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Compiz was probably the single most impactful event for desktop linux of the mid 2000's. Not that it itself made much of a difference, but the ripples affect ma

Compiz was probably the single most impactful event for desktop linux of the mid 2000's. Not that it itself made much of a difference, but the ripples affect many areas we take for granted today. A few reasons: - it put linux ahead of windows and mac in terms of appearance; - it brought many new users and most were a good mix technical and enthusiasts; - it showed the advantages of modular software; - many plugins were useful and these useful plugins influenced desktops to this day; - it was fast, stable and cool enough; - it brought many new developers; - it was an incentive for vendors to improve 3d linux drivers; - it made X.Org developers improve redirection, - it came by default on the most popular distro from 2006 to 2012. Yes, most of the effects were useless but even they helped developers and designers to decide what not to include or do in the future. It pioneered useful things like selecting an area of the screen and saving it directly to a file, useful zoom and quick visualization of non-visible windows. It also showed how important compositing was on the desktop. Although probably not in direct influence, there is a reason android, wayland and whatever comes with ChromeOS all have compositing features. At the time, there was some interesting developments and experimentation: métisse, sun's looking glass, bumptop, deskgallery... none of them was as successful as compiz. I'm proud I was myself part of it (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-X9bcrJ3TjY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-X9bcrJ3TjY) and have my name written in some of its source files to this day, even if almost nobody use it anymore.

