Compiz The Greatest Compositor Nobody Uses

[@BrodieRobertson]

Slight correction, I mixed up 0.8 and 0.9, 0.8 is released, 0.9 is the dead branch

[@ed2win37]

I need the flexibility to move between windows very quickly. I can't find compiz nowhere. Any suggestions?

[@JHess]

@@ed2win37 linux mint mate comes with compiz and you can load more components through the various package managers.

[@paechan]

There was a golden time at around maybe 2007 where my laptop was running Ubuntu with compiz, and it was so freaking cool. I was using it for university work and the cube desktop switching was literally the coolest thing I had ever seen. And actually functional. You could sort of peak around the corner and see what was on the next workspace at a glance. What a time.

[@Cigam_HFden]

Similar experience with me. I enjoyed compiz around that time and at university many people had no idea what linux was and switching with a cube/cylinder/sphere desktop projection was just mind boggling to them. Actually converted some people to linux just with that showy desktop effect. There are times I still use desktop effects, but nowadays its just not worth my time. I wish there was a better multi desktop tile to show all your desktops and drag them around, that worked well on multiple monitors, but other than that a nice zoom effect is handy. The other thing that was neat with compiz that I think kde still has is combining windows, where you can have tabbed like windows. and I could have firefox open, and then flip the window around and its gimp, or something like that. Still neat to show off compiz to people because windows and other system do not really do that much.

[@Bagginsess]

Can you still get the cube desktop if you install compiz?

[@Zestyclose-Big3127]

​@@BagginsessCan't imagine why not.

[@Bagginsess]

@@Zestyclose-Big3127 finally I can be hackerman again!

[@anon_y_mousse]

@@Bagginsess You can get that effect with KDE. In the system settings find the compositor settings and check to enable on startup. Then when you setup virtual desktops check to show an animation while switching and select the cube animation.

[@unfa00]

This was a fascinating deep dive into desktop compositing on Linux! We need Vulkan-based display compositing, lol :D

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

11:33 I think this “clean and minimal design” is a fashion idea promoted by Microsoft, because trying to do fancy 3D effects turned out to be such a disaster for them, in the resource-hogging Windows Vista.

[@Danielo515]

Compiz was awesome, and a great example of all the excess and visual noise we used to love in the early 2000s

[@mem7562]

It is awesome! It's not dead yet, don't let it die [well, it hasn't died yet anyways.] I recommend you try the awesome Linux Mint MATE, which in its 21.1 version [came out on December 2022], it still ships it by default. kzbin.info/www/bejne/lYm0nX6HiZWLmrs

[@JodyBruchon]

It wasn't excess visual noise.

[@arashi9469]

Compiz was my favorite thing back when I was in middle school, I really miss making my computer unusable by setting the animations so slow that it would take minutes just to open a window 😢

[@xard64]

Compiz was back then when introduced a quite a nice tech demo for accelerated desktop. And to remind you that this was on the windows xp era which did not have any kind of 3d acceleration for the desktop. However mac osx was had been done years accelerated effects on the desktop with functionality like transparency, drop shadows and window presenting feature "exposé". Compiz essentially brought these features and more to Linux desktop very good performance which was rather impressive at the time.

[@paechan]

It was so impressive at the time. I had a real shitty laptop with windows xp that could barely run anything. But switching to Ubuntu with compiz gave it new life in such a cool way. It was a good time to be honest.

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

Apple pioneered the use of OpenGL for on-screen drawing, but it never really did any of the fun effects.

[@xard64]

@@lawrencedoliveiro9104 So Exposé, Magic lamp, sliding and bending utility windows and rotating desktop cube don't count for some reason? OSX introduced these effects during 2004.

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

@@xard64 That’s only very basic stuff. Compiz and its successors do a lot more.

[@xard64]

@@lawrencedoliveiro9104 Sure these are not the most earth shattering by modern standards. However no other operating system offered compisition with window drop shadows or glitch free dragging and resizing. I cannot overstate how far ahead of the competition Apple was at the time when it comes to polished look and feel of the operating system. OS X Panther had all of this already in 2003 while Compiz introduced composition around 2006 Windows Vista finally in 2007.

