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

It is a Linux distribution. You can pick nearly any one that you would like, and then you'll install this in that OS. There are some links within that video page.

 

and how do I get the thing with the animation and stuff??

ive downloaded the file from ubuntu.com
its an ISO file. Do i write it to a CD and boot it from the CD to try it?

 

Ok, so it has some nice looking desktop animations, so what ? When it comes to doing real work there is lot more to an OS than some fancy desktop animations. Besides, those windows managers have a long way to go in terms of stability and ease of use (installation rather... ). I haven’t used Compiz Fusion, but I have Beryl, it is still very buggy.

 

Again, to be fair, a number of those desktop animations, etc. are more just about showing what it is capable of, not so much about doing real work.

I think these things aren't mutually exclusive though. The "Focus Effect" animation, for example, is genuinely useful, as is the "Group Tabs" functionality.

Personally, I find OS X's Expose/Spaces (and the comparable Expo plug-in in Compiz Fusion) to be extraordinarily useful, besides also being a nifty "effect". Being able to expand out all of your open windows at once and quickly jump to them, rather than older methods of getting to the right window (choosing from a menu of open Windows, switching between open apps, etc.) has been one of the really nice improvements in GUIs I've seen lately.

And that's really what it's all about; not eyecandy for the sake of eyecandy, but things that actually can help with doing "serious work".

 

The thing is, those aren't recent developments. The Expose thing is, but spaces (originally known as "virtual desktops") have been around for... 20 years? Longer? And finally now people are starting to realize how powerful they are.

 

Right. The new thing about Spaces isn't virtual desktops itself (as you've noted, they've been around for a long time). It's more the concept of expanding them out to see them all visually at the same time; when I've used virtual desktops in the past on Linux, this wasn't really possible...... there is a benefit to being able to see the full desktops side by side (as opposed to the small icon representations).

Combined with Expose, the ability to also expand out and see all windows, move them around from desktop to desktop visually, etc. (I know you can do this by dragging a window onto another virtual desktop in the traditional method), it does make them a bit more usable.

Which is why I'm also glad to see this in Compiz Fusion.

It's a significant improvement to working with windows and multiple virtual desktops.

-Zadillo

 

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You'll have to partition your hard drive and install Ubuntu to that partition. You'll then have to install video drivers, and then you'll have to install Compiz fusion. This isn't really an easy or short task, so you might want to think before you start doing this on a whim. There are a lot of guides that you can follow at ubuntuforums.org.

The same could be said about Vista. I would even brand Aero buggy for the most part, as random applications force it off, it causes issues with full screen viewing, and animations can be slow on lower-end graphics hardware. And honestly, who really uses Flip3D? Sometimes, it's not just about increasing productivity, but moving things ahead for the moment until you can do something useful. The beauty of Beryl/Compiz IMO is that you can turn it off and you don't get stuck with something terribly ugly.

 

Forget going with Ubuntu. You can get beryl running if you install it, but if you just want to see what it's like (without changing your computer), try this ISO of Sabayon, which will show you what Beryl is like from a LiveCD. Download it, burn it as an image to a CD, and then boot from it, and see what you think.

 

I cant get Ubuntu to install.
Windows Vista wont make the partition for me.
I have 30 GB Free and I want to make a partition of 20GB for Ubuntu. I went to Disk Management and it seems the maximum size I can make a partition of is 280MB.
I even tried GPartition but no help.

 

thats odd gparted should be able to partition the disk corecctly

 

What filesystem is in the Vista partition? The only partitions I've ever resized were FAT32. I've never tried NTFS and I know at least at some point in the past, most (if not all) of the tools could not deal with resizing an NTFS partition.

Did you try Googling for it?

 

There's a tool called "ntfsresize" that's on most LiveCD's and such that will allow you to resize an ntfs filesystem, and then you do the partition change after that.

 

where is a good tutorial or information to configure this with ubuntu. i knwoit already comes with it but i dont know how to use the plugins.

 

ok ive already installed ubuntu through wubi.....
although i looks really buggy

 

That is....awesome..

 

Nice ....... New Options

The stuff gets old quick thought. The option where all workspace are lined up together is sweet and might be useful instead of just being eyecandy.

 

I got Beryl running about a month ago, was fun to play with but not that stable as an every-day desktop. This CompizFusion looks even nicer!!

Can't wait till it's production-ready stable!! Nearly every new PC just about has hardware 3D acceleration either ATI or NVIDIA, so the timing is right.

 

After a few tweaks, I've found that Beryl is actually rock-solid. It's mostly with nvidia's drivers that have some issues with different rendering paths. I keep meaning to post the info if I find it again...

 

Beryl is stable for me too. But I still never figured out why it crashes every time I try to use record desktop. Besides that it's flawless, just not useful (at least not yet)

 

I've never had a problem with Beryl/Compiz stability. FGLRX on the other hand...

*Waits patiently for 3D open source drivers*