Re: Metacity Compositor

[Rob Adams <readams readams net>]

On Tue, 2006-10-03 at 21:18 +0100, Toby Smithe wrote:

> I had a feeling this would be the case, and I doubted inclusion as soon
> as I sent off the e-mail. I don't want a Compiz clone, so I probably
> think that doing something new is the better approach. It's just that
> there is a working infrastructure there, and it's a pity to waste it.

Compiz is really more of a technology demo than a seriously credible
contender as a main window manager for either the GNOME or the KDE
projects.  It has lots of pretty eye candy (though for me it's beyond
painfully slow), but it's not a particularly good window manager.  You
don't have to use it for very long before you notice lots of little
details about "being a window manager" that it gets wrong.

The key to success here is that we need to manage windows first, and eye
candy should be used a means to that end, rather than a goal in its own
right.  My hope is that once we have nvidia and ATI drivers with the
necessary indirect rendering support that the metacity compositor will
take off more (and we need at some point to make it so that the metacity
compositor can autodetect support and enable itself as needed rather
than requiring a compile-time option).

-Rob