I came back to Compiz after 10+ years. It's one of the main reasons I immediately liked Linux when I tried it on our old PC. It was so smooth and captivating. I was kind of okay for the past few years with very simple compositing done by marco. I tried picom (formerly known as compton) with the dual_kawase blur, which plays nicely with my custom transparent "Materia in MATE colors with Arc window titles" theme, but there was always something missing... Today I spent hours fiddling with my desktop and wow, I'm so happy with it! I wish I tried Compiz sooner.

[@lazyh0rse]

Actually some distros still use compiz, for example when my laptop's ssd failed, I used knoppix to live boot, I had nvidia at the time, and it was hard to make knoppix use nvidia right away, but looking at the commands list I was able to boot using nvidia for hardware rendering, it then started using compiz as the default compositor during startup. it was the year 2015. But still it was really cool to see my crappy laptop at the time make these visual effects, pretty old model, 2010.

[@BrodieRobertson]

Oh do they, I'll have to take a look

[@conceptrat]

Holy crap. Nice bit of research there Brodie. And presented in a simple way. Good job 👍 Used Ubuntu since year dot. Was a fan of Unity and some of the animations. Wobbly windows and 3d cube workspace switcher not so much. In the end I turned everything off except for transparency and the basic sliding eased windows. Transparency was super useful for keeping an eye on a process or cheat sheet running in a background window. Although I switched the having the cheat sheet sitting on the Desklet layer along with Conky. Can't remember if the Desklet layer was part of Compiz?

[@joshuarichards2421]

I still use Compiz to this day, on a 6.0 kernel linux with modern xorg. Back when the KDE3/KDE4 shenanigans happened, KDE forked, and Trinity Desktop Environment (TDE) was born. It still exits, and is maintained to this day. (There is even some fairly recent activity, and they also ported the entire source tree over to Clang and Ninja, so the whole classic KDE3 style desktop compiles in a ridiculously short amount of time.) As part of preserving the totality of KDE3, a fully functional modern fork of compiz and the matching TDE window decorator are included. So, you can experience DRI headaches, blue squares, spinning cubes and burning windows right now, on modern Debian or Gentoo (The two distros I've gotten it fully working on.) Hell, it mostly works on a raspberry Pi 4 rofl. (The GPU isnt fully OGL compliant, so some things don't work right)

[@FrancoBugnano]

Nowadays KDE has natively all the cool effects that Compiz used to have, and there are some GNOME shell extensions that recreate the old Compiz effects, so Compiz is obsolete for those desktops. Compiz today is still used in the Fedora MATE-Compiz spin, where you can have wobbly windows and the desktop cube with the MATE desktop. If you don't care about those effects though, Marco (the default compositor for the MATE desktop) usually does a better job as a window manager and desktop compositor.

[@guitarhero01234]

Pretty dure they got rid of the Cube, which I've considered completely ditching Kwin to switch to Compiz for

[@condellmaurice8597]

Cannot run so many of the effects at the same time and it feels slower and bloated. Not enough choice. It would have been nice if KDE played nice but they did not. Compiz made it both functional and fun to use your computer.

[@expresateiam]

I am using Compiz in MATE Desktop right now on september 2023 successfully. It has a wonderful performance in a 2009 iMac with a Legacy Nvidia 9400 and 4Gb of RAM. It don't look any obsolete.

[@plupoli7784]

@@expresateiam im sure you can get it to work but from my past experience if you hit the wrong setting once in CCSM and you were done for. Like 9 hours of work gone!

[@tordjarv3802]

When I started to use Linux compiz was all the rage. I didn’t use the typical cube desktop effect, instead I had a spherical desktop. I also had the burning windows effect. One thing that was fairly simple to do at the time that doesn’t seem possible in Gnome any more is to set a screensaver as desktop background in order to have an animated desktop background

[@tordjarv3802]

@Voodoo Yam I have seen that, but I now a days I think that is a waste of computing resources

[@Tetrahcodom]

Compiz fuuuussssiiiiooooon! Man I remember when it was all the rage

[@OdinsCloud]

I miss the Zoom features and the cube the most . magnifier over dock Zooming was smooth and so fast . The cube and other effects recreated as Gnome extensions are crude by comparison. Being able to have a fluid desktop that interesting increases productivity for many. The cube was very useful and easier than any other way of managing / switching desktops. I use the Gnome extension now but wish I could get back the Compiz version.