hammock 5y ago
I dont know what Compiz is (not a linux user), but I seem to remember something like this mod existed for Windows in the 90s/00s
- mr_cyborg 5y ago
  Are you remembering Desktop Destroyer[0] perhaps? 0: http://stressreliefpig.com/games/downloadable-desktop/desktop-destroyer.html http://stressreliefpig.com/games/downloadable-desktop/deskto...
- jchw 5y ago
  WindowBlinds had some similar features, but I’m pretty sure Compiz almost immediately did far more. The state of the art third party software on Windows in the 2000s tended to try to emulate Vista Aero on XP, or skin Vista/7 differently but with similar functionality. The Molten theme from WindowBlinds 6 is somewhat reminiscent of burning windows, but I don’t think it actually did that. Maybe at some point you could burn the start menu down, I can’t remember. Some stuff, like the desktop cube, could be emulated, but not too well. On Compiz, everything was drawing during the animation, showing off the modular compositing that it enabled, whereas most desktop cube toys didn’t update the screen while rotating, making it less impressive.
  - hammock 5y ago
    Yes I think that was it! I never used it for Windows XP but I definitely used it for earlier versions of Windows.
  - nicoburns 5y ago
    WindowBlinds was ok, but the performance was pretty bad and I don't think it could live-update the windows in the expose like view. It just displayed screenshots. Compiz on the other hand was silky smooth.
  - Ambroos 5y ago
    Stardock's WindowFX is the Compiz equivalent for Windows. It still seems to exist: https://www.stardock.com/products/windowfx/ https://www.stardock.com/products/windowfx/ I remember trying it in the XP/Vista era alongside Compiz/Beryl and it was quite unstable. As a result it never reached the popularity of the (mostly usable) WindowBlinds.
    - bigmattystyles 5y ago
      Oh man, I forgot all about Stardock or how much I played Sins of a Solar Empire at one point. Talk about a game that should have been waaay more popular. I was (and still am) impressed by how Stardock made Windows Apps and Games - until I saw that, I had never realized that a mostly programming utility house could also do games and do them extremely well.
ridethebike 5y ago
I remember when Compiz was released. It was mind-blowing, its sheer awesomeness was something out of this world. "ok, Windows is done" me and my friends thought, "prepare for linux dominating the desktops". Yet ~15 years later here we are.
- marcodiego 5y ago
  I miss that feeling. Desktop moves at a much slower pace today.
  - tpmx 5y ago
    Me too. Desktop "progress" is now sadly now mostly done by Microsoft (geriatric at best) and Apple (mostly just implementing the new graphical design whims every year).
    - rapind 5y ago
      My god I wish companies would stop iterating on desktop “default” design. The only features on a Mac I use are Cmd+space and Cmd+tab. Beyond that it’s just a host. Every time they add crap I have to find and disable it all. By all means make cool stuff but also make it opt in.
      - ridethebike 5y ago
        So much this. Things I need my OS to do are: run my apps (office/browser/games), connect my devices (printers/game controllers/displays), basic file operations (copy/paste/delete) And while doing this be: secure, reliable, out of my way. All these adding people/chat/weather widgets "innovations" (looking at you, msft) make me throw my hand up in the air and ask "why", I wish they would spend that time and energy on security and reliability instead.
        distances 5y ago
        Ahh that weather widget was so bad. I had to use Windows for one project, and one day that abomination just appeared there. It rendered very badly (text didn't look at all like other taskbar elements), it was in a wrong language (???) and unnecessarily hard to remove. Felt super unprofessional, something I'd expect from browser malware.
BugsJustFindMe 5y ago
Bunch of rose-tinted hogwash, this. > It pioneered useful things like selecting an area of the screen and saving it directly to a file Pioneered? This was a standard feature on Macs since January 1997. > It also showed how important compositing was on the desktop. No, that would be the Quartz and Quartz Extreme compositors released with Mac OSX 10.0-10.2 years prior. Compiz in the mid 2000s was a mixture of catching up to established ideas and a bunch of cute but useless visual wastes of time. It didn't pioneer anything except novelty display plugins and was quickly made obsolete when people realized that wobbly transition effects got very old very fast.
- Aeolun 5y ago
  Maybe for the people that could afford to own a mac. Compiz was something I, a student could use though. And for free. Maybe it’s more accurate to say it brought it into the reach of everyone with a bit of willingness to learn how to install an obscure OS (as opposed to having a ton of money)?
  - javier2 5y ago
    Same. Apple products were so obnoxiously expensive.
- dang 5y ago
  "When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. 'That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3' can be shortened to '1 + 1 is 2, not 3." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- MarkSweep 5y ago
  Also the composited desktop Aero shipped in Windows Vista in late 2006, the same year as the initial release of Compiz. Aero was originally demoed at WinHEC 2003, for whatever that is worth. I don’t know how much these different compositing window managers inspired each other. To me it seems like there is some convergent evolution. Compositing window managers are obviously superior (no redrawing when moving windows). In the mid 2000s memory and graphics cards became cheap and powerful enough to make compositing viable.
leephillips 5y ago
What does “mid 2000's” mean? I don’t mean to be dense, I just can’t figure it out.
- timemct 5y ago
  Years 2003(ish) to 2008(ish).
  - leephillips 5y ago
    Thanks. I was being dense. The first thing I though was, “around 2500?”, which is silly.
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 5y ago
  The English-speaking world still hasn't really agreed upon a term for that decade, especially in America, where "aught" and "nought" are rarely used words. (We tend to use "zero" instead, and "the zeroes" doesn't exactly roll off the tongue.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aughts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aughts
  - _tki0 5y ago
    Yeah, at best we have the-turn-of-the-century (millennium?). Though mid-turn doesn't seem quite right either.
