Former Compiz Developer Creating New Window Animation Library

[ddriver]

Moron, do you realize the only two things you just complained about are the top two things that make linux distributions so powerful.

Evidently, the "idiocy" part triggered you, which also explains why you believe that being user-unfriendly makes linux "so powerful". My condolences to you.

In which case -you- need to choose something else. That simple really. Go buy a mac, you'll never have the power to fix your own machine ever again. And that's exactly what your complaining about that you want.

I've been building my own boxes since the days of 386, I've never bought a branded desktop machine EVER. I've never used customer support in my life EVER. I've been a power user and a prosumer for most of my life. I have no trouble fixing things, my issue with linux, which you obviously lack the mental capacity to understand, is that the only way to be cozy in linux is if you only do linux. I don't use operating systems to spend my time trying to fix problems with them, many of which shouldn't arise in the first place. I use operating systems to run the software I use in my profession.

Linux has over 99% of the supercomputer market share, and 96% in servers, but on the end user front, it has a measly 1.7%, which is a loud and obvious testament to how abysmal it still is as a user operating system. Google managed to make it useful by only taking the core, and replacing the "user" part of linux with android - that seems to work pretty well, but vanilla linux, even the best distros... still mediocre and useless for anything but the most trivial and non-critical computing.

[duby229]

Evidently, the "idiocy" part triggered you, which also explains why you believe that being user-unfriendly makes linux "so powerful". My condolences to you.



I've been building my own boxes since the days of 386, I've never bought a branded desktop machine EVER. I've never used customer support in my life EVER. I've been a power user and a prosumer for most of my life. I have no trouble fixing things, my issue with linux, which you obviously lack the mental capacity to understand, is that the only way to be cozy in linux is if you only do linux. I don't use operating systems to spend my time trying to fix problems with them, many of which shouldn't arise in the first place. I use operating systems to run the software I use in my profession.

And yet, -ALL- OSes break. If you tell me Windows never broke right when you needed it the most, I'm gonna have to call that a lie. Dealing with breaks in operating systems is part of -every- computer users life. If you don't like the truth then choose a mac and you'll never be capable of fixing your own machine ever again.

[Guest]

Every serious PC user I know actually disables even the most basic animations and effects.

What about us non-serious PC users too busy getting actual work done to bother looking for how to disable animations and effects?

[ddriver]

Everything breaks. It is just that for a daily prosumer driver, linux breaks way too often, for some reason. I use it for the same things I use windows. I am very conservative and careful with software installations, updates and whatnot. My main PC has a windows 7 install that is about 8 years old, it is rock solid, hasn't broken ever, and often goes for months without even a reboot.

I wish I could say the same thing about linux, but I can't. It keeps on breaking, usually inexplicably. A few weeks back I had to copy some backups to a linux share, well the darned thing kept interrupting transfers and giving error messages that wouldn't tell me anything useful about what's going on, and that woldn't go away unless the error logs are manually deleted from the terminal. Such a powerful os outta be able to handle some network file copying, but it doesn't.

What about us non-serious PC users too busy getting actual work done to bother looking for how to disable animations and effects?

If you find it arduous and challenging to go through the few clicks it takes to disable those, and don't see how quickly you get that investment of effort returned, I cannot help but wonder what kind of "actual work" you are doing...

[schmidtbag]

So Linux now appears to what is essentially idiocy, by wasting processing power on superficial eye candy? Rather than committing more efforts to the many things that make Linux user-unfriendly...

Who cares that you can't do basic things without having to search the internet and type cryptic commands in the console, when you can just spend your day watching window animations?

Every serious PC user I know actually disables even the most basic animations and effects.

Though the vast majority of the effects are unnecessary, resource taxing, or might even slow down your workflow, I think you are looking at this in way too personal (and negative) of a perspective. I personally disable special most or all effects on all of my devices (even my phone), except my general-purpose laptop, where I use about half of the of the KDE Plasma effects. I do this for 2 reasons:
1. Since I don't do anything time or framerate sensitive on my laptop, I can sacrifice some system resources without any worries.
2. Despite what you think, some of the visual effects actually have practical benefits. Here's a few examples:
* The "expose" view of the workspaces allows me to quickly and easily switch between all applications and organize applications across workspaces.
* alt+tabbing between applications on a single workspace is faster and easier, since I get a full preview of what it is I want to switch to and I can just simply click on it.
* Since I set my workspaces up in a grid, if I navigate them using keyboard shortcuts, the sliding effect gives me a visual cue of where I am, without taking up any space on the screen at all.
* I like having stuff like terminals and window decorations transparent, since that allows me to see what/if something is behind them, and then I add a blur effect so the text is easier to read.
* I like having windows turn transparent when I move or resize them because it helps me maximize my workflow, since I can see exactly where I can fit everything.
* Being able to manually set window transparency in general is very useful (on small laptop screens) since it allows me to read text in 2 different programs at the same time, without having to minimize, shade, switch tasks, or switch workspaces.
* Though it doesn't work under Wayland, having window thumbnail popups in the task list is especially useful, like when trying to view the progress of a download without having to actually switch away from what you're currently using.