[@thegougeman]

Compiz is the bomb. Wobbly Windows, Fire, Flame, Shimmer, Rain, Cube. I never understood why the trend of boring "Simplicity" became the norm. Time for a Compiz movement again.

[@wp6007]

This was a good video, you came off as well informed and told an interesting story, unlike your old content

[@Mr.Finkel]

ouch

[@CaptainApathetic]

You should do a video on Fedora MATE-Compiz, it's a blast from the past you can get in the present Also: it should be noted that Compiz is a Composting *Window Manager* rather than being just a compositor like Picom.

[@folksurvival]

MATE is the most underrated DE.

[@Hun_Uinaq]

@@folksurvival they should rename it the get shit done desktop. Super efficient.

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

Composting ... for those with a sense of humus.

[@Soliprem]

I use xcompmgr, mostly because it was in LARBS and so I kinda learned to set it up from there. Very much a "live and let live" manager. Never asked too much of it, it never asked to much of me. Kinda nice and out of the way

[@nonetrix3066]

>2D is just flatted 3D >Many Wayland compositors use OpenGL etc boundary break episode when?

[@erkanersoy]

The reason I first started using linux was compiz. I learnt a lot just because of that. My first compile is because I wanted that snow effect.

[@TekuzoOdium]

Not only did I use compiz, I used Beryl

[@georgH]

I also used compiz back in the day, it was GREAT and functional, like the window overview and the cube, which worked beautifully along GNOME's 2 Spatial Nautilus :) GNOME3 killed all of that, but it has now become an even nicer desktop. It took quite a long time, though

[@akimbofurry2179]

Loved compez. Was a cube user. Used it in 2010, at its end of life.

[@neffscape6353]

I'm actually still using compiz in 2023, coupled with ubuntu mate on my aging 2011 27"iMac and it's still awesome. I don't usually load compiz with tons of plugins. I just use the basic "rotating cube", the expo plugin and some subtle animation to minimize/maximize windows. And I'm really happy with it. Of course there are unfixed bugs here and there, and of course I'm worried about the end of the dream when everything will be Wayland based. I'm also a bit sad that nobody decided to keep up with development with this historical piece of software. The magic began around 2006-2007 and I remember the first endeavors to make compiz actually work. And when it was picked up by ubuntu and preconfigured with GNOME 2 (I think it was in Hardy Heron release) that was paradise on earth :). I remember shocking my friends at university with the rotating cube and I remember converting them to linux just showing them this feature. It was literlly the coolest thing everybody had ever seen on a PC, and I'm kind of surprised that none of the current popular compositors preserved some of those cool effects.

[@schneensch]

Usually using GNOME, however everytime I try out KDE, I always activate wobbly windows first. It's just so much fun.

[@hansdampf2284]

Isn’t schneegans making the wobbly windows for gnome now? He also is making the cube for gnome

[@JaredWyns]

Compiz+Beryl were one of the first things I got configured on Linux back in the early 00s and really got me digging into more tech. Absolutely love it and with a good hotkey setup you could be hyper efficient in all sorts of things. I had binds for wobbly windows and other stuff, I loved ringswitcher. being able to hold a key and drag the window from clicking anywhere vs having to pinpoint the taskbar was amazing. With the recall nonsense MS is doing, I'll be biting the bullet to jump my main desktop back to linux for gamedev. I did not know about wayfire or a chunk of the info in this video. But if old plugins don't exist or can't be used anymore, I suppose I'll have to write them myself. This'll be a fun upcoming few years.

[@snakeat3r114]

I wouldn't use any linux distro without having Compiz. It's what made me switch to linux back in the day when it was called Beryl

[@a9udn9u]

Probably around 2007, Compiz stormed the Linux window manager scene. I remember that time vividly because I spent numerous hours compiling, customizing and showing it off to friends. It really appeared to be the future standard composer, I thought things can only get better but sadly it didn't. After 16 years, Compiz still does something better than concurrent composers, one being no screen tearing while moving windows.

[@shahnawazshahin3781]

Compiz was awesome. Granted it wasn’t the best for a smooth desktop workflow, but with Expo, desktop cube and wobbly windows it just looked so good and satisfying.