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  Mid '00s if you prefer. Referencing decades in two-digit form fell out of favour with the Y2K issue. Perhaps it should be resurrected. At the turn of the 20th century, fashion was to refer to "oh-eight" and such, IIRC. I don't know that the decade had a common nomenclature. I suspect there's a Wikipedia article on that somewhere.... Hrm ... not really, or at least not readily. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decade
  - jethro_tell 5y ago
    Lol was thinking this yesterday when I was explain school years to my grade schoolers. You know, 2nd grade was from 2020-2021 and third is 2021-2022. Half way through I was thinking, we could probably go back to 2 digit years now. . ..
Izkata 5y ago
The way I remember it, I never managed to get the original Compiz to work right, the Beryl fork worked out-of-the-box with no hacking around, and then Compiz Fusion (when Beryl was merged back into Compiz) lost like 95%+ of what Beryl could do.
nitrogen 5y ago
The physicality that Compiz and wobbly windows brought to the desktop was a huge boon to my productivity. Everything was low latency, high framerate, and just felt real. I could rotate my virtual desktops around and they felt like actual spatial locations for organization. I could drag windows and they felt like quasi-tangible objects, not just abstract rigid platonic rectangles. It was far more than just a gimmick, and I really miss the effects today.
- rbanffy 5y ago
  I have to say the same. It makes the computer "feel" better. It reminds me of discussions around Mac vs PC in the early days. The experience of using a Mac was more "fluid" than Windows. The Mac would draw windows faster, move the mouse faster (as in more refreshes of the cursor position per second) and that made it more comfortable to use. At the same time I also used Sun and SGI boxes regularly and the stark difference between the jerky mouse movement of the Sun and the fluid, Mac-like, movement of the SGI made the former an inferior experience (even though I liked OpenWindows over SGI's window manager whose name I forgot). I'd love to have wobbly windows back.
  - ISV_Damocles 5y ago
    If you use KDE wobbly windows are built in to its KWin compositor. :) I forget the exact details of how to get to it since I don't use KDE anymore (long-ish story), but even most of the silly things Compiz did are a configuration checkbox away in KDE.
    - JasonFruit 5y ago
      It's under Desktop Effects.
    - roenxi 5y ago
      Yeah, but it just doesn't quite manage to Compiz/Beryl feel. It is difficult to put a finger on but whoever did Compiz wobbly windows had an eye for it that the KDE devs don't. Using both, I can't imagine getting excited by KDE wobbly windows in the same way that Compiz could get a "wow!" by demoing wobbly windows -> desktop cube. It was a short, beautiful peak of Linux on the Desktop where a high was reached and then desktops just fell away from it.
godot 5y ago
I clicked on the youtube link expecting to see Compiz examples, and was extremely pleasantly surprised to hear the music of Top Racer on SNES (I believe the game might've been called Top Gear 1 in America. In Asia Top Gear was the sequel to the first Top Racer game). One of my favorite SNES sound tracks of all time.
brnt 5y ago
It was just plain fun! Nowadays, the only thing to look forward to is what functionality the Gnome devs ripped out this time...
- jbverschoor 5y ago
  But they did that back then as well. Quartz compositor and quartz extreme are older. It has always been like this.
quadrifoliate 5y ago
I instinctively expected to hear the notes of "Here Comes the Hotstepper" when I clicked on that video. I was expecting https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xC5uEe5OzNQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xC5uEe5OzNQ; which was somewhat popular to send around to show comparisons of how Compiz was so far ahead it could not just replicate Vista's interface, but could also better it in some aspects like the famous 3D cube. Thanks to you and others for working on it! Looking at the video almost 15 years later, I feel wistful for the joy that accompanied some of these desktop effects, and wonder where it has gone today.
- jaywalk 5y ago
  Shocking to see what passed as acceptable video quality back in 2007.
  - necovek 5y ago
    Without checking, I would guess it was more related to limited upload speeds: video was probably recorded at a much higher bitrate, but then uploading that...
  - chrismorgan 5y ago
    $ yt-dlp -F 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xC5uEe5OzNQ' [youtube] xC5uEe5OzNQ: Downloading webpage [youtube] xC5uEe5OzNQ: Downloading android player API JSON [info] Available formats for xC5uEe5OzNQ: ID EXT RESOLUTION FPS │ FILESIZE TBR PROTO │ VCODEC VBR ACODEC ABR ASR MORE INFO ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── sb2 mhtml 48x27 │ mhtml │ images storyboard sb1 mhtml 60x45 │ mhtml │ images storyboard sb0 mhtml 120x90 │ mhtml │ images storyboard 139 m4a │ 1.55MiB 47k https │ audio only mp4a.40.5 47k 22050Hz low, m4a_dash 140 m4a │ 4.13MiB 127k https │ audio only mp4a.40.2 127k 44100Hz medium, m4a_dash 251 webm │ 4.11MiB 126k https │ audio only opus 126k 48000Hz medium, webm_dash 17 3gp 176x144 8 │ 2.67MiB 82k https │ mp4v.20.3 82k mp4a.40.2 0k 22050Hz 144p 160 mp4 192x144 25 │ 1006.62KiB 30k https │ avc1.4d400b 30k video only 144p, mp4_dash 278 webm 192x144 25 │ 1.70MiB 52k https │ vp9 52k video only 144p, webm_dash 133 mp4 320x240 25 │ 2.01MiB 61k https │ avc1.4d400d 61k video only 240p, mp4_dash 18 mp4 320x240 25 │ 9.42MiB 290k https │ avc1.42001E 290k mp4a.40.2 0k 44100Hz 240p 242 webm 320x240 25 │ 2.81MiB 86k https │ vp9 86k video only 240p, webm_dash None of these will be the format it was originally uploaded in, but I’d guess format 133 (~61 kbps) to be the closest for the video part, at 2MB. Judging by the sound of it, the original audio bit rate was probably higher than the video bit rate!
fartcannon 5y ago
It also taught me the value of enthusiast built software. A nearly blind friend of mine was able to use Linux for music recording in Ardour (thanks again Ardour/Paul, you rock) with the ezoom function in compiz! The only problem was that it had a limit of something reasonable like 8x, but my friend often required a bit more than that. I emailed the maintainer and he added it within an hour! We were both so used to dealing with the various exploitative zoom software providers on Windows that charged an arm and a leg for support, and new features were only added in future expensive upgrades that our minds were totally blown. Thanks again, Kristian! If you ever read this, you really made our year.
