Submitted by David Reveman writes: “I’d like to get all of you updated on the compiz related things discussed at the X developer conference that was held last week. My talk was mainly focused on ‘what’s next’ and how to get desktop compositing in X to the next level.” He also discussed the fork: “I had the chance to talk to Quinn Storm from the beryl project during xdevconf. I would have hoped that the current situation with beryl could be improved but it seems like Quinn at least isn’t interested in that. However, after talking to Quinn it’s very clear to me that the fork was partially motivated by assumptions that were wrong.”
All the stuff he’s said concerning Beryl seems to be rather embittered. I think just about everyone in the community realizes at this point that Beryl has been making improvements in leaps and bounds. David seems to have two main goals in his post:
1. To try to point out that Beryl’s improvements have been “temporary solutions and workarounds.” OK, but provide a little evidence before expecting people to believe this statement.
2. To claim that everyone is working on the fork, and not on Compiz, and that’s not fair. Tough.
I enjoyed reading this choice statement in particular:
I’m sure that there’s people involved in the beryl project that will sooner or later realize that they’ve made a mistake
This seems to say that people that chose to involve themselves in Beryl have made a mistake by doing so. This is jealousy at its finest. Insulting the developers isn’t going to make them any more friendly toward Compiz.
I appreciate the work that’s put into both projects, as they have made my Linux experience more fun, to say the least. But, I get sick when I read flame posts like this.
Before I even read your comment I was thinking the exact same thing – sour grapes!! Like you, I say David hasn’t provided much in the way of proof whatsoever to his allegations that Beryl is simply “feeding” off of projects they can’t control, or using “temporary solutions and workarounds” which only make Beryl “appear” to work better. His entire attitude towards Quinn and Beryl seems juvenile. Dude, get over yourself!!! Beryl’s developers are doing a great job! This is evidenced by the fact that many major distributions that are introducing compositing in their distros are using Beryl, not compiz. I also disliked the way that David was quick to add something nice right after he said something spiteful. I’ve always found that you have to watch your back around people like that or you might end up with a knife in it.
Edited 2007-02-17 21:16
First of all, Its not Sour grapes. The fact is that its well known that beryl currently uses a lot of hacks to get things to work in a perceived “better” manner. I’m not going to give you any evidence, I don’t have to, thats what Google is for. The evidence is right in his message. Input redirection is just making it into the x server, how is beryl doing this already? They certainly don’t have input redirection working properly. There are other things that he mentions in his message that he is currently working on getting the x server patched for atm and here beryl has these “implemented”. We all know the amount of work Berly had to to to untie it from that god awful beryl manager, something that shouldn’t have happened to begin with. Beryl is a hack, and its full hacks that work but in the long run they are going to have to get rid of these hacks and guess where they are going to get their stuff from then. Yep, they are going to do what they currently do which is take code from Compiz.
Whether or not Beryl is using hacks to accomplish some of its effects is irrelevant. What’s obviously at issue is the Compiz folks are pissed off about the fork. Now, the fork has moved ahead and fanned out in directions Compiz hasn’t yet gone, the compiz devs are making sure they point out every flaw in Beryl while at the same time using stability and “doing it right” as their own excuse for being slow. So what?!? Beryl devs made it clear what they forked that Beryl’s purpose for being was to act as a test bed for new plugins and technologies not yet stable enough to make it into Compiz. Obviously this is going to require some workarounds or hacks while stable underlying infrastructure gets put into place in the X server or elsewhere. As long as Beryl ends up with code that works while they clean it up for future releases, who cares if some elements are hackish for the time being. The end user isn’t going to see that end of it nor is he likely to care. As for Beryl devs stealing the “fixes” or whatever from Compiz, that’s the sort of sour grapes attitude I was referring to. If Compiz doesn’t want other developers using their code then don’t make it open source. Finally, it’s clear that there are Compiz people and Beryl people and that a debate will rage ad nauseum over which is better. Use what you like. I will.
Edited 2007-02-17 22:10
“Once more into the breach my friends..”
Whether or not Beryl is using hacks to accomplish some of its effects is irrelevant.
No it ‘s not.
What’s obviously at issue is the Compiz folks are pissed off about the fork.
And rightfully so… Fist and foremost the fork happened for all the wrong reasons… lies and personal rivalry.
Now, the fork has moved ahead and fanned out in directions Compiz hasn’t yet gone, the compiz devs are making sure they point out every flaw in Beryl while at the same time using stability and “doing it right” as their own excuse for being slow.