[@rabidmoose01]

I remember compiz-fusion with the desktop cube that you could zoom out on and see 3 simultaneous virtual desktops. That was fun, hahaha

[@EnderKill98]

I started using compiz with ubuntu 14.04. I think I broke it with the CCSM (compiz config settings manager). At some point I started with LinuxMint Cinnamon and later Linux Mint Mate since Compiz was available for it. They I happily used it a long time. Things I still do nowadays because of compiz back then. **Wobbly windows** Still using KDE's wobbly windows to this day because of starting in ubuntu 14.04 with compiz. Compared to compize the windows feel more like a "Metal sheet" instead of compiz's more rubbery feeling, but still love my wobbly windows to this day. They are pretty subtle, but I really like them. Will be so sad when they vanish one time. I also have compiz on my system, but more for a little fun every few months. They window borders are completely different which makes compiz stick out like a sore tooth in this regard. Not sure if this can be fixed, but I always thought, compiz would only play nice with Gnome based frame/theming systems (not sure those still exist). **Screenshots** Also, compiz gave me the workflow of "screenshot and forget". With compiz, you could hold the Super key and draw a rectangle over the screen. When you released the Super key, it saved a numbered screenshot into a folder of your choosing (e.g. ~/Pictures/Screenshots/screenshotXXXX.png). For that reason I use lightscreen for a really long time now. I can trigger a rectangle selection with Ctrl+PrintScn and it's also automatically saved as a numbered file and also copied to the clipboard. Using this, I have now over 5000 screenshots since 2015 (I lukily migrated them when I switched distros since my first screenshots were using KDE 4 on my old laptop with a cairo dock). A lot of screenshots are random, or I just did them for the sake of pasting them into some messenger or gimp. But it still makes a pretty nice "photo diary". I had some old recording tools in the beginning (Vokoscreen, ScreenStudio, Kazam) and they all usually had either a hard performance hit for basic recording on my poor laptop, or A/V desync issues. I also didn't keep a lot of those recordings due to limited storage space at that time. OBS came around a bit later for me, so my screenshots go back longer and are more representative, since I almost never deleted any. OBS was truely a game changer for me at that time!

[@0x007A]

The last time that I gave compviz any thought was 2005 when I used a 3-D cube desktop switcher application. It was eye-candy and not much else as I recall.

[@estanforth6754]

I used wayfire for a while. It was nice.

[@pushqrdx]

correction, 0.8 is the version known as reloaded (it was meant to keep the old codebase around), 0.9 is just original compiz available at launchpad. Another thing compiz 0.9 uses `egl` now, and removed all the fixed pipeline stuff

[@BrodieRobertson]

I accidently swapped the numbers around.

[@hikingpete]

AIGLX and Compiz happened during my KDE / Gentoo days. I loved showing that stuff off. Wobbly windows were cool. Consider that, at the time, Windows users were using XP.

[@pushqrdx]

I'll just leave it here because nobody believes me when i say it, Compiz is still the best performing and featureful compositor+window manager on linux to this day, it has unique features like full screen zoom that i highly depend on (because of my eyesight), smooth animations not just the gimmicky yet fun stuff like cube, but every other standard animation. I have tested it on integrated graphics on laptops and desktops ranging from 2012 to now, compiz never fails to output max refresh rate for the monitor tested on both 60 and 144hz.. I have been literally using Compiz + Mate for years now, never felt the need to switch

[@gintokisakata7490]

I also still use Compiz and think that its the best window manager. But they should fix some bugs and improve some features. That would be nice.

[@crataegus125]

I loved compiz. It was fantastic. The desktop developers cannibalised it for parts, and then made changes so that the rest of it would not run. Linux can be a nasty jungle at times. If you can get under another application on the stack you can kill projects you don't like. And this is what happened to compiz. And it wasn't just compiz. Virtually all customisation applications and tools were repeatedly broken and eventually killed at this time. KDE and Gnome and Ubuntu and all the other corporates decided controlling the look and feel of the desktop was vital for their corporate branding. However this ran directly counter to the existing linux ethos where everyone customised the heck out of their desktop and the only people who ran a bog standard desktop were newbies. It was a massacre. Most desktop customisation software and packages was repeatedly broken until the people trying to maintain them gave up. Gnome 3 started the trend and broke the most. But other corporates soon followed the trend. The more determined desktop customisers would scuttle around and repair things. And then Gnome and KDE and Fedora and Ubuntu would break it all again. I grew to hate those people. It was done quite deliberately. I still think Gnome are absolute scum for what they did back then. Compiz got broken with all the rest of the customisation software; sacrificed on the altar of corporate branding.

