imho the linux desktop simply isn't ready for it yet. A shame, but I'd rather only use it when it properly works than push it like many distros do nowadays.
-=] life sucks deeply [=-
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I recently tried compiz-fusion again, and I hated it. In terms of windowmanagement, it simply sucks. It plays horrible with the pager applet and taskbar, but the lack good focus-stealing prevention, the occasional graphical glitches, the crashes when you start wine (and other) apps, the extremely complex config tool, bad responsiveness (can't do anything until an effect is ready doing what it wanted to do) - bleh.
Except the glitches and wine apps, none of that has to do with compositing, that's just a poorly made window manager.
Compiz is great at effects, but especially terrible at window managing.
James
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Compiz is great at effects, but especially terrible at window managing.
Yes. Someone should write a good window manager with support for composite/damage extensions built in, so that it may be used eventually. I've looked at the possibility myself, but I still don't know where to start! I wish there existed a simple, well-written and well-commented (and short) window manager that could be used as an example/starting point when writing one's own.
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I don't find this fixes much. What if I don't like KDE? I guess the trend will be that most window managers will eventually make use of the composite extension.
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