jmspring 5y ago
I thought compiz was interesting and it did have an impact. That said, In the mid 2000s, Linux was better but still had issues getting video/etc configured properly (depending on what you wanted to do/your hardware). I specifically moved to OS X because video just worked.
- necovek 5y ago
  Playing videos with Xv worked well for me on Linux in early 2000s. I can't never get proper hw-accelerated video to play without bogging CPU down on my Linux laptops anymore (Thinkpads with Intel low-voltage CPUs).
  - jmspring 5y ago
    I was more a FreeBSD person at the time, slutty to try various things, but 2000s think pads and FreeBSD just worked at some point and never changed that system. Used OSX otherwise. Printers were the other Linux/OS X usage gap.
sedatk 5y ago
I think it also frontiered GPU acceleration in user interfaces too.
Nition 5y ago
You might well be right. I was at university during that time, and people would legitimately see that someone else had wobbly windows and cool effects and end up getting Linux because of it. Just looking at all the options in the Compiz window was exciting. I can have fish inside my desktop cube?
DonHopkins 5y ago
https://github.com/Schneegans/Burn-My-Windows/commit/b5f911802de95ef4d3ddf7bf6a72bec08a1763b3#diff-7439bd06ba4d14a735e17c177d8a1b82141ff2e9e059146a89f6f142536ad973L23 https://github.com/Schneegans/Burn-My-Windows/commit/b5f9118... // This effect is a homage to the good old Compiz days. However, it is implemented // // quite differently. While Compiz used a particle system, this effect uses a noise // // shader. The noise is moved vertically over time and mapped to a configurable color // // gradient. It is faded to transparency towards the edges of the window. In addition, // // there are a couple of moving gradients which fade-in or fade-out the fire effect. // https://github.com/Schneegans/Burn-My-Windows/blob/main/src/extension/FireShader.js https://github.com/Schneegans/Burn-My-Windows/blob/main/src/...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
anarazel 5y ago
Random, low confidence and trollish, theory: Compiz et al had the opposite effect. The number of different compositor / effect projects increased the already substantial fragmentation of the linux desktop world, and put a large amount of developer energy into things that didn't end up having influence over the long haul.
jdoliner 5y ago
I got into Linux largely because of how cool compiz was. Wobbly windows legit created my entire career.
oraphalous 5y ago
Also - it was just fun... I don't know why that can't be more of a consideration in modern UX.
echelon 5y ago
I was already dabbling in Linux with shared hosting for my hobbyist website, but Compiz made me lean into Linux and development full tilt. Showing friends the crazy 3D desktop, the wobbling, burning windows, and all of the other crazy customization and effects it provided gave me a kind of unique confidence and excitedness in my explorations. It was like jet fuel for learning. Bash, vim, Unix philosophy, Python - all things I got sucked into because I liked the aesthetics and promise of Linux. Lessons that outlived the window manager and paved the way for my career. Compiz couldn't have done a better job.
AtlasBarfed 5y ago
Yes, Compiz, yet another point where Linux could have grabbed massive mindshare in the desktop market, when there was massive ... what do I say ... confusion? incompetence? exhibited by Windows especially. And... it went nowhere. A shot at a truly amazing desktop that would put it even above OSX. Squandered. The desktop market is STILL, ten years after windows 8, STILL ripe for the taking.
- nsonha 5y ago
  Sorry no one gives a shit about these. The majority of users hate visual effects. Those that add useless delay into the task they are doing, tasks that in some cases are already repetitive & tedios without the delay. Same for modern web design, just egoistical style over functions. Windows won because of software written on it, OSX because of exceptional hardware that comes with the OS. Things like compliz are for nerds and inconsequential on the grand scheme of things
- herbst 5y ago
  Linux is still far superior when it comes to window managers. If you like the Windows 95 approach both Microsoft and Apple are using you have KDE/Plasma, mature, stable and full of helpful gimmicks. If you like the out of your way approach and still have all the luxury of a modern desktop (a bit like windows 8 wanted to be) there is Gnome Shell. If you don't want to waste resources just try something like openbox and if you hate desktops all together try something tiled like awesomeWM If desktops would be any argument for the average users nobody would be using windows today.
madmax108 5y ago
+1 to this. Back in the mid-late 2000s, I used to have a modded compiz theme which was heavily inspired by the Matrix, and looked absolutely spectacular. It included things like windows beind "hidden" unless you used a key-combo to "see the matrix", a bunch of animation effects, some sound effects from the movie etc. I can bet that more folks in school wanted to try out linux (This was around the time when Canonical was sending out free installation CDs to whoever wanted to try out Ubuntu) because they thought it was "cool" rather than because of any of the other philosophical or technical arguments for Linux.
herbst 5y ago
Even thought most was useless I still wait for to see native zooming coming back. For visionally impaired with high resolutions this is more relevant than ever.
secondaryacct 5y ago
I loved it then I grew to love even more low effect, dark-style simple UIs as a result of the constant slowdowns, uselessness, desktop crashes that came with compiz. But god was it cool to brag.
darthcoder1010 5y ago
I really miss this Linux era. Yeah, probably all these effects were not useful, but at least we had something innovative and fun going on in the Linux community, now the best we can hope for is to copy Apple interfaces... Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the quality of the Linux desktop of today, but I don't see anything really different from Windows/Mac apart from getting subpar support from many software/hardware vendors. Maybe is just nostalgia, or maybe I'm growing old and grumpy...