[@yjk_ch]

It was back when I had no idea how anything worked, but there was a time when I used Ubuntu with Unity desktop. So I probably used Compiz without even knowing.

[@tibssy1982]

I used to use compiz. I remember the time when I used xgl with Compiz first time. It was a bit difficult to set it up before SLED10 (SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop) released with built in compiz on the top of gnome 2.x environment with a unique start menu. Then aiglx and beryl merged with Compiz to Compiz-fusion. I really loved that time, it was a huge milestone in the desktop linux history.

[@Fuxy22]

Ah the good old days when I was playing with compiz and conky... I kindof miss the cool things conky used to do. It was a cool little dashboard for your system if you configured it right.

[@Michael-it6gb]

Compiz effect were great fun. For a week or so, and then I wanted normal windows back. I tried all the way back in 2007. Haven't used it since.

[@ROFLMAOwithExtraCheese]

Thanks for this summary. I’m recently rediscovering Linux after not using it much over the past few years. At the time it made Linux the best looking desktop environment. The effects were cool but the use of the cube and being able to see all the virtual desktops was great for productivity. To my knowledge no other desktop at the time had this ability.

[@thingsiplay]

Wobbly windows and turning cube effects my childhood (well, i was 24 or so, if you can call that childhood).

[@scottpascal3099]

I use Compiz nowadays in Ubuntu-MATE because without it EA games remain minimized to the taskbar and refuse to open full-screen in Ubuntu's MATE compositors (same issue with Linux Mint 20.3 and bellow). Compiz is very usable nowadays.

[@fernandoescutia1372]

I'm actually using compiz in an old laptop from 2012, my OS is Linux mint with Mate and Compiz as compositing manager. Some effects works well, some others doesn't work, I think that is what we have, but overall compiz is working really fine.

[@chrismcdonaldracing]

I remember doing a 3D cub design on LXQT with compz. Kinda killed the point of LXQT but looked really Kool.

[@nichtgestalt]

I do not often comment but I want to appreciate this white board in the new set up. Keep up the good work! 😎

[@muellerhans]

The cool thing about Compiz is that it actually has MPX support to some degree: Dragging two windows at once doesn't work (although I saw that in two different old demos earlier). But using a second mouse pointer to interact with a second window without the focus going from the first window is possible. This is also true for keyboard focus which is a bit buggy and sometimes still keeps the focus on the first window even if you click with the first mouse pointer into another window. Unfortunately this window manager also has other quite annoying bugs that occur regularly

[@------country-boy-------]

Thanks for the video!!! I use compiz rotate desktop cube with opacity lowered so videos can be viewed from behind. Using ubuntu mate on pc and laptop. Linuz 4 ever !!! Sometimes the window decorator fails however ( maximise, minimise buttons not displayed if too many windows are open)

[@boo_1096]

My first experience with Linux was using compiz as I started using Ubuntu back in 2017 right before Unity was abandoned. I noticed, though, that there was an issue with my nouveau drivers (at the time I didn't know about nouveau/nvidia and just ran whatever came with the system) which made Compiz peg the CPU at 100% usage. After that I switched desktop environment and didn't have the issue. Just a couple of days later they switched to GNOME with 17.10 and I probably haven't used Compiz since.

[@jkghusngfyh8wrythgvj]

I used Compiz at the time... Two things about it: 1st - was the first to have multiple workspaces (Im almost sure...) 2nd - the level of customization was really high, specially compared with the posibiities on mac and windows at the time... in fact I think that I used Compiz in a Windows xp machine in mid/late 2000s

[@harrytsang1501]

Multiple workspaces already exist in KDE 0.1 in 1997, which was a rebrand of CDE from 1993. You can see the four workspaces in the center bottom panel

[@AndreyLepher]

I miss My Karmic so much i had all plugins installed and fully working back in the day i wish they coul;d bring all them effects back that would work amazing with all new powerfull hardware out there

[@MichaelTavares]

thats some serious nostalgia, I haven't heard the name compiz in years!

