Compiz integration

[Who]

---Given that QuinnStorm is the maintainer of Compiz in launchpad I
assume that Compiz-Quinn is being used - I may be wrong becuase I
don't have a home PC at the moment. If Ubuntu is in fact using
Compiz-Quinn then I think we need to be careful - If it is not then
the rest of this post is largely irrelevant and getting Quinn to
maintain it is a great idea because we integrate some of the stabler
plugins/patches from her CVS code into the Upstream version for some
new features in Ubuntu that aren't present in FDO's Compiz. :) ---

Assuming we are using Compiz-Quinn, Is there going to be a more stable
branch of it for Ubuntu? If not, I think perhaps there should be:

I think the QuinnStorm version of Compiz is perfect for people who
want to try things out and who are prepared to have things go
wrong/have things change, I love using it and I am very greatful and
have great respect for all involved in the development - however it is
not as stable or reliable as David Reveman's upstream code, I think
because it doesn't aim to be...at least not at the moment.

Compiz-Quinn, it it's unaltered state, is good for me because I like
messing with my system, it is bad for my brother, because he wants the
cool effects but doesn't ever want to mess with his PC's setup and he
_never_ wants things to break. Given that Compiz-Quinn is so easy for
the tinkerers to install I think it makes more sense to set up Ubuntu
for the people who want to play safely (these are the people unlikely
to set it up for themselves, too), not the ones who want to dissect
and reconfigure their (explosive) toys.

Here are some examples of things that I think show that (current)
Compiz-Quinn is aimed at alpha/beta testers, not ordinary users (I
hope that the developers of Compiz-Quinn agree - I am not trying to
say their code is bad, I am trying to demonstrate that last time I
used it it was 'testing' code...). NOTE: These were true when I was
last able to use her packages (3 weeks ago), but I think are
indicative of the aims of the QuinnStorm CVS tree

* The blur plugin that was included can lead to artifacts on the
screen, distortion while drawing some windows, and can be very slow
(but very beautiful :) - it improved a lot while in the compiz-tree
and may now be very stable...
* The Show Desktop plugin (while _extremely_ useful and normally very
stable) sometimes caused Compiz to crash or Firefox windows to exit
without warning - very irritating
* The new 'cgwd' was slower and had memory leaks (that were solved, I
believe). It also has many, many more configuration options that any
other part of a Gnome/Ubuntu environment and there is no simpler
frontend (it is still possible to use gnome-window-decorator if
desired)
* The pace of development is so fast!

Finally, I do not understand the decision to remove Gconf
compatibility - perhaps there is a very good reason...All I know is
that there have been many successful tools in the past that have
allowed people to use both a GUI _and_ Gconf, but that now we have
only 'CSM' to configure Compiz-Quinn - reducing the ability of
developers to easily create 'cut down' and simple front-ends that just
use Gconf. To me it pushes the code closer to being a fork, which
seems undesirable. Unfortunately I have not looked at how different
things are _really_ (I.E is the change just in compiz's core so that
plugins still work identically to before but Compiz-core makes
settings controlled by CSM not Gconf, or are all the plugins in
Quinn's current tree now changed to work with CSM and _not_ Gconf, so
they are not compatible with Upstream and Gconf?)

In my opinion, the _safest_ solution would probably be to start with
the Upstream code from FreeDesktop.org and add the desired stable
plugins from Quinn's tree into the Ubuntu version, or even add many of
the plugins that aren't stable and stabilise them. I know that porting
plugins between versions wasn't too difficult before the Gconf change,
and it may still be not too hard - I do not know.

The other, perhaps _best_ solution from the point of view of features
and development, is to communicate with QuinnStorm about making a
stable branch of her code (perhaps this has been done and I don't
know...), and perhaps bringing back Gconf if it is desired. As far as
I have seen she works very well with the community, and regularly
reads and responds to posts at www.compiz.net. Observing the
development of the Community version beside the official mailing list
I believe she responds and fixes things faster than David R.

If you are still reading, hope that helps,

Who


On 9/13/06, Fabio Berta <fabio at berta.ch> wrote:
> Hi
>
> I'm seeing that Compiz is getting integrated a bit in Ubunutu. It's even
> mentioned in the Knot 2 Release Notes. But I think it's a very bad idea
> to use the Quinnstorm CVS tree rather than upstream. She made some
> strange decisions lately, like dropping gconf and replace it with a
> configuration tool named csm. So you can't change settings without this
> tool. Also she accepts many unstable plugins. She also introduced a new
> new window decorator, which isn't that bad, it just so different from
> upstream. I think one should call the Quinnstorm tree a fork.
> My opinion is, that it would be better to use upstream's tree as a base
> for ubuntu packages.
>
> Greets
> Fabio
>
>
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