hammock 5y ago

I dont know what Compiz is (not a linux user), but I seem to remember something like this mod existed for Windows in the 90s/00s

mr_cyborg 5y ago
Are you remembering Desktop Destroyer[0] perhaps? 0: http://stressreliefpig.com/games/downloadable-desktop/desktop-destroyer.html http://stressreliefpig.com/games/downloadable-desktop/deskto...
jchw 5y ago
WindowBlinds had some similar features, but I’m pretty sure Compiz almost immediately did far more. The state of the art third party software on Windows in the 2000s tended to try to emulate Vista Aero on XP, or skin Vista/7 differently but with similar functionality. The Molten theme from WindowBlinds 6 is somewhat reminiscent of burning windows, but I don’t think it actually did that. Maybe at some point you could burn the start menu down, I can’t remember. Some stuff, like the desktop cube, could be emulated, but not too well. On Compiz, everything was drawing during the animation, showing off the modular compositing that it enabled, whereas most desktop cube toys didn’t update the screen while rotating, making it less impressive.
- hammock 5y ago
  Yes I think that was it! I never used it for Windows XP but I definitely used it for earlier versions of Windows.
- nicoburns 5y ago
  WindowBlinds was ok, but the performance was pretty bad and I don't think it could live-update the windows in the expose like view. It just displayed screenshots. Compiz on the other hand was silky smooth.
- Ambroos 5y ago
  Stardock's WindowFX is the Compiz equivalent for Windows. It still seems to exist: https://www.stardock.com/products/windowfx/ https://www.stardock.com/products/windowfx/ I remember trying it in the XP/Vista era alongside Compiz/Beryl and it was quite unstable. As a result it never reached the popularity of the (mostly usable) WindowBlinds.
  - bigmattystyles 5y ago
    Oh man, I forgot all about Stardock or how much I played Sins of a Solar Empire at one point. Talk about a game that should have been waaay more popular. I was (and still am) impressed by how Stardock made Windows Apps and Games - until I saw that, I had never realized that a mostly programming utility house could also do games and do them extremely well.

ridethebike 5y ago

I remember when Compiz was released. It was mind-blowing, its sheer awesomeness was something out of this world. "ok, Windows is done" me and my friends thought, "prepare for linux dominating the desktops". Yet ~15 years later here we are.

marcodiego 5y ago
I miss that feeling. Desktop moves at a much slower pace today.
- tpmx 5y ago
  Me too. Desktop "progress" is now sadly now mostly done by Microsoft (geriatric at best) and Apple (mostly just implementing the new graphical design whims every year).
  - rapind 5y ago
    My god I wish companies would stop iterating on desktop “default” design. The only features on a Mac I use are Cmd+space and Cmd+tab. Beyond that it’s just a host. Every time they add crap I have to find and disable it all. By all means make cool stuff but also make it opt in.
    - ridethebike 5y ago
      So much this. Things I need my OS to do are: run my apps (office/browser/games), connect my devices (printers/game controllers/displays), basic file operations (copy/paste/delete) And while doing this be: secure, reliable, out of my way. All these adding people/chat/weather widgets "innovations" (looking at you, msft) make me throw my hand up in the air and ask "why", I wish they would spend that time and energy on security and reliability instead.
      - distances 5y ago
        Ahh that weather widget was so bad. I had to use Windows for one project, and one day that abomination just appeared there. It rendered very badly (text didn't look at all like other taskbar elements), it was in a wrong language (???) and unnecessarily hard to remove. Felt super unprofessional, something I'd expect from browser malware.

BugsJustFindMe 5y ago

Bunch of rose-tinted hogwash, this. > It pioneered useful things like selecting an area of the screen and saving it directly to a file Pioneered? This was a standard feature on Macs since January 1997. > It also showed how important compositing was on the desktop. No, that would be the Quartz and Quartz Extreme compositors released with Mac OSX 10.0-10.2 years prior. Compiz in the mid 2000s was a mixture of catching up to established ideas and a bunch of cute but useless visual wastes of time. It didn't pioneer anything except novelty display plugins and was quickly made obsolete when people realized that wobbly transition effects got very old very fast.