[@eveypea]

I used to use Compiz with the Gnome 2 DE on Ubuntu back in the early days. When Canonical shifted to Unity, they built their own compositor called "Mir" and it sucked by comparison. Mir was designed for use across multiple form factors with convergence in mind. It was so deeply rooted in Unity that eventually one couldn't use Ubuntu with Compiz anymore. Then Canonical gave up and went to Gnome 3 whihc ran on X11 and tentively on Wayland. By then I had started using other distros and for a long while really enjoyed LMDE

[@anandr1290]

I am using compiz + KDE on Fedora 37 (latest release) today - 5th Jan 2023. Works great. I had stopped using compiz back in ~2012 i guess.

[@thedananimal]

Yes, I used to use compiz. Was just wondering wtf happened to compiz. It was actually pretty great

[@geoffk777]

Compiz is in the AUR, (both 0.8 and 0.9) so if you use Arch (or Endeavor or Manjaro) it's easy to install. I have 0.9 on my Arch and Manjaro laptops and they run flawlessly under KDE. They work with regular Intel graphics too--even on 6 or 7 year old laptops. Spinning a cube with KZbin and CMatrix running, with no delays or glitches on this older hardware is very impressive. 0.9 is still getting updates too. Not really essential software, but still cooler than anything that Windows or MacOS is doing in 2024.

[@ab.3800]

Compiz was the reason I first tried Linux in like 2007 all the Linux vs windows vista videos

[@corrosionoc69]

compiz was great. It was crazy flashy when nothing else was. Windows just had the glass effects and some blur when compiz was burning away open windows, exploding windows, the desktop cube /multi workspaces....it was fun just to watch the animations.

[@hansdampf2284]

Nah when compiz came out when win xp was king, so win had basically nothing but some colors :D

[@purplecatty]

I'm using Compiz now. I have it installed in MX Linux and I love eye candy. I remember 10 years ago or so, I had to install updated graphic driver for Nvidia GEForce 9400 graphic card to enable compiz at full mode (was using Ubuntu at that time). I managed to get my friends drooling all over Compiz eye candies. I told them that it's far better than Windows and Apple. Sabayon Linux have pre-installed Compiz and it starts it when you boot up. Now my current system with Asus Strix ATI 370 graphic card easily handle full blown Compiz (Asrock 970 Supreme 4 with AMD Althon Black Edition 3500 (6 cores) and 16 gb ddr ram.)

[@davedumas0]

i like to use the emerald theme manager as it allows me to change the entire look of my desktop environment if i wanted my close windows button to look like ME i can

[@thenextpoetician6328]

When I restarted on Linux a few years ago, I put together a Compiz setup just for kicks. If Picom was a bit more of a circus act might be interesting, but I'm an end user only, so there it is.

[@UltimatePerfection]

Now Kwin has everything that compiz did.

[@hansdampf2284]

At around 2008 maybe this was the shit. Showing windows xp users how you have virtual desktops via a desktop cube was just downright jaw dropping for them. :D then you start burning the windows and letting it rain in the desktop It all went to hell when Gnome 3 came out. I know there’s wayfire now and I already tried it, but idk this stuff just doesn’t fit into my world anymore. :< Wayfire isn’t just a spiritual successor. Wayfire has the exact same animation, it has the exact same configuration window like compiz. Wayfire IS compiz on wayland. You can even use the same hack to set some mouse button alone as a hot key for an animation :D

[@zerotheory941]

I used Compiz on MATE for years.

[@JayRCela]

Yes I used Compiz back when it was popular for a little while, it had several features I really liked and looked very cool. :_) / thanks for the video

[@drishalballaney6590]

I love how the white board says, Ubuntu more like Nobuntu

[@gerrykola]

I think you may be missing on project WayFire. It's modern Wayland + Compiz. Tried it a few months ago on Garuda Linux & found it a bit lacking on the Desktop Environment, but compositor remains awesome. To this day compiz offers some features not yet found on other DEs like binding multi-key + mouse-events to compositing, custom commands or WM actions.

[@firstlast-tf3fq]

We need a Wayland compositor with the compiz eye-candy philosophy

[@Frank_Nemo]

'Compiz The Greatest Compositor Nobody Uses'......which explains why the latest Mint Mate Vanessa comes pre-installed with, er, Compiz. There once was a time when people made feeble clicknait vids on KZbin and still do.