I dare you to come up with a list of 10 features that are only available on beryl and not on compiz. (ok, i’ll five you the snow animation as an head start
)
Then, i dare you to make a list of all the bugs you’ll find beryl but not in compiz.
Edited 2007-02-18 03:35
er … do you really want that list ?!
and i am sorry , but i dont use compiz because i use beryl.
if beryl didnt exist , i would use kwin !
i do apreciate and respect D.R. and hope he continues to work in X development , but as compiz ( window manager / composite manager ) goes , it sucks!
its not beryl’s fault… compiz just sucks
plus , i dunno why is this mentality of “beryl will become obsolete , metisse will become obsolete ” ( read the forums , its in there ). Are you guys seeing too much Star Trek Borg episodes ?
this users will over time choose compiz , and beryl will die mentality… boy oh boy
just to remind you of something : wrong … i for one , will choose kde4 , no matter if beryl dies or not
for someone who is mostly unbiased , and respects both side’s work ( at least the very important and tecnological work of David r. ) , reading your forum and blog posts just makes you look like angry geeks
Yeah i really want that list
So you thnik Compiz sucks ? Well beryl is fork of compiz… and after fork it still syncs compiz code so you shuld now say BERYL sucks too, because 99 % beryl “core” code is still compiz code, there ware no significantly changes. And the almost all users and developers of beryl dont say nothing about that in official statments or official discussion (this disscussion is good example). Only poison
and personal attacks, Star Trek ? angry geeks ? so i this is your technical arguments ? constructive comments ?
ok , you will get that list , dont forget tomorrow to check this out.
if beryl is 99 % compiz , then , heck , the beryl developers did a miracle in that 1 % code !
every version i try compiz , i dont like it ! its animations sucks ( expecially of rotating the cube , its nothing like beryl ) and other problems. i am not exagerating when saying that i prefer kwin to compiz.
now , maybe your native language isn’t english, but surely you would understand that when i was mentioning angry geeks , those were not my technical arguments.
go into compiz’s forum , and read it. then go into beryl’s forum and read it also. then you will see which side looks like angry geeks
constructive comments ?! ok , here is one !
compiz and its developers are the root program , and the one doing the important coding. they are more skilled coders and working on what needs to be done , not only for compiz , or beryl , but for all desktops that work with X. its credit to them and they are due.
but they completly miss the point when they talk so badly and insult so badly the beryl developers. they want the fame and fortune. they make a point of always saying beryl is full of hacks and compiz will make beryl and metisse obsolete. that compiz “will win” in the end ! that it was a mistake for beryl to exist !
this makes it look like a race , surviving on a jungle ! it is not !
beryl should give more credits to compiz.
and compiz should learn usuability wise, what beryl is doing.
Well i read both forums actively and on beryl forum when disccussion is getting more tuoch on compiz subject it seems that beryl community members looks like “angry geeks” but ofcours not all, there are two sides of this medal and so if diccussion on compiz forum is touching beryl subjects some people from compiz community show that they are angry about whole case. But imho they are showing some technical arguments in all disscussions so i thnik you are not fully right in this case.
if beryl is 99 % compiz , then , heck , the beryl developers did a miracle in that 1 % code !
every version i try compiz , i dont like it ! its animations sucks ( expecially of rotating the cube , its nothing like beryl ) and other problems. i am not exagerating when saying that i prefer kwin to compiz.
Pure your private user experience and “others problems”, and! cube is plugin not core of compiz/beyrl right, so i thnik this is not miracle ;D of 1%
And i thnik none from the compiz forum was talking about matisse will be obsolate. Could you bring me some link for that topic i’m very interested about that.
and compiz should learn usuability wise, what beryl is doing.
Well i thnik usuabilitity is “personal feeling” of each person that is using software (here compiz/beryl). You could say that transparent cube is very usable… i culd argue you with that.. well this is personal user expeirance problem and i dont think compiz shuld lern from beryl in this case, we dont need fork of beryl 😉
well , i dont understood your post 100 % , lots of typos , and i dont really want to continue this.
first , i am not arguing who the best side is ! i am not arguing who did what , and who is doing more important work , and who is more capable. history is there , and so is svn and cvs and git logs.
my private experienced shared with most of the world feel that beryl is much better “user oriented” than compiz.
about metisse , yes i can : http://forum.go-compiz.org/viewtopic.php?t=479&highlight=metisse
to finish , to say that you should not learn from beryl in this case … or any case , its just plain arrogant , foolish and wrong.
in the end of the day , i just hope you are doing this for fun and out of love.
take care, may both projects have the best of luck
No it ‘s not.
