Vista and OS X GUI's can't touch THIS!

This is a video demonstrating an alpha version of CompComm (name pending), the GUI interface tool for Linux. Its the work of the now merged Beryl and Compiz studio's.

Microsoft and Apple Can't Touch this.

Just makes me wonder, why one of them hasn't bought them out.

 

That's freaking awesome!

 

-DirtCheap (15 hours ago) in comments


nuff said

 

Unfortunately, being ALPHA software, Compiz Fusion is a bit of a hit and miss affair. I can get it running on my machine, works perfectly and stably, but I lose window decorations.

Still, it's another way to wow my friends.

 

Looks like good progress is being made. I look forward to trying this out when its more stable. Thanks for the link!

 

Couple of screenshots from me.





Initial impressions are excellent. The new control center is good too.

 

Man, linux just got more atractive. If only full windows gaming emulation (at least in a virtual machine, like Vmware is promising) was available, i would switch.

 

Nice, but I'm not sure why one would say "Vista and OS X GUI's can't touch this".

I'm going to do a running commentary watching through each plug-in demonstrated in the video:

-------

The first plug-in, Expo, is essentially like Expose (and an adoption of the Spaces functionality in Leopard, combining Expose with virtual desktops).

The 3D cube stuff is cool (one of my co-workers uses this, but it seems like he mainly uses it more to show off; he doesn't really use it day-day). It's one of those sort of nifty effects, to be sure, but I don't think Vista or OS X are specifically lacking because they don't do this. Personally even with Compiz Fusion I would still use the "Expo" plug in to view all virtual desktops at once rather than worrying about navigating a 3D cube.

The Scale plugin again is basically the expanded OS X Expose view.

Ring Switcher is a neat effect, and I'll give it credit for being more useful than Vista's Flip3d (which stacks the windows on top of each other, so you can't see everything). But again, not sure it specifically blows OS X or Vista away.

The Focus Effect: Dodge is interesting.

Zoom Plugin is sort of useful too (similar to some of the "zoom" Accessibility functions, but more for mainstream use).

The demonstration of the realtime nature of the windows is interesting, but not something that OS X and Vista don't have.

The Window Preview plug-ins are nice, although I don't see how that blows away the window previews that Vista does in its taskbar.

Firepaint is cool, although as a GUI function I'm not sure it's relevant really to a comparison with OS X or Vista. It's something I'd chalk up again to a cool effect/toy - not complaining about that, and it's nifty, but I don't think OS X or Vista are lacking because they don't have it.

The Annotate Plugin looks like it could be cool, although I'm not clear on the extent of the functionality.

The Wobbly Plugin is sort of cool too, although again along the lines of eyecandy (again, I'm not knocking eyecandy; like the "genie" effects in OS X, they do contribute to the overall user experience). It is one of those other features that seems more like something to be used for fun though, rather than something that actually helps the user.

Blur Plugin looks nice I guess (although not sure that it blows away Vista's "glass" effects).

The Group Tab plug-in is actually genuinely interesting - it's the first thing I've seen here that is genuinely unique/interesting that Vista and OS X don't do, and I can actually see it as being genuinely useful. I will give them Kudos on this one....... I just wish this demonstration had more of this (i.e. genuinely interesting new UI concepts).

I'll actually go so far as to say that Group Tab is one of the most interesting and cool GUI functions I've seen since Expose.

Water Effect is cool, although same comments as with Fire Paint.

ADDHelper is also a cool idea, and nice to see integrated into the GUI (one of my Mac owning friends has an app that does something similar, blacking out everything behind the active window, but it's not part of OS X itself).

------------

I don't mean to come across as negative. I actually use Ubuntu, and like it a lot, and think it's great to see how Compbiz Fusion has come along.

But I really have to disagree with the general premise behind the title of this post, that the Vista and OS X GUI's can't touch this. For the large part, these are implementations of GUI concepts in OS X and Vista, combined with some unique GUI ideas and effects (the 3D cube desktop, fire paint, water effects) that seem to perhaps be more useful for showing off the capabilities of the GUI than for day to day use.