[@BendyLemmy]

Yes, maybe 2007 Ubuntu Gnome2 desktop with compiz - if I middle clicked the desktop, it receded to display the 'cube' wrapping the desktops. Windows could stand off the desktop (as defined) and the backdrop looked huge - and scrolled by as you rotated the cube. If your video was playing with mirrored text, you could watch it through the transparency in the cube from the opposite side... I looked at Wayfire, and that's a pretty nice implementation of the cube - but as far as most compiz effects are concerned they were mostly useful in that they attracted people to Linux. They were hugely impressive, but really not as effective as present/overview for switching of windows/desktops/arranging anything. I am very happy, however, that Kwin still has an option for less rigid windows and really does plenty already. It's something that brought me back to KDE, because it seemed to mature very quickly (and Compiz looks more like the useless spotty teenager that once looked so amazing).

[@alexmsmartins]

At the time Compiz brought in a lot of flashy effects, I went in (as I had done for gnome, kde and other desktop environments) and explored its options. This was around 2007. And I had a big shock when I found a scroll wheel zoom implementation that was better than anything I had ever tried. Smooth both in the screen following mouse movement, but also smooth in the zoom in and zoom out with the scroll wheel. I do not see well and actually having a good zoom system literally changed the way I use a computer and allowed me to zoom in and out constantly to see the big picture or to zoom into a part of the screen I care about. Given that most ui libraries, applications and systems do not look great when you duplicate the size of the font (even today), having Compiz available with the zoom plugin was amazing. To be clear, Windows has always been horrible in its implementation of zoom. Kde and Gone had similar problems, so I ended up using Compiz for years (with KDE and with Gnome afterwards). To be clear, the only zoom implementation that is better than Compiz (for me) is actually the MacOS (which I only found out about 10 years later anyway). And the two key reasons for that are: 1. it crashes less and 2. the hardware support for touchpad scroll wheel actually helped me not feel so much pain while constantly zooming in a computer. Sorry for the rant but, seriously, Compiz was way ahead of its time in a really practical problem that many people face when using a computer. And I have to really emphasize that and appreciate the work put into it. It changed my life, both professional and personally.

[@muellerhans]

That Fisheye zoom is really just what people need. There is a bug with multiple monitors but if I did not overlook something, the magnifier was not changed since 2008. This tells us how bad other things suck. I wrote my own wannabe replacement (Magnify, can be found on codeberg) but it is only taking images and upscaling them which means it will also take images of itself (set some values to prevent that). I want to get rid of that but looks like we need to copy a bunch of code from compiz / use opengl or so.

[@linuxdebian6534]

yes, still using the full packages of ccsm and it is so powerful on AMD and no need for any "nvidia" new haedware

[@angelplayz5783]

I use compiz and don’t turn it off while gaming and never had a FPS issue and no screen tearing In fact it feels smoother than mutter on gnome I love it!

[@uuu12343]

Those were certainly the days, I miss that word "Compiz"

I'd love to see an stable reliable compiz fork to use with dwm ❤️

[@omfgbunder2008]

I turned on wobbly windows in KDE the other day coincidentally, what a flash from the past, but its almost nauseating 😲

[@gintokisakata7490]

Still using Compiz here (standalone on Arch)! Why? No one else has the ring switcher! ^^ Well, I use the mouse a lot while browsing and stuff. You can set up and use alot of mouse activated things in compiz. So you are able to handle your PC while having a cup of tea in the other hand. Of course, hot keys are very handy, too. But do some hotkey stuff, when you have a cup of tea in one hand or a spoon for your food in front of you or if you are holding your heavy head or even di**. Honestly, hot keys are good if your hands currently are at the keyboard for writing stuff here and there. But do you do this most of the time? Me not. So having good mouse based window handling at hand is a huge plus. And some effects are really nice. I adjusted the wobbly windowsa bit so now my windows are moving preety smoothly. It just feels better that way instead of those stiff windows elsewhere. Desktop switching, window scaling, closing effects and so on, everything you can adjust pretty accurate in Compiz while on other window managers there are far less options to configure your stuff to your likings. So I got a smooth handling with my mouse (pro tipp: use easystroke, too). Thats why I use Compiz. Of course, tiling window management is handy, too. Would be great if Compiz would integrate stuff like that. And its true, some effects are just bling bling. But you dont have to use them but only the handy ones. I want to try Walyand, but the Compiz there (Wayfire) is by far less funcctional yet (and includes useless things like docks and bars that should be seperate applications). So I hope Compiz will be functional until I get the same experience I have now with Wayland. Ah yes, and I hate Gnome and dont like KDE.