I don’t see how it isn’t irrelevant to an end user. As long as Beryl works, an end user doesn’t care. Besides, if you look at both Beryl and Compiz they both use a bunch of hacks and neither are particularly stable for anyone to use on a day to day basis. The notion that Compiz has clean code, does things right and is stable is just laughable. If that was the case everyone would be using it. They’re not.
And rightfully so… Fist and foremost the fork happened for all the wrong reasons… lies and personal rivalry.
Right. Do we have some evidence for that, otherwise this is someone just being pissed for the sake of it and doing what open source has always been about? Additionally, some people are just pissed at the attention that Beryl has got.
I dare you to come up with a list of 10 features that are only available on beryl and not on compiz. (ok, i’ll five you the snow animation as an head start
)
So why should the above concern you or anyone else then? 😉
Then, i dare you to make a list of all the bugs you’ll find beryl but not in compiz.
Both Beryl and Compiz are buggy. Compiz is by no means a bastion of stability.
Edited 2007-02-18 22:34
Its not laughable, its closer to the truth than you think. The truth is that compiz when first created was a proof of concept, a prototype showing how a compositing manager should be implemented. The project took off and quinnstorm really needs credit for that as a lot of interest stemmed from that compiz branch. the issue is that regardless of what teh end user thinks, this isn’t closed source software where the end justifies the means. Opensource software isn’t afraid to rewrite a huge amounts of code just to clean it up, instead of piling hacks upon hacks. Beryl is hackish, it uses hacks to get things kind of working, but not properly and the real end result is that unlike compiz other window managers can’t benefit from the work done in beryl. the patches the Dave is adding to the xserver will benefit any window manager that needs it not just compiz. Thats important and it shows you how selfish the beryl project has been. The licensing being the most major screw up.
It does sound that way. Some of the things he says makes sense (e.g. keeping the MIT license so as to allow code to be moved into X.org), but it does seem that he is out of touch with Beryl and just plain FUDful (e.g. willing to accept code without too many questions and references to kludge after kludge). There’s also mention that Beryl continues to use Compiz code and doesn’t give back, but no mention that Beryl plugins have been ported into compiz-extra by Compiz developers (at least according to Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beryl_%28window_manager%29
)
Here’s a view from the other side of the fence:
http://dev.beryl-project.org/~kristian/beryl/7/the-future-of-beryl/
You don’t have to look too far to find it. It’s directly on the main Beryl page in the “Planet” section.
Given the Beryl link and the Compiz link, my uninformed impression is that the real reason for the fork is something glossed on by both sides:
1) the Compiz team what’s their code to get into X.org and so they try to make it compatible with the X.org low level code.
2) low level X.org code is overly complicated out because of it’s generality and the Beryl developers don’t see the reason for the complexity if all you want to have is a window manager. That complexity makes it harder for new people to join Beryl so they want to spend a lot of time refactoring the code to make it easier for new people to contribute. The Beryl team also found other places that limited contribution and started working on reducing those.
The result? More people contribute to Beryl that would have with Compiz, and some plugins have been ported back to Compiz giving more plugins than would otherwise be the place, and finally some compiz work has (or will) get into X.org which in turn allow Beryl to become better.
My own prediction is that Compiz will eventually disappear since the Compiz team’s dream seems to be moving it’s code into X.org. This in turn will give Metacity and KWin the ability to catch up to Beryl in most aspected except for support for multiple decorators and multiple configuration managers.
1) the Compiz team what’s their code to get into X.org and so they try to make it compatible with the X.org low level code.
2) low level X.org code is overly complicated out because of it’s generality and the Beryl developers don’t see the reason for the complexity if all you want to have is a window manager. That complexity makes it harder for new people to join Beryl so they want to spend a lot of time refactoring the code to make it easier for new people to contribute. The Beryl team also found other places that limited contribution and started working on reducing those.
Oh, please, compiz/beryl need GLX_EXT_texture_from_pixmap, the composite extension, AIGLX, and where do you think all these things live? In the X.org code and in the DRI/nvidia driver code! there was no way to implement the 3d effects without those things. Then, when those thing were implemented in the proper xserver you could have those nice 3d effects. The input redirection is the same, to have more advanced effects you just need the infrastructure in the X server. Or you can use a ugly hack, and we all know that ugly hacks are evil.
