[clug] Remember this?

[Simon Pascal Klein]

I think it depends more on the tasks of the user at hand. My workflow  
sees GIMP and Inkscape open a fair bit, with inspiration and image  
libraries open in the background. On top, I want to listen to music,  
browse the web, chat and read email—on average I’ll have ten  
applications open at any given time, and not a single one is a  
terminal. :)

I like to work with the largest amount of screen real estate available  
for the current design and because most of my design apps have palette  
windows, toolbars and a variety of other knobs and switches, having  
numerous desktops is great. Being able to toggle the transparency of  
windows also became useful. Perhaps the most useful of all was the  
ability to take a screenshot through compiz of any area I selected, at  
any time (without firing up the GIMP first). Further, the exposé-like  
reveal feature makes finding that other window so much easier.

I agree that many of the features available with compiz are entirely  
overdone—I don’t need my windows to burn and smoke when closing them,  
but there are features there that I have come to love.

I think it really does come down to what you’re doing with your  
machine. If you’re predominately running terminals then perhaps compiz  
might not be for you, whilst for others it can both make the computing  
experience more enjoyable whilst also serving a functional purpose.

Regarding the iPhone, I think don’t think it has ‘bling’ that doesn’t  
serve a purpose of some form. The iPhone could do with a few interface  
tweaks—mainly buttons being misplaced—but otherwise the animations  
provide visual feedback, which I think is vital for an interface of  
such a small form factor.


—Pascal

On 10/11/2008, at 11:37 AM, Randall Crook wrote:

> I know Michael, just growling at the inane.
>
> Yes I have tried compiz and just found  was not using enough of the  
> useful functions to justify the resources it uses. Also found that  
> on the hardware I was using it was effecting a number of other  
> applications like kaffiene and gimp. So  I turned it off.....
>
> I know, with the way things are going, they will become a standard  
> part of all OS dists. The inane and the useful and at some time I  
> will need to deal. But sometimes one should be allowed to despair at  
> the worrisome trend of society to be too wrapped up in the  
> appearance to notice the slowly rotting core.
>
> iPhone, iPod, and Vista are examples of this distraction technique...
>
> Look, Look, sparkly things.... Oh don't worry about the fact that  
> there are much better things out there.... Look at the pretties.
>
> </rant> </old fart whining> nuff sed. <--- LOL and example of  
> computing killing the literacy of the human race... :)
>
> Randall
>
> Michael Cohen wrote:
>> Randall,
>>  I too thought the whole compiz thing was eye candy. I was using
>> window maker for about 5-6 years. I gave metacity a go in the days
>> when gnome used it by default, but metacity really doesnt compare to
>> window maker lacking in even basic functionality.
>>
>> In the past year I started using compiz and I initially thought i was
>> a bit of eye candy.
>>
>> But im surprised to find that some of these effects are very very
>> useful. The window rules plugin for example can position windows in
>> specific places (I use it to run emacs in a terminal with no
>> boundaries, title bars etc so it takes the full screen). The zoom
>> plugin is very useful in presentations were you can zoon on specific
>> text. Alt tab is more useful since you can see the contents of each
>> window you tab through in real time (dont need to read title texts).
>> Most important to me is that compiz is still designed to be driven
>> 100% from the keyboard unlike other GUI frameworks. I rarely need to
>> use the mouse to switch desktops, raise windows etc. It is  
>> efficiently
>> designed.
>>
>> Granted some of the effects are fairly pointless but they are very
>> fast to run due to dedicated hardware support (im surprised how well
>> it works on bottom of the line intel chipset laptops). So its not a
>> big performance hit. It does have a memory hit though - you better be
>> running at least 2gb ram (Amazing to think of emacs these days as one
>> of the smaller apps at 23mb rss its about 15th on my machine right
>> now, with firefox and xorg 160mb each and compiz 36mb - where are the
>> days of emacs being huge and bloated?).
>>
>> Its certainly a good thing that metacity is no longer the default
>> gnome window manager.
>>
>> Michael.
>>
>> On Sat, Nov 8, 2008 at 2:50 PM, Randall Crook <rcrook at vtown.com.au>  
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Mike Carden wrote:
>>>
>>>>> Also makes you wonder how much more data from all the useful  
>>>>> scientific
>>>>> projects out there, could have been process with the wasted CPU  
>>>>> and GPU
>>>>> cycles it took to do those really useless effects.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> Yeah, you start giving people desktop effects like those, and they
>>>> might start wanting to use computers for something *other* than
>>>> processing scientific datasets. Ought to be a law against it.
>>>>
>>>> I'm just glad all those GPU designers had all those scientific data
>>>> crunchers in mind when they designed their fast and inexpensive
>>>> processors.
>>>>
>>>> And I hear now some people are wanting to use *portable* computers!
>>>> What's wrong with a proper mainframe?
>>>>
>>>> Now you kids, get offa my lawn.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>> use them for what part of benefiting the human race?
>>>
>>> Face Book?
>>> Social Networking?
>>> Web 2.0?
>>> for increasing the literacy of the human race?
>>> for bringing the world together and destroying war and hatred?
>>> for making the world such a nicer and safer place to live in?
>>> enhancing the worlds culture?
>>> enhancing true knowledge?
>>>
>>> Yes I can see how wobbly windows and cubing the transition from  
>>> one desktop
>>> to the other is making a massive difference to the human race.....
>>>
>>> Excuse me for thinking that the eye candy was nothing more than  
>>> just eye
>>> candy.
>>>
>>> Randall.
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> linux mailing list
>>> linux at lists.samba.org
>>> https://lists.samba.org/mailman/listinfo/linux
>>>
>>>
>
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---
Simon Pascal Klein
Concept designer

(w) http://klepas.org
(e) klepas at klepas.org