I will definitely give it credit for bringing the Expose/Spaces combination of Leopard to Linux (and yes, I do know that Spaces itself is of course an implementation of virtual desktops that have been around for a long time...... but I think it is still nice to see the unique aspects of Spaces brought back to Linux as well).

The biggest thing I will give it credit for is the Group Tab functionality, which I think is genuinely innovative and unique and interesting, and offers a lot of really nice USEFUL functionality.

But again, I disagree with the premise that this completely blows away what OS X or Vista have (or are capable of).

 

The thing is, the interface has all the good things about Vista and OSX, and you can choose which effects you want, and which ones you want. If the wobbly effect annoys you, you don't have to use it! That is why this is so much better than Vista/OSX. You can make it your own, and it can have either more or less than what the "mainstream" systems provide.

That being said, you seem to think that almost all of the effects are "interesting", they're a superset (and more) of Vista and OSX's features, they're more configurable, and you still think that isn't blowing away what the competition is capable of?

 

I don't disagree with this. The heavily customizable nature is nice, no question (although many of the effects, etc. in Vista and OS X can also be turned off/disabled or just not used).

I'm not sure what you mean about the second one. I said some of the features were interesting (I'm mainly trying to be polite - there are things that are interesting but I'm not sure of how much practical use they are - and again, I don't think they are there for practicality, but more to show off). The 3D Cube, for example, is cool, but I'd never use it over the Expo/Virtual Desktops stuff (which is pretty much identical to Expose/Spaces in OS X, for example). The 3D Cube looks cool and works great as a demonstration of what its capable of, but I don't think it's as practically useful as just layout out all your desktops in a 2D space (which is why I'm glad they've adopted this concept).

But no, I don't see how this "blows away" what OS X and Vista have (not to mention what they are capable of, as the GUI toolkits of both OS X and Vista can handle these things as well).

I am acknowledging that it looks very good, that it adds to Linux many interesting and nice GUI effects and capabilities - but how can I say it "blows away" the competition when for the most part these are mostly things that both Vista and OS X do?

The fact that you can turn off "wobbling" for example doesn't blow me away (why should it?) any more than the fact that OS X's "genie" effect can be turned off.

Again, the biggest thing I'm disagreeing with is this idea that OS X and Vista "can't touch this" - i.e. neither OS X or Vista can do the things demo'd in this video. The GUI toolkits of both OS X and Vista can do this, and many of the things these abilities are used for are essentially direct imitations.

Most of them aren't really "supersets"; I give credit to the Ring Switcher for fixing the obvious flaw in Windows Vista's Flip3D, for example (that windows are stacked on top of each other), but that doesn't mean Vista CAN'T do that; it's just that it doesn't based on how MS has decided to implement Flip3D.

Minor enhancements though don't particularly "blow me away".

-Zadillo

 

Eh, where are Light's glowing red eyes?

 

You can do things in OSX that you can't in Vista. You can do things in Vista that you can't in OSX. You can do it all under Linux. And more. If that's not "blowing away" and a superset the capabilities of either of the incumbents, I don't know what is. Hence, my comments. And yes, it does mean that they can't do it... if it's not programmed into Vista, it can't do it. The hardware and drivers may support the actions, but that's a different statement. Vista does NOT support the ring switcher, period. I can't explain it any clearer. BTW, the "cube" is just a visual representation of virtual desktops (mine has 5 sides). If you want them all laid out flat, you can use the Expo plugin. You cannot make those choices under OSX or Vista, they've already been made for you.

 

OK, fair enough.

The thing is, at least on the OS X side, there isn't that much from the Vista side that I want (i.e. i.e. it doesn't really bother me that there isn't a Flip3D equivalent). I'm not sure what you're getting at when you say Vista doesn't support the "ring switcher"; I know.......... it has Flip3D instead, which I already said I think is inferior to the "ring switcher", but it's not like it's fundamentally different.

It sounds like we are arguing about two different things though.

Yes, I agree it is nice to have all these UI elements in one place (although if I was on OS X, that would satisfy me just fine - not having Flip3D or the "ring switcher" doesn't really make a whole lot of difference to me. It is nice to be able to customize them like you can.