On the compiz/beryl fork: David Reveman pretty much single-handedly wrote XGL and the first composite manager with 3d effects, and helped to define all the necessary specifics. If I have to choose, I trust him, not the beryl developers, who regularly “sync” to put in beryl the new compiz features and code without publicly acknowledging it.
Exactly. Beryl doesn’t deal with the internal of x the way compiz does, because frankly the beryl devs don’t know how, that much is obvious by beryl itself. The fact is if things are done correctly from the get go, they wouldn’t have reimplement things correctly later. Chances are when things do get implemented correctly its not going to be code coming from the beryl devs instead they are going to be using code from compiz, getting all the benefits and giving very little back to the project that started the whole thing to begin with. What the beryl devs have done is pander to every fool out there who wants eyecandy, implement a hack to get it working, giving the user a perceived “better than compiz” impression because compiz won’t pander to every idiot request being put out there. The fact is beryl got forked because of the hacks that were being put into it. Dave has always maintained that everything should be implemented through plugins and if can’t be done with plugins THEN update the core. Beryl took a different approach and instead was patching the core left and right for something that shouldn’t be done there in the first place. The biggest example is the BSM, the beryl devs claimed that compiz relied to much on Gnome, when in-fact this wasn’t true at all, compiz was made to have any backend implemented through plugins. The beryl devs took it upon themselves to implemented an extremely hackish settings manager that btw still relies on gtk. Guess what when they wanted to be considered to be the default Wm in ubuntu (composite by default spec) they had written themselves into a corner and had to rewrite it.
Edited 2007-02-17 23:54
The biggest example is the BSM, the beryl devs claimed that compiz relied to much on Gnome, when in-fact this wasn’t true at all
When, for no apparent reason whatsoever, the only current working way of getting configuration settings was through GConf, and David Reveman’s standard answer was “Oh you can write a separate plugin” I don’t really see a need for that, nor does it inspire confidence in its future.
The beryl devs took it upon themselves to implemented an extremely hackish settings manager that btw still relies on gtk.
Well no actually. Beryl uses a flat file method for storing configuration settings, which is the way things should be, and then the Beryl Settings Manager (GTK) or a KDE version can be implemented on top of here – like just about everything else. There is no reason for anyone to write a separate plugin to store config settings for a piece of software that is fundamental to a desktop. It’s more work for absolutely nothing, and means more things to go wrong.
Seriously, people demanding reasons for the fork is just pointless.
Additionally, people are forgetting the history of Compiz. The Beryl people have argued that a fork was necessary because they just couldn’t trust David Reveman and Novell to be open about it (not that they don’t respect him), and because of the undocumented method of the code itself. Given that Compiz was developed in a closed environment for some time until someone asked about it, and Novell then perked up and said “Oh, oh, oh, we were going to release that in February anyway”, it just doesn’t inspire confidence. David and Novell simply made a bad decision there, and they’ll have to take that on the chin.
Another thing levelled at Beryl by David is that they are somehow less skilled than he is, and as a result, things are hacked together. Quite frankly I don’t care if he thinks that. The Compiz code isn’t exactly the best organised in the world, nor is it partularly stable and great. If it was, people would be using Compiz en masse. The Beryl developers are learning about writing some software that they do not have huge expertise in, but they’re committed and working hard at it and they’re learning – which is what open source development is about really.
I’d rather have skilled people constantly learning, and making at least some mistakes, than someone who criticises what he thinks are temporary solutions and hacks.
Cut them some slack. If it work it works. If it doesn’t then people may or may not flock to Compiz in the way David Reveman so obviously and desperately wants.
what is wrong with those syncs?
i dont beleive the licenses require them to acknowledge that they do it…
1. To try to point out that Beryl’s improvements have been “temporary solutions and workarounds.” OK, but provide a little evidence before expecting people to believe this statement.
2. To claim that everyone is working on the fork, and not on Compiz, and that’s not fair. Tough.
AD. 1 I think much of evidences was submited in that letter good example is input redirection, anather could be fragment program attirbute that was acctually ported by beryl developers to beryl from compiz few days ago, if beryl have blurfx why they port this ? If Kristian Lyngstøl thinks that compiz code provided by David is so bad ? (And he dont give any evidences for that:/) Why other beryl devs still “branch” compiz ? If he thinks it is bad he shuld show code that will fix right ?