Aeolun 5y ago
Maybe for the people that could afford to own a mac. Compiz was something I, a student could use though. And for free. Maybe it’s more accurate to say it brought it into the reach of everyone with a bit of willingness to learn how to install an obscure OS (as opposed to having a ton of money)?
- javier2 5y ago
  Same. Apple products were so obnoxiously expensive.
dang 5y ago
"When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. 'That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3' can be shortened to '1 + 1 is 2, not 3." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
MarkSweep 5y ago
Also the composited desktop Aero shipped in Windows Vista in late 2006, the same year as the initial release of Compiz. Aero was originally demoed at WinHEC 2003, for whatever that is worth. I don’t know how much these different compositing window managers inspired each other. To me it seems like there is some convergent evolution. Compositing window managers are obviously superior (no redrawing when moving windows). In the mid 2000s memory and graphics cards became cheap and powerful enough to make compositing viable.

leephillips 5y ago

What does “mid 2000's” mean? I don’t mean to be dense, I just can’t figure it out.

timemct 5y ago
Years 2003(ish) to 2008(ish).
- leephillips 5y ago
  Thanks. I was being dense. The first thing I though was, “around 2500?”, which is silly.
rrrrrrrrrrrryan 5y ago
The English-speaking world still hasn't really agreed upon a term for that decade, especially in America, where "aught" and "nought" are rarely used words. (We tend to use "zero" instead, and "the zeroes" doesn't exactly roll off the tongue.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aughts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aughts
- _tki0 5y ago
  Yeah, at best we have the-turn-of-the-century (millennium?). Though mid-turn doesn't seem quite right either.
dredmorbius 5y ago
Mid '00s if you prefer. Referencing decades in two-digit form fell out of favour with the Y2K issue. Perhaps it should be resurrected. At the turn of the 20th century, fashion was to refer to "oh-eight" and such, IIRC. I don't know that the decade had a common nomenclature. I suspect there's a Wikipedia article on that somewhere.... Hrm ... not really, or at least not readily. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decade
- jethro_tell 5y ago
  Lol was thinking this yesterday when I was explain school years to my grade schoolers. You know, 2nd grade was from 2020-2021 and third is 2021-2022. Half way through I was thinking, we could probably go back to 2 digit years now. . ..

Izkata 5y ago

The way I remember it, I never managed to get the original Compiz to work right, the Beryl fork worked out-of-the-box with no hacking around, and then Compiz Fusion (when Beryl was merged back into Compiz) lost like 95%+ of what Beryl could do.

nitrogen 5y ago

The physicality that Compiz and wobbly windows brought to the desktop was a huge boon to my productivity. Everything was low latency, high framerate, and just felt real. I could rotate my virtual desktops around and they felt like actual spatial locations for organization. I could drag windows and they felt like quasi-tangible objects, not just abstract rigid platonic rectangles. It was far more than just a gimmick, and I really miss the effects today.

rbanffy 5y ago
I have to say the same. It makes the computer "feel" better. It reminds me of discussions around Mac vs PC in the early days. The experience of using a Mac was more "fluid" than Windows. The Mac would draw windows faster, move the mouse faster (as in more refreshes of the cursor position per second) and that made it more comfortable to use. At the same time I also used Sun and SGI boxes regularly and the stark difference between the jerky mouse movement of the Sun and the fluid, Mac-like, movement of the SGI made the former an inferior experience (even though I liked OpenWindows over SGI's window manager whose name I forgot). I'd love to have wobbly windows back.
- ISV_Damocles 5y ago
  If you use KDE wobbly windows are built in to its KWin compositor. :) I forget the exact details of how to get to it since I don't use KDE anymore (long-ish story), but even most of the silly things Compiz did are a configuration checkbox away in KDE.
  - JasonFruit 5y ago
    It's under Desktop Effects.
  - roenxi 5y ago
    Yeah, but it just doesn't quite manage to Compiz/Beryl feel. It is difficult to put a finger on but whoever did Compiz wobbly windows had an eye for it that the KDE devs don't. Using both, I can't imagine getting excited by KDE wobbly windows in the same way that Compiz could get a "wow!" by demoing wobbly windows -> desktop cube. It was a short, beautiful peak of Linux on the Desktop where a high was reached and then desktops just fell away from it.