But it doesn't "blow me away". I get the impression you didn't read everything I said (you explained to me that if I didn't want to use the 3D Cube, that I could use the Expo plug-in, which I already acknowledged - you made it sound like I didn't know that).

I don't think the premise of this original post was about the customizable nature of Compiz Fusion, or even that it was the "best of both worlds". These are fair points.

The premise of this thread, as I read it, was that Vista and OS X "can't touch this" - implying that these effects are things that Vista and OS X don't do.

The point I am arguing is that there isn't really anything here either OS can't do, and in most cases, don't do.

Why should I be blown away that they've implemented Expose/Spaces, or live previews of items in the dock/taskbar?

They are neat, and it is nice to see them in Linux, but they are largely unoriginal.

As I said, I give credit for the Group Tab functionality, which IS original and unique and pretty cool in my opinion.

Again, I hate to keep arguing this point, but I am taking issue with the claim that Vista and OS X can't/don't do the things in this video. I'm not talking about the specific configuration options for Compiz (which are notable).

So please, I'm really not getting why you think I should be "blown away" here. It looks nice, it's very interesting.

If this thread was called "Look at the cool stuff that is in Compiz", I wouldn't have even said anything other than "Yeah, this does look cool". But the claim was made that this blows away Vista and OS X's GUI effects and capabilities, and I don't see anything to really support that.

-Zadillo

 

Just FYI, UNIX has had virtual desktops for forever; Microsoft and Apple are just now catching up to that. If, however, you are referring to the GUI effects of having them all on the screen at once, yeah, that is like OS X's Spaces concept, but again, Compiz has been doing this for a while (in the Cube).

I really like the Group Tab plugin; I could see myself using this a lot in the real world. Many of the effects are simply rehashed from Beryl, and others like Fire Paint are pretty much worthless if you ask me. I've never been a big fan of the cube either besides just playing. But, like Beryl, I doubt I will use it unless a)it starts playing nicely with nVidia's suspend/resume functions, or b) the majority of distros start having suspend2, etc built in that can take care of this.

 

Thanks, yes, I do know that virtual desktops have been around for a very long time. I went out of my way to say I knew that, and wasn't trying to claim that Apple invented virtual desktops - merely that they did come up with the specific Spaces implementation, as well as Expose (neither of which I had seen implemented before).

I'm not criticizing them for this; I am glad to see these ideas adopted.

Again, I really am trying to avoid sounding like I'm being critical of Compiz itself - I think it looks great, and would look forward to using it in Ubuntu. The only thing I've really been disagreeing with here is this idea that this somehow totally blows away OS X and Vista.

 

I'm pretty sure that there has been an "unfold" function to the cube for quite some time, however, it wasn't implemented in quite the way we saw there when I tried it last (it was more like you locked the cube's vertical axis and didn't apply the 3d effect of the corner of the cube).

Another aspect to the customization argument is that one could write new plugins provided you have the programming knowledge. Even if you don't have the skill to create something like this, you could potentially add something that someone else has created. The possibilities are truly open-ended. I'm pretty certain that OS X and Vista don't have this similar plugin-style structure.

 

Both OS X and Vista certainly do allow third party developers to create modifications to the UI, including ones that use their special effects, etc.

OS X and Vista both have API's and toolkits available to their graphics architectures (and Core Animation will be available to devs in OS X 10.5). There isn't anything preventing UI modifications/add-ons to either OS.

-Zadillo

 

But none of them compare to what Compiz has been doing. I wonder why.

 

Having used all three extensively - I can safely say it does indeed blow them away.

It makes my desktop fun, if nothing else can be said.

 

What is there in Compiz that the GUI effects and functions in OS X and Vista don't compare to, exactly, other than the 3D Cube?

Most of the other things shown, off, as I said, have direct parallels (Expo compared to Expose/Spaces, for example).

Or if you're making some point about why no-one has programmed a 3D Cube thing for OS X or wobbly windows for Vista; who knows? Perhaps it's an issue of demand?

As it is, as I understand it, the 3D Cube, wobbly windows, etc. are really designed more to show off what Beryl/Compiz/etc. can/could do. Just like various demos shown off for Vista and OS X.