AD. 2 Well i think you must go hear http://gitweb.freedesktop.org/?p=xorg/app/compiz.git;a=blob;h=47d29…
its pretty long list imho.
Most of Beryl users seems to dont see the main problem that David is trying to touch.
Yes – as much as I like beryl (I use beryl instead of compiz because there is no port for the new compiz GUI in FreeBSD, and I hate gconf) I must say that the real work is still done by David – like the solution you referred to.
Beryl went from beta stage to rc stage. I expect software in the beta stage to stabilize over time: no extensive changes, no new functionality, fixing bugs and stabilizing the code, that’s what BETAs and especially RCs are for. And yet, this is not what’s happening. RC1 was a huge regression over Beta2 – our port maintainer had to disable a newly introduced plugin because it instantly crashed the wm. Just browse through the posts on beryl-projects forum to see what I’m talking about, or see the comments below the RC2 announcment: http://pricechild.co.uk/?p=38 People are actually now downgrading to BETA releases, because they are more stable than RCs – this is unheard of, and quite ridiculous.
The fact that beryl devs frantically import extensive changes from compiz at such late RC stages speaks volumes of the importance (and quality) of the work done by David! Please, even if you like beryl (just like I do), have at least the respect for him that he deserves for his work, and don’t mock him with “sour grapes” kinda comments – it is unfair.
All the stuff he’s said concerning Beryl seems to be rather embittered. I think just about everyone in the community realizes at this point that Beryl has been making improvements in leaps and bounds.
The only thing that can derail the free software desktop’s continued downhill battle is short-sightedness of this sort. Hacks are for getting projects off the ground and people involved. Once a project reaches the state where people are blathering about it on OSNews, hacks should be out of the question. Recently Ubuntu pulled composited window management out of Feisty. Why? Because too many hacks make it too unreliable for most people.
I appreciate Quinn’s contribution with Beryl. It got a lot of people interested in desktop effects and showed those big desktop OS vendors that we’re right on their tails. But Beryl is a demo. It’s an overly aggressive showcase of where we’d like to take desktop effects over the next several months. And for this purpose, Beryl has been wildly successful.
However, Beryl’s job is becoming less and less important now that we are painfully aware of how much we want those sweet desktop effects. Now we want it on our systems, and we want it to work properly. I’m sure many of you Beryl supporters have gotten it to work more-or-less reliably on your systems, but you’re kidding yourself if you honestly believe it’s ready for default installations. It’s close, but no cigar.
If you’re an end-user, by all means, continue using Beryl. It arguably works better than Compiz at this point in time. But you must realize that it is a short-term fix for problems that Compiz will solve correctly in the 6-18 month timeframe. The real development is happening in the Compiz project. The Beryl project offers a fleeting glimpse into the relatively near future–and not much else.
Anyone who knows anything about X development knows that developers like David Reveman, Keith Packard, and Jon Smirl have more talent in their pinky fingers than Quinn Storm and his (not a female, btw) posse have all together. Enough talent to realize how to do things the right way.
I’m sure that there’s people involved in the beryl project that will sooner or later realize that they’ve made a mistake
He’s right. When the Compiz project moves forward with their roadmap, there won’t be anything to distinguish Beryl save for its shaky foundations.
you are , of course ,right indeed.
the work d.r. is doing is of very importance.
but why is it a mistake beryl ?
people should do what they want ! they want to do beryl , and its working bery well for them.
in contrast , D.R. is doing background work, but foreground work ( compiz ) sucks big time.
to me , neither compiz nor beryl matter …. the only thing that matters is D. R. work on Xorg.
why people forget that beryl dev’s are doing it for fun , to learn new stuf… they are people , individuals.if they are happy , what is the problem ?
beryl is also doing very important stuff… they are testing and making important usuability tests. other desktops ( as kde / gnome / compiz ) can learn from this, and see what users want.
David Reveman, Keith Packard, and Jon Smirl deserve everyones support for the amazing work they have done to enable applications like Beryl. There aren’t many people with the skills and vision of these 3, and I think that is where some of the misunderstands come from. It is apparent that David would rather have people help him on long term solutions than implement short term patches like EXA and Beryl. However, it is difficult for new people to jump into projects like Compiz, Xgl, Cario, glitz, Xorg, etc that often don’t produce visual results to users for years. Beryl might be the stepping stone new developers need to get involved with some of these long term projects and they need to be provided with helpful mentoring, not treated as outcasts. I believe that is what David is trying to say, but he comes off as a little defensive. I appreciate the work being done by both groups and I hope they work together in the future.
