Re: Metacity, Mutter, GNOME Shell, GNOME-2.28

[Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com>]

On Tue, 2009-03-24 at 19:42 +0100, Xavier Bestel wrote:
> On Tue, 2009-03-24 at 12:46 -0500, Jason D. Clinton wrote:
> > There is nothing good about compiz other than as a spectacle and
> > general proof of concept.
> 
> Eh, for now compiz is working and is the reference WM for linux (and
> more). gnome-shell would be the proof of concept :)
> 
> > It has myriad application compatibility
> > issues and configuring it is a usability nightmare. It tried to be
> > desktop agnostic, so now it has four configuation backends and three
> > window decorators--all of which are half-baked. The community around
> > it very nearly died about a month ago.
> 
> True, but all of this would be implementation details, sort-of.

Implementation details matter.

> > I would encourage you to try gnome-shell before you lament compiz.
> > You'll see that already it is quite functional and there's lots of
> > bling for those who care about such things. And since it's based on
> > Metacity, all the app. compatibility bugs in compiz are gone.
> 
> The problem isn't just with me - who cares ? After a few linux installs
> I can reasonably say compiz is addictive for newcomers, and these people
> don't care about configuration or backends or community behind the
> product (yet).
> 
> But I don't want to sound negative or start a flamewar at all. I'll try
> gnome-shell if it's not too time-consuming, instead of babbling.

We've spent a lot of effort making it as easy as possible. Build
instructions are on:

 http://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell

If you run into any problems, hop onto the #gnome-shell IRC channel and
ask us.

- Owen