-Zadillo

 

If you don't mind my asking, could you elaborate on that? Compared to OS X and Vista, what specifically about Compiz (or Beryl, etc.) blows them away, in your opinion?

One thing I'll acknowlede of course is that Mac users won't be able to actually use Spaces, for example, until Leopard comes out in October.

 

"Again, I really am trying to avoid sounding like I'm being critical of Compiz itself - I think it looks great, and would look forward to using it in Ubuntu. The only thing I've really been disagreeing with here is this idea that this somehow totally blows away OS X and Vista."

"Having used all three extensively - I can safely say it does indeed blow them away. It makes my desktop fun, if nothing else can be said."

Somehow, I agree with both Lysander and Zadillo; the effects look like fun (Beryl looks great every day), but sometimes you have to stop playing around, roll up your sleeves and create something very functional. The fire writing is an example of this "fun" stuff. The "Expose" plugin or whatever it's called is, IMO, a new approach to managing virtual desktops; and I like it even more because I don't necessarily have to use it.

 

The thing that blows Vista and OSX away for me is that the linux eye candy is free and open source.

You don't have to spend a penny on it, and if you want to you could grab the entire codebase and modify it yourself and then redistribute it. That's something that neither OSX or Vista can even come close to matching.

Sam

 

That's certainly a fair point.

-Zadillo

 

Also, Beryl used to run at full speed on my old Mobility Radeon 7500. I doubt the same could be said for Aero.

 

What i'm saying is there is no unified control base for visual effects for Vista or OS X, and neither do they provide the debt and scope of things available from Compiz/Beryl.

One in particular visual eyecandy I liked was the windows going underneath others when swapping between them.

 

K, fair enough.

I agree, the Focus Effect is a nice touch.

-Zadillo

 

Well, just the simple fact that I can make any program as transparent as I want puts it miles ahead of the other systems. Having a lower resolution screen, it's really useful to be able to blow up a video full size, then make my word processor 25% opaque over the top of it. So I can type away and still watch my video without squinting to read the subtitles.

 

Fair enough, that makes sense, and that is a good point that it's part of the fundamental GUI kit, as opposed to an add-on.

Just in case you're interested, there's an open source OS X utility called SetAlphaValue that lets you turn on transparency functions for any app (as opposed to just apps that specifically have it enabled):

http://lifehacker.com/software/feat...sparent-windows-with-setalphavalue-267002.php

Afloat is another option that does something similar:

http://millenomi.altervista.org/Afloat/

Just figured you might be interested in these so you can make use of this concept in OS X as well.

(I'm also mentioning these since there were claims above that people somehow couldn't do these kinds of modifications to the UI with OS X or Vista)

 

Well, with a month off, I don't think I'll be using OS X that often. I can only use it in the Mac labs at uni, because I can't afford a Mac.

 

Gotcha, sorry, I was mixing you up with someone else.

Either way, I figured those might at least still be of interest to the people who were saying it wasn't possible for third party devs to create UI mods like that.

 

Absolutely, if I was stuck with OS X, I'd definitely check it out.

Just like http://chsalmon.club.fr/index.php?en/Download#Yodm3D is fun for Windows users.

 

I must say I share zadillo's reservations about the title of this thread. That's hype. I hate hype, no matter where it comes from. I'm excited that someone's working on eye candy for Linux.

But here's the deal. I can go out there buy a Mac and right out of the box, the eye candy is going to work flawlessly. (Yes, it has been my experience with the Macs I've used that it worked flawlessly.) Can't say the same for Vista right now I think.

But anyway, on Linux things are far less polished. Ubuntu ships with compiz but I'm lucky if it does not freeze within a few hours of turning it on so I don't use it anymore. Now we have an alpha release of a piece of software destined to replace compiz. Not only is it alpha but that's not something I can get to run out of the box by any means.

Until it is stable and runs out of the box, this is non-entity as far as I'm concerned.

 

I won't even go that far though. Again, I use Ubuntu at work and like it a lot, and like to see these effects and UI additions (more the generally day-to-day useful stuff like Group Tabs and Expo). The fact that it's still in development, etc. and not necessarily as "cut and dry" as the built in stuff in OS X and Vista I think is just the nature of things while they're still being developed, and I wouldn't criticize it for that.