Is that it seems to be more about adding features from Vista than something more original. Compiz on the other hand seems to more about stability and need features like metacity theming and more bug fixing.
In the end Beryl is what Quinn wants it to do, her own thing and I don’t think Compiz progress is quick enough. IMHO Beryl is going to fast and maybe David is concerned about this, since he’s already said the quality of code is not that good in beryl.
“Quinn wants it to do, her own thing”
She’s a he >:> :
http://metascape.afraid.org:13666/~quinn/resume.html
Thomas Morrow
He’s a he/she. Quinn is a trans gendered individual which is why we get so many confused people on the subject.
Personnaly, I don’t care.
I think beryl is better because :
– it is quicker than compiz
– it is more alive, and you can easily build svn code
– I saw both, and I think beryl is simpler to set up.
Everybody is free to use either compiz or beryl.
Why stinking flamewars on that ?
– it is quicker than compiz
No it’s not.
– it is more alive, and you can easily build svn code
Software doesn’t live, thank god for that… if programs lived and walked the earth, they would debug us all!!!
Yes, beryl development is apparently more active than compiz’s because they sacrifice lots of good software engineering practices and make stupid in order to progress quicker.
Why would anyone even want to run and SVN version beryl?! The release is unstable as it is!.. Is it because the released version is so buggy you try to run the SVN version, hopping to have some critical bugs fixed? whatever… your call, not mine.
– I saw both, and I think beryl is simpler to set up.
No it’s not.
How is this:
http://gandalfn.wordpress.com/gnome-compiz-manager/screenshot/
More confusing then:
http://wiki.beryl-project.org/wiki/Image:BSM0.2.0.png
?!?!
I bet you haven’t installed compiz in a few months. Check it out. If you follow the tutorial in the first site I’ve mentioned, remember to install gnome-compiz-manager since gnome-gompiz-manager-extras is not used anymore… And I can’t seem to get the authentication key, though it doesn’t matter much.
So, you can tell me what I see on my computer better than me ? About speed display ? Tweaking ?
Are you some kind of god or what ?
“Yes, beryl development is apparently more active than compiz’s because they sacrifice lots of good software engineering practices and make stupid in order to progress quicker.”
I can see what’s happening simply, on every single day. I don’t care a bit about your trolling and other FUD you’re writting.
Bad luck for you, my last attempt was early last month.
So, stop saying nonsense and other crap. Compiz is slower, harder to tweak.
Gnome Compiz Manager is not an official compiz tool, after all.
It takes me 20 minutes (18 building) to set beryl on my computer.
I use SVN every single day. So, please, stop your lies and try using beryl instead of spitting on its face and on beryl coders.
Don’t know why I got the impression he’s a she, my mistake.
Is it part of the the requirement of being a OSNews poster that we always have to read so much into comments?
I have no knowledge of the technical problems or workarounds in either code, (just like the majority of readers), but just because he didn’t give a detailed presentation doesn’t mean its not true.
Sure Beryl appears to be miles ahead of compiz in flash, but IF problems do exist, it is important that these are addressed and not hidden. Isn’t this the kind of thing that has caused problems for MS over the years?
Whether most distros are choosing Beryl means nothing, as distro often grab what ever if the most flashy or currently usable.
I’m interested in if the plugin effects for either of these projects are going to be usable when the both KDE and Gnome have native/builtin compiz support. If things aren’t planned properly, isn’t this all spinning wheels no matter how cool it might look?
Edited 2007-02-17 21:58
Beryl deserves its props.
Users didnt move to beryl just because if it was Compiz fork. they flocked for a good reason and the user base kept increasing for a good reason too.
developers kept cracking code at break-neck speed (as compared to Other X projects) and it just keeps getting better and better. Dont trust me? then take a look for yourself >> latest svn install of beryl on my HP laptop (opensuse) http://youtube.com/watch?v=dJO6CLln-B0 .
really, i read nothing but sore grapes regarding david’s words.
Edited 2007-02-17 22:24
No one is knocking Beryl developers.
I don’t put much merit into the “choices” of most end users either. I hate this argument for anything as most users are sheep and have no understanding of underlying technologies. (Windows as an example)
Maybe for a game you can get away with the end result looks OK system, but for any project that will future projects will build on, it’s just as important how you get to that point.
People take these things too personal and read way too much into it. Its a difference in methodology: get things working now and adapt for future changes when they come, or only build “proper” solutions and get to the end result when all is ready.
