"The Compiz and Beryl teams are discussing a merger. Posts on the Compiz forum and Beryl mailing list indicate that the projects are discussing how to execute a merger and work together to deliver a single compositing window manager to give 'bling' to the Linux desktop."
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Member since:2005-07-24
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Seeing how Compiz and Beryl seem better to me than, for example, Aero anyways.
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I dislike Microsoft as much as anyone, but these premature claims of victory are not good.
I have tried Compiz and Beryl on a number of machines, and in the cases that worked at all... each was very buggy.
I have not used Aero, but it would have to be awfully unstable for Compiz and Beryl to claim any sort of victory at this point.
IMO, we are still playing catch up. I am writing this from my laptop with a video chip set that is one of the many, many, many chip sets not even supported.
Member since:2005-06-29
People complain about compiz and beryl making java apps show up blank but in Vista java apps just turn off Aero completely. Flash does the same. And Aero only comes back on when you close the web browser that was running flash.
Member since:2007-02-17
Again ypu can't blame compiz for not supporting your chipset. MS should be supporting your chipset, you pay 200 and up to get the OS you expect things to work, oh, wait you have to get the drivers form the manufacturer if you installed windows yourself nevermind vista. Linux kernel devs have offered to write drivers themselves under a NDA so there really is little excuse for hardware manufacturers to not support Linux.
As for Aero, I won't say its awful, I'll just say its resource intensive, while compiz/beryl will run on much older hardware with pretty much the same effects and animations and then some. Macosx runs even faster but with less shiny things such as pixel shaders (Leopard is supposed to address that). Compiz/Beryl is till in its infancy you have to remember that this project is one opensource with a lot of it being submitted by volunteers, two not very old. The project is about a year and change old while macosx had 4 versions and Vista had 5 years of development (the UI stuff was being worked even before that, as many MS people like to point out that Macosx wasn't the first to do the whole gui on video card thing). Compiz/beryl is still just starting, not to mention that initially compiz was just supposed to be a proof of concept which the (now beryl) community turned into what it is today. I must give credit where its due the enthusiasm of the (if not skill) of the compiz-quinn community is why we are here talkign about compiz. Everythign Dave has worked on is for inclusion in xorg, compiz was what he was workign on so that other WM such as metacity could see how to implement the features.
One thing that is great about Aero is that it switches mode depending on the level of support for a feature. The reason compiz can't do this is because it requires hardware acceleration and there is no current support for using 2d drivers only. to switch to a supported Wm requires that either metacity or kwin get started so the transition isn't anywhere near as smooth as it should be.
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Google added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.Glass is getting some love at Google I/O as well. New applications have been released - Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Elle, Tumblr, and CNN. Perhaps more interesting: the newly announced Google Glass Developer Kit will allow offline applications and direct hardware access - great for hacking and expanding Glass' potential. This kit will really allow hackers to put Glass through its paces.
"But Beck and Merrill decided that simply banning toxic players wasn't an acceptable solution for their game. Riot Games began experimenting with more constructive modes of player management through a formal player behavior initiative that actually conducts controlled experiments on its player base to see what helps reduce bad behavior. The results of that initiative have been shared at a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and on panels at the Penny Arcade Expo East and the Game Developers Conference." Absolutely fascinating stuff. I'm a League of Legends player, and to be honest, the community isn't nearly as bad as some make it out to be. I'm happy Riot games has the guts to employ science to address the issue.
"Android and iOS, the number one and number two ranked smartphone operating systems worldwide, combined for 92.3% of all smartphone shipments during the first quarter of 2013 as Windows Phone crept past BlackBerry for 3rd place. According to the International Data Corporation Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, Android smartphone vendors and Apple shipped a total of 199.5 million units worldwide during 1Q13, up 59.1% from the 125.4 million units shipped during 1Q12." Windows Phone doubles from a few to twice few, iOS loser market share as its growth is slower than that of the overall market. BlackBerry continues slide into irrelevance."According to the latest research from our Wireless Smartphone Strategies service, global Android smartphone profits reached US$5 billion in total during the first quarter of 2013. Samsung dominated and captured an impressive 95 percent share of all Android smartphone profits." Wow."During its Keynote today, Google announced new features coming to its flagship search function - you know, that thing we all started using Google for. VP Amit Singhal spent some time discussing what Google's search functionality will eventually morph into. Google's strategy is summarized by three words: answer, converse, and anticipate. Singhal explained that many of the pieces of these upcoming changes can already be seen in products that Google has recently introduced - namely, Google Knowledge Graph and Google Now, with perhaps a splash of Google Glass, too." I hold on to my hat every time Google changes Search. It's such a vital product in my daily life.
Member since:
2006-11-27
Seeing how Compiz and Beryl seem better to me than, for example, Aero anyways.