[@justinhall3243]

I remember hacking compiz. I loved my spinning cube.... for about 5 minutes before I realized it had no productive value.

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

10:39 EGL is a cross-platform API to allow an app to get an OpenGL context tied to a GUI window. Curious: how do things like “Gallium” and “Linux DRI/DRM” fit into this?

[@luckyowl10]

damn, all that just flew over my head, I don't think I ever used Compiz

[@hansdampf2284]

Give it a try, there is Fedora with compiz and Garuda Linux with wayfire :)

[@luckyowl10]

@@hansdampf2284 ok, will try Fedora with compiz on a live stick, the effects sound fun, even if I wouldn't use them on a daily basis. I like speed and responsiveness more than fancy animation

[@twistidclowns]

🔥🔥 Compiz fusion 🔥🔥was how I roped friends into linux.

[@9a3eedi]

Wobbly windows are the best thing ever invented in computing

[@thedude6131]

I was just looking for a guide how to install it, because my linux looks kinda lame atm 😅

[@robertcoyle9071]

I did the spinning cubes and elaborate conky scripts. They were fun but how much time did you spend looking at an empty desktop anyway? Today I use XFCE with a string of system widgets on my top panel to keep an eye on my systems information or have bpytop running in a terminal.

[@BernardoHenriquez]

I still use it as stand alone wm, i love it and it work on low power pcs then other compositors out there, kwin it a wanna be compiz :P

[@oneofthesixbillion]

I've been wondering. I loved compiz.

[@obake6290]

I never used Compiz myself. I remember hearing about it a lot back in 2008 or so. At the time it was in kind of a similar position to Enlightenment. It had a niche, and that niche was being pretty. People that used it loved it, and liked to look down their noses like "why would you use such pedestrian things like KDE or Gnome?" But most people didn't care because DE's were good enough, having gotten the simple things like transparency working by that point.

[@robertcoyle9071]

Anything beat the bland and boring XP or aero. All of us played with the eye candy and over the top conky scripts back in the day

[@hiru92]

i loved its cube effects ☺️

[@JOELwindows7]

Compiz was the coolest thing that makes linux experience the coolest than Windows. It had crazy effects we can turn on and makes it worth showing that Linux is way cooler than Windows. Yeah. That time.

[@1945ramirez1]

I installed compiz on my on my test VM and i do miss it. By the way Linux Mint ships compiz with its Mate and Xfce spins

[@ericjohnson5990]

The mate spin of Fedora uses compiz

[@benjy288]

The problem with compiz version 0.9 is its slower to render windows, it has the XFCE problem where it renders the window decoration first and then renders the rest of the windows contents, if you disable window decorations this problem goes away and windows are rendered instantly, but that's not very practical, compiz 0.8 doesn't have that issue, but it suffers from screen tearing issues on my intel laptop, unless you don't use the modesetting driver but then performance suffers, especially in firefox where its basically unusable, luckily we still have Kwin, its the best window manager by far, you can even use it in other desktop environments, it goes great with LXQT.

[@shadowblack5455]

Smh should’ve been rewritten in rust

[@Mantikal]

MS & Apple will one day add that Compiz effect to their OS - and market it as the latest thing - like all the other stuff they've stolen from the Open Source community. Their respective fan people will be going "Oooohh, AAhhhh" and I'll be laughing my ass off.

[@zzco]

I don't use Compiz anymore because I use KDE, like a sane person. #opinion

[@martinus_mars]

I don't think you mentioned this, but Fedora still ships Compiz with MATE

[@jaxjax7318]

Compiz my baby since 08

[@vexsimp]

I'll give compiz a try. I'm really sick of minimalistic and simple design, so this will definitely complement my skeuomorphic look and feel.

[@SIMULATAN]

Try picom, it's actually maintained

[@vexsimp]

@@SIMULATAN I was already using picom, but really loving how compiz is working :P I'm just trying different stuff in a secondary PC. In my main PC I use KDE.

[@SIMULATAN]

@@vexsimp picom is a fork of compiz, so things *should* work about the same

[@autistadolinux5336]

@@SIMULATAN no, its was a fork from compton (which itself was a fork of xcompmgr).

[@SIMULATAN]

@@autistadolinux5336 oh my, I confused the too.. lol