Is either right or wrong, no, but we all have our preference to approach. Stating which doesn’t mean you have “sour grapes”. All he stated was he thought that methodology was wrong.
humm ok agree. so its like , for some how you get results (in proper way) matters, and for some How fast you get results and developments matters. and it looks like I choose to be with faster horse
.
That’s great and what’s great with open source projects, you can choose.
As long as the faster horse gets to the same finish line, that’s cool, but just saying you jumped the first 3 hurdles first and not getting to the finish line is no accomplishment. 🙂
At least that’s more how I read the comments from David.
From your statement I’m guessing your not a developer. Going with the faster horse like Beryl has done will lead to spagetthi code a la Win32 API. I just hope Reveman and the other Compiz/X.org developers stick to their plan and don’t loose motivation because of your ungrateful attitudes.
developers kept cracking code at break-neck speed (as compared to Other X projects) and it just keeps getting better and better. Dont trust me? then take a look for yourself >> latest svn install of beryl on my HP laptop (opensuse) http://youtube.com/watch?v=dJO6CLln-B0 .
And what was the result, really? Yes, there is more bling, and I like that, but we see a release process that is going nowhere, as beryl devs are frantically importing new stuff from compiz in late RCs. I’ve seen people downgrading from RC2 to BETA releases, because they were more stable. This is something I’ve never seen before – software in beta stage usually stabilizes over time. Beta stage means no new functionality, no extensive code changes, just fixing bugs and stabilizing the code. This is especially true in RC stage, and yet, you have an RC2 release that proved to be a regression over RC1 which had regressions for some people over BETA2 – something is not right with the beryl project management right now.
And I mention this as a happy beryl user – luckily, I didn’t have problems with beryl since beta2, upgrades worked for me (except window preview plugin, which instantly crashed the wm, and since this occured for almost everyone, it was even disabled in the port temporarily). These are my beryl screenshots:
ftp://hatvani.unideb.hu/personal/screenshots/beryl/
So I’m not speaking as a disgruntled user, and I can make a video and post it to youtube to show how incredibly fine beryl is, but I don’t, because I regularly read beryl-forums, and it is rather incredible what I see there: people experiencing probles that were not there before when going from BETA to RC1 and from RC1 to RC2. The sheer amount of bugs people experience is frightening, and I write this because actually I want Beryl to succeed, but I just don’t see where it is heading: it is chaos!
What’s more, David has a very good point about licensing – it just seems an absolutely bad decision to change the license so code can only flow in one direction. I wonder why Quinn did that, really. I don’t see this post of David as insulting at all, in fact, he urges more cooperation and laments the fact that Quinn apparently does everything in his/her (I’m not sure about the gender here, David uses him while I always assumed a she) power to make that impossible (but the license change is the most obvious and pointless one).
In other words, I’m concerned – this is not an anti-beryl post, I just want things to be better for everyone.
i use two distro’s in my home:
1) SUSE with Compiz on my workstation
2) Sabayon with Beryl on my living room HTPC
The former is my ‘work’ PC and i need it to be bomb-proof, therefore Compiz is the choice.
The latter is a fun bling-machine so i sacrifice the absolute stability for a pretty desktop with wizzo effects.
In my life, they both have a purpose, so they both get used.
Ideally, I would like to see Compiz with Beryl effects ported over thus providing the holy-grail or bomb-proof bling.
Best of luck to DV in his efforts to get a thoroughly sorted compositing manager into the X tree.
On a different note, i vastly prefer AIGLX to XGL, given that I deliberately buy nVidia cards for their robust nVidia drivers, that and the fact that XGL screwing up OpenGL apps really annoys me.
The former is my ‘work’ PC and i need it to be bomb-proof, therefore Compiz is the choice.
Well, you shouldn’t be using Beryl or Compiz either.
I remember when quinnstorm started releasing compiz-quinnstorm-9999.ebuild’s during the early days of compiz in Gentoo.
Why did I choose that day to use quinnstorm? Because it had intel specific patches (that I needed) and those patches would only make it into compiz after a long time later. I was tired of metacity, and it was stopping me from using linux. gwd to the rescue.
And from that point on I followed quinnstorm -> beryl, because it provided the latest patches for problems, even if occasionally there was a show stopping bug.
Beryl is perfectly! stable for me on my 855gm intel chipset. There are some buggy plugins, but the core itself is solid.
I don’t think I could go back to compiz until it catches up in terms of features and usability. Beryl makes programming (and managing many files/windows) a snap on my small 1280×800 12″ laptop screen.
I started my AIGLX experience with Beryl and I was amazed by what it can do on my 855GM integrated Intel graphic card.
But a few months ago I tried Compiz and I think I prefer it over Beryl. Reasons?
– it “seems” smoother and faster,
– sane default settings,
– sane default plugins, and
– less crashes.
Anway that’s just my personal opinion and preferences. But I think the stability over blingbling trade-off that David chooses is starting to show off, especially in the lower end Intel integrated graphic cards.
Machine – Ubuntu 6.10 on Inspiron 510m
Reference – http://gandalfn.wordpress.com/howto/howto-compiz-aiglx-on-edgy
Here is a video of Quinn discussing Beryl:
http://www.lulu.tv/?p=4346
damn i though quinn storm was a girl
Like I’ve said before. Quinn is a trangendered person, so she was a girl now she’s a guy. I was extremely confused until Quinn stated as much and it started to make sense after that. She was a she now she’s a he.
Beryl is a hackfest with quick results, Compiz is a slower-progressing project but gets things right(er) most of the time. In the end, I’m not surprised that Beryl guys (‘n’girls) are porting valuable features from Compiz. It was expected for Beryl to first run forward, and then start looking back.
But thr split was needed. It had to be done because of many average programmers and wannabe UI developers which wanted to do sexy stuff on their desktop (but didn’t have vast knowledge needed to actually improve underlying stuff like xorg, DRI etc., after all there aren’t that many people capable of doing it). So Quinn opened it to them, ability to “cheaply” boost self-confidence, have fun and give something to the community. To get to better state quickly, without waiting for stuff to be done, hooks and hacks were placed all over the codebase and beatiful effects (like blur) were created. This is not bad concept, it allows people to experiment, to devise new UI ideas and some of them are very good. Unfortunately, it can’t last long as possible phase space of ideas is exhausted and one must commit to real, often boring and uninsiprative work of actually improving core to get to the next level where lots of possible stuff for experimentation ‘opens’ again. So i believe we shall see more of porting stuff from compiz, as well as vice versa with plugins, as neither project seems to be dying.
beryl is built on compiz, so they’re both moot and overdesigned. :-p besides, the tech is already here. now its just making it better.
MPX and sofware cursors, now that is some hot shit. video walls suck without multiple concurrent users.
first , i am not arguing who the best side is ! i am not arguing who did what , and who is doing more important work , and who is more capable. history is there , and so is svn and cvs and git logs.
But you arguing that compiz is better than beryl right ?
Well if you really want to end this why you starting that ?
to finish , to say that you should not learn from beryl in this case … or any case , its just plain arrogant , foolish and wrong.
Well i thnik beryl dont have anything to offer in usability area for compiz, and i dont think this is arrogant, only point of view about beryl usability versus compiz usability.
Last weekend, I got a 3D desktop set up for a client of mine. I was using Fedora Core 6 and AIGLX, since that is what is included as standard in that distro.
I spent about six hours trying to get compiz to work right. I failed. Sometimes it would decorate windows, but most of the time it would just ignore them and they wouldn’t even have a frame. I spent so much time Compiz keeps claiming that they are the more stable branch.
I gave up in disgust and installed Beryl. Worked like a charm. The config utilities are impressive. (Compiz’s seem to be nonexistant, but I didn’t really get far enough with it to look too hard for it.)
Just based upon my limited experience, it appears that Beryl is leaps and bounds ahead of Compiz.
I had similar feelings regarding my AIGLX experience vs an XGL experience I had while back.
With AIGLX, I have only one X server running. I can play 3D games. (XGL doesn’t run 3D games unless you write a script to start yet a 3rd X server on another VT! What a kludge!)
AIGLX just seems *so* much cleaner. XGL felt like something Rube Goldberg might have designed.
It seems to me that these projects that Novell is going off and doing behind closed doors, intentionally short circuiting community peer review, are coming out half baked.
Just based upon what I have seen, if I were Quinn, I wouldn’t be particularly interested in tying my project down by “joining forces” with Compiz.
I should clarify that I’m staying neutral with respect to the whole Novell political situation. (i.e. I hope this does not come off as senseless Novell bashing.)
But the evidence seems to be going against their arguments about the benefits of a “cathedral” development style.
Edited 2007-02-19 14:25
the cathedral and the bazaar all over again eh?