I am sorry because I think all my arguing in this thread made it sound like I thought this stuff wasn't any good.

All I really was taking issue with was the title/premise of the thread.

-Zadillo

 

I'm willing to go that far because I'm sick and tired of the shoddy quality that some of the Linux distributions are willing to inflict upon their users. In the past 2-3 years I've become much less forgiving about "experimental" software. My stance now is that I don't want to use technology demos. So yeah, as far as I'm concerned, they are non-entities until they are released in a stable form.

That's why I very seriously considered switching to Mac recently. What I'm interested in is to get work done. If I'm writing a paper on the epistemological, ontological and soteriological aspects of the two truths in Nagarjuna's Mulamadhyamakakarika, I just want to write the darn paper and not have to reboot or restart X every 3 hours because the "eye candy" module froze my computer.

 

I don't know, I still use a Mac as my primary system, but I also have been using Ubuntu on my second computer at work for about a year now, and have been really impressed with how stable it has been (although granted, I am not running it with Beryl/etc. since I don't have a 3D card installed on my PC).

Can't speak for the other distros, but I've really been impressed by Ubuntu at least, in terms of the goal of just having a solid desktop OS that works well without requiring a lot of fiddling, etc.

-Zadillo

 

Right, instead of switching to Mac, I've switched from Debian and its insane release schedule to Ubuntu and its intelligent release schedule. That took care of most of my annoyances.

 

I'll agree that I like having stuff like Aero and Core Animation working right out of the box on a machine, and I hope my replacement "every day" laptop will be a Macbook after Leopard is released. But I have to say that at least Ubuntu (or PCLinuxOS) doesn't enable Compiz by default. It's installed and you have the option, but it tells you in advance that it is experimental and unstable and nobody is forcing you to click "OK." This is just different from Microsoft or Apple, especially Microsoft's approach of just scrapping all the big ideas for another set amount of time.

 

I assume you run an nvidia card? It's actually not Beryl or Compiz doing anything wrong or being unstable, it's NVIDIA's driver's not being quite right: http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-357835.html, http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=86253 and http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=58498

I have had Beryl running on Feisty for the last week or so, and it hasn't locked up since I did some tweaks to the way that Beryl renders... I'll post that tomorrow or something.

 

Nope, ATI card. ATI is renowned for their lack of support but now you're telling me that "NVIDIA's driver's not being quite right". Yay!!!!

Please do post. I'm glad there are solutions and I'm looking forward to the day those solutions will be integrated in Ubuntu so that with only a click I can turn the eye candy on without seeing Xorg turn to poop after a few hours.

 

The problem is that it's new features stuff. OpenGL is old hat, but the compositing and such, it takes a balance of capabilities between the kernel, the drivers, the windowing system and the X server. If any of those are missing, you get issues. Seems as though most of the issues I linked to have been fixed with the kernels available for Feisty and the nvidia-glx-new package in Feisty (which you want to use if you have an FX/5xxx level card or later)

 

It looks really impressive. What kind of computer -- mainly graphic card, I guess -- does one need to run the plugins in the video? Will a standard Intel graphic card work with this?
-Rasmus

 

I've used Intel's integrated graphics to drive Beryl in SimplyMepis 6.5 with absolutely no problems, worked right out of the box.

 

I've run beryl/compiz stuff on REALLY old really weak graphics. The beauty of linux eye candy is that it runs on almost anything.

 

Where can i find this new Linux OS ?? wouldn't mind giving it a whirl.

 

This is just a window manager addon you can add to any existing linux installs you have. Ubuntu has it in the package manager or you can download it from the developers web site.

 

I just wish i could have gotten compiz or berly to work properly on my go5200. The features look awesome, but also a bit excessive. But you could always just change a setting for that.

 

I know the cube one is working via a plugin for windows, the rest I havnt seen yet but I bet some of them are out there. Oh and I think the ring swicher is pretty much just like vista's 3d flip wich has also been made into a plug in for xp.

 

Except you can see the programs behind easier.

 

mannnn this is awesummmmm

If I want this OS with all these effects, from where do I get it??
Is it free?