godot 5y ago

I clicked on the youtube link expecting to see Compiz examples, and was extremely pleasantly surprised to hear the music of Top Racer on SNES (I believe the game might've been called Top Gear 1 in America. In Asia Top Gear was the sequel to the first Top Racer game). One of my favorite SNES sound tracks of all time.

brnt 5y ago

It was just plain fun! Nowadays, the only thing to look forward to is what functionality the Gnome devs ripped out this time...

jbverschoor 5y ago
But they did that back then as well. Quartz compositor and quartz extreme are older. It has always been like this.

quadrifoliate 5y ago

I instinctively expected to hear the notes of "Here Comes the Hotstepper" when I clicked on that video. I was expecting https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xC5uEe5OzNQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xC5uEe5OzNQ; which was somewhat popular to send around to show comparisons of how Compiz was so far ahead it could not just replicate Vista's interface, but could also better it in some aspects like the famous 3D cube. Thanks to you and others for working on it! Looking at the video almost 15 years later, I feel wistful for the joy that accompanied some of these desktop effects, and wonder where it has gone today.

jaywalk 5y ago
Shocking to see what passed as acceptable video quality back in 2007.
- necovek 5y ago
  Without checking, I would guess it was more related to limited upload speeds: video was probably recorded at a much higher bitrate, but then uploading that...
- chrismorgan 5y ago
  $ yt-dlp -F 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xC5uEe5OzNQ' [youtube] xC5uEe5OzNQ: Downloading webpage [youtube] xC5uEe5OzNQ: Downloading android player API JSON [info] Available formats for xC5uEe5OzNQ: ID EXT RESOLUTION FPS │ FILESIZE TBR PROTO │ VCODEC VBR ACODEC ABR ASR MORE INFO ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── sb2 mhtml 48x27 │ mhtml │ images storyboard sb1 mhtml 60x45 │ mhtml │ images storyboard sb0 mhtml 120x90 │ mhtml │ images storyboard 139 m4a │ 1.55MiB 47k https │ audio only mp4a.40.5 47k 22050Hz low, m4a_dash 140 m4a │ 4.13MiB 127k https │ audio only mp4a.40.2 127k 44100Hz medium, m4a_dash 251 webm │ 4.11MiB 126k https │ audio only opus 126k 48000Hz medium, webm_dash 17 3gp 176x144 8 │ 2.67MiB 82k https │ mp4v.20.3 82k mp4a.40.2 0k 22050Hz 144p 160 mp4 192x144 25 │ 1006.62KiB 30k https │ avc1.4d400b 30k video only 144p, mp4_dash 278 webm 192x144 25 │ 1.70MiB 52k https │ vp9 52k video only 144p, webm_dash 133 mp4 320x240 25 │ 2.01MiB 61k https │ avc1.4d400d 61k video only 240p, mp4_dash 18 mp4 320x240 25 │ 9.42MiB 290k https │ avc1.42001E 290k mp4a.40.2 0k 44100Hz 240p 242 webm 320x240 25 │ 2.81MiB 86k https │ vp9 86k video only 240p, webm_dash None of these will be the format it was originally uploaded in, but I’d guess format 133 (~61 kbps) to be the closest for the video part, at 2MB. Judging by the sound of it, the original audio bit rate was probably higher than the video bit rate!

fartcannon 5y ago

It also taught me the value of enthusiast built software. A nearly blind friend of mine was able to use Linux for music recording in Ardour (thanks again Ardour/Paul, you rock) with the ezoom function in compiz! The only problem was that it had a limit of something reasonable like 8x, but my friend often required a bit more than that. I emailed the maintainer and he added it within an hour! We were both so used to dealing with the various exploitative zoom software providers on Windows that charged an arm and a leg for support, and new features were only added in future expensive upgrades that our minds were totally blown. Thanks again, Kristian! If you ever read this, you really made our year.

jmspring 5y ago

I thought compiz was interesting and it did have an impact. That said, In the mid 2000s, Linux was better but still had issues getting video/etc configured properly (depending on what you wanted to do/your hardware). I specifically moved to OS X because video just worked.

necovek 5y ago
Playing videos with Xv worked well for me on Linux in early 2000s. I can't never get proper hw-accelerated video to play without bogging CPU down on my Linux laptops anymore (Thinkpads with Intel low-voltage CPUs).
- jmspring 5y ago
  I was more a FreeBSD person at the time, slutty to try various things, but 2000s think pads and FreeBSD just worked at some point and never changed that system. Used OSX otherwise. Printers were the other Linux/OS X usage gap.

sedatk 5y ago

I think it also frontiered GPU acceleration in user interfaces too.

Nition 5y ago

You might well be right. I was at university during that time, and people would legitimately see that someone else had wobbly windows and cool effects and end up getting Linux because of it. Just looking at all the options in the Compiz window was exciting. I can have fish inside my desktop cube?

DonHopkins 5y ago

https://github.com/Schneegans/Burn-My-Windows/commit/b5f911802de95ef4d3ddf7bf6a72bec08a1763b3#diff-7439bd06ba4d14a735e17c177d8a1b82141ff2e9e059146a89f6f142536ad973L23 https://github.com/Schneegans/Burn-My-Windows/commit/b5f9118... // This effect is a homage to the good old Compiz days. However, it is implemented // // quite differently. While Compiz used a particle system, this effect uses a noise // // shader. The noise is moved vertically over time and mapped to a configurable color // // gradient. It is faded to transparency towards the edges of the window. In addition, // // there are a couple of moving gradients which fade-in or fade-out the fire effect. // https://github.com/Schneegans/Burn-My-Windows/blob/main/src/extension/FireShader.js https://github.com/Schneegans/Burn-My-Windows/blob/main/src/...

deleted 5y ago
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anarazel 5y ago

Random, low confidence and trollish, theory: Compiz et al had the opposite effect. The number of different compositor / effect projects increased the already substantial fragmentation of the linux desktop world, and put a large amount of developer energy into things that didn't end up having influence over the long haul.

jdoliner 5y ago

I got into Linux largely because of how cool compiz was. Wobbly windows legit created my entire career.

oraphalous 5y ago

Also - it was just fun... I don't know why that can't be more of a consideration in modern UX.

echelon 5y ago

I was already dabbling in Linux with shared hosting for my hobbyist website, but Compiz made me lean into Linux and development full tilt. Showing friends the crazy 3D desktop, the wobbling, burning windows, and all of the other crazy customization and effects it provided gave me a kind of unique confidence and excitedness in my explorations. It was like jet fuel for learning. Bash, vim, Unix philosophy, Python - all things I got sucked into because I liked the aesthetics and promise of Linux. Lessons that outlived the window manager and paved the way for my career. Compiz couldn't have done a better job.

AtlasBarfed 5y ago

Yes, Compiz, yet another point where Linux could have grabbed massive mindshare in the desktop market, when there was massive ... what do I say ... confusion? incompetence? exhibited by Windows especially. And... it went nowhere. A shot at a truly amazing desktop that would put it even above OSX. Squandered. The desktop market is STILL, ten years after windows 8, STILL ripe for the taking.

nsonha 5y ago
Sorry no one gives a shit about these. The majority of users hate visual effects. Those that add useless delay into the task they are doing, tasks that in some cases are already repetitive & tedios without the delay. Same for modern web design, just egoistical style over functions. Windows won because of software written on it, OSX because of exceptional hardware that comes with the OS. Things like compliz are for nerds and inconsequential on the grand scheme of things
herbst 5y ago
Linux is still far superior when it comes to window managers. If you like the Windows 95 approach both Microsoft and Apple are using you have KDE/Plasma, mature, stable and full of helpful gimmicks. If you like the out of your way approach and still have all the luxury of a modern desktop (a bit like windows 8 wanted to be) there is Gnome Shell. If you don't want to waste resources just try something like openbox and if you hate desktops all together try something tiled like awesomeWM If desktops would be any argument for the average users nobody would be using windows today.

madmax108 5y ago

+1 to this. Back in the mid-late 2000s, I used to have a modded compiz theme which was heavily inspired by the Matrix, and looked absolutely spectacular. It included things like windows beind "hidden" unless you used a key-combo to "see the matrix", a bunch of animation effects, some sound effects from the movie etc. I can bet that more folks in school wanted to try out linux (This was around the time when Canonical was sending out free installation CDs to whoever wanted to try out Ubuntu) because they thought it was "cool" rather than because of any of the other philosophical or technical arguments for Linux.

herbst 5y ago

Even thought most was useless I still wait for to see native zooming coming back. For visionally impaired with high resolutions this is more relevant than ever.

secondaryacct 5y ago

I loved it then I grew to love even more low effect, dark-style simple UIs as a result of the constant slowdowns, uselessness, desktop crashes that came with compiz. But god was it cool to brag.

darthcoder1010 5y ago

I really miss this Linux era. Yeah, probably all these effects were not useful, but at least we had something innovative and fun going on in the Linux community, now the best we can hope for is to copy Apple interfaces... Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the quality of the Linux desktop of today, but I don't see anything really different from Windows/Mac apart from getting subpar support from many software/hardware vendors. Maybe is just nostalgia, or maybe I'm growing old and grumpy...