Obviously there's more, but that's just the few that came to mind. So anyway, not all of it is just slow useless eye candy. Most of it is, and in general I still wouldn't recommend anybody use them, but some of them do have practical benefits.

[storma]

Though the vast majority of the effects are unnecessary, resource taxing, or might even slow down your workflow, I think you are looking at this in way too personal (and negative) of a perspective. I personally disable special most or all effects on all of my devices (even my phone), except my general-purpose laptop, where I use about half of the of the KDE Plasma effects. I do this for 2 reasons:

<-- snip -->

Obviously there's more, but that's just the few that came to mind. So anyway, not all of it is just slow useless eye candy. Most of it is, and in general I still wouldn't recommend anybody use them, but some of them do have practical benefits.

What schmidtbag said.
It's not about the fluff but what it can give you.

[Djhg2000]

So Linux now appears to what is essentially idiocy, by wasting processing power on superficial eye candy? Rather than committing more efforts to the many things that make Linux user-unfriendly...

Who cares that you can't do basic things without having to search the internet and type cryptic commands in the console, when you can just spend your day watching window animations?

Every serious PC user I know actually disables even the most basic animations and effects.

Speak for yourself buddy, Compiz used to kill performance on my GMA915 but it was totally worth it to see the spontaneous combustion of Windows users.

[duby229]

Everything breaks. It is just that for a daily prosumer driver, linux breaks way too often, for some reason. I use it for the same things I use windows. I am very conservative and careful with software installations, updates and whatnot. My main PC has a windows 7 install that is about 8 years old, it is rock solid, hasn't broken ever, and often goes for months without even a reboot.

I wish I could say the same thing about linux, but I can't. It keeps on breaking, usually inexplicably. A few weeks back I had to copy some backups to a linux share, well the darned thing kept interrupting transfers and giving error messages that wouldn't tell me anything useful about what's going on, and that woldn't go away unless the error logs are manually deleted from the terminal. Such a powerful os outta be able to handle some network file copying, but it doesn't.



If you find it arduous and challenging to go through the few clicks it takes to disable those, and don't see how quickly you get that investment of effort returned, I cannot help but wonder what kind of "actual work" you are doing...

That Windows 7 installation that is 8 years old, is definitely broken in multiple ways, you either don't trigger them or you just don't know any better. Believe it, it's broken.

[crowen]

What you should not forget is, that it is sometimes those "toys" that get young people interested into development. When compiz came up with all the neat effects, alot kids got interested into development suddenly and wanted to do some more fancy "show off". Also it is purely the libraries authors choice if he wants to spend time on his project. Take that as a gift from that developer to the community. I am thankful about that, sometimes toys are a neat and welcome distraction.
What i do not understand though is why this thread had to be turned into a "fix my personal problems" thread. That is completly irrelevant for this and offtopic... if you encountered problems with your distribution of choice... why not just report them to the bug tracker... or work on a solution on your own and gift it to the community (alternatively pay someone to do it).
Think about how it is when other people complain that you did not mow their lawn instead of fixing a problem for yourself and all other people out there. To me that just sounds silly.

[You-]

The updates failing problem is currently being fixed in a number of ways.

Fedora/RedHat are going the way of Atomic images, such as with Fedora Atomic Workstation/SilverBlue.

OpenSUSE are going the way of BTRS Snapshots.

I use Fedora (not the atomic variety) and since I dual boot, one of the few things I need to remember when setting up a new system is how to prevent kernel updates from changing the default boot target.

After that, add rpmfusion and now flathub and for basic use three isnt much more to remember.

What is lacking is helper functions for instance on Windows there are various environments available for developing web platforms from Wampserver to Acquia Dev Desktop that help keep everything "contained" and not take over the whole system.

Talking of which, having a webapp as a flatpak could be an interesting project